Mahjong

Overview

Mahjong is a multiplayer strategy mini-game available in Neverness to Everness. Players can sit down at Mahjong tables and play the classic tile-based game against other players online. The activity is part of the Hethereau Hobbies system within the City Tycoon progression framework. Mahjong is one of several life simulation activities that contribute to the game's urban daily life atmosphere, giving players a traditional social game to enjoy between anomaly investigations and combat encounters.

Location

Mahjong is played at the Little Sparrow maid cafe in Hethereau. Players approach one of the Mahjong tables inside the cafe and interact with it to begin a session. The Little Sparrow serves as a social hub within the city, and the Mahjong tables are always available for players looking to take a break from the main gameplay loop.

Additional Mahjong tables may also be found at other social gathering spots across Hethereau's districts, though the Little Sparrow is the primary and most well-known location for the activity.

How to Play

Mahjong in NTE follows the traditional tile-based format. Four players sit at a table and take turns drawing and discarding tiles, attempting to assemble a winning hand according to standard Mahjong rules. The game uses online matchmaking to pair players together for each session.

Key gameplay elements include:

Multiplayer and Matchmaking

During the Co-Ex Test (February 2026), Mahjong operated exclusively through online matchmaking. Players entered a queue and were matched with three other human players to fill the table. There was no option to play solo against computer-controlled opponents, which drew criticism from players who wanted to practice or learn the rules without the pressure of a live match.

The reliance on online matchmaking also meant that wait times varied depending on how many players were actively queuing for Mahjong at any given time. During peak hours, matches filled quickly, but off-peak queues could take longer.

AI Opponents at Launch

The developers confirmed in the launch roadmap that AI opponents are being added to Mahjong for the April 29, 2026 launch. This change directly addresses the most common criticism from beta testers by allowing players to:

• Practice Mahjong solo against computer-controlled opponents without needing online matchmaking.

• Learn the rules and develop strategies at their own pace before competing against human players.

• Play Mahjong at any time regardless of how many other players are online.

The addition of AI players ensures that Mahjong is accessible as a solo activity while retaining its multiplayer option for players who prefer competing against others.

Rewards

Completing Mahjong sessions awards players with Fon and other in-game currency. Regular participation contributes to the City Tycoon progression system and counts toward daily and weekly activity completion milestones.

Connection to Hethereau Hobbies

Mahjong sits alongside other hobbies like fishing, street racing, the rhythm mini-game, and claw machines within the Hethereau Hobbies system. Unlike most other hobbies, Mahjong supports real-time online multiplayer, making it one of the few social hobbies alongside racing.

City Tycoon Menu Placement

Mahjong is surfaced in the player's City Tycoon menu under the Hobbies tab. Opening the City Tycoon menu and selecting Hobbies brings up the full list of Co-Ex Test hobby activities, and Little Sparrow is the entry that leads to the Mahjong tables. The menu route means a player does not need to memorize the cafe's exact street address in Hethereau; picking Little Sparrow from the Hobbies list will also point the player to the venue on the city map if they prefer to travel there on foot.

Because Mahjong lives inside the Hethereau Hobbies panel rather than the main quest menu, it is treated as optional life-sim content and does not block story progress. Players can open the panel at any time once City Tycoon has been introduced, pick Little Sparrow, and jump straight into a session without taking a detour through the world map.

Currency Exchange

Finishing Mahjong matches pays out a dedicated Mahjong match currency that is separate from the general Fond wallet. Players carry this currency back to an exchange counter and spend it on three different categories of reward, which is what makes the activity worth running even after the novelty of the tile game wears off. During the Co-Ex Test the exchange stock included furniture and cosmetic items for the player's apartment, direct in-game cash, and the roll currency used on the character gacha board, so a steady Mahjong habit feeds both housing decoration and character pulls.

Because all three reward tracks share a single Mahjong currency pool, players can focus the output wherever they need it most that week. A player chasing a specific furniture drop can bank for the item exchange; a player who is close to a featured banner pity can instead convert everything into roll currency. The in-game match history screen also tracks lifetime Mahjong currency earned, making it easy to plan saves ahead of a limited banner rotation.

