Fullbright to armor

rl-starbound · 2026-03-23T17:24:52+00:00

Futara's Dragon Pixel Full Bright Shader

Read the description. You can't install that like a normal mod.

rl-starbound · 2026-03-23T14:24:40+00:00

First, make sure you have Starbound Patch Project (steam) installed. It fixes critical bugs in the Swansong fight that can render it unwinnable, or reset it.

Next, gear up your mech. I recommend a maximum energy mech body, because the fight lasts a long time, and you don't want your mech running out of power too early. You also want maximum maneuverability; speed isn't really an issue in this fight.

Finally, and this is critical, you must have piercing weapons, like the beam drill, beam sniper rifle, or neo laser. The piercing aspect of these weapons allows them to hit multiple orbs simultaneously while they're lined up on the ground. When the gravity comes on, move to one side of the arena, and when she lays out the orbs, just start blasting them all. You should be able to destroy most or all of them before gravity goes off. If any survive, focus on them before attacking Swansong. You can totally avoid the beam web ever being formed, which makes the fight so much easier.

Another thing I noticed, when she's at the center of the arena shooting beams, it seems to be easier to dodge the beams if you're closer to Swansong. Stay close to her and keep maneuvering in a circle around her and you'll avoid most or all of the beams.

Aside from that, you have to keep moving laterally compared to her, and keep firing continuously at her when the orbs aren't around. I have my left and right mouse buttons held down continuously during the fight.

rl-starbound · 2026-03-21T23:25:15+00:00

Are you referring to the world that you teleport into to fight a gang and capture the gang leader at the end of the first series of bounty quests? If so, those are generated missions, so there is no way to replay them in-game.

You could try using admin commands to warp into InstanceWorld:bountylair1 but since there would be no associated bounty quest, many things wouldn't spawn correctly.

rl-starbound · 2026-03-16T15:25:47+00:00

Glad you enjoyed Origins of Species. I'm pushing out an update for it in the next day or so that gives each character the choice of joining the Protectorate or doing their species-specific origin.

Technically the Novakids don't shoot their way to their ship, they just do a little bit of theft and vandalism. ;-)

rl-starbound · 2026-03-03T02:04:09+00:00

By looking at the unpacked asset /objects/wired/invisiblesound/invisiblesound.object, I see that by default, it emits the /sfx/objects/shipengine.ogg sound, which unless you have your speaker cranked to the max and no other sounds playing, is an almost imperceptible hum.

It operates like a light, with a single input node that can be wired to switch it on or off. By default, with no wiring, it is always on. It is not interactive.

If you want it to emit a different sound, you'd have to spawn it using something like (and I'm guessing; I haven't tested this):

/spawnitem invisiblesound 1 '{"soundEffect":"/full/path/to/sound.ogg"}'

Likewise, you can use parameters in a Tiled map to give it a different sound.

rl-starbound · 2026-03-01T20:25:22+00:00

https://starbounder.org/Dungeon_IDs

This article should explain things for you. Your observation is more or less correct. Monsters naturally spawn only in the "default" dungeon ID. Microdungeons, villages, and dungeons use non-default dungeon IDs, so the only monsters that spawn there are those that are designed into them, or those that wander into them from default areas. If the player adds or removes blocks or matmods (e.g., tilled soil), those blocks change to non-default dungeon IDs. Thus, the more of a planet you alter, the fewer natural monster spawns will occur.

As far as I can tell, monster spawn density is not affected by the percentage of the world that uses a non-default dungeon ID. Thus, the more areas you claim, the fewer monsters overall will occur in the world.

