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Oxygen Not Included Wiki

Settings Guide: Best Graphics & Difficulty Tips

Oxygen Not Included's Settings control how a new game is generated, how forgiving the simulation is, and what UI/debug options you can use. This page summarizes the in‑game options available when creating a world (Game Settings / Game Mode), the New Game selection steps, the Sandbox and Debug tools, and the most gameplay‑relevant presets.

Game mode and Game Settings — overview

  • First you choose a Game Mode: Survival (standard) or No Sweat (easier preset). Game Mode simply preselects a collection of lower‑level Game Settings; it does not change core simulation mechanics beyond those settings.
  • After selecting a destination asteroid and world seed, the Game Settings menu exposes detailed options (disease, hunger, morale, suit durability, stress, meteor difficulty, etc.) that you can tweak manually. Mods that add asteroid types become selectable here too.

New Game flow and Duplicant selection

  • The second screen (“Choose a Destination”) shows asteroid and world seed and world traits, with a button to open Game Settings. Your chosen Game Mode presets are preselected.
  • Final step: pick the three starting Duplicants. You may reroll them indefinitely, choose one guaranteed Interest for rerolls, and rename them.

Difficulty-presets and what they change

  • Survival: the default/standard mode; most published numbers and mechanics refer to this mode.
  • No Sweat preset: adjusts several settings to make the colony easier to manage while leaving core mechanics (oxygen needs, temperature, material ratios, world generation) unchanged. Specifically, No Sweat sets:
    • Disease: Germ Resistant
    • Morale: Chill
    • Hunger: Fasting
    • Stress: Chipper
  • There are additional tweakable options (examples below) to tune challenge further.

Key adjustable settings (player-facing)

These controls are available in the Game Settings screen and determine how robust or fragile duplicants and the world are.

  • Disease
    • Options range from Total Immunity (duplicants never get sick) through Germ Resistant, Default, Germ Susceptible, to Outbreak Prone (greatly increased sickness risk).
  • Morale
    • Sets how easily duplicants gain stress from unmet morale expectations. Example named options include Totally Blasé (never gain stress), Chill (lower requirements), Default, and higher‑demand settings.
    • Morale interacts with duplicant skill training: a duplicant above their expected morale requirement reduces stress per cycle (tiered reductions for +1 or +2+), while being below requirement causes stress gain per point missing.
  • Hunger
    • Controls how quickly duplicants need to eat (preset names like Fasting alter hunger thresholds/rates).
  • Stress
    • Presets like Chipper alter baseline stress accumulation and thresholds.
  • Suit Durability
    • Introduced with the Spaced Out DLC—affects rockets and EVA logistics. Vanilla ONI defaults to Indestructible suits; DLC/merged versions may have different defaults.
  • Meteor / External hazard difficulty
    • Meteor shower settings (selected at world creation) affect meteor season frequency, calm periods, interval, mass per meteor and the approximate total number of meteors over time. Difficulty options include Clear Skies, Spring Showers, Default, Cosmic Storm, and Doomsday; these multiply event frequency and total meteor counts accordingly.

Sandbox Mode

  • When Sandbox Mode is enabled at game start, a “Sandbox mode” button appears in the UI. Activating Sandbox Mode unlocks:
    • All research and buildings for placement without cost.
    • The ability to create/destroy solids, fill gases, and spawn duplicants, critters, plants, and objects.
    • Spawning and world edits persist, but research state will revert to whatever it was at the moment Sandbox was activated when you deactivate the mode.
  • Achievements are disabled for any save where Sandbox Mode has been activated.

Debug Mode and debug controls

  • Debug Mode provides a suite of developer/testing commands. These are only available when the debug menu is enabled.
  • Common debug hotkeys include (examples shown as keys used in the game client):
    • Debug Focus: CTRL + T
    • Toggle Debug UI: ALT + F1
    • Debug Teleport: ALT + Q
    • Spawn Minion: CTRL + F2
    • Instant Build Mode: CTRL + F4
    • Toggle Profiler: `/~ (backtick+tilde)
    • Steam‑specific: Screenshot F12, Steam Overlay Shift + Tab
  • The exact debug command list in your build appears in the debug menu and can differ by platform/build.
  • The Schedule UI uses 24 blocks (each block = 25 seconds) and lets you assign Work, Downtime, Bathtime and Bedtime slots per duplicant.
    • Default schedule: 1 block Bathtime at dawn, 18 blocks Work, 2 blocks Downtime, 3 blocks Bedtime.
    • Work: duplicants prioritize tasks, only interrupting for critical needs.
    • Bathtime: prioritizes bathroom activities at >40% bladder; communal sanitary use favors grouping bathtime to avoid bottlenecks.
    • Downtime: prioritizes bathroom usage, eating (below ~3300 kcal), and leisure.
  • Alert priorities include Yellow Alert, which forces a building/task to be treated with higher urgency (ignores normal schedule except bedtime).

Other UI and convenience settings

  • Notification Designer (when available) lets you customize a notification’s name, tooltip, visual/audio type, and whether the game pauses or zooms on that alert.
  • Some buildings can be set as controlled/uncontrolled when using Interior Building Restrictions via control stations (for example beds, sanitation, storage, and recreational buildings can be restricted).

Time and units

  • The game uses seconds (s) and the day–night cycle (one cycle = 600 seconds).
  • Day/night affects duplicant behavior: daytime is when most work is performed; nighttime is for sleeping. Sunlight (and solar panels) only functions during daytime.

Practical tips for settings

  • Use Game Mode presets (No Sweat/Survival) to quickly set an overall desired difficulty, then adjust individual settings if you want specific changes (for example, increase meteor severity but reduce disease).
  • Enable Sandbox only for experimentation—activating it disables achievements and can alter research progression when turned off.
  • If you plan to use debug commands for testing, enable the debug menu before relying on those hotkeys; builds and platforms may vary which keys are active.

This page covers the player‑configurable settings visible during new game setup, the sandbox/debug options, and the most commonly adjusted presets.

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