Player
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| This guy seems to have nothing to say to himself. | |||
The Player is the avatar that represents the user playing Starbound as they explore the galaxy, fight monsters and mine to create many unique items and tools.
Contents
Character statistics
The Player is 2×4 blocks normally (sphere Techs shrink the player to a size of 2×2). In addition, the player has 100 base health, 100 base energy and an energy regeneration rate of 58.5% per second (going from empty bar to full bar takes 1.75 seconds regardless of energy pool size). Doing anything that consumes energy pauses energy regen for 1.5 seconds.
Survival and Hardcore players have a food bar size of 70 and a food bar depletion rate of -0.0583 per second (20 minutes for a full food bar to go to 0 and cause starvation effects). Over-filling the food bar (or eating any food in Casual mode) incurs the Well Fed status effect, stopping food bar depletion and bestowing other effects.
If the player becomes submerged in a liquid, enters an airless area or is buried underneath blocks while not wearing an Environment Protection Pack (EPP), the player's breath gauge, with a maximum size of 100 units, begins depleting at a rate of 4 units per second, allowing the player to be without air for up to 25 seconds without any side effects. If the breath gauge hits 0 and the player has no access to air, the player will begin to lose 5% of their health per second until they gain access to air. While in breathable air, the breath gauge regenerates at 10 units per second (a fully depleted breath gauge refills in 10 seconds).
The player has 5 item tabs which can hold 40 items and item stacks each. The leftmost tab is the main bag, followed by the material bag, the object bag, the reagent bag, and the food bag. In addition, the player can carry up to 9,999,999 Pixels or Ancient Essence at a time, and has functional and cosmetic equipment slots for the head, chest, legs and back (these can only hold appropriate Armor pieces, Costume pieces and functional backpacks).
Creating your character
After launching Starbound, your first task will be to create a character. In the character creation menu you can select among seven different races: Apex, Avian, Floran, Glitch, Human, Hylotl, and Novakid, Each race has their own unique aesthetics and racial features which you can unlock over the course of the game. You can also select the sex, appearance, game mode you want to play in, and give them a name.
You can play in three game modes. Casual is the easiest, where you only lose 10% of carried Pixels if you die. Survival is an average mode where you lose 30% of carried pixels as well as liquids, building materials, voxels from the Pixel Compressor, food, crafting materials, dyes, medical items and other consumables on death (you can retrieve lost items if they are not in an unreachable place). In addition, Survival mode has a hunger mechanic which can kill you if you do not eat for too long. Hardcore is the hardest, where if you die you drop all items and pixels (another player can retrieve both the items and the pixels for you if they are not in an unreachable place). A Hardcore character cannot respawn, and you must switch to another character if the Hardcore character dies.
Default controls
List of all Hotkeys here
| Movement | |
|---|---|
| Move | A / W / D |
| Duck | S |
| Jump | Space |
| Walk | RShift / LShift |
| Controls | |
| Interact | E / Middle Mouse button |
| Inventory | I |
| Drop Item | Q |
| Crafting | C |
| Quest | J |
| Inspect Mode | N |
| Empty Hands | Z |
| Highlight Interactable Objects | Alt |
| Camera Look | RCtrl / LCtrl |
| Building | |
| Matter Manipulator | R |
| Place in Foreground | Left Mouse Button |
| Place in Background | Right Mouse Button |
| Single Block Mode | Shift |
Death and respawning
If your character dies, depending on the mode selected during character creation, your character may either lose 10% Pixels, 30% pixels and some Items, or all items and pixels and respawn ability. If the character isn't in hardcore mode, the character will go through a respawning animation before reappearing on the ship.
Trivia
- In Starbound terminology, "the player" is synonymous with "the player character", which refers to the user's virtual avatar in the game. It is different from the user, the actual person playing the game, but the terms are often confused as they're otherwise similar.
- In Hardcore mode, when your character dies, the game keeps going but you are left frozen looking at the loot that you dropped. To get out of this, you must manually save and exit the game. Once you do, this character will not be playable anymore and a new one must be created.
- Strangely, the description to the player in the game files always refer to the player as male even if the player is female.
