This guide is written for neutral players to begin with. It will not include choosing a faction or any faction equipment. If you wish to choose a faction at the beginning, see one of the following guides:
- The advantage of being Neutral
Being neutral is the ideal for not feeling restrained. It's generally for the person who feels like just doing what you feel like and not having to worry about things such as the wars. It also makes you unhackable from the faction pilot database in the black market allowing pirates to be unhackable. It comes at a price however, you can't join any faction aligned alliances, and you can't get any of the equipment and ships from the factions.
Beginning[edit]
You've just finished the tutorial, and all you have is a sabre, about 5,000 credits, and a few pieces of basic equipment. Right now, you're either at a planet called a homeworld which is where you end up every time you die, or at a random Class M planet in the cluster you've chosen.
Although you might be eager to go around killing everybody or maybe a sarrencia, this isn't a time for fighting and dying in your ship. Your sabre is a weak starter ship. It'd be useless to even think of putting any equipment on it besides an impulse laser; you'll be getting a better ship rather soon.
Now, go into the planet and look at the ship equipment. Make sure that you have:
- Auto-refueler
- Fuel-scoop
You should have a mining laser in your inventory. You can choose either to sell it for the extra cargo space and the money, or keep it as a cheap defense against space maggots (SM) and for mining. If you can find asteroid fields while you're going around, mine some ?? off of the tiles over 250. Mining under number is considered stripmining, which is extremely discouraged because the more a tile is mined, the more slowly its resources recharge. Sell ?? to smelting facilities, which will probably be nearby if there are asteroid mines.
- What you should get
For now, you need a few basic things before you can get a lot better:
- More credits: this will let you buy things such as weapons and commodities, useful when stocking high level production building.
- A better ship: your sabre is just a basic ship with the bare necessities. You will never be able to do anything professionally and well without a better ship.
- Equipment: nobody got anywhere stocking without a high level engine and teleporter. The same thing goes with fighters too. You can't kill lucidi squads with a mining laser. If you're going to do stuff, you need the right stuff for the job.
- An alliance (not needed, but very helpful): when you're in an alliance, you're taxed a small amount each day (0%-1%). In return, you get the alliance chat where only your alliance mates can chat, financial help from the alliance, and access nooks zoned off by the alliance. The tax is incredibly minimal for the amount of help they give to you.
- Making money
Around the planet will be various buildings, and you can make a profit by buying commodities from them and selling them to buildings that need them. One of the easiest ways to do this is with medicines and liquor. However, you'll need some fuel. If you're at a homeworld, then the area around you will be very heavily stripmined, likely to the point where you can't mine it anymore!
If you're at a homeworld, move a few tiles away from the planet and try mining it. If you can't, you're going to have hard time there. Look around for fuel collectors and buy about 10 fuel from there before doing anything else.
If you aren't at a homeworld, chances are that the area around you is somewhat low on fuel, but still minable. Now, look around for a brewery or a med lab then fly to it. Enter the building, and buy the liquor or medicines. Check that the prices are normal, it should be around 675 or less. Now, go back to the planet and sell them back. Make sure that the average for it is fairly higher than what you bought it for. You can probably do this for a while, but soon the stocks of liquor andmedicines will run out, or the planet will stop paying enough for you to make a profit.
In the next section, we'll take a serious approach to making some more money. This will involve stocking buildings, running FWE, and getting into a rustclaw.
Getting money[edit]
There are several ways to make money. First, you'll probably be tempted to find a resource field and strip-mine it. This cannot be stressed enough, never ever mine a field below 300. The fields regenerate on a basis of what is already there. If you drop the field below 300 you will be stifling future profitability of new players.
The best thing you can do is spend a little time in your home sector doing a F-W-E run. Learn where the monsters are, and avoid them in your Sabre. You will have plenty of time to kill monsters. You need to save up for some travel.
If you have any friends already in the game, find out where they are and help their economy as much as you are able to. If you do not know anyone in the game, it might be wise for you to consider joining an alliance.
Generally, you want to be getting Food and Water from class M planets and selling it at a star base where you buy Energy and take that back to that class M planet. You will not be making a ton of money doing this, but you will be able to make some money and gain some XP. Once you get enough credits to buy a new ship, you can start doing some missions - these will really help you get credits.
Possibly the most important part of earning money is to always have enough fuel. This is something a lot of new people overlook, but if you get caught in open space with no fuel, you will most likely be attacked or will waste a lot of AP's getting home.
Trade routes[edit]
Edvea[edit]
Edvea is the Homeworld sector for the Empire West Skaari Core (Otherwise known as the WSC or the EWSC). The sector itself can fit two Starbases, if these bases are placed appropriately, it is rich in all collectable resources, and is therefore a nice starting area for the Skaari player.
This is a map of the sector. All buildings and NPCs are omitted in this. You will note the placement of the two Player Owned Starbases (PSBs) are in the Northwest and Southwest. For optimal trading as a new player, it is recommended you try the Southwest base. The reasons for this are simple, in the Southwest, there are fewer NPCs, at the Northwest base, you will have to evade Space Maggots, which while posing no threat to the established player, can be a nuisance for a new player.
To maximise trade income, it is recommended you sell all non-needed equipment. This would include the 30MW mining laser you began with. As a Skaari player, you began with the ship known as the "Rustclaw", this has advantages and disadvantages over the standard Sabre. The biggest advantage is the improved cargo capacity, a Rustclaw can carry 35 tons more cargo than the Sabre, which at low levels is a large increase. However, this increase in size means a higher chance of being hit in combat. This will be explained in more depth in the Combat portion of the guides.
The standard way of earning money as a new player is the Food, Water, Energy run. This is the act of taking Energy from a Starbase (For example, see 5,16.) and taking it to an M Class Planet (These look like Earth, see 21,9 for Edvea.). From here, you buy Food or Water, and take it back to the Starbase. As an example run, starting on the Starbase, you would buy Energy, move to (8,16), then to (11,16), then to (14,16), then to (17,13), then to (20,10), and finally to (21,9). From here, you sell your energy to the planet (for a hefty profit), and buy Food or Water to make the return journey.