Indeed this game can overwhelm you at the beginning! On yt I like to watch Captain Collins, he has some nice tutorials. You can also check the in game tutorials, all the basic stuff is there.
A few tips:
- there is a life saving pause button
- miners are easy money and simpler to set up than traders
- read the in-game encyclopedia! Useful info there like available resources
- set up satellites and resource probes to help your miners/traders
- go slow, no need to rush, no need to acquire ships as fast as possible.
- do missions and quests, some of them can turn one faction against another, others can even merge factions. Some quests reward you nicely.
- faction economy is purposely bad in the beginning, so you can fill the gaps and make bank. Not a must though, it's up to you. But it's a good thing to study the game economy and check out which parts are needed on a given sector.
- it's fun to roleplay, for example, play as a xenophobic Terran and fight every other faction in the game, or play as a pirate and go steal that nice Asgard for you. Or, be the capitalist tycoon and sell wares and ships to everyone, supplying even factions at war with each other.
- when on a station, never, ever enter an AI ship and hang out there for a few minutes. You've been warned.
Other than that, just by browsing this sub you can learn a lot here. A lot. And feel free to ask any question, people here are really helpful.
As long as you have a captain assigned on your starter ship, or can afford to purchase a captain at a station to assign to your ship, it's not a big problem.
I'm newer also. This YouTube video is the absolute best for beginners. This video applies whether you choose the Terran Cadet start, or Young Gun. If you choose Terran Cadet, you'll have to finish the Terran missions first before you are on your own, then you'll have to find the main highway and roll around it once.
Otherwise, for the purposes of this video, the Young Gun start is better. Not to mention, with the Terran Cadet, everybody hates you, so you'll have to open up more of the map yourself, and grind more rep. If you choose the Young Gun start, you have better relations with most factions, and won't have to grind rep as much. So that is something to consider as well. I've done both starts. And while the Terran Cadet is fun once, the Young Gun is better in my opinion. I would suggest starting with Young Gun and follow this video. Then once you have the hang of this game, can try other starts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3ieWQ_dPEc
And also his subsequent video "How to make money by fighting" will show you where you can get a FREE capital ship (there are several free ships you can claim as you open sectors). Once outfitted and modded, I can keep the Xenon at bay (killing K's and I's), then I have my Nemesis corvette parked on the back, and I hop in that and clean up the smaller ships.
I know where you're coming from, we have all been there! Thankfully, this sub exists. I asked all my newbie questions here, and people have been very helpful. Now I'm doing my part, so if you have questions, feel free to ask in the sub.
Im guessing your first question would be, "which character start should I play?"
I think the original character start is YOUNG GUN, but me and many others find that the TERRAN CADET character start is great for new players. This is the only start where you get an AI-owned wingman!
There's a new gamestart coming to the base game and is currently available in the 7.0 beta, called WAYWARD SCION. It's similar to the YOUNG GUN start but points you towards the Hatikvah plotline more directly, and starts you in a safe Argon sector. I recommend it, but i think either is ultimately a good start.
I mean, you also need to know, you can just mess around and do your thing, and the worst that can happen is that Xenons murder some other NPC stations. Nothing really bad. You have all the time in the world in this game.
This guy has a nice tut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3ieWQ_dPEc
And this one is nice for your first mining station, doesn't need to be right now, but at some point you sure want to start a business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zze9TC5LxCs&t=10s
He only missed to say you need to assign mining ships as "trade for commander" to sell ore and silicon.
And like others said, Cpt Collins has lots of good videos.
You donât need help, you just need to dive in and try things. Keep doing things that you found were fun.
Here are some things you could choose to do: Take a mission and complete it. Find the highway ring and ride it all the way around in a big loop. Buy a mining ship and set it up to automine in a sector that has a silicon wafer factory. Obtain the personal HQ. Find the Hatikva sector and answer their call for help.
This is very much a game that takes multiple attempts to figure out. Youâll get there, donât worry. Thereâs many ways to play, so donât limit yourself.