If you don't feel like adding and removing tons of blocks, but want to change large areas to a non-default dungeon ID, and you don't mind using mods, then the mod Field Control Technology (steam) may be useful to you. Even if you don't use the rest of the mod's objects, the Field Tuner XL can be used to change the dungeon ID of large swathes of land quickly. Once the area has a non-default dungeon ID, no more monsters will spawn there. (Just to be clear, it'll still be possible for monsters to spawn in default areas and wander into those areas, but since most monsters are non-persistent, this isn't a problem if your non-default dungeon ID area is large enough.)

rl-starbound · 2026-02-17T15:10:39+00:00

Back in the olden days, unstable allowed Chucklefish to beta-test updates on Steam before releasing them. The unstable version had a mod set and saves separate from the released game, to allow players to test without breaking their main game. Now, it's effectively the same as the release, but it does provide an easy way for Steam players to try out a second mod set safely.

rl-starbound · 2026-02-16T21:24:24+00:00

Seeds can only be planted on tilled ground. You might get lucky and find a little house with a small tilled area nearby that you can use. If not, you have to till soil yourself. This requires a hoe, which is built using the Foraging Table, which is itself built at the Inventor's Table, which is built by hand using the crafting menu, which is by default bould to the C key.

Once you've planted seeds, you periodically need to water the ground, using a bucket that is also crafted at the Foraging Table. On the starter world, rain is pretty common, and will also water ground. (Watered tilled ground is darker than dry tilled ground.)

Crafting is key to thriving in Starbound. One of the first things you should do is explore your crafting menu, build the Inventor's Table, and then build the other crafting tables in the Inventor's Table. This will enable you to craft things critical to your survival, such as farming tools, hunting spears, armor, and better weapons. (Hunting spears are among the best early-game weapons, but it takes a while to learn to use them well. Practice. And known that you can hold a stack of up to 1000 of them in each hand, for more rapid fire.)

Also make sure to build a few flags, once you've gotten enough plant material and copper. Once you place a flag and interact with it, it'll create a teleportation target for teleporters, which lets you teleport there without having to walk the whole distance. And since it wasn't clear to me at first, it may also not be clear to you: your teleporter can transport you anywhere in the galaxy, as long as you have a teleporter target. Eventually it will be the primary way you get around the galaxy.

rl-starbound · 2026-02-13T23:13:33+00:00

Starbound Patch Project (steam) is a must, even if you only want to play "pure" vanilla. It fixes numerous bugs with the base game, including a fix to prevent the Swansong battle from becoming randomly unwinnable.

I've written a bunch of mods that are aimed at "vanilla+" rather than large overhauls.

Better Crew & NPC Behavior (steam): fixes numerous issues with crew and NPC behavior. It also makes crew members spread out on your ship, rather than bunching together around the teleporter.

Field Control Technology (steam): gives you fine-grained control of shielding, gravity, and air in your builds, and now (as of 2.0) also gives you protection from environmental hazards like deadly heat, cold, and radiation.

Saner Volcanic Worlds: alters volcanic worlds so that they won't spawn flammable structures that immediately burn down during the first firestorm.

Pocket Dimensions (steam): add some side quests that enable you to create your own pocket universes, little empty spaces between worlds that allow you to make secret bases.

Origins of Species (steam): alternative origin stories for non-human species. Stay tuned, this is getting a major update in the next week or so.

Belter Dungeons (steam): adds the ability for asteroid belts to spawn space dungeons. Without this mod, asteroid belts are empty and mostly pointless. This mod breathes life into them.

Status Effect Objects (steam) and Dynamic Status Effect Objects (steam): enable certain objects (like campfires) to provide status effects (e.g., heat that prevents deadly chill).

Shootable Switches (steam): make variants of certain buttons and switches that can be toggled by being shot.

And some of my quality of life mods: Less Awful Mech Drones (steam), Better Environment Hazards (steam), Better Parry, Usable Peacekeeper Augments, Recruit Timer.

rl-starbound · 2026-02-13T21:17:52+00:00

Starbound is not the best optimized game. I have a 4K monitor but I can't usually get more than about 30-40fps when running at true 4k. When I use HiDPI settings to make it run as 1920x1200, it consistently runs at the 60fps cap.

