Advanced Engineering

Lore & Background

In the world of Oxygen Not Included, the colonists are a small crew of dwarves stranded in a two-dimensional slice of a living planet. Every layer of rock, every pocket of gas, every vein of ore is a resource to be understood and exploited. The tech tree reflects their growing competence: early on, they can fashion a basic refinery and a simple generator, enough to keep a few air filters humming and a planter fed. But as the colony expands and the demands of atmosphere, water, and food multiply, those early tools become bottlenecks.

Advanced Engineering is the moment the dwarves stop patching and start designing. The blueprints it unlocks introduce machines that store, convert, and route power more efficiently, allowing the player to build out a true grid rather than a single point source. The in-game feel is one of quiet triumph: a battery bank ticking along in the dark, a refinery processing a steady stream of raw materials, the hum of a well-designed power loop replacing the anxious watch over a single flickering generator.

For players, this node often marks the transition from "survival" to "engineering." The colony's layout starts to look less like a hodgepodge of desperate builds and more like a planned facility, with dedicated power rooms, processing lines, and waste-heat management. It is, in many ways, the point where Oxygen Not Included stops feeling like a resource-scraping game and starts feeling like the industrial simulation it promises to be.

In Their Own Story

The air in the workshop tasted of hot metal and recycled oxygen. Mirek wiped grease from his goggles and stared at the half-assembled battery frame, its copper coils still warm from the last soldering pass. Around him, the colony hummed—three air filters cycling in the upper level, the distant clank of the refinery chewing through a vein of iron, the soft tick of the generator that had kept them alive for forty days.

"You're sure about the charge rate?" asked Yuna, her voice thin over the intercom. She was three layers up, monitoring the O₂ levels in the nursery.

"Double what the old cell could hold. And the discharge is clean—no voltage drop." Mirek tapped the frame. "Once we wire the second unit in parallel, the filters run on their own. We stop rationing air."

A beat of silence. Then, faintly, the sound of four dwarves exhaling at once, as if the colony itself had been holding its breath.

"Alright," Yuna said. "Build the second one. And Mirek? Vent the heat. I don't want the nursery to smell like a forge again."

He grinned, already reaching for the next spool of wire.

Reader's Guide

Advanced Engineering sits in the engineering/power branch of the tech tree and unlocks a set of blueprints that let the colony move beyond single-source power and basic resource processing.

Power & Storage: The most notable unlock is the Battery, which stores generated power for later use—critical during the dark phases of the planet's surface or when demand spikes. A Battery Charger (or equivalent charging mechanism) lets you top it off from a generator or solar source. Together, these let you decouple generation from consumption, a huge quality-of-life upgrade over running everything off one live wire.

Resource Processing: The node also opens more advanced refinery or processing blueprints, allowing the colony to convert raw materials (iron, coal, oil, etc.) into usable components at a higher throughput than the basic workshop. This is what lets you build out the machines the rest of the tech tree demands.

General tips: Place your battery bank near the machines that draw the most power (air filters, O₂ generators, planters) to minimize wire length and reduce the chance of a power hiccup during a surge. Vent the heat generated by the refinery and battery into a dedicated exhaust shaft so it doesn't cook your colonists. And always keep a spare generator running in case your primary source fails mid-cycle.

The exact research cost and prerequisite chain can vary slightly with game updates and DLC content, so check the in-game tech panel for the current numbers. The core principle, though, stays the same: Advanced Engineering is where your colony stops surviving and starts building.

Did You Know?

• In Oxygen Not Included, power is transmitted through copper wires laid in the 2D cross-section, meaning the physical routing of your grid is as important as the machines it connects—a design choice that makes Advanced En
• The game's 2D slice-of-planet view means heat rises and cold sinks, so the waste heat from advanced engineering machines (refineries, generators) can literally cook a colony if not vented—turning thermal management into
• Klei Entertainment designed ONI so that every resource is finite within the planetary cross-section, making the efficiency gains from Advanced Engineering blueprints not just convenient but often the difference between a
• The dwarven colonists have distinct personalities and moods that react to their environment; a well-designed engineering setup (clean air, stable power, no heat buildup) directly improves their happiness and work efficie