Andy felt like crying tears of joy. Ever since he landed on this god forsaken planet the hydration bar had been a guillotine hanging above his head, waiting to snuff his lights out. And now it was sitting at a sweet, sweet ninety eight percent!

Next up was the energy bar. He hoped the system would consume more than was needed and that he wasn’t about to waste it. But honestly, it took so much to pull this off, that he didn’t know when his next opportunity for ‘eating’ was going to come along.

Andy held the energy bar up to his mouth. After a small delay it registered and the energy bar now read: ‘Energy bar (6%)’. His hunger in turn was now full. So it only used what it needed. Good.

Andy looked around the interior of the rover. For some reason it was getting really hot in here. The hud showed the temperature being thirty nine degrees celsius. Was it because the rover was off? Did it need power to cool the interior?

No. It was more likely Andy’s waste tank. It had more O2 in it that had been heated by the sun. It could easily be transferring that heat to the cab’s atmosphere, given the canisters much higher pressure.

Andy sealed his helmet once more to keep out the cab's rising heat. He took a moment to consider his next move.

The rover is clearly not going anywhere and he clearly didn’t have the resources, tools or parts to fix it. Even if he did, he would not have the power to run it. He also couldn’t stay here, he would need more food and water eventually.

That means he would have to leave, but where would he go?

Andy felt depressed again. It felt like he was right back at square one.

The rover had to have come from somewhere. Perhaps it was possible to try and find that location, likely the dead players base.

No. Likely a POI of some kind. He doubted that a player could acquire a functional rover by the first day of the game already, just using their starter gear. Most games just did not work that way. This meant the dead player likely found the rover somewhere. Which meant a lucky POI find.

But still he would make it work. He just had to find it.

First things first though. He needed to exit the rover. But the cabin was filled with O2, a lot of it! He was pretty sure he would be sitting at ground zero for a giant explosion if he opened the door.

He couldn’t pump the O2 into the rover's O2 tank on account of the broken valve. He could vent it to the outside, but that would likely result in another fiery disaster given the sheer volume of O2 in the cab.

What he really wished he could do was get the precious O2 back into his personal O2 tank. But he knew of no way to do that and even if he could, it was already too hot to be very useful.

He once more removed the battery from his backpack and used it to power the rover, allowing his suit's temperature to start accumulating again.

Andy poured over the menus one more time and finally found a setting that would let him set the pump used for venting the rover, to a lower flow rate. This would in theory allow him to vent the O2 at a ‘safer’ rate. He just hoped it was safe enough and that the rover was as fire retardant as his suit was.

Andy set the setting and began venting. Immediately he heard the tell tale roar of the fire and felt the entire rover rock violently. As scary as it was however, everything seemed to be holding together.

It took a while, at the reduced flow rate, but eventually the cab was a vacuum once more.

Andy reset the flow rate on the pump and set it to pump in the external atmosphere to fill the cab, so that when he opened the door there wouldn’t be a mass depressurisation.

A short while later he turned it off. The dashboard was reporting that the cab was sitting at a ‘healthy’ 148kpa of a hundred and fifty degree celsius atmosphere. It was once more night time outside.

He returned the battery to his suit.

Before exiting, he decided to take a chance and set his suit’s settings back to their original starting state, hoping that the duct was sufficient to deal with the difference in pressure between 150kpa and 50kpa. He also stopped the manual flow to the waste tank as it would cost him oxygen he currently could not spare given the almost empty state of his O2 tank.

He nervously held his breath and carefully watched that his health bar did not suddenly start showing a minus sign, due to leaking toxins or some such. If this didn’t work he would be screwed, as any wasting of O2 at this point, would see him running out very quickly and suffocating.

Andy breathed a sigh of relief. No alarms. Everything seemed to be holding steady. And with the night time outside, it was ‘cool’ enough that none of those extreme measures were needed.

Andy opened the rover door and exited the vehicle.

His situation unfortunately was still no less precarious than when he first arrived on this shithole. He still needed to find shelter.

But first, he took a look around to see what he could scrounge up. He of course noticed the scorch marks on the sides and top of the rover from the O2 venting, but otherwise the rover seemed to have sustained no additional damage from the event.

He first checked the dead player more thoroughly. Andy should have felt something more, rummaging through a dead man’s corpse, right? But he didn’t. Not really. Was it because this felt like a game despite the realness? He sincerely hoped he wasn’t a psychopath. But it could also just be his gamers instincts, pvp and all that. Kill or be killed.

The dead player’s backpack contained another flat battery. Andy decided to take it anyway, he may be able to recharge it later on or something. The player's O2 canister had ruptured, with more of those deep claw marks.

No matter how he looked at it, there was some dangerous shit running around this place and he was probably lucky not to have run into any alien lifeforms so far. Let’s hope his luck continues to hold out.

