The first 15 minutes

Voidborn has no quest system, no quest log and no NPC to lead you. The first fifteen minutes are a route: a chain of places, and a one-line chip at the top of the screen that says the next thing to do. Every pilot walks the same one - ore first. When the chip goes quiet, the Docket takes over.

1. The door

The download on playvoidborn.com is the launcher. Its Create account asks for a username (three to twenty letters, figures, dash or underscore), an email address - kept for a password reset, not confirmed - and a password of at least eight characters; creating the account signs you in. Play starts the game, and the launcher signs it in for you: the door opens on your pilots, with no second password. An account holds four pilots. The site has no registration of its own - the same name and password sign in there.

A new pilot is four steps, and there is no class among them - classes were retired, and an old pilot keeps only a title, Old Vanguard and the like.

• Birth - where you were raised: Concord, Sepulchre or Ashaari. Permanent, and it moves no number; it gives you a voice. The three colonies.
• Oath - which Compact you serve. It moves no number either, but it decides your home, where you may dock, whose Wanted marks you see, whose bounties you claim and your house. The account swears with its first pilot, so later pilots find it already on record; it can be re-sworn once a season, in the Slack, at the drums, for a fee - the three colonies.
• Hull - one of four starting hulls, drawn and not numbered. See below.
• Name - three to twenty letters, figures, spaces or dashes. It goes on the hull, and it is one to a pilot across the whole universe.

2. What you start with

The four hulls cost the yard the same 12,000 and none is better: each trades a tenth in two of hold, thrust and hull against the others.

Nothing about the choice is final: the Citadel at home swaps the hull it gave you for any of the other three for 4,800 credits. The given hull can also be sold, but the yard pays only 2,400 for it. Hulls.

Every hull comes with the same three things fitted: Pulse Cannon I, Mining Laser I and Cargo Bay I. They are issued - they fly like anything else, and no counter will buy them. The purse is 600 credits whoever raised you. The hull’s own hold is 60 m³ and the Cargo Bay adds 90.

So there is no bay to buy; the first sale funds the next thing.

3. The route

You come in over your home’s Citadel, looking down at it (in a siege window a pilot who has never warped starts at the Shallows’ Mining post instead). Home has no rock; that is the economy, not a suggestion.

1. [W][A][S][D] + MOUSE TO FLY - [SHIFT] BOOST.
2. ORE IS IN THE SHALLOWS - [J] TO WARP. Your Compact’s Shallows is on the same planet as home - an in-system warp that spends no lane from the tank. Open at rank 1, no PvP, no patrol. The strip at the top already reads FIRST RUN: J opens the chart with the Shallows marked, J again warps. Eight seconds of wind-up, six in the tunnel.
3. CUT A ROCK - AIM CLOSE AND HOLD LMB. The laser reaches 400 m. The rock breaks.
4. FLY INTO WHAT CAME OUT OF IT. The hold fills; I opens it.
5. HOLD FULL - DOCK AT THE STATION IN THIS FIELD. Just outside the rock disc stands the Shallows’ own Mining post (Alder Weighbridge, Edda’s Bench or First Stake). Dock with R, sell with G at ×1.10.
6. Or carry the hold home: DOCK AT THE PORT - R WHEN THE PROMPT SHOWS. Home’s Trade port pays ×1.50 because it sells you nothing; the Citadel pays ×1.10 and the Arms post only ×0.85.
7. After the first sale, the send-off: ORE PAYS MORE FURTHER OUT - IF YOU GET THERE. The chip is done.

Mining · Stations.

4. The Docket

After the chip, a NEXT · ... line and the station’s Docket tab carry on, one step at a time, in the order the game wants every verb tried once:

• SELL WHAT YOU CUT - the route above.
• EXTRACTION I AT THE MINING POST - the first skill grade, from rank 2, paid in credits and materials.
• A CULL WRIT FOR YOUR GUNS - opens after your first sale. See below.
• A +1 AT THE BENCH - from rank 3.
• DRIVE II AT THE CITADEL - when you can afford it.
• A HULL OF YOUR OWN AT THE CITADEL.
• A HAULAGE WRIT FOR YOUR HOLD.

The Docket can be turned down to Quiet or Off in the settings. Ranks.

5. The guns

The same pilot, the same cannon, a different counter.

1. Dock anywhere at home but the Arms post and the berth says your guns have work where the mark points; undock and the strip reads WORK FOR YOUR GUNS, pointing at home’s Arms post.
2. Open The rolls there. It posts cull writs for your Compact’s own sectors, frontier first. A threat-1 writ asks for three kills (more when the sector has been left alone for weeks). Take it.
3. The two threat-1 sectors, Foundry Yard and Shallows Drift, are in your home system: one warp. A patrol is something you can watch - a drone attacks only if you shoot it or crowd it - a few hundred metres, by its kind. T locks; your cannon reaches 1.8 km, its gun 1.2. A starter cannon takes a threat-1 drone down in about six seconds.
4. Each wreck spills silicon. Fly into it - the same verb the miner learns. The writ’s card on the HUD counts the kills and turns green when the count is met.
5. Back at the Arms post, Collect. The pay is a tip - a share of the spill’s value; the XP is the point. The post buys ore, but at the floor rate (×0.85).
6. Shield Cell I is 600 credits at the Arms post or the Citadel. It goes in the Systems mount and adds a fifth to a shield that comes back on its own.

Combat.

If you die on the way

You almost cannot in the Shallows. If you do, the hold spills where you died and lies there ten minutes, the fitting stays on the ship, and you wake beside the nearest counter you may use - in the Shallows, its own Mining post - with the hull whole. Death.