Photo Area with the Maids

In addition to the Mahjong tables, the Little Sparrow includes a dedicated photo area where the maid staff strike poses for visiting players. The space is tucked inside the cafe interior and is signposted as part of the venue tour, so it is easy to find after queuing for a Mahjong match. Players can step into the frame, swap the in-game camera to selfie mode, and capture a shot alongside the maids without needing to find a separate photo spot elsewhere in Hethereau. This makes the Little Sparrow one of the more social-hub style side activities and mini-games venues, since the cafe doubles as both a game room and a photo backdrop for screenshot-focused players.

Multiplayer-Only Status During the Co-Ex Test

It is worth repeating for clarity: during the Co-Ex Test window, Mahjong could only be played by entering the online matchmaking queue. The build shipped with no offline or solo option, so picking Mahjong from the Hobbies menu always routed the player into a waiting lobby where three other human seats needed to be filled before a session could begin. Players who wanted to practice on their own or learn the rules without the pressure of a timed live match had no way to do so inside the beta.

This multiplayer-only behaviour is the single most cited Mahjong restriction in Co-Ex Test coverage, and it is the reason the launch roadmap's AI-opponent addition is treated as a major feature rather than a minor polish pass. For the Co-Ex Test version specifically, the expectation was that Little Sparrow would feel most active during peak regional hours, and any off-peak visit carried the risk of the matchmaker failing to fill the table.

Tips

• Once AI opponents are available at launch, use solo practice sessions to learn tile patterns and hand combinations before competing online.

• Mahjong sessions are short enough to fit between other activities. Consider playing a round while waiting for friends to join co-op content.

• Regular Mahjong play contributes to daily milestone completion, making it a relaxed way to chip away at progression goals.

• Visit the Little Sparrow maid cafe in Hethereau to find the main Mahjong tables.

Rules Overview

Mahjong in Neverness to Everness is a traditional four-player tile game played on a square table. Each session follows the general flow that Mahjong players recognize from the real-world game: a wall of tiles is shuffled at the start of the round, each player is dealt an opening hand, and turns rotate clockwise around the table. On their turn a player draws a tile from the wall, decides whether to keep it, and then discards one tile face up into the center. Other players can interrupt that discard with calls such as claiming a triplet or a run, which then passes the turn to the caller. A round ends when a player completes a legal winning hand from the tiles they hold, at which point scores are tallied and the next round begins.

The specific ruleset used by Neverness to Everness has not yet been published by Hotta Studio. The Co-Ex Test build did not come with an official rules document in the game client, and developer communications have not confirmed whether the tiles, hand values, and scoring formulas follow Japanese Riichi rules, Chinese Official rules, or a simplified hybrid. Players entering the launch version should expect a mainstream tile set and hand structure, but the exact scoring tables, bonus yaku, and penalty rules may differ from any single real-world variant. This wiki page will be updated with a detailed rules breakdown once that information is confirmed from the final release build.

What is confirmed from hands-on Co-Ex Test coverage is that the game uses the standard four-seat table, tiles are drawn and discarded each turn, and a session concludes when one seat finishes a valid hand. Newcomers who have never played Mahjong before should plan to treat their first few sessions as practice runs. The activity is part of the side activities and mini-games pool rather than a required part of story progression, so there is no penalty for losing or for leaving a session early to study the basics elsewhere.

Where to Play in Hethereau

The primary Mahjong venue during the Co-Ex Test was the Little Sparrow maid cafe in Hethereau, which houses several dedicated tables in its seating area. The cafe doubles as a social hub and a regular stop on many players' daily routine, so sitting down for a round naturally fits into a longer loop of errands, bond events, and commissions. The tables are always spawned in the world, meaning players can approach, interact, and queue without needing to pre-book a seat or wait for an NPC to appear.

Early previews also suggested that Mahjong tables are not limited to the Little Sparrow alone. Other social spots around Hethereau's districts contain additional tables, though the Little Sparrow remains the most visible location and the one that features prominently in promotional material. Players can expect a uniform experience between venues: the rules, the matchmaking pool, and the rewards are tied to the Mahjong activity itself rather than to a particular cafe.

AI Opponents at Launch (Detail)

Hotta Studio committed in the launch roadmap to adding AI opponents to Mahjong for the April 29, 2026 global release. The stated design goal is to fill empty seats at a table with computer-controlled players whenever matchmaking cannot locate four humans within a reasonable window. This system is meant to eliminate the common Co-Ex Test scenario in which a lone player waited in an empty cafe while the matchmaker searched for opponents who were never going to arrive.

