Your Beginners Guide To The P3 Habitarium!

In Professor Milton Clodbottle's Astounding Habitarium, you get to take on a habitarium, full of petpetpets, or from now on we'll call, P3s. In this game, you take on the role of controlling their habitarium by teaching them how to nest, fight, and work. Their goal is to work to get you six major resources, wood, mud, and stone for building structures such as store houses and homes to rest in, and grass, pollen, and water used to make ink and food.

When you first start out the habitarium, you'll find that you can choose from three maps to begin your habitarium on. Look over and decide which one you will pick, because you don't get to change after this!

For the next section of the game, you'll be helped out by none other than Professor Milton Clodbottle, who will give you some general directions for the game. Now you will begin the real part of the game.

From here on out, you'll be mostly on your own, with the occasional help of Clodbottle. Here I will give you some tips so you aren't being overrun by pests with a collapsing storage house and starving P3s with nowhere to run! But I don't think that'll happen, right?

Tip 1: Prioritize

You will start out with a certain amount of P3s. In order to begin working proficiently, they need to be spaced out among the resources. If you work them all on stone, then go to build a structure that needs wood, stone, and mud, you're going to have a dilemma on your hands! Try to even it out between what you need the least and what you need the most. If you think the P3s may get hungry, then focus on the pollen, grass, and water. If you would like to get a structure built in a timely matter, focus on wood, mud, and stone. As you get farther into the game, you might get a surplus of an item, so it would be best to move the P3s harvesting that resource to another area, until you feel you may need that resource again.

Tip 2: Build Wisely!

As you know, building cost a lot of resources, and can really pack a punch in your storage. Make sure when you're building that you're sure you'll have some resources open if something comes up that you'll need a building in a timely manner. This especially goes for food. Do not buy five pieces of cornmeal that you don't need, because you may find that a drop of nectar is needed which you don't have the supplies for!

Tip 3: Nesting

Nesting is very important. Every few levels you advance you'll get an egg as a prize, but this is the only egg you'll get for a while. You'll see at the bottom of the habitarium it shows you how many P3s you have in your habitarium out of how many P3s you could have in your habitarium. As long as the first number is smaller than the next, you're all set to go nest! Simply drag a nester P3 over to the nest (Make sure it's a nester P3! Workers or soldiers will get confused and will not nest!) and drop it! It will then create an egg and over time, incubate it until it's ready to hatch! You'll know when the egg is ready to hatch when the blue bar is full or when you pull the P3 off the nest and see that the egg is wiggling and bouncing. You can then click on the egg and press the hatch icon on the bottom of the circle in the middle of your habitarium, and now you have a new P3 in the family! You can drag it over to any resource and it will begin working! Remember, do not leave the egg too long in the nest, or the egg will crack open and the P3 will escape the habitarium! Make sure to either harvest or hatch it immediately!

Also, if your habitarium is full, you can still nest, though you'll need to harvest the egg into your bag as there is no option to hatch. When you're granted more room in your habitarium, you can then hatch the egg!

Tip 4: Rest

Ah, something everyone would like to do. Rest. When you click on your P3 and press the right arrow on the circle at the bottom of your screen, you'll find its statistics on health, food, and rest. Your P3s should be fine as long as they are all above the halfway point, but if not, you may want to put them in your house for some rest. This will not only cure their exhaustion, but their hunger too! If you decide not to do this, your P3s will simply continue working until an icon pops up above their head showing what they are lacking. If you still put off resting your P3, it will drop what it's doing and fall asleep right in its tracks. This is not good for the P3, and may have it pass on earlier!

In some cases, such as after battling pests, your P3's health may reduce to nothing. In this case, you must immediately put them in a house or, if you have one, a hospital. If you do not, unfortunately, your P3 will pass on.

Tip 5: Pests!

Pests in this game will be your enemy from now on. They're blue P3s who come and pay you a visit every once and a while, attacking your habitarium. Luckily, you have soldiers. These P3s specialize in fighting, and can fight off those pests! They don't even need to be moved over to the pests; they do it themselves! The problem with this is that sometimes, the pests can do damage faster than the soldiers can get there. Every once in a while, they'll manage to attack your resources long enough for them to be damaged. This can mean anything from a withered tree to a dried up bog. These will either heal themselves of a period of time or you can get a friend to help fix your resources. If the P3s are attacked, as stated above, they can lose health--sometimes enough to bring them to zero, which would mean you would have to care for them right after the incident, or they could pass on.

Another thing you could do to prevent pest damage is 'decorating'. Using fences to block off your structures on sides is a good idea. Also, blocking areas that the P3s don't use as a pathway would be a smart as well. Make sure not to block off areas completely, as this could also obstruct your P3's pathway as well.

Tip 6: Upkeep

Over time, your buildings will become decayed, and you will need to fix them. Their status will go from 'Perfect' to 'Not too shabby' in no time. In order to fix them, you must find workers and soldiers and drag them over to the decaying structure. They will slowly build your structure back to its original form, so it can be used without fear of collapse once more. Also, if you would like to take some decay of a structure, I suggest buying a twig, seed, or, if you have some NC to spare, a pebble hammer to take it off.

Tip 7: Care

Yeah, I know it sounds a little corny, but care. If you neglect them constantly, you will not get the results you had hoped for. If you do not feed your P3s but instead let them starve and force them around working, they will pass on earlier then you expected. If you do not repair your buildings in a timely matter out of carelessness, they could collapse and you could lose all of your items in a storage building. They may only be petpetpets, but they do need love as well!

I hope these tips I provided for you will help you in your journey to become the habitarium master and rule your land of P3s! Good luck!