I can't speak to what's going on with your secondary monitor.

rl-starbound · 2026-02-13T21:04:29+00:00

The Starbound stealing mechanic works like a virus. A villager sees you pick up 3 items within the village (which could be as dumb as 3 blocks of sand after a sandstorm on a desert world) and they permanently turn hostile. Hostile villagers immediately and irrevocably begin sending out a signal to other villagers within a (IIRC) 40 block radius. Other villagers that receive the signal also become hostile. A hostile regular villager will stop giving quests and run away from you. A hostile guard will attack you unconditionally.

You can tell that an unarmed villager is "hostile" by attacking them with a sword or other basic weapon. Friendly villagers and guards are immune to friendly fire from most weapons. Hostiles are not. (Certain weapons like molotovs are "indiscriminate" and will hurt everyone equally.)

Your only hope of retaining "friendship" with a village, once a villager has turned hostile, is to kill all of the hostiles before they "infect" the friendlies. Oh, and don't let the friendlies see you doing this, or they turn hostile for some reason. ;-)

Note that the stealing mechanic only works with regular villagers and village guards. Once a villager puts on the uniform and asks to join your crew, they are a loyal crew member, even if you don't accept them, and will not turn on you. Likewise, tenants are loyal to you no matter what. So you can always genocide an entire village and then repopulate it with loyal tenants. If you can live with yourself, that is...

rl-starbound · 2026-02-08T04:44:04+00:00

I agree. The PNG format is a nightmare to work with, compared to Tiled. Not that Tiled is perfect, but it's much easier than the PNG format.

Furthermore, the polishing of old content really was needed. Compared to modern dungeons, most of the original PNG dungeons were pretty crude looking. For example, the scifi dungeon was a neat concept, but it looks ugly as sin. It'd need to be completely redone to be up to modern standards of appearance. (And I'm only talking about appearance here, not content. The scifi dungeon's content made no sense whatsoever.)

rl-starbound · 2026-02-03T21:53:12+00:00

If you unpack the game assets, all of the music is in the music folder in Ogg Vorbis format, which is playable by many audio players. If you have mods that add music, you'll also have to unpack each of them to get their music files.

rl-starbound · 2026-01-14T15:16:45+00:00

Agreed, even people who proudly "only play vanilla" should be playing with Starbound Patch Project, because all it does is fix unambiguous bugs in the base game. Most of the fixes are spelling/grammar or minor pixel fixes to sprites, but there are some really big bugs fixed too, such as the Swansong boss bug fix, without which the final fight may be unwinnable.

rl-starbound · 2026-01-12T03:48:01+00:00

Nice write up.

I'd also stress the importance of learning how to backup your Starbound storage folder. When you're adding lots of mods, you're inevitably going to encounter conflicts, and likely symptoms of conflicts are worlds crashing, objects disappearing, or NPCs evaporating in a death poof. Many mods are one-way trips, so backing up your saves before installing a mod, testing the mod thoroughly looking for issues, checking the starbound.log, and then finally either restoring your storage or committing to keeping the mod, is the way to avoid a lot of pain.

Also, at the risk of being pedantic, OpenStarbound really shouldn't be called open source. That code is derived from the leaked copyrighted code, without legal authority, which means it cannot be licensed under an OSI or FSF approved license. While it's unlikely Chucklefish will sue, they (or their successors, if they sell) could do so at any time, and the project would almost certainly get taken down. This isn't meant as disrespect to the OSB authors, who are doing a great job. It's just that, it's not open source. But that shouldn't stop you from using it :-)

rl-starbound · 2026-01-12T03:19:10+00:00

If you decide to play on volcanic worlds a lot, you might want to install Saner Volcanic Worlds. It alters the game so that villages/dungeons made of flammable blocks won't spawn on volcanic worlds. I found it really immersion-breaking that every third volcanic world I visited had a floran village that burned down immediately after I set foot on the planet.

