Your first evening in Starlane: a beginner's guide

Starlane is a space game you play in a browser tab. There is one persistent universe and one character per account, and nobody hands you a map. Your first evening has a shape, though, and the game walks you through it in six steps. This guide is those six steps, plus the things we wish someone had told us.

1. Pick who you were

Your origin is the one choice you can't take back. It decides where you wake up, what you're already good at, and who already knows your name. There are five:

• Dock Rat. You grew up loading other people's cargo on Sol's freight decks. You start with hauling skill and a freight licence. It's the gentlest start.
• Belt Prospector. Raised in the asteroid belts. You start with prospecting skill and a mining permit, and you read a rock face better than a market.
• Navy Washout. Two years of flight training and no commission at the end of it. You can shoot, and someone in the Directorate still returns your calls.
• Company Courier. You ran documents for the League. You start with navigation and a freight licence, and the League remembers you kindly.
• Fringe Smuggler. The most money and the best margins, but you start in lawless space, where other pilots can attack you. It trades safety for tempo.

None of them is the strong pick. Choose the life you want to play, not the numbers.

2. Work a shift on the dock

Before you fly anywhere, earn something. The dock board posts shifts. Your first cargo shift takes a couple of minutes whatever the board says, and it pays what it posts. Stack the bay well and later shifts go faster.

This is also where you learn the game's rhythm: things take real time, and they keep going while you're away. Start a shift, read something, come back.

3. Make your first trade

Buy something where it's made and sell it where it's wanted. It's the oldest living out here. Prices move because pilots trade, so a market isn't a fixed table to memorise: it's a place you read.

Two habits help:

• Keep some credits back. A pilot with an empty wallet can't take the next opportunity.
• Raw goods first. A Skiff's hold full of a cheap raw good is a safe first run. Expensive cargo is a lesson you can afford later.

4. Fly a lane nobody charted for you

This is the part people remember. You don't have a map. Each lane out of a system goes somewhere, and you won't know where until you arrive. When you do, it's yours: your chart grows one jump at a time, and if you're the first pilot ever to reach a system, the record says so permanently.

Before every jump you can see the fuel and the flight time. What you can't see is what's on the other side.

5. Own your ship outright

Every new pilot gets a Skiff, fronted by the dockmaster. You fly first and pay later. Half of everything you earn goes to paying him back, automatically, and it never takes you below a little working money. When you have the rest, settle it on the Ship screen and the hull is yours.

Two things to know. You only get that loan once. And the debt survives the ship, so look after it. Insurance exists for exactly this, and it's worth buying before you take risks.

6. Earn your next licence

Your origin handed you your first licence. The next one you choose and pay for yourself, at an academy: freight, the belt, the workbench, the bounty board, or the rim. Each one opens a line of work of its own.

Here is Starlane's most important rule, and it's worth understanding on day one:

• Skills are time. They train on a real-world clock while you're away, and nothing can buy them faster.
• Licences are credits plus skill. You pay for a certification, but only once your skills are high enough.

So the pilot who plays an hour a day and the pilot who plays all weekend progress differently, but neither can buy their way past the other.

After the first evening

Finishing the six steps opens your career's own story: four longer steps that run over a week or two, ending where the next rung of the ladder begins. Your character never resets. What you build tonight is still there next year.

Ready? Create a pilot. It's free, and there's nothing to download.