The Hitchhikers Guide To Thrive

Well hello there fellow sentient life-form.
Have you ever been spawned in a tide-pool and tasked to "Thrive", then been completely overwhelmed and confused as to how to accomplish this macro-cellular task?

If so then this guide is for you. The Hitchhikers Guide to Thrive, and don't panic, we have this under control.



Surviving through the Microbe Stage
In the Microbe Stage, you need to gather Compounds for your creature to use, and choose the right Organelles in the Cell Editor to adapt to the changing environment and to evolve your creature to the next stage. These microbes can also migrate around the Patch map, which can vary in biomes, ecosystem, and what environmental components such as compounds are present there and in what concentration.

Collect Compounds
Compounds are often found in the form of compound clouds, which can spawn around the map or be emitted by chunks or taken from engulfed microbes and small enough chunks. In cloud form, what type of compound they are correlates with the cloud’s color.

Phosphate and Ammonia, the Purple and Orange compounds respectively, will play a constant role in your gameplay as a required resource to evolve. If you have passive generation on, you would simply need to survive long enough to collect the amount of Phosphate and Ammonia you need.

In addition to Phosphate and Ammonia, you’ll need a source of energy, which comes in the form of ATP, to keep your cell alive until it could evolve. In the beginning of the game, your single hex of cytoplasm will rely on Glucose to make ATP, but with the right organelle, can also use Iron.

Glucose, the White compound, is a compounds your cell can use to make ATP with, and it is one of the more flexible energy sources. The Cytoplasm hex can use Glucose, as well as any cytoplasm-bound protein hexes such as Nitrogenase and Chemosynthesizing proteins. That latter protein’s osmoregulation cost would use up as much ATP as it produces, so you should only use it for its primary function, turning Hydrogen Sulfide, the Yellow compound, into glucose, this scaling with Carbon Dioxide. Metabolosomes is an organelle that can also produce ATP from Glucose faster, this speed as well as its efficiency scaling with oxygen. Mitochondria, which is unlocked after getting the Nucleus, is essentially a much more efficient and faster version Metabolosome.

Glucose is also the only energy source compound that your cell can produce on its own via the use of Thylakoid organelles, and a patch with enough Carbon Dioxide and Light. Chloroplasts, which is unlocked after getting the Nucleus, can also do so, being essentially a much more efficient and faster version of Thylakoids.

Iron, the Red compound, is another compound your cell can use to make ATP with. Rusticyanin is the only organelle that can make use of it, but iron is also the only compound that has a chunk form, so you can hang around them or the giant sea of the iron cloud they leave behind to keep yourself supplied.

Edit and Evolve your Cell
With every evolution, it is vital that you make sure your cell’s ATP production is more than enough to cover the amount of ATP it uses. The two bars in the right side of the Cell Editor display these values and warn you if it is unbalanced, so make sure to keep track of it. It is possible for your cell to be able to survive even with an unbalanced ATP usage, so long as the amount of ATP the cell uses when it stays still doesn’t consume too much ATP (you can estimate this by ignoring the movement bar, the one with an arrow on it, from part of the consumption length), though you will have to move in short bursts to make sure your ATP meter doesn’t fall so low that you start dying.

As the other microbes evolve with yours or new microbe enters your patch, you will have to deal with the new features they bring along with them, whether it be increased speed, spike projections, ranged toxins, or specialized resistance to being engulfed. You can either place the right organelles to counter or avoid these cells, or move to a new patch for a different ecosystem with the cost of different environmental conditions.

To progress through the stage, you’ll need to eventually get a Nucleus so you can unlock and add the Binding Agent organelle, which allows you to bind cells of your specie to stay mext to each other. Once you have 5 Cells bound to each other, you can then click the button to progress to Early Multicellular stage.

PvE
Speed is important regardless if the cell is predatory or prey, so adding Flagellum when having these type of interactions is common, especially with a bigger cell. Speed is also important for finding compounds quicker to refill them. You can also increase your speed by changing your cell membrane to be more fluid than rigid, though health will decrease in return, this also applying to the membrane types, though the default membrane is the fastest. With higher speeds, your turning speed will be slower, so to make it easier to control your direction, add Cilia. Mucilage, which Slime Jet organelles can pour out, can be used to slow down cells within it.

Size determines what a cell can engulf, the cell having to be some amount bigger than what it’a trying to engulf to eat it. Increases in size also increases how much ATP it uses and decreases its movement and turning speed, so make sure to balance it with the appropriate organelles. Size also increases the length of the Pilus, the spike projections that deal physical damage to other cells.

The Cellulose membrane and the Chitin membrane option makes the cell resistant to being engulfed by normal means, the cell taking no damage and eventually escaping its host after a short moment. Lysosomes, which are unlocked after having a Nucleus, can counter this with a modification that has them produce Cellulose or Chitinase, this allowing those cells to be digested and so, won’t escape.

OxyToxyNT is a toxin that cells can produce with Oxytoxisomes with the speed based on Oxygen, or a Toxin Vacuole which is essentially a more efficient Oxytoxisome but it also adds some storage. Cells can shoot OxyToxyNT as a ranged attack, and engulfed cells who produce this toxin can also damage its host, using up its toxin each time. Certain cell membranes can provide some resistance to toxins, these membranes being the Chitin membrane and Calcium Carbonate membrane. However, the Silica membrane is extra weak against toxins.

General Tips

 * Your cell cannot store compounds it doesn’t use, so any compounds your cell has evolved to no longer use will not carry over to the next generation
 * The Chemoreceptor organelle can draw a line toward the nearest compound of a specific type. The type of compound this organelle detects and at how high a concentration the cloud must be can be modified
 * To store more compounds, you can a Vacuole, which is unlocked after getting a Nucleus.
 * A Pilus on the back of your cell can keep a predator chasing you out of reach from engulfing you. This doesn’t make you immune to their other attacks
 * When using OxyToxyNT, make sure you have a high turn speed so your cell can quickly turn to shoot where you want your cell to shoot
 * Wide cells have more surface area to collect more compounds from clouds with

Other
(This Guide is based on the 0.6.3 version of Thrive)

Trivia

 * If you turned LAWK off, Thermosynthase could alternatively be used to generate ATP from the amount of heat in a patch. Thermoplasts, which can be unlocked with a nucleus, is essentially a more efficient form of this organelle.
 * This is currently only viable in the Volcanic Vents biome
 * When coloring a cell with a dark color or with a saturated blue or purple, the inside of a Thermoplast will be near black compared to the unchanged orange of its organelle membrane. In a dark biome such as in the Volcanic Vents, the Thermoplast looks like an oval eye with glowing orange sclera.

