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Getting Started
October 18, 2026 at 05:45 PM
Corrected the ship specialisation sentence to mark combat as planned, and added Restricted Area rewards, Data Disks and character re-customisation for new players
This page introduces the early game in SpaceCraft. SpaceCraft is an online space exploration and building game, so your first hours center on learning to fly, scan, mine, craft, and build while you find your footing in a shared universe.
At its heart, the early game is a loop: explore a system, scan it for resources, mine raw materials, craft them into parts, and improve or expand your ship. Each step feeds the next, and the better your ship, the farther and faster you can explore.
Explore a star system by piloting your ship in real time. Systems contain planets, asteroid fields, abandoned space stations, and derelict ships.
Scan your surroundings to reveal where valuable resources are located.
Mine raw materials from planets and asteroids using your ship and tools.
Craft those raw materials into refined materials and ship parts.
Use the parts to build or upgrade your ship, then push deeper into the galaxy.
You fly your ship in real time and transition seamlessly from deep space down to planet surfaces. To cover long distances between systems, SpaceCraft uses Faster-Than-Light travel, letting you jump between distant systems quickly. See Exploration and FTL Travel for details.
Ships are assembled from crafted parts, and every component you add affects performance. Early on you can build a small, nimble vessel suited to exploration and light mining. If you prefer a head start, you can buy a Blueprint from another player and build a ready-made design instantly. As you progress you can specialize ships toward exploration, trade or mining; combat is planned for later in Early Access and is not in the build as of October 2026. See Ship Building for the full system.
Once you can reliably gather resources, you can establish a base on a planet and begin turning an outpost into a productive hub. Bases let you process materials and, over time, automate production so you are not mining every load by hand. See Base Building and Automation and Logistics.
SpaceCraft supports solo play as well as multiplayer, including online co-op. As you grow, you can create or join a Corporation to pool effort with other players, divide tasks, and build larger operations. The Trading marketplace is shared, so you can buy and sell with other players from early on. If you would rather play entirely on your own, a separate Solo Offline Mode is available from the menu under Options, then Change Region, then Offline Mode. See Corporations and Co-Op and Trading and the Player-Driven Economy.
Scan before you mine so you spend time extracting the materials you actually need.
Keep your first ship simple and cheap to operate while you learn how components affect performance.
Sell surplus resources and parts on the marketplace to fund your next upgrade.
Remember that the game is in Early Access, so systems and balance can change between updates.
The game’s tutorial gives a concrete picture of the first hour. You begin on the space station Babylon 7 as employee 115-C, a newly released ex-convict working for The Company, and a trainer walks you through your first contract. Your starting ship is the Scrappy Pioneer.
Fly out. Take the Scrappy Pioneer from Babylon 7 to the nearby planet Solar Alpha 1, transitioning seamlessly from space into the atmosphere.
Scan and mine. Use your ship’s radar to locate resource nodes, then mine your first raw materials: iron and copper.
Return and unlock a permit. Head back to Babylon 7 and unlock the Modular Systems permit for 40 Credits, which grants the Scanalyzer Alpha blueprint and Shipyard access.
Refine and craft. At the station, smelt your ore into ingots and craft the Scanalyzer Alpha in the Workshop, then install it on your ship at the Shipyard.
See Space Stations, Progression: Permits and Experience, and Setting and Story.
After the opening tutorial, a follow-up quest called Space Base 101 walks you through setting up your first base. It is handed out by Guion Faris in Raqmu, and a late-July 2026 patch moved it much earlier in the run so new players reach base building sooner instead of stumbling into it unguided.
Getting around early on is also more forgiving than it first appears: you can board the bus even without the fare, running up to 100 SU of debt to do it, so a bad trade or an expensive repair will not strand you. Since Community Update #1 every station also offers 300 SU of personal storage shared across all stations, which eases the inventory pressure of the early game. See Base Building for what to do once the quest points you at your first outpost.
Major Update #1 on October 8, 2026 gave new players more to do between contracts. Restricted Areas guarantee a blueprint the first time you complete each one, and the Data Disks they reward are turned in to the UCG Agent at the Mining Bureau, which unlocks Encyclopedia entries with tips aimed at new players. Blueprints are also no longer lost when you die.
When you create your character you choose cosmetic options such as gender, face, skin color, facial hair, and hair. You do not pick stats or a fixed playstyle at the start; the developer wants you to discover how you prefer to play before specializing later. Since Major Update #1 on October 8, 2026 you can re-customise your character later in the Debt Quarter of Babylon.
You view the game in first person while on foot and inside buildings, and in third person while flying your ship. Controls are built for PC keyboard and mouse: the mouse steers, W and S adjust throttle, and Shift engages afterburners that drain your battery. Controller support is unlikely at these early stages of development.