You crashed your spaceship. Again.

So far you have been lucky on your expeditions and managed to find your broken ship again every single time. But now you no longer have to rely on luck. Never walk into a biter nest by accident again, because a good engineer marks their way back with glowsticks!

FAQ

Q: Nice. Can I kill biters with them?
A: Of course. Build a factory and beat the biters to death with tons of glowsticks.

Q: And if I only have a few glowsticks?
A: That is what the engineer kept their legs for.

Q: ...?
A: A single glowstick should barely hurt a biter. You could call them vegan, really. We prefer not to mention that. Weren't you going to build a factory?

Q: So there will be burnt-out glowsticks lying around everywhere? What happens to the waste?
A: Only one question is permitted.

Q: What happens to the waste?
A: The glowsticks are engineered to blend perfectly into the concrete that you, as a good engineer, are paving across the entire planet anyway.

Q: Why six colors?
A: So you can tell apart the way there, the way back, the detour, the wrong turn, and the one that nearly cost you your legs.

Q: I have a minimap.
A: A mini...? You just crashed on an alien planet. You cannot have a map. And certainly not a mini one. Also, that was not a question!

What it does

• Craftable, throwable glowsticks in six colors: green, yellow, red, violet, cyan, white.
• Disappear on their own after a configurable time.
• The glowstick on the ground has no collision: you can build straight over it.
• Minable by hand or by construction robots, returns nothing.
• Never shows up in blueprints or on the map.
• Does not attract biters.

Recipes

Hand-craftable. Same recipe for every color.

Technology

None. Available from the very start of the game.

Settings

Startup

• Colors — one on/off switch per color, all enabled by default.
• Light radius — Off, or 5 to 40 tiles. Default 10. 40 is what a regular lamp emits. Set to Off to keep only the glow of the stick itself, without it lighting up the ground.

Map

• Glowstick duration — 1 to 15 minutes, default 14. One Nauvis day/night cycle is 7 minutes, so the default covers two full cycles. Changing it also affects glowsticks that are already lying around.

Details worth knowing

• The light radius setting is the outer edge of the light. The lit area looks smaller than the number, because the light fades out towards its edge.
• Glowsticks are cleaned up in throw order, so having thousands of them lying around costs no extra performance.

Recommended mods

Light Overhaul — makes nights darker and gives them more contrast.

AI

Mod concept & design by Morlot.
Implementation developed with the help of Claude (AI assistant by Anthropic).