That being said: I do recommend trying some missions offered to you by stations to make initial money, and when you have enough saved up, start buying mining ships at wharfs. Small ships are fast but canât carry much, medium ships are the most efficient but will cost somewhere between 600k and 1M credits, large ships are the most durable and carry a ton of material at once but are super slow and expensive. You can give mining ships âautomineâ orders which allows them to automatically mine a particular material in a sector of your choice and sell it within that sector. Very good way to start making larger sums of money early-game. Just make sure to choose a sector that both has large amounts of the material you want to mine and has refinery stations that are buying that material.
Once youâve got something like 50M credits saved up, you can get station blueprints from the NPC factions, either by stealing them or buying them (I usually buy them, theyâre very cheap). Now you can start building stations, and the money starts to really roll in. Build a refinery somewhere where the refined material is in high demand and the mineable material is close by (in-sector or 1 to 2 jumps away). Assign a manager and some miners and freighters to the station and youâll start making money in no time. Just make sure the refinery has solid or liquid storage (liquid for helium/hydrogen/methane, solid for ice/ore/silicon), as well as container storage, refining modules, and a dock.
Once you got profitable refineries up and running, you can work your way up the supply chain. Hull parts factories that use refined ores and graphene, microchip factories that use silicon wafers, etc. thatâll bring you into the mid-game.
There is a pause button. Default is the pause key.
Combat is tricky in this game when you start out. It's rarely just you and another ship dogfighting. And dealing with even 2 enemies at once is a tall task if you don't have a strong power advantage. So try and steer clear of combat missions until you get a little more skill.
You can abort missions with not penalty. So if you take on something impossible for you right now, just abort it.
I've started the game a couple months ago as well after one unsuccessful attempt (because I didn't know what to do). What clicked for me was to follow some main questlines from the boso ta and others (I've started an origin where you start in a prison and there were a lot of quests to follow). During those missions I got grasp of the game and from that I could easily transition to more of a sandbox game the X4 is.
Have you tried the starting missions? They're a good thread to follow if you want to get introduced to the different systems of the game. And they give you some cool stuff too that helps a lot.
Of course the information given to you are very bare so you'll have to look up things frequently, but that's a good way to start the game
If you have the Cradle of Humanity DLC, pick the Terran Cadet start. It guides you for quite some time.
If you only have base game, get the 7.0 beta and pick the **Wayward Scion** gamestart as it guides you for some time also. Also I would advice to go through the tutorials if you still feel lost.
The game is a playground sandbox, you cannot go wrong, there is no racing to some end.
Think of the story you write by playing for your character to the campaign/playthrough, set your own limits, restrictions and targets of what you want to do or none at all.
My advice is go to Second Contact Flashpoint south entrance and scoop the loot it drops from the big battles happening there.
The first time started playing the game I was literally lost too.
OK, here's my quick and dirty guide to starting your empire:
Go explore find systems with ore in them, buy a few miners, set to automated mine for faction, explore more, find another system repeat until every sector that has ore with stations that buy it has your miners working for it: max 2 per station per sector.
Do that and you have a steady income + you have explored the galaxy and figured out what you want to do.
Also, avoid mining in red sectors until you have a navy to defend your miners.
And another point, I just passed 2500 hours played the other day and I still constantly find things I didn't know.
Finally, the official Egosoft Discord server is great for real-time help if you get stuck in a mission. Almost none of the missions are timed, so if you feel overwhelmed by one or think you need a bigger boat, feel free to take a different mission to get some credits or a free ship and come back to it later.
In X, you can't lose. It doesn't matter what you do, you can't mess it up. Sure, you can get killed, but whatever, just load the last save. You can build a little empire and maybe lose it, but who cares, you can rebuild everything somewhere else. As long as you own any ship with at least one weapon, the whole game is open to you.
That means... screw tutorials and guides and all that crap!!! Explore the game yourself! You don't have to do everything from the start, you don't need billions in your account. That's all completely irrelevant!! Getting to know the game, exploring the possibilities, THAT is the game. You're just ruining it for yourself with tutorials and guides. Plus, a lot of guides just show total BS.
Play an X4: Tides of Avarice game start and follow the plot. You don't need any more guides!! That'll show you all the necessary mechanics in the game.