The waste tank of the player was still intact, but Andy doubted its usefulness. It either contained pure hot CO2, or it contained vented Hot O2, both of which he didn’t have much use for at this stage, coupled with the fact that he had no reasonable way of transporting the heavy and bulky canister on what was likely to be another long and hurried journey.

Andy left the player and searched the rover instead. He took the battery of course. In a trunk at the back, he actually found a second energy bar, score! He also found a crowbar. Holding it, he read the info on the hud:

“Crowbar: used for forcing things open or disassembly of plates and panels. To use, hold in hand and point at target.”

Interesting. His first tool apparently. He noticed the crowbar had the same type of connector on it as ‘his’ toolbelt. Andy managed to clip it onto his toolbelt, it fit perfectly.

He took a look at the large oxygen tank attached to the rover. What a waste, the pressure gauge suggested it was still half full. That’s a lot of O2! But aside from the now clearly visible bust up valve, he also had no way of removing it from the rover. He tried the crowbar, but that did nothing. It seemed he needed a different tool for the job. To be fair, even if he could remove it, he would not realistically be able to carry something that heavy around anyway.

Andy then took a look at the broken mining drill. Picking it up, his hud updated:

“Tier 1 Mining drill (unsalvageable): Can be used to excavate or to mine ores. To use, activate and point at the target surface.”

Well that makes it pretty clear. Andy guessed the poor guy came out here to mine ores or something. Some creature must have attacked him. Maybe he tried to make an escape and crashed the rover instead. But Andy was no detective, he couldn’t really determine the order of events or anything like that.

Inspecting the immediate area, Andy could not find anything else.

It was time to leave. But where to? He noticed some faint tracks in a patch of ground that was covered in some ash, making tracks possible in the first place. It was at a different angle to where the rover crashed, which meant there was a decent chance that the player had come from that direction. One could hope.

If Andy was wrong about this, then he was probably going to end up right back on death’s door, but he honestly did not have anything better to go on at the moment.

As Andy set off for the nearest peak in the direction of the tracks, he contemplated his odds of survival here. He probably had more ‘night’ time to use than when he landed. The day night cycle in theory should be a fifty-fifty split, but the night he started had felt considerably shorter than the day. So it stands to reason he arrived in the middle of the night and now he should have a bit more time to deal with.

That being said, he had to find shelter before day time rolled around or he was done for. His O2 was running on fumes and he had no more tricks up his sleeve that he could use to deal with the increased heat. If he hasn’t found shelter by the time day rolls around, he’ll be dead in minutes.

Andy crested the first peak of his new journey and saw… Nothing. Of course it would not be that easy. He once more carefully climbed down the opposite end of the hill, as always carefully watching his step and staying far away from magma streams.

Fuck. He really hoped he would not run into one of whatever the fuck bullshit alien killed that player. He had no weapons on him save for the crowbar and sincerely doubted it would do any damage to whatever the fuck had ravaged that rover.

He wondered if a player's lander’s starter equipment didn’t perhaps contain some basic guns or similar weapons to defend themselves with. But then surely he would have found one on that player. It was more likely this was just a consequence of the so-called ‘hard’ difficulty.

Either way he was going to have to simply hope he didn’t run into any aliens, because he doubted there would be much he could do if he did.

Andy crested another hill, but still nothing. He was really starting to get worried. Not even any signs of tracks. Not that it would be at all practical to spot them though.

*Sigh*. He descended once more.

He also couldn’t help but wonder about the victory condition. You know, the unknown one that all the other players probably have a nice head start on thanks to all the shit he’s been through. Well at least the ones that are still alive anyway. You gotta wonder with how dangerous this game seems to be.

Given the nature of the game so far and what hints he could pick up so far, it was most likely some kind of’ build this ultimate project’ or ‘structure’ type deal. Or ‘leave the planet in a rocket ship you built’. Something like that.

Then again, the intergalactic host or whatever the fuck was running this game, could just as easily spice things up a bit to make it more ‘entertaining’ as alien suit dude had put it. So it could also be stuff like last man or x number of men standing wins. Either way, he really needed to get ‘back in this game’.

Andy lost count of how many more hills he attempted and how far he had travelled. Suffice to say it was a lot and a long time. His hydration had once more run out and just started to eat into his health again. A health bar that had been recovering slowly and now only sat at twenty five percent, not much to play around with.

It was in this sorry state that he crested the hill and finally spotted what he was looking for. A large ruined structure. It had clearly suffered some kind of accident or explosion, but there seemed to be parts of it still intact.

Andy was filled with joy and nearly jumped up and down in excitement. Finally a real shot at this bullshit game!

Looking it over more carefully, he deduced it was likely a POI, not the players base. Probably where he got the rover from in the first place. Andy decided to wait a little bit and scout from his vantage point.

There was always the possibility of POI’s being a magnet or spawning location for mobs. A lot of games liked to do that sort of thing after all and he could not afford to be jumped by some alien at the moment.

And then he saw it.

No. Not an alien. The sun was rising!

Andy started sprinting down the hill, all caution thrown out, he was about to be cooked alive!