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This is a guide for for both new and experienced players. This guide contains (once it's done) pretty much everything you'll need to know as you progress through the game.

Also for clarity, I'll be calling places star systems, but ingame they are called galaxies. I'll be referring to layers as the name of those areas, for instance Nexus or Wild Space.

For new players, you can find some useful chat commands and things to do in here, at the end of the Nexus Introduction section.

(0-20) Nexus Introduction

Cadets vs Volcom Pirates?

When you create a new character, you'll be faced with two choices, to either join the Earthforce Cadets, or the Volcom Pirates. Depending on your choice, you will either begin the game in the Cadets side, or the Volcom side, and you'll get a different series of missions to begin with. This choice will not affect anything outside of Nexus other than giving you 1 level in the skill of either Earthforce Affiliation or Pirate Affiliation, however you can not train this up more and does not affect anything like the other skills you'll get do.

Explanation of Nexus

So, just where are you exactly? Well, when you begin the game you'll be in Nexus, either on the Earthforce side, or the Pirate side, depending on your initial choice. But, Nexus is not the only area in Star Sonata, there are several other areas that are much more sizable than Nexus is, but for now you won't have to worry about those places.

Combat and Leveling Up

Although the loot is not amazing in Nexus, you may find something of use while you're there, however you may require a skill to use something to find, for instance Equipment skill to use a tweak, or Engine skill for an engine from a mission, I'll be talking about that later though, for now if you want to get those skills, you'll need to get experience to do so! You can get exp from either killing AI or completing missions, which both ways can also get you some interesting items. If you're just starting out, you may want to try killing some space rats for experience, and go up from there, as there are more dangerous rats within Tunnels and Droppings, under the sun in Nexus. There's also a mission chain to kill them, meaning you can get even more experience and loot while you're at it. Once you reach around level 20, you can leave Nexus through Deep Space (more on Deep Space near the end of this section).

Skills and Skill Points

If you want to use better gear, you'll need higher levels in various skills to equip them! Every time you level up, you'll be rewarded with 5 Skill Points, which you can use on training skills at some of the various AI stations around Nexus. The skills you'll want to train up at first are called Core Skills, these are required to use higher tech gear and ships. Some of the higher priority core skills to get are Piloting to use better Ships, Weaponry to use higher tech Weapons, which you'll need a better Energybank to power, which takes the Electrical Engineering skill. Of course, your enemies are also using weapons, so you'll need Shielding to use better Shields, and depending on your playstyle, you may want to considering getting Drone Deployment, as Drones will automatically fight nearby enemies for you, though mind you you'll need a Drone Scoop to pick them back up (unless the drone's description says unscoopable). Equipment is also very useful, to use better Hull Expanders for more hull space, for instance.

If one wishes to obtain some of these skills, they'll have to discover locations around Nexus that train them. Once you leave Nexus, you'll reach Sol, and at the AI base situated around Earth, you can train your core skills up to level 3 there, I'll talk about outside Nexus at the end of this section.

Gearing Up Your Ship

Once you get some skills up, you'll want some better gear. However, you'll probably want a better ship too to hold all that gear. There are several choices of ships you can choose, for instance, the Wingship if you prefer being fast, though you'll lose out on hull space, or the Helga, with a good amount of space and boasting powerful inbuilt weaponry. Some of the gear you get from completing missions around Nexus can be better than the gear sold at the AI stations, so you'll probably want to hold onto that gear until you know whether you need it or not. I'll probably work on this some more later. Just note that one useful ship you may want to get is the Paximinus, sold in Paximinus (Galaxy).

Leaving Nexus, Deep Space

Once you're either around level 20, or simply done with Nexus and wish to move on, you'll want to head to Deep Space, located near the northern area of Nexus. Upon entering Deep Space you'll be met with a station next to you, which if you get close to it, you'll gain a significant speed boost. You'll need this to cross Deep Space. While you're around that station, you can check out some of the missions available there, but beware of the nearby UrQa scouts, who will attack you on sight. The UrQa, if you have not completed the missions in Paximinus (Earthforce Cadet side), the UrQa and Paxians have been fighting for an extremely long amount of time, the UrQa annihilating any species that gets in it's way (they're somewhat based around the UrQuan from Star Control), and the Paxians have come from another galaxy, and have took stand here in our galaxy to fight the UrQa with the Terrans. The UrQa are fully resistant to laser weaponry, and are vulnerable to heat-based weaponry, which coincidentally is the damage type that they use.

So, back to getting out of Nexus. You'll want to start at the first station, Voyager's First Stop, and have the speed boost from it. If you target the base and hit Q, you'll target the other station, Anchor Point. Hit V to autopilot all the way to it, this may take a minute or so to cross all of Deep Space, even with the speed boost. Along the way there will be four fueling station pillboxes that you can use to regain the speed boost in the event you lose the bonus and lose the extra speed.

Once you reach the other station, you'll be given a Prototype Blue Photon Transwarp Device, which you can equip on your ship. I'd recommend putting it on the hotbar at the top of the screen, it will take 10 minutes to charge up, and once it's charged up, if you have more than 75% shielding and are at least 250 distance away from any planets, moons, suns and asteroids, you can instantly transwarp to any Warp Beacons within 5 jumps of your current location (you can upgrade your transwarp later at Beta Antares to have more jump range, but you'll need to be further away from any celestial bodies to initiate transwarp).

