A helpful guide to exploring Caves you find on the planets of Approaching Infinity.
Why Explore Caves?
As you zip through space in Approaching Infinity, the one thing you really want to find are caves on distant world. No matter how much time you spend among the stars, caves are where it’s at.
So why do you care about caves, beyond a few missions that might take you there? Here’s why:
- Caves have levels stuffed with resources you can sell.
- Caves sometimes have levels chock-full of artifacts, blueprints, and alien data.
- Mercenaries REALLY like setting up bases in caves, which let you get your hands on bounty, use teleporters, fight them – and eventually befriend them.
A good set of caves can make you money, give you blueprints, and make friends (after you kill a bunch of them, Mercenaries are weird).
Caving Basics
Here are the things you need to know to spelunk among the stars.
CHANGING LEVELS: As you go deeper, you might worry about how to get back to the surface – or all the way back to where you were. Fortunately as long as your health and oxygen are high enough, you can immediately return to the surface, or go to the lowest level you explored from the surface. Even if you can’t go as far as you want, you can hopefully get close (or get better equipment).
OXYGEN: Getting into caves is difficult as you need Oxygen! Fortunately as you wander around you’ll find Oxy-Alge (blue icons) and Mercenary bases have oxygen tanks. Oxy-Algae respawns so you can keep diving deeper and deeper. If you can find a cave on a planet with breathable atmosphere, then score – dive deep.
DIGGING: You can dig into some walls without equipment, but sometimes you’ll find (or uncover) piles of rocks that you need an Excavator or the Spelunker skill to get through them. Always keep an Excavator on hand.
DANGERS: There are areas prone to cave-ins, acid pools, lava, and more to be found. Learn the dangers and be careful – unless you have Self-Sealing Suits its hard to heal. You might want to use various Away Team equipment to protect yourself, but remember you can only have one at a time, and you’ll probably want an Excavator or something else.
ENEMIES: There will be enemies. You knew that, but you have more unique terrain to take advantage of.
