Starting as an Emperor

This section is in need of revision. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. The reason given is: This page still feels very empty, need some more information. Maybe about how to craft a flag. The Targoss section also feels a little unneeded, at most mention him in passing maybe?

This page describes what to do when you start the game as a new emperor.

Tribal Age

Your new emperor avatar comes into existence in a village on your homeworld, usually in daylight. Your homeworld is a habitable world that has never been explored or visited by any other avatar in the game.

Wild animals will ignore you while you are inside the village. If you die, you will respawn in the village.

Targoss

Targoss approaches and begins to speak.

Targoss is a NPC (non-player character) of your race. Targoss teaches you the basics of moving around and interacting with the game environment.

Targoss gives you a torch that you may find invaluable when the sun sets.

Press F4 or click the backpack icon to examine your inventory. Besides the torch, you start with a piece of paper containing a message from Haxus, the game's creator, and a knife.

Your Knife

Your knife has two functions: It can be used as a weapon to injure or kill animals, NPCs, or other avatars, and it can be used to skin animal carcasses they drop after they die. The function can be selected by using the scroll wheel. Be careful to select the second function when skinning carcasses, or you will destroy the animal carcass instead of skinning it!

By default, information about the tool you currently have selected is at the lower right of the screen. When the weapon function is selected, you will see this icon:

The number "20" means the nominal damage of this weapon is 20 hp, which is fairly low for a weapon.

The spike below the number indicates the type of damage. In this case, it is piercing damage.

When your knife's skinning function is selected, you will see the following icon:

Skinning an animal carcass is done by attacking the it while it is laying on the ground, this will produce a morsel of animal meat, a piece of leather, and a bone.

Rise of Civilization

Build a city to assert your claim as the ascendent race on the planet.

You will need a flag to do this. To get a flag you will need to handcraft one from the Gear (F4) window. Click the button with two hands on it, which will be on the upper left side of the Gear window.

You will need one textile and a sewing needle. A textile can be made from one piece of leather or two units of plant fiber. Leather can be obtained by killing animals and either skinning the animal carcasses with your knife or handcrafting them into leather. Plant fiber can be foraged from certain plants.

A sewing needle can be handcrafted from a bone or a log. Bones are produced by skinning animal carcasses or by handcrafting from one animal carcass (which consumes the carcass without producing leather or animal meat) and logs can be foraged from trees.

You have likely noticed that everything you need to make a flag can be made from a single animal carcass. As Targoss usually drops an animal carcass when he is killed, the fastest way to get everything you need for a flag is to kill him with your knife or torch. Your torch will probably be more effective because people and animals are less resistant to fire damage. Many players consider killing Targoss to be a rite of passage.

Once textile and sewing needle is acquired.

Planing the Flag

After you craft a flag, open the Construction (F11) window by selecting the orange diamond symbol from your toolbar or by pressing F11. Press Backspace to go to overhead view. Select the large flag icon, which should be at the top center of the window. Select the location on your world where you would like to place your town square. This will use the flag to found a new city.

Choose the location of your city carefully. You will likely notice some new icons have appeared when you first switched to overhead view. These icons represent the resources in your area. Pressing \ will cycle through views, one of which shows the same resources but with extremely common resources like stone (which looks like a white brick) filtered out.

A good starting location has ore (three round grey rock icons) minerals (purple and yellow mound icons) crystals (green crystal icon) and especially oil (black raindrop icon). Oil is notoriously difficult to find. If you cannot find a single oil source after wandering around for a while, it may be best to start again on a new world.

Once you find these resources, start your city. It is not necessary that all of these resources be right next to your town square. Having them all in your view when you place the town square is great, or at least knowing where they are relative to your town square is best.

Once you found a city, you will no longer be tied to the village. If you die, you will respawn in the city. The town square is a safe area in which wild animals cannot see you. Go there for refuge if needed.

This begins the Rise of Civilization. The ultimate goal of civilization is to develop space travel and spread your race into the galaxy.

Next chapter: Building Your First City