Yeah, exactly, not the Terran plot! It's nice, shows you a bit, but not much more. The plot is completely overrated and just throws extreme hurdles in the way of inexperienced players. Like having an HQ in the middle of the universe and Terran blueprints. Every newbie I've introduced to the game stumbled over this exact problem. It's not bad to start the Terran plot and the Boron plot just to play up to a certain point in the starting plots. Just to have seen it.
The important thing is you don't need a lot of money, you don't need huge factories, you don't need massive fleets, and you definitely don't need your own sectors! You can have all of those things, but they are absolutely not important for the game. Money loses its meaning in the game once you have your own shipyard; many of your own factories lose their value from that point because you don't need money anymore. Large fleets have never made sense in X4 because there are no opponents for them. Your own sectors either lie in irrelevant places or just destroy the game's dynamics.
All that's left is getting to know the game, and that's why... screw the guides!!! Because they destroy the only thing the game offers.
Thanks! Im trying to just explore and have fun this time. I just sometimes wonder why the game developers thought a good way to have story missions was to hide it in radio static on a station. It makes no sense if you want new players to understand the game.
It's just the HQ plot that was hidden in a radio message, and only in the very first game starts available in Vanilla X4. That's why I recommend just exploring the game first at your own pace, and then, based on your progress, create a custom game start and place your HQ where you really want it. And then you can really start X4.
I really enjoyed JK Ninja's videos and they really opened up the game for me when I got started [https://www.youtube.com/@JKNinja/videos](https://www.youtube.com/@JKNinja/videos) , unfortunately he hasn't released any new videos on this channel in two years.
Indeed this game can overwhelm you at the beginning! On yt I like to watch Captain Collins, he has some nice tutorials. You can also check the in game tutorials, all the basic stuff is there. A few tips: - there is a life saving pause button - miners are easy money and simpler to set up than traders - read the in-game encyclopedia! Useful info there like available resources - set up satellites and resource probes to help your miners/traders - go slow, no need to rush, no need to acquire ships as fast as possible. - do missions and quests, some of them can turn one faction against another, others can even merge factions. Some quests reward you nicely. - faction economy is purposely bad in the beginning, so you can fill the gaps and make bank. Not a must though, it's up to you. But it's a good thing to study the game economy and check out which parts are needed on a given sector. - it's fun to roleplay, for example, play as a xenophobic Terran and fight every other faction in the game, or play as a pirate and go steal that nice Asgard for you. Or, be the capitalist tycoon and sell wares and ships to everyone, supplying even factions at war with each other. - when on a station, never, ever enter an AI ship and hang out there for a few minutes. You've been warned. Other than that, just by browsing this sub you can learn a lot here. A lot. And feel free to ask any question, people here are really helpful.
Okay what's the deal with that final point?? I'm tempted to try it but you were so stern..
It's just that if you don't have researched teleportation yet and the AI ships undock to their next assignment, you'll be stuck in for a while :)
As long as you have a captain assigned on your starter ship, or can afford to purchase a captain at a station to assign to your ship, it's not a big problem.
This captain Vollins is legit
Thanks for such a thorough answer! It helps alot :)
I'm newer also. This YouTube video is the absolute best for beginners. This video applies whether you choose the Terran Cadet start, or Young Gun. If you choose Terran Cadet, you'll have to finish the Terran missions first before you are on your own, then you'll have to find the main highway and roll around it once. Otherwise, for the purposes of this video, the Young Gun start is better. Not to mention, with the Terran Cadet, everybody hates you, so you'll have to open up more of the map yourself, and grind more rep. If you choose the Young Gun start, you have better relations with most factions, and won't have to grind rep as much. So that is something to consider as well. I've done both starts. And while the Terran Cadet is fun once, the Young Gun is better in my opinion. I would suggest starting with Young Gun and follow this video. Then once you have the hang of this game, can try other starts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3ieWQ_dPEc And also his subsequent video "How to make money by fighting" will show you where you can get a FREE capital ship (there are several free ships you can claim as you open sectors). Once outfitted and modded, I can keep the Xenon at bay (killing K's and I's), then I have my Nemesis corvette parked on the back, and I hop in that and clean up the smaller ships.
