Part of the Beginner's series:

Quick Answer

  • Permadeath deletes your save on death. It must be chosen at save creation: no existing save can be converted to it.
  • Almost nobody dies to something dramatic. Runs end to hazard protection running out during a storm, drowning, or a Sentinel fight the player chose to have.
  • Your first hour decides a lot. Permadeath starts are weighted towards hazardous planets, so expect to spawn somewhere trying to kill you.
  • Carry a permanent floor of Sodium, Oxygen, Carbon and Ferrite Dust. Never let any of them hit zero. This one habit prevents most deaths.
  • Spend upgrade slots on Shield and Hazard Protection first, and install S-class modules only: a C-class module costs the same slot as an S.
  • Caves are the answer to weather. Learn to find and reach one from anywhere on the surface, quickly.
  • Never take a fight you can leave. Sentinels, predators and pirates all disengage. Fleeing costs nothing; a lost run costs everything.
  • Space is more dangerous than it looks. Hauling valuable cargo attracts pirates, and a ship fight is the hardest thing in the game to escape.

Overview

One housekeeping note before the tactics: backing a Permadeath save up against file corruption is sensible, and restoring one to undo a death is not. The save backup guide covers the mechanics and where the line sits.

Permadeath changes nothing about the game's mechanics and everything about how you play it. The same storms, the same Sentinels, the same predators, but a mistake that costs three minutes in Normal mode ends a fifty-hour run instead.

What surprises most people is what actually kills them. It is not a boss, and it is rarely combat you lost. Runs end because someone was ninety seconds from shelter with eleven percent hazard protection and no Sodium, or because they went underwater to look at something and did not check their oxygen, or because they decided one Sentinel quad was manageable and it summoned a walker.

So the discipline is not about being good at fighting. It is about maintaining a small number of margins and never letting any of them get thin. This guide is those margins, in the order they matter.

If you have not started yet, read the game modes guide first: Permadeath is configured through Custom difficulty by setting Death Consequences to "Save Deleted", and it cannot be turned on afterwards. That decision is genuinely permanent.

What Actually Kills Runs

Ranked by how often each one ends a save, from experience rather than from theory.

1. Hazard protection running dry outdoors. The classic. You are mining, a storm rolls in, protection drains three times faster, and the nearest shelter is further than you thought. This is the single biggest killer and it is entirely preventable.

2. Drowning. Underwater exploration is fascinating and the oxygen meter is easy to ignore because there is no storm warning attached to it. See the underwater guide before you go deep on a Permadeath run.

3. Sentinel escalation. You engage one drone, which is trivially winnable. It calls friends. Two minutes later there is a walker. Nothing about the first drone told you this was coming.

4. Space combat. Pirates intercept you when you are carrying valuable cargo. Ship fights are fast, and unlike ground combat there is nowhere to run to on foot.

5. Predators. Rarely lethal on their own, frequently lethal in combination with something else: low health, a storm, or a fight you were already in.

Notice what is missing: falling, exploration accidents, starvation. The game is not trying to catch you out. It kills people who let a margin get thin and then met something ordinary.

The First Hour

Permadeath spawns are weighted towards hostile worlds, so plan for the worst case rather than hoping.

Assume the planet is trying to kill you. Check your hazard protection type the moment you can: extreme heat, cold, toxic and radiation all drain at different rates and want different recharge materials.

Sodium before anything else. Sodium is your hazard protection recharge and it grows as a yellow-flowered plant on most surfaces. Before you do anything ambitious, have a stack. Sodium Nitrate, the refined version, recharges more per unit.

Find the shelter pattern. Caves, small structures, your own ship, and any building interior all stop hazard drain. On a hostile world, never walk further from one than you can walk back.

Do not rush the ship repair. The Awakenings opening pushes you towards fixing the launch thruster and leaving. On Permadeath, take longer. Bank materials, learn the local hazard, and leave when you are comfortable rather than when the mission marker says so.

Get the scanner working. Your Analysis Visor marks resource locations, and knowing where the Sodium is beats wandering. It is also how you make early units without taking any risk at all.

The Materials You Never Let Run Out

Four things. Keep a floor under each and most deaths become impossible.

Material Keeps you alive by Where it comes from
Sodium / Sodium Nitrate Recharging Hazard Protection Yellow-flowered plants, most surfaces
Oxygen Recharging Life Support, and underwater Red-leafed flora, scannable everywhere
Carbon / Condensed Carbon Life Support, fuel, crafting Any plant or tree
Ferrite Dust Emergency crafting and repairs Rocks, everywhere

Ion Batteries are worth mentioning separately. They recharge hazard protection in an emergency and stack small, which makes them good insurance in a cargo slot you were not otherwise using.

There is also a food trick most players never learn: certain plants restore hazard protection and life support directly when eaten. Impulse Beans and Heptaloid Wheat both do it. Growing a few in a base farm gives you a renewable emergency supply that costs nothing to maintain.

Upgrade Priorities

Slots are scarce, and on Permadeath they should go to staying alive before they go to anything else.

Shield first. Exosuit shield upgrades reduce every source of damage in the game. Nothing else has that breadth.

