Every biome has a unique property or effect that makes them different from another than just temperature and pH-levels. This guide shows each biome’s unique effect/property.
Shallow
It spreads and grows on the rocks in the biome and is mostly a nuisance. Sometimes they contain materials but that’s about it.
It stops growing completely once you’ve developed the zone enough.
The starting zone (always called Shoreline Gulf) is a shallow zone but does not have any Seaweed Overgrowth.
Volcanic
This effect makes resource producers like Clams, Sprout Corals, and Essence Corals has a relatively good chance to double their output each resource tick.
However, it makes every structure in the biome have less maximum health.
This makes volcanic zones great raw resource production hubs, which can help with early-game bottlenecking of Coral Matter.
Arctic
This makes energy corals (Moon Corals, Vent Corals, Sun Corals) produce 20% more energy.
However it also decreases the range by 1.
This makes arctic zones perfect powerplants for exporting energy to other zones.
It also makes the Evolved Moon/Vent Corals more worth it, since the 20% boost to a regular Moon Coral only give 1 extra energy, but an Evolved Moon Corals give 6 extra energy.
Barren
.
The effect makes refineries (Crafter, Coral Refinery, Coral Infuser) work faster.
However the downside is that Water Sprites can take damage. However I’ve found this downside to never be an issue as water sprites rarely die from damage. It’s just slightly annoying because it begins to clog the message log with water sprites taking damage.
This effect makes barrens zones perfect to put a bunch of Coral Refineries and Coral Infusers in to produce them way quicker.
Rocky
Mystery Clusters can be reclaimed for potential rewards, but they can contain bad stuff like parameter changes and garbage. The upside is that it can contain Coral Plates or Infused Coral, giving you potential early-game access to these advanced resources.
This biome relies heavily on you having researched the Move action to get rid of potential garbage, but also to move rocks to access resource nodes.
I personally find rocky biomes to be a terrible early-game biome as you most likely don’t have access to the Move action yet.
Ruined
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This effect make structures randomly take damage over time, but is removed after restoring the zone (aka developing it enough).
After the biome is restored, it effectively becomes another Shallow biome (without the Seaweed Overgrowth effect).
The only thing Ruined zones are good for is progressing the story to upgrade the Reef Heart (however this is irrelevant in Freeplay) or to connect energy networks together.
I’ve personally been using them as biodiversity hubs.
Conclusion
- Volcanic: Good for raw production
- Arctic: Good for energy
- Barren: Good for refineries
Meh biomes:
- Rocky: Ok mystery clusters and resource nodes but requires Move action
- Shallow: Annoying overgrowth but good all-around biome once fixed
- Ruined: All-around biome once fixed and story progression