Exactly how the matchmaker balances human and AI seats has not been publicly detailed, but the practical effect communicated by the developers is clear: queue times should drop significantly, solo practice becomes possible, and players in quieter regions or off-peak hours can still enjoy the activity on demand. AI opponents are part of a wider batch of launch improvements that also includes AI racers for the street racing activity and additional ride-along companions, all of which target the same underlying complaint about matchmaking friction in the Hethereau Hobbies subsystem.

Rewards and Progression

Completing Mahjong sessions pays out in-game currency and contributes toward the broader life-sim progression loop. Regular participation counts against daily and weekly milestone trackers that reward players with additional currency and progression materials once a certain number of sessions have been finished. Because Mahjong is a relatively short activity compared to anomaly hunts or major story beats, it is an efficient way for players with limited play sessions to still clear meaningful chunks of the milestone list.

Specific payout values for finishing, winning, or placing in a Mahjong session were not published during the Co-Ex Test and may be adjusted before launch. What is confirmed is that Mahjong feeds into the same reward pool as the other Hethereau Hobbies, so any progress in the life-sim track can be made through a mix of Mahjong, fishing, street racing, rhythm games, and the other supported activities. This lets players pick their favourite pastime without being locked out of shared milestone rewards.

Integration with Hethereau Hobbies

Mahjong is one of several anchor activities in the Hethereau Hobbies system, the umbrella name for the life-sim pastimes scattered around the city. The roadmap lists Mahjong alongside fishing, taxi driving, street racing, the rhythm mini-game, the claw machine, coffee shop work, and the Pink Paws Heist as the core hobby roster players can rotate through. These activities are deliberately casual, low-stakes, and designed to make the city feel lived in between combat missions.

Within that roster, Mahjong occupies the social-multiplayer slot. Most other hobbies are single-player loops that let one character complete a task in isolation. Mahjong, like the street racing activity, supports real-time interaction with other humans, which gives it a slower and more deliberate feel than the other mini-games. After the launch update adds AI seat filling, Mahjong still keeps the option to queue exclusively against humans, so the social role of the activity is preserved for players who specifically want that experience.

Co-Ex Test Feedback and Launch Improvements

During the Co-Ex Test in February 2026, Mahjong was one of the most discussed mini-games in community coverage and official developer notes. Testers appreciated that the game existed at all, since full Mahjong tables are uncommon in gacha titles, but the experience was heavily bottlenecked by the online-only matchmaking. Review coverage during the test highlighted that Mahjong had no single-player mode, meaning that players who simply wanted to try the activity had to wait in a queue before any tile was drawn. At least one tester reported sitting alone in the cafe because the matchmaker could not locate three additional humans during their session.

Hotta Studio acknowledged this feedback in its post-test developer letter. The studio explicitly named Mahjong and fishing as social activities that needed refinement and committed to reducing queue friction as part of the launch polish. The public roadmap that followed a few days later then listed AI players for Mahjong, AI racers for the street racing activity, and additional ride-along companions as specific launch-window additions aimed at this class of problem. Alongside those additions, the roadmap noted that overall improvements to visuals and variety were being applied to all the Hethereau mini-games, and that the claw machine would also receive a pass.

Tips

• If you are new to Mahjong entirely, use the launch AI seat filling to run a few solo sessions at the Little Sparrow before entering human-only queues. Treat these as practice rounds and focus on learning which tile groups count as a valid hand.

• Keep an eye on your discard pile and the discards of other seats. In almost every Mahjong variant, reading opponent discards is the single most important skill, and the in-game interface surfaces this information during each turn.

• Because sessions are relatively short, Mahjong works well as a filler activity while you wait for co-op teammates to join a separate anomaly run, or while a bond event timer counts down elsewhere in the city.

• Mahjong counts toward the shared Hethereau Hobbies milestone tracker, so even losing sessions contribute to your daily and weekly reward progress. Do not skip the activity just because you are still learning.

• If matchmaking with humans feels slow at any point, remember that the launch update is designed to fall back to AI. Sitting at a table is always preferable to standing in the cafe lobby, since you cannot earn rewards or progress until a session actually begins.

• Visit the Little Sparrow first, since this is the venue that every guide and community discussion assumes you have access to. Other Mahjong tables around Hethereau are useful secondary options but are not universally documented yet.

• Check back after any post-launch patch notes for adjustments to the ruleset or the payout tables. Mahjong is flagged as an area Hotta Studio intends to keep refining after release as part of the broader Hethereau Hobbies polish pass.