Crisis Order Cheatsheet

The spine

ONI has no enemies. Its progression is a chain of resource and thermodynamic crises. Solve one and the next comes due. The order below is fixed. The cycle timings are community guidance, not game-scripted, so treat them as approximate.

Breathe -> Eat -> Destress -> Plumb -> Power -> Cool -> Space.

The crises, in order

Approx. cycle	Crisis	Why it hits	The fix
1 to 5	Initial oxygen	Starting Oxylite near the Printing Pod runs out	Oxygen Diffuser (burns algae) or Algae Terrarium
3 to 15	CO2 buildup	Dupes exhale heavy CO2 that sinks to the floor	Carbon pit, Deodorizers, oxyferns, later a Carbon Skimmer
5 to 20	Food	Starting rations deplete, each dupe needs 1000 kcal per cycle	Mealwood plus a Microbe Musher, then farming and ranching
10 to 30	First stress	Bad decor, food, sleep, and low oxygen stack up	Beds, latrines with wash basins, decor, Massage Table
10 to 40	Water and plumbing	Outhouses fill and you need clean water	Liquid pumps, pipes, a Water Sieve, a secured source
20 to 40	Oxygen scaling	Diffusers burn finite algae at a poor ratio	Transition to an electrolyzer-based SPOM
15 to 60	Power scaling	Manual generators cannot keep up as buildings multiply	Coal, then Natural Gas, Hydrogen, or Petroleum Generators
80 to 120	Heat wall	Sealed-base heat has nowhere to go	Insulate, Wheezeworts, then Thermo Aquatuner plus Steam Turbine
50 to 120	Slimelung	Digging Slime off-gasses infected Polluted Oxygen	Atmo Suits, Deodorizers, Chlorine rooms, or wait it out
100 to 150 plus	Petroleum and deep resources	You need Plastic, Petroleum, and Steel	Oil Wells or refineries, Petroleum Generators, Steel
150 plus	Space	Reach the surface, meteors, rockets	Bunker Tiles and Doors, Space Scanners, rockets

Game-defined numbers you can trust

The cycle framings are estimates, but these are set by the game.

Fact	Value
Dupe food need	1000 kcal per cycle
Dupe CO2 output	2 g/s (1.2 kg per cycle)
Diffuser overpressure stop	around 1.8 kg of gas in its tile
Default building overheat	75 C (raised by build material)
Slimelung self-cure	4 cycles untreated
A cycle	roughly 600 seconds

Rules that apply the whole game

• Solve toilets, food, and oxygen before anything else. Every game, in that order.
• Keep toilet output away from food and drinking water, or Food Poisoning spreads.
• Do not over-print dupes. Around 8 to 10 early is plenty.
• Insulate early. Heat is the crisis that filters players, and it is easier to prevent than to delete.
• The endgame is closing loops: geysers and ranches feed renewable inputs, and cooling loops delete the heat it all makes.

Go deeper

The setups that solve these crises: the SPOM oxygen build, the cooling loops, and food and ranching. For the why behind the mid-game wall, read heat management, power, and plumbing and gas.