Tips for Beginners in 2023

#### Why the game is F2P

The game it was innately developed as P2W game and therefore received a harse critic from Stellaris fans who anticipated more strategy-based gameplays than typical base-building games. Nonetheless, the game is fairly F2P. You can enjoy every aspect of the game without buying a single thing in the game. You can clear every mission - daily, weekly, special, and bi-weekly missions and events by saving up resources. P2W commanders are not overpowered at all. You have a limited fleet size. And even if you pay massive amount of money, you will have only marginally more fleet size.

#### How to get stronger?

So how do you get stronger? The answer is more fleet size and more strength per fleet size. Moving up a class provides you about 50-100% strength-per-size improvement. You can unlock destroyer, cruiser, battleship, and dreadnougut at Lv 10, 13, 16, and 19 Ship Design Center. Therefore, the first success factor in the game is your Nexus and Ship Design Center level. After that, smaller factors such as research level, leader skill level, relics, and higher-tier parts come into play.

LEV (Leviathan) ships provide 270-360% as strong as its regular counterpart. For example, if your regular battleship provides 10220 strengths per 32 fleet space, LEV Battleship will provide 36314 strengths per 32 fleet space. In the end, you will have filled your fleet with LEV Dreadnoughts (roughly 100k without dreadnought-related research) per 48 slots). Also, you can build an LEV dreadnought no matter what your Nexus level is. An LEV