Hazard protection second. More capacity means more margin during a storm, which is the exact margin that ends runs.

Life support third. Less urgent than the two above, but it removes the slow background pressure that makes people take shortcuts.

Movement fourth. Jetpack upgrades are quietly a survival technology. Getting out of a fight, over terrain, or back to your ship quickly has saved more runs than any weapon.

Weapons last. You are not planning to win fights. You are planning to leave them.

Two rules on modules themselves:

Only install S-class. A C-class module occupies exactly the same slot as an S-class one and gives a fraction of the benefit. On a run where slots are the constraint, anything below S is a waste. The technology upgrades guide covers adjacency bonuses and supercharged slots, which multiply this further.

Respect the three-module cap. More than three upgrades of one technology type in an inventory tab causes them all to overload and stop working. Discovering this during a storm is a bad time.

Exosuit slots themselves are the underlying constraint, and the exosuit upgrade guide covers buying them cheaply. On Permadeath, prioritise general inventory slots over technology slots early. Carrying more emergency material matters more than installing more tech.

Habits That Keep Runs Alive

Check the weather before dismounting. The planet's storm cycle is visible in the scan data. If a storm is due, do the thing you were going to do afterwards.

Never go further from shelter than your protection allows. Halve the number in your head. Storms triple the drain rate and the walk back is always longer than the walk out.

Leave every fight you did not have to start. Sentinels give up if you break line of sight and wait. Predators lose interest. Pirates disengage if you jump. There is no achievement for standing your ground and there is a save file at stake.

Do not haul valuables you do not need. Pirates scale their interest to your cargo. A hold full of Storm Crystals turns a routine flight into an ambush. Move value in smaller loads, or through your freighter.

Board your ship before logging off. The game saves as you exit the ship, and starting a session sitting safely in a cockpit is better than starting one mid-storm in a canyon.

Build early, build modest. A small base with a teleporter, a refiner and some storage is a safety net: somewhere to retreat to and somewhere to keep materials that do not die with you. Teleporters and base networking turns that into a network of safe points across your systems.

Give underwater its own respect. Oxygen underwater drains without any of the warnings a storm gives. Surface earlier than you think you need to.

Survival Mode: The Same Game, Slightly Meaner

Survival is Permadeath's less punishing sibling: harsher resource drain, tougher enemies, thinner margins, but death costs you your items rather than your save.

Everything on this page applies, with one difference in emphasis. On Survival you can afford to learn by dying, so use it as a rehearsal. Players who go straight from Normal to Permadeath tend to die to a hazard they never had to respect before. A Survival run first teaches the drain rates in your muscle memory rather than in your notes.

The middle option is worth knowing about too: on any existing save you can raise Death Consequences to "Items Destroyed" for a harsher run without the save-deletion commitment. It is the honest recommendation for most players who like the idea of Permadeath more than the reality.

FAQ

Can I turn an existing save into Permadeath?

No. "Save Deleted" must be selected when the save is created, through the Custom difficulty menu. On an existing save the harshest option available is "Items Destroyed", which is a real step up in tension without the permanence.

What actually kills most Permadeath runs?

Hazard protection running out during a storm, well ahead of anything else. Drowning and Sentinel escalation come next. Almost no runs end to something the player could not have walked away from.

Should I play Survival before Permadeath?

Yes, if you have not played a harsh mode before. Survival teaches the same drain rates and the same threats with a recoverable failure state. Going straight from Normal to Permadeath usually means learning those lessons once, expensively.

Do I lose my bases if I die on Permadeath?

The save is deleted, which takes everything with it: bases, ships, freighter, progress. Permadeath saves also use a separate base registry from other modes, so nothing carries across from your normal saves either.

What upgrades should I install first on a Permadeath run?

Exosuit shields, then hazard protection, then life support, then movement. Weapons last. And only install S-class modules: lower classes take the same slot for a fraction of the benefit, which you cannot afford when slots are the limiting factor.

Is multiplayer safe on Permadeath?

Permadeath has its own player pool, so anyone you meet is also on a Permadeath save and equally motivated not to die. The practical risk is not other players; it is that group activities encourage taking fights you would have skipped alone.

How do I escape Sentinels without fighting?

Break line of sight and wait out the alert: a cave, a building interior or a hill will do it. Alternatively board your ship and fly away, or use a jetpack to put distance between you and the search area. Running is always available and always cheaper than escalating.

Key Takeaways

  • Permadeath is chosen at save creation and cannot be enabled later. Decide before you press start.
  • The killers are mundane: storms with no Sodium, oxygen underwater, and Sentinel fights nobody had to take.
  • Keep a permanent floor of Sodium, Oxygen, Carbon and Ferrite Dust. This single habit prevents most deaths.
  • Never walk further from shelter than half your hazard protection allows. Storms triple the drain and the way back is always longer.
  • Shields, then hazard protection, then life support, then mobility. Weapons come last because you are not planning to fight.
  • Install S-class modules only, and respect the three-per-technology cap that overloads the whole group.
  • Leaving is always an option. Sentinels, predators and pirates all disengage; a deleted save does not come back.
  • Play a Survival run first. It teaches the same lessons and lets you keep the save when you learn them.