The Starbound Beta has been released.

AngrySquirrel wrote: »

As promised here is my somewhat helpful guide of collected info:

Beginner Tips/Getting Started:

CONTROLS
WASD movement with cursor aiming.
Spacebar to jump.
E to interact with objects in the environment (IE: crafting bench, door, harvest plants, campfire, etc).
Q drops the selected item.
Menu hotkeys such as C for crafting, I for inventory, N to inspect things in the environment.
Right-click a stack to divide it in half.
Shift-click an item to move it from slots like toolbar and chests to your inventory and vice-versa.
F key is used to activate tech powers such as the Mech.​

GETTING STARTED
It's wise to use the 3D Printer aboard your ship to copy the seeds you start out with. To interact with the 3D Printer, press the E key when you're next to it. Once you scan them into the printer, you are easily able to copy them for only 1 Px apiece. Not sure you can copy seeds with it in the latest patch, but it should still be useful.

In order to actually use the seeds, you will need a gardening hoe. To craft a hoe, you will need cobblestone and wood. Gather them with the matter manipulator you are given at the beginning, and press C to open your crafting window. From there, craft some wooden planks and then, using the planks, craft a workbench. The workbench will allow you to craft the essential Iron Anvil among other useful tools. Once you have crafted your gardening hoe, find (or make) a fairly long, flat stretch of dirt. Use the hoe on the dirt and then use the seeds on the tilled land. After a wait, the seeds will grow. In order to harvest them, you should activate them as you would a crafting station or a door. This will give you the grown item as well as a seed or two back that you can plant again.

It's to build a shelter early as well. Monsters gets nastier at night and you will want some protection. Once you're settled in, with a decent crop, you can begin working on crafting other things.

HELPFUL TIPS

• Not all creatures are hostile. Most of them are.
• Do NOT swim in green liquid. This is poison and will kill you. Not instantly, but leaves a DoT on you for a short time even after leaving the liquid.
• Moon planets tend to drop temperature very quickly, but contain a lot of ores, with no trees. Bring warm clothes and fire.
• Arid planets have no trees, okay temperature and a good amount of ores, but it seems like it has stronger monsters.
• Forest planets are just "ordinary" planets.
• Every race has different starting armour and weapon recipes.
• The thermometer that sometimes pops up shows temperature. If the bar empties, you tend to die.
• At night, all creatures become stronger, and more seem to spawn.
• You can left-click to build, but you can also right click to build a background.
• Some crafting recipes unlock new crafting recipes. (Copper armour unlocks silver armour for example.)
• Holding the attack button while using a bow increases attack damage and range. Releasing when it flashes fire a much more powerful shot.
• The shift key has many uses. You can mine/build in a 1x1 area with it, and it allows you to walk.
• The Ctrl key can be used to extend your view in the direction of the cursor. Very handy in caves.
• Blueprints are used in the same way as food. Simply equip it, and click. This will allow you to craft whatever is on the blueprint. The same applies to found tech too.
• You can repair tools with the tool's respective ore. For example, right clicking a damaged copper pickaxe while holding copper ore will restore some of its durability.
• Use a hunting bow or hunting knife if you want meat or leather. If you kill a monster with anything else, they'll usually drop pixels.
• Using coal, you can fuel your space ship. Simply open the fuel tank and drop in the materials. Unrefined wood also works, however it isn't nearly as efficient.
• The Distress Beacon summons the first boss. Don't fight him until you're ready!
• When looking for meat/leather weaken the monster with your weapon and last hit with the bow. Bows tend to do less damage.
• Middle Mouse Button has the same functionality as "E", and is often more convenient to use.
• A very useful combat strategy is to have a one-handed weapon plus either flashlight or bandages in your "L/R" quick slots. That way, you can either fight in the dark, or fight and heal without changing slots.
• Also regarding combat, be careful around cliffs, or on top of hills. Monsters deal significant knockback, and even a weak monster can send you flying down, instakilling you with fall damage.
• Pressing "X" toggles between your "L/R" slots and the last non-L/R-slot you selected. This effectively allows you to toggle between two equipment sets in a heartbeat (for example, Sword+Flashlight <-> Bow).
• The "armor" rating in your inventory isn't just the total of armor points from your equipment; it's more of a general rating to tell you which monsters you can battle without problems (armor 5, for example, means you can handle level 5 monsters pretty well). The last balance patch totally reworked armor and weapons. I don't know what = what anymore.
• Before traveling to a planet, be aware that (at least in the early stages), monsters on it seem to be about 1-2 levels higher than its "danger" rating at day, and about 3 levels higher at night.
• Do not travel to a planet with a difficulty rating significantly higher than your current armor level. You may get stranded with no fuel, and hordes of instakilling monsters on the surface.This has also changed due to Threat levels only going from 1-10 now while armor is different. Basically the tier of armor should match the threat level of the planet, but I haven't worked out which tier is which armor wise yet.
• The most efficient way to fuel your spaceship earlygame is unrefined wood. Craft an axe, fell a few trees and you've got plenty of fuel to go and explore the universe.Wood no longer fuels ships.
• Upgrade your hunting bow to an iron bow as soon as you can. It's not that expensive, and is an extremely useful upgrade early on.
• You can customize many aspects of your ship. You can, for example, place blocks or platforms for additional floors, and remove/replace the background walls! You can put all your crafting stations and a bed on your ship for easier access.
• If you find a village, press E / MMB on every NPC. Some are traders, and often provide interesting weapons or cheap food.
• Village people don't mind if you take their village with you. Take all the materials and furniture you want - and don't forget to look in all containers (chests, crates, lockers...), as they often contain useful stuff.
• Try not to display your weapon publicly in a village. The guards tend to get nervous about that.
• Also, if a monster attacks you close to a village, do not hit it - instead, try to lure it away. Otherwise, you will soon find 10 guards chasing after you.
• If you start to freeze, an effective way to counter it is placing a torch very close to you. This only works for moderately cold environments; it won't stop you from freezing on moons, for example.
• You will lose pixels whenever you die.
• Be careful with shift-clicking items around. If the destination storage is full and you shift-click an item into it, it will disappear forever. This is a bug and will likely get fixed soon, just be cautious.
• Regarding storage, be aware that, when playing online, everyone can access all storage units (including the shiplocker) in your ship. Play with people you trust, or hide your treasures on a secret planet.
• If you fell a tree and it only drops "plant fibre", don't be disappointed. First, it's extremely useful for making bandages (low-tier healing items). Second, just walk on - there's bound to be other trees on the planet which give you actual wood.
• Ores buried in sand, gravel or other gravity-affected materials are easy to harvest. Just mine the sand underneath, and the displacement will cause all ores to separate from the blocks and convert to item-form.

Background is important.
1. Best way to drain water is to break background (with right click). This only seems to work until a certain depth.
2. When you are mining for some specific material, dig background. Background can have ores as well.