I started my save within an hour of the expedition going live. And spawned in a storm, with multiple hostile critters. I died twice in two minutes, deleted the cursed save, and tried again. Did better, but fell into a cave system killing critters (with a mining laser), and got lost… before I could build the Terrain Manipulator. After 20 minutes, I deleted the cursed save, and started again. Third time's the charm! Much better start, even grabbed some Storm Crystals for later right at the start.
Needed to get some work done, but I've gotten a couple of hours in since yesterday, steady progress, having fun stumbling around, but I can see I'm going to get stuck looking for Crystal Sulphide. I don't think I'm anywhere near the ocean, although I see 3 underwater creatures on this world so there must be some somewhere. I've got the Minotaur built, but that doesn't seem the best way to search for ocean, it's a little slow. If only I had a spaceship… oh wait, that's what the Crystal Sulphide's for.
Also, got killed again, by one of those evil teddy bears that jumped me while I was killing a couple of the crystal spider dudes. Was close to my base, but still! Embarrassing.
Those "alchemy" recipes are exactly why I got hooked on running refiners when I step away. I can still be generating resources while I'm doing something in RL.
I haven't put much thought into optimizing "idle" time. My go to is the Dihydrogen/Dihydrogen Jelly cycle. Generates 200 extra Dihydrogen per cycle, but the jelly step takes 20 minutes, which isn't a problem if I'm just leaving it idle. It seems like you can always use some more Dihydrogen.
Only thing is, you could probably use the refiners to generate something more valuable, and buy the Dihydrogen. So if there any long time:high profit recipes, I should probably consider them as well.
Thing is, there are hundreds of refiner recipes, and even though I can easily look then all up, I just subscribed forget some recipes even exist.
Your "Oxygenate Carbon" is a perfect example. I just forgot about it the first time I made some Condensed Carbon.
If there are any long run refiner recipes you want to highlight, feel free. Even if it's one I use or an aware of, no harm. Might even help some poor soul who drifts into a NMS refiner recipes thread.