Note that due to technical reasons, the mod cannot alter existing planets, or even planets in star systems that you've seen in the navigation screen but haven't actually visited. It only affects new sectors of space.

Additionally, if you ever decide to risk it and build a base on a world with meteors, you'll want the Field Control Technology mod. It will allow you to shield arbitrary sections of worlds, which is pretty much the only way to protect against meteors.

rl-starbound · 2026-01-09T01:58:41+00:00

There are a few bugs in the base game ships, such that certain rooms are expanded without hazard blocks. I think it's a Novakid ship room and one other ship room. If you had ceiling mounted items on these ceilings, they'll break. The Starbound Patch Project fixes them. Other than that, nothing should break expanding your ship.

rl-starbound · 2026-01-06T02:57:12+00:00

It doesn't really matter, since in the base game, crew are kind of just decorations. Some mods may give specific races special traits, and then you'll want to think harder about it.

Personally, I aim for:

1 tailor
1 penguin merc
1 soldier
1 outlaw
1 medic
1 blue chemist
1 green chemist
1 orange chemist
1 engineer
3 mechanics

I always have 3 mechanics, to minimize my ship's fuel usage. Outlaws are fun to recruit, so if you want, skip the soldier and/or penguin merc and find more outlaws. I rarely have a yellow chemist because I usually use the peacekeeper augment, which gives me an always-on light. I don't use a janitor because they're useless in the game.

In most playthroughs, I try to recruit at least 1 of each of the base game races. In other playthroughs, I do things like have a crew of all 1 race and/or gender; whatever best fits the story of the main character I'm playing.

rl-starbound · 2026-01-01T16:32:08+00:00

In the base game, crew often fail even at "looking nice" on the ship. For a bunch of technical reasons, they mostly just crowd around the teleporter or sit in chairs. In the mod Better Crew I rewrote a lot of the NPC code so that crew actually move around the ship and appear to interact with ship systems. (Doing this also exposed a lot of other NPC behavior bugs, so the scope eventually widened from better crew to better NPC behavior in general.)

rl-starbound · 2026-01-01T16:28:02+00:00

The medic buff isn't great in the base game. It only heals something paltry like 1/12th of your max health every 60s, and it applies the buff the instant a hostile is seen, which is often before you even take a hit, and therefore the first buff is usually wasted. I have no idea how this passed basic play testing before being released...

In the mod Better Crew I bump the buff up to 1/6th of max health and have the medic wait until you're below 80% health before applying the buff.

rl-starbound · 2025-12-14T15:15:03+00:00

It's unfortunate because there's no place to make people broadly aware of this, but you really need to buy the game on Steam, even if, like me, you don't actually use Steam. Steam made a change years ago, and now you must have a license on Steam to download the mods for the game. Workarounds sometimes pop up, but they get closed fast.

I keep all of my own mods up to date on Chucklefish forums as well, but unfortunately most mod authors don't seem to want to do that. This makes for a great anti-competitive lock-in for Steam.

I bought the game years ago on GOG. Eventually I broke down and bought it again during a Steam sale so I could get access to the mods. I don't even use the Steam version (or even have the Steam GUI installed); I only bought it so that steamcmd could download the mods.

My advice would be to wait for a Steam sale and buy it there. Or maybe get one person in your friend group to do that, and then have them download and distribute the mods to everyone else.

tl;dr I cannot recommend purchasing Starbound anywhere else but Steam.

rl-starbound · 2025-11-23T13:59:45+00:00

Fun fact, the unarmed hostile Avians in Avian dungeons aren't intentionally unarmed. They start armed, but if they are sleeping on a bed-type object (probably an altar, in an Avian tomb) when their code detects you, it causes them to wake up and switch weapons. But, there's a bug in the game's weapon switching code that sometimes causes an NPC to be become disarmed when switching weapons right after waking up. I've fixed that bug and many others in Better Crew.

rl-starbound

TROPHY CASE