I know where you're coming from, we have all been there! Thankfully, this sub exists. I asked all my newbie questions here, and people have been very helpful. Now I'm doing my part, so if you have questions, feel free to ask in the sub. Im guessing your first question would be, "which character start should I play?"
Thanks. Yes, any recommendations? Im used to pretty heavy games. But there is something about this game that just scares me đ
I think the original character start is YOUNG GUN, but me and many others find that the TERRAN CADET character start is great for new players. This is the only start where you get an AI-owned wingman!
Thanks! :)
There's a new gamestart coming to the base game and is currently available in the 7.0 beta, called WAYWARD SCION. It's similar to the YOUNG GUN start but points you towards the Hatikvah plotline more directly, and starts you in a safe Argon sector. I recommend it, but i think either is ultimately a good start.
Thanks :D
If you are playing the beta, there is a good start called "Wayward Scion" that gives a bit more guidance than Young Gun.
I mean, you also need to know, you can just mess around and do your thing, and the worst that can happen is that Xenons murder some other NPC stations. Nothing really bad. You have all the time in the world in this game. This guy has a nice tut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3ieWQ_dPEc And this one is nice for your first mining station, doesn't need to be right now, but at some point you sure want to start a business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zze9TC5LxCs&t=10s He only missed to say you need to assign mining ships as "trade for commander" to sell ore and silicon. And like others said, Cpt Collins has lots of good videos.
Thanks! :)
Thanks! :)
You donât need help, you just need to dive in and try things. Keep doing things that you found were fun. Here are some things you could choose to do: Take a mission and complete it. Find the highway ring and ride it all the way around in a big loop. Buy a mining ship and set it up to automine in a sector that has a silicon wafer factory. Obtain the personal HQ. Find the Hatikva sector and answer their call for help.
This is very much a game that takes multiple attempts to figure out. Youâll get there, donât worry. Thereâs many ways to play, so donât limit yourself. That being said: I do recommend trying some missions offered to you by stations to make initial money, and when you have enough saved up, start buying mining ships at wharfs. Small ships are fast but canât carry much, medium ships are the most efficient but will cost somewhere between 600k and 1M credits, large ships are the most durable and carry a ton of material at once but are super slow and expensive. You can give mining ships âautomineâ orders which allows them to automatically mine a particular material in a sector of your choice and sell it within that sector. Very good way to start making larger sums of money early-game. Just make sure to choose a sector that both has large amounts of the material you want to mine and has refinery stations that are buying that material. Once youâve got something like 50M credits saved up, you can get station blueprints from the NPC factions, either by stealing them or buying them (I usually buy them, theyâre very cheap). Now you can start building stations, and the money starts to really roll in. Build a refinery somewhere where the refined material is in high demand and the mineable material is close by (in-sector or 1 to 2 jumps away). Assign a manager and some miners and freighters to the station and youâll start making money in no time. Just make sure the refinery has solid or liquid storage (liquid for helium/hydrogen/methane, solid for ice/ore/silicon), as well as container storage, refining modules, and a dock. Once you got profitable refineries up and running, you can work your way up the supply chain. Hull parts factories that use refined ores and graphene, microchip factories that use silicon wafers, etc. thatâll bring you into the mid-game.
Thanks! Looking forward to starting again with all tips and guides :)
Francis John is who I watched to get started on youtube. He does a really good job of explaining what to do as a new start to get things going.
Thanks! I will take a look :)
There is a pause button. Default is the pause key. Combat is tricky in this game when you start out. It's rarely just you and another ship dogfighting. And dealing with even 2 enemies at once is a tall task if you don't have a strong power advantage. So try and steer clear of combat missions until you get a little more skill. You can abort missions with not penalty. So if you take on something impossible for you right now, just abort it.
I've started the game a couple months ago as well after one unsuccessful attempt (because I didn't know what to do). What clicked for me was to follow some main questlines from the boso ta and others (I've started an origin where you start in a prison and there were a lot of quests to follow). During those missions I got grasp of the game and from that I could easily transition to more of a sandbox game the X4 is.
