Getting started: your first days in AstroExpanse

AstroExpanse is a space strategy game you play in your browser, on a computer or a phone. You start with one planet and a little metal, crystal and deuterium. Everything else you build. This guide covers the first days: what to build, in what order, and why.

Create an account

Go to play.astroexpanse.com and choose Create account: an email and a password, nothing else. The game is free.

Confirm your email in Settings; the Warden reminds you later. You can start playing without it, but a confirmed email is needed to write in public chat, found an alliance, send resources to another player, turn on vacation mode or join a second universe.

The game speaks English, Czech and Slovak. Switch the language in Settings once you are in.

Pick a universe and a commander name

A universe is one galaxy with its own players, its own leaderboard and its own end. Progress doesn’t carry from one universe to another. During the test there is one universe open to everyone: join it.

Then choose your commander name: three to sixteen letters, digits or underscores. It is how other players see you, and it has to be unique in that universe.

You land on your home planet with a starting stock of resources and no buildings at all.

Meet the Warden

The Warden is your colony’s machine mind. It lives at the top of the right-hand rail (on a phone, the icon next to Messages) and opens on your first visit with a list of quests in six chapters: Foundations, Industry, Science, First flight, Defence and Expansion.

• Quests complete by themselves when you do the thing. You never have to open the list.
• Each quest pays a resource reward that you claim with the Claim button. The reward roughly covers the next step.
• Take me there jumps to the screen where the quest is done.
• The next chapter opens when the current one is finished.

You can ignore the Warden, or dismiss it and bring it back from Settings. Following it is the quickest way through the first week.

Mines and power

Resources come from mines, and mines run on energy.

1. Metal Mine and Crystal Mine first. Metal is what you need most; crystal goes into research and better ships.
2. A Nuclear Reactor to power them. When energy runs short, your mines produce less, so raise the reactor whenever you raise the mines.
3. A Deuterium Synthesizer. Deuterium is fuel for your fleets and goes into research.

Keep raising all three in turn. Each level costs more than the last and produces more.

Your colony is drawn on the planet’s surface, and every building appears there as you build it.

Storage

Each resource has a storage limit. When a resource reaches it, that mine stops producing until you spend some. Build Metal Storage, Crystal Storage and Deuterium Storage before your mines outgrow them, and spend often. Resources a fleet brings home are always unloaded in full, even into a full store.

Research and the shipyard

• A Robot Factory makes every building go up faster, and the Shipyard needs it.
• The Shipyard builds ships and defences.
• The Laboratory unlocks research. Research belongs to your whole empire, not to one planet. Energy Technology and Combustion Drive come first: drives are what most early ships need.

Buildings, research and the shipyard each have their own queue, so keep all three busy.

Your first fleet

Your first ships are working ships:

• A Small Cargo carries resources between planets.
• Espionage Probes scout other planets. Open the Star map, find a neighbour, send a probe, and read the report: it shows what they have and what defends it.

Fleets travel in real time. You see them in flight, and the arrival shows up on screen without a refresh.

Defence

Build a few Rocket Launchers. Soon after, someone notices: a small raid heads for your planet, sized so that your turrets win. It is your first battle: watch it play out, then read the report. How battles work explains what you are looking at.

After that the track moves on to a Colony ship and a second planet, a transport between your own planets, and joining or founding an alliance.

Protection for new players

New accounts are protected for their first week, or until they grow past the beginner bracket, whichever comes first. While you are protected, players past their own protection can’t attack or spy on you, and the pirates leave you alone too. Other new players can: two protected players may attack and spy on each other, as long as they are close enough in points, so the ships you build in your first week have someone to fly against. What you can’t do yet is attack or spy on a player whose protection has ended.

Even later, players far apart in points can’t attack each other, so the biggest empires can’t farm the smallest.

Use the week. By the time it ends you want defences on your planet and nothing lying around that is worth a raid.

Where to next

• How battles work: the next thing you will need.
• FAQ: free to play, phones, the test universe and what testers get.
• Rules: one account per person, and report bugs instead of using them.
• Discord: questions, bug reports and other commanders.