A Champion's Guide to the Habitarium

Have you seen everyone talking about the new game Professor Milton Clodbottle's Astounding Habitarium? The Neoboards are all abuzz with chatter about P3s, pests, raids, and resources. But beginning the game can be overwhelming; aside from the brief tutorial, you're essentially given a beginner set of resources and P3s with no directions for success.

Well, you've come to the right place. Follow this simple guide, and your Habitarium will be the envy of the neighborhood!

First, know what your P3s will and won't do.

The species has no effect on the work that a P3 can do, but each P3 has a type. There are soldiers, workers, and nesters. Nesters lay eggs if you put them in a nest, and can also gather resources. Soldiers can raid other Habitariums and defend yours from raids and pests, and they can also build and repair buildings. Workers can gather resources and build and repair buildings, and can fight invading pests.

For most purposes, we suggest having mostly workers (around half of your total P3s) and an equal number of soldiers and nesters. If you plan to raid, you should make more soldiers. Workers are ideal because they gather resources the best out of the three, but can also defend your Habitarium and build and repair buildings.

To get your P3s to work on something (or eat, or go into a house), you pick them up and move them over to one of the adjacent squares. Keep in mind that they will not do a task outside of their skill range, even if you place them on top of it! A nester will not repair your damaged house, for example.

Second, concentrate on buildings, not food.

You will start your Habitarium with enough resources for a little food. You should concentrate on gathering the resources that you need for buildings (mud, stone, and wood) instead of the resources for food (grass, pollen, and water).

You need to build at least one storage and one nest, but the next thing to concentrate on is houses. Houses will heal your P3s when they are tired, hungry, or injured. Ideally you want to have enough houses for all your P3s to be in at once, and then you will not ever need to buy food, nectar, or things for energy. At first, you can rotate your P3s in and out of the houses to keep them well. If all workers and most nesters are working towards the goal of building more houses, you should have enough in no time!

Third, nest constantly.

Your first priority with nesters should be to make a new nester egg of each species. That way, if your nester dies, you can continue to propagate the species. Hold onto the eggs and do not hatch them until your nester dies.

Then you can concentrate on making more P3s to reach the maximum population for your level. Keep in mind the ratio that we suggested: about half workers and then the rest nesters and soldiers equally.

Once you're maxed out on population, you can start discarding eggs for experience! Each discarded egg yields 200 experience points, so nesting is a very good method of leveling up.

Fourth, don't bother upgrading P3s, but do upgrade buildings.

Testing done on upgrading P3s suggests that it currently has a very minimal impact on the work done by the P3. Upgrading is a waste of resources unless you're currently maxed out on level 25 (the last level currently in the game) and have nothing better to do. Also, keep in mind that your P3 will die, even if you've taken good care of it. The resources invested in upgrading it are then gone.

Buildings, however, become much more useful when they are upgraded. Houses, for example, go from holding 3 P3s to 5 with their first upgrade, without taking up any more space. Having less buildings cuts down on the upkeep work that your workers and soldiers will need to do, and also gives you more space to work with.

Upgrading a nest does not seem to have much of an impact at the current time, but upgrading storage allows you to hold more resources.

Fifth, keep the game open as much as possible.

This has two purposes. One is that you can only be raided when you are offline. If the game is open, that means you cannot be raided (though pests can still attack, so make sure to have soldiers out of the house and ready to defend).

The other purpose is that P3s work much faster when the window is open. Your workers will gather many more resources while the game is open than they will when it is closed, though they will continue to work even when the game is closed.

If the game will be open while you will not be there to check in on them, you may want to put out some resources for P3s to take care of themselves, such as food, nectar, and energy items. Note that P3s will only eat if they are not currently engaged in a task, so workers gathering resources will not stop to feed themselves. P3s also will not go into the house by themselves, unfortunately. You should try to check in on your P3s regularly to prevent catastrophes!

Sixth, get good, non-raiding Neofriends.

Your Neofriends can help your Habitarium by giving you gifts, repairing resource tiles, fixing a building, or taking care of a P3. They can also raid you, taking resources and harming P3s. So choose your Neofriends carefully, and you should probably avoid raiding them lest they decide to retaliate.

If you need more Neofriends for Habitarium, there is a Neoboard specifically for Habitarium discussions called Habitarium - BETA. There are regularly topics about making new Neofriends for the game.

Note that there is currently a glitch where you cannot see all of your Neofriends in Habitarium. They are in alphabetical order at the bottom of the game, and after some point, you cannot scroll right anymore. Hopefully this glitch will be corrected soon!

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your envious Habitarium! Remember that the game is still in Beta testing, so elements of the game may change and there may be glitches.