Campaign Checklist

The opening building sequence that unlocks rift travel, then the rare-resource and -nite mission lines, then the endgame fork. The campaign in order.

At a glance


Start	The Tropical Zone, at the Headquarters site.
Opening goal	A fixed checklist of six buildings that unlocks global rift travel.
Mid game	Three rare-resource mission lines plus four -nite mission lines, each in its own biome.
End	Build the rift home, or stay for the Megastructure endgame (post-2.0).

The opening checklist is a fixed sequence. Everything after it branches off the research tree and the rare-resource missions.

Step	Building	Why
1	Headquarters	The central hub. Upgradeable to levels 3 to 7 later.
2	Armory	Mech weapon and equipment access. Upgradeable to levels 2 to 5.
3	Communications Hub	Opens the Base and Weapons research trees.
4	Rift Station	Enables the rift home and acts as respawn.
5	Orbital Scanner	Reveals rift travel locations.
6	Laboratory	Opens Alien Research and the Bioscanner (needs clean water).

After the Orbital Scanner and Laboratory are up:

Three rare-resource lines (Titanium, Palladium, Uranium) each run a chain of locations to a Mining Outpost. Cobalt is the exception and does not run a multi-step chain. The goal is typically to gather a target amount (sources cite 10,000) and ship it home.
Four -nite lines unlock by reaching level 2 Familiarity with a specific plant or material: Hazenite (Fungus Crystallo Luteus), Rhodonite (Vitreus Pura Rubidus), Tanzanite (Bulbus Pirium Purpura), Ferdonite (Fungus Crystallo Corulus). Each lives in a different biome.

Build the six opening buildings to unlock rift travel.
Set up the Bioscanner and start farming Familiarity on green-highlighted entities.
Run the rare-resource missions, mining Cobalt first, then Titanium, then Uranium or Palladium.
Build outposts on remote deposits to ship rare resources home.
Keep HQ and Armory upgraded throughout so research never stalls.
Build the rift home to finish the story, or decline to return and unlock the Megastructure tree.

Remote bases. A remote attack does not trigger until you rift-travel there, so be ready for a wave the moment you return.
Falling behind on HQ and Armory levels, which locks the research the missions assume you have.
Entering a -nite biome without the matching environmental shielding researched first.