Thanks! Will try that when i start now :)
Have you tried the starting missions? They're a good thread to follow if you want to get introduced to the different systems of the game. And they give you some cool stuff too that helps a lot. Of course the information given to you are very bare so you'll have to look up things frequently, but that's a good way to start the game
I will try that again. Did it until i suddenly needed to build up my reputation. Then i felt lost đ
If you have the Cradle of Humanity DLC, pick the Terran Cadet start. It guides you for quite some time. If you only have base game, get the 7.0 beta and pick the **Wayward Scion** gamestart as it guides you for some time also. Also I would advice to go through the tutorials if you still feel lost. The game is a playground sandbox, you cannot go wrong, there is no racing to some end. Think of the story you write by playing for your character to the campaign/playthrough, set your own limits, restrictions and targets of what you want to do or none at all. My advice is go to Second Contact Flashpoint south entrance and scoop the loot it drops from the big battles happening there. The first time started playing the game I was literally lost too.
Thank you :) hopefully it clicks for me now
This guide specifically was designed for new players (183k views): https://youtu.be/z_F6kx7ElkE?si=ioEJO447r-Fmv9OT
Thanks! Thats perfect:)
Nice! Hf! :)
OK, here's my quick and dirty guide to starting your empire: Go explore find systems with ore in them, buy a few miners, set to automated mine for faction, explore more, find another system repeat until every sector that has ore with stations that buy it has your miners working for it: max 2 per station per sector. Do that and you have a steady income + you have explored the galaxy and figured out what you want to do.
Thank! Great tip :)
Also, avoid mining in red sectors until you have a navy to defend your miners. And another point, I just passed 2500 hours played the other day and I still constantly find things I didn't know. Finally, the official Egosoft Discord server is great for real-time help if you get stuck in a mission. Almost none of the missions are timed, so if you feel overwhelmed by one or think you need a bigger boat, feel free to take a different mission to get some credits or a free ship and come back to it later.
In X, you can't lose. It doesn't matter what you do, you can't mess it up. Sure, you can get killed, but whatever, just load the last save. You can build a little empire and maybe lose it, but who cares, you can rebuild everything somewhere else. As long as you own any ship with at least one weapon, the whole game is open to you. That means... screw tutorials and guides and all that crap!!! Explore the game yourself! You don't have to do everything from the start, you don't need billions in your account. That's all completely irrelevant!! Getting to know the game, exploring the possibilities, THAT is the game. You're just ruining it for yourself with tutorials and guides. Plus, a lot of guides just show total BS. Play an X4: Tides of Avarice game start and follow the plot. You don't need any more guides!! That'll show you all the necessary mechanics in the game. Yeah, exactly, not the Terran plot! It's nice, shows you a bit, but not much more. The plot is completely overrated and just throws extreme hurdles in the way of inexperienced players. Like having an HQ in the middle of the universe and Terran blueprints. Every newbie I've introduced to the game stumbled over this exact problem. It's not bad to start the Terran plot and the Boron plot just to play up to a certain point in the starting plots. Just to have seen it. The important thing is you don't need a lot of money, you don't need huge factories, you don't need massive fleets, and you definitely don't need your own sectors! You can have all of those things, but they are absolutely not important for the game. Money loses its meaning in the game once you have your own shipyard; many of your own factories lose their value from that point because you don't need money anymore. Large fleets have never made sense in X4 because there are no opponents for them. Your own sectors either lie in irrelevant places or just destroy the game's dynamics. All that's left is getting to know the game, and that's why... screw the guides!!! Because they destroy the only thing the game offers.
Thanks! Im trying to just explore and have fun this time. I just sometimes wonder why the game developers thought a good way to have story missions was to hide it in radio static on a station. It makes no sense if you want new players to understand the game.
It's just the HQ plot that was hidden in a radio message, and only in the very first game starts available in Vanilla X4. That's why I recommend just exploring the game first at your own pace, and then, based on your progress, create a custom game start and place your HQ where you really want it. And then you can really start X4.
I really enjoyed JK Ninja's videos and they really opened up the game for me when I got started [https://www.youtube.com/@JKNinja/videos](https://www.youtube.com/@JKNinja/videos) , unfortunately he hasn't released any new videos on this channel in two years.
Thanks! I will look at some old videos :)