Sol Intro and Things To Do

Well, you'll have finally made it to Sol now. You'll notice that there are many ships in here, most of which are players. The first thing you'll want to do is go to Earth Central and check the skills trained there for anything that you might find useful. When you're ready, you've got several options available to you:

The next few sections will show you various leveling zones you'll want to check out, here's a quick list of them:

• You can participate in the Blue Pirates Campaign, whether by helping Earthforce take down the Blue Pirates for once and for all, or by assisting the Blue Pirates (or both, mind you this isn't affected by your initial choice of Earthforce Cadet vs Volcom Pirate).

• You can check out Brigand's Stronghold for bounty missions on various AI ships that roam around the Sol area. This is a good way of getting credits while roaming around Sol.

• Speaking of credits, you can do DG runs around the Sol area for Minor Augmenter Condensers (worth around 100 million credits each), and some great boss loot like Prototype Fermium Extractors or Hydroponics (base items) that you can sell to other players.

• One popular thing to do for great experience is to get the mission from Earth Central that involves speaking with a Paxian. You'll be told to head to Paxius, near Sol, where you can assist the Paxians by exploring various locations and scanning anomalies for them.

Now that you'll be in this place, you'll want to know some useful commands. If you want to search for a galaxy, take for instance Blue Outpost, you can type in "/search Blue Outpost" and your map will open, and center on Blue Outpost (if you've already got it mapped or have explored it before). If you want to automatically head over to there, you can type in "/ap Free Market" and your autopilot will kick in and bring you over to that star system. Note however that if the star system has an apostrophe in it's name, you'll need to surround it's name with quotes when typing the command, for example: /ap "Brigand's Stronghold".

Another useful command is the market check one. Say you want to buy a Paximinus but can't remember where I had mentioned you could get it before, you can type in "/mc Paximinus" and in the top left of the screen, a window will open showing the cheapest locations to buy a Paximinus from. Mind you you'll need to use proper capitalization when searching for an item, if you type in paximinus instead of Paximinus, you'll be faced with an error message in event chat telling you said item does not exist.

(20-100) Leveling and Missions

(20-50) Blue Pirate Campaign

Starting in Sol, at Earth Central, you can help fight the Blue Pirate menace alongside Earthforce. These missions revolve around mainly Blue Outpost, where you'll be tasked with destroying some Blue Pirate ships to start off with. These ships can give some good experience (NOTE: Currently the spawners are set to not let the AI give very much experience) and will drop some rather mediocre loot.

If you want to stick to being a pirate, you can head to Blue Outpost and from there help the Blue Pirates fight Earthforce instead (though you can do both if you wish).

(30-100) Arctia

Arctia is a frozen DG Zone which also features a tutorial for Remote Control.

Upon entering Arctia you'll be given a mission from a Holloway Mooncurse, who asks you to fight Lord Borean and Lady Aurora for him. Once completed, he'll reward you with a Glacial Freeze super item. This is a special blocker device which, when used, will cover your ship in ice and will increase your resistance to damage and will also freeze your ship into place for a few seconds while it's in effect. This means that this super item is very useful whether it be for combat or to stop your ship while attempting to access a future location like Deflector, where the AI drones there cause forced thrust when you get hit by them, meaning you'll need some way of braking. Because of this, you'll want to hold onto the Glacial Freeze.

RC Tutorial

So, in Arctia there is a station called Arctia Outpost. Here you can find the Remote Control Tutorial I mentioned.

Once you dock at Arctia Outpost, you'll have one or two missions available. One is from Holloway Mooncurse, to eliminate the local bosses, and the one that will teach you about Remote Control is from Station Manager Ackers, who is having some difficulty. In exchange for your help, he'll teach you what you need to know about the Remote Control skill.

Slaved Ships

(Note, if you're new, 'slaves' refers to automated combat or trade ships that assist you, not actual enslaved entities, by now you'll probably have seen a few, their names appear as TS### or CS###, depending on if they're trade or combat slaves)

One of the best ways to fight enemies is to use combat slaves! No, not enslaving people and having them fight for you. Instead, slaves are created when you put a Combat Controlbot (or better variant) onto a ship and equip it, if you have the appropriate level in Remote Control, it will undock when you undock and will follow you around. By default, they are set to 'Fight Enemies' and 'Stay Close'. If you click on one of your slaves, you can hit X to bring up a menu on the right side of the screen (if it's not opening up, keep hitting X every 5 seconds, it'll work after once or twice). Here you'll be able to set your slave to do stuff. For now I'll avoid talking about trade slaves because you don't need them right now, for now you'll want combat slaves.

Paxian Exploration

What's better than getting levels worth of experience, valuable medallions that can either be used to train Warp Navigation up easily, or sold for a lot of credits, and exploring some points of interest around the galaxy? Not much, I tell you.

So, the Paxians are a race that have fled from galaxy to galaxy to avoid the UrQa who are determined to destroy them. Now in our galaxy, they've taken a stand and are fighting the UrQa menace with us. However, they are a curious race and are confused by many anomalous things around our galaxy. They'll ask you to help them learn more about these various star systems and in return will reward you quite nicely.

Once you've spoken to the Paxian in Sol, Earth Central, you'll be sent off to find Paxius. Once there, you can begin helping the Paxians.