Journey to the Savage Planet tips and tricks

Journey to the Savage Planet is a pretty straightforward game, but there’s still plenty of strategy for new players to learn. In this starter guide, we’ll share a handful of tips for getting started with gathering resources, locating your destination, upgrading your equipment, finding the best hidden items, and more.

Return to your ship often to bank your resources

Wandering around an alien planet and scraping together resources is a dangerous job. You can always reclaim your resources after you die, but it’s not always convenient (or guaranteed).

Instead, return back to your ship often. Every time you appear inside the Javelin’s habitat, you’ll automatically deposit everything you’ve collected into storage. That way, you’ll build up reserves for printing upgrades and won’t have to worry as much about tracking down your corpse to recover your stuff.

Look above and below for hidden paths

There’s a lot of verticality to the titular Savage Planet — even beyond all the floating islands. Not every path leading to hidden treasures like Alien Alloy or Orange Goo will be at eye-level. Look for ledges and grapple points that lead up. Check near the edges of cliffs for ledges below you. Cut down space grass, and you might find a cave entrance to crouch through.

Upgrade your visor to find resources on your HUD

Not too long into your journey, you’ll start getting Science Experiment missions. These are collection-type tasks like kicking Pufferbirds or scanning 50% of the planet’s resources. Completing them unlocks new tiers of upgrades at your ship’s 3D printer.

Image: Typhoon Studios/505 Games via Polygon

There are three sets of Science Missions. Completing the first (Rank: 1 — Junior Explorer) unlocks the Orange Goo and Alien Alloy Detector upgrades for your visor. These mark any nearby Orange Goo or Alien Alloy (obviously) on your HUD while scanning. And that’s important because …

Prioritize finding Orange Goo and Alien Alloy

The two most importantly items to find in Journey to the Savage Planet are Orange Goo and Alien Alloy.

Orange Goo increases your health (for surviving tough fights) and stamina (for running around). You’ll need (at least one) Alien Alloy for each of your upgrades.

You’ll encounter some of these upgrade resources organically while you’re exploring the planet, but it’s worth searching for them everywhere you go. (Orange Goo often lives in paths of space grass, so cut it all down.)

Most of these upgrades are technically optional, but they’re practically required. We reached the end of the game and the final boss fight long before we maxed out our upgrades or health. And that’s how we learned our lesson: Instead of banging your head against a too-tough fight, take the time to explore and level yourself up. And with the upgrade from the previous tip, it’s even easier to do.

Look for your destination above or below you

On the top of your screen, the kite-shaped icons indicate the direction of your next waypoint. There will also be a tiny arrow pointing up or down if you’re not at the same elevation.

Image: Typhoon Studios/505 Games via Polygon

Beyond that, any time you feel lost, just click R3 on your controller. This will highlight your current objective (whatever mission you’re tracking in your Journal), and temporarily place an icon on your HUD. That icon will include the up and down arrows, too.