What are your thoughts on the Extreme desert biome?

[daterxies]

I tried it out last night in mountainous area.. Dug into mountains a bit.. but after 5 hours of game play i didn't really find it challenging.  Even with heat waves up to 120 degrees F.

What has your experience with it been so far?

[Shurp]

Haven't played it yet, but maybe I should.  But 120'F?  That's a standard heat wave, nothing special there.  I get > 50'C (122'F) heat waves in boreal forests.  What season are you in?  Maybe you have to wait to summer for the really brutal ones?

[Robovski]

I've had a heat wave and it got up to 134F at one point. I've managed to avoid heat stroke and too much trouble, though the freezer did become a fridge as -2F became unachieveable and the freezer sat at 40F. Fortunately I didn't lose power so the colonists could sleep in AC too.

I'm currently teching around my problems. Plants only grow in that thin border between rock and sand? Hydroponics. Plants won't grow when it is too hot? Move that growing into a controlled environment. No wood for fuel or building? Stone for the construction and electricity for everything, get those geothermals up and running.

It hasn't been an easy start though, having one of your starters work on research from the get-go.

[Shurp]

Yeah, that's the standard ice sheet rule -- have to have a researcher to get stonecutting going. 

I just started an extreme desert colony to see what it's like.  It looks like the standard ice sheet only hot instead of cold.  I guess the extra challenge is that parkas don't help.  But on the plus side sieging pirates should drop like flies

[daterxies]

The hottest point i found on my map the avg July high is 94, and January is 79.  Are yours higher?

Even with my colonist out during the 120 degrees, i didn't get any notifications of heat stroke or anything.

[Jack_Treehorn]

If you think Ice sheet and Extreme desert is easy . Try plains or small hills in those biomes and increase the map size. It makes it far harder when you don't have much to work with, you need to take advantage of every opportunity.

I would say the hardest is Ice sheet-Large map-Plains. The only building materials you will find is abandoned buildings and the occasional ancient site.

[A1win]

I also tried extreme desert and it seemed much easier than the coldest ice sheets I did at alpha 11, but maybe I didn't find a map with as high temperature for it as possible. I didn't get very far because of Randy and me making some mistakes I had forgotten about since the last time I played. I might just go back to ice sheet, it's hard right from the start!

[Shurp]

Even on flat/plains you have rubble strewn all over, plenty of building material once you get stonecutting going.  The major challenge on flat is lack of steel.

But yes, I always play on small hills because large hills get in the way of my base and mountains is too killboxy

[makapse]

extreme desert is NOT more hotter than normal desert, but a lot less rainfall.I have seen a desert at 38C ,400mm rain // and 32C  80mm rain  extreme desert on the same seed. One can go without noticing even a single rain in a year. Extreme desert tend to go around the temp of desert in summer and single digit temp in winter which is harder to cope with as u need both cooler and heater in the same room else have at least 1 of slept in hot/cold for some time and also, there is nearly no soil(i havent seen in my 1 playthrough) and very little gravel, comparable to that of ice sheet

[TheDirge]

I wish it was a bit hotter

[Andy_Dandy]

Id find it alot more challenging if the Biome could produce very hot summers and very cold winters. Then I'd need all kinds of temperature apperatuses and all kinds of clothing for every colonist. Just an idea.

[Shurp]

So until rain is relevant for farming I'm right to be underwhelmed by the extreme desert.  Until then, I can grow my potatoes and hops *outside* in gravel... sure, it grows slow during a heat wave.  But nothing nearly as difficult to contend with as a solar flare turning off my heaters when it's -50'C outside.  Quick, set my farms on fire to keep them warm!

[MajorFordson]

I've not even seen "Extreme Desert" on a biome map yet... Or is that not how it works?

Having to collect water with moisture condensers, or using a bore pump for your crops like the old fertilizer pump, would be a great game addition. Even if you had to deal with salty or unclean bore water as well.

[makapse]

to be honest, desert is harder than extreme desert because the outside temp can excede the tolerance temp for the plants in summer.Its nearly not possible to get it out of the range in the extreme one without events and hydrophnics being a tier1 research, gravel potatoes are easy to get in the starting too. Also, unlike the ice sheet where 1 might find the max outside temp to be -50C and nearly always, unhealthy at game start there is no such driving force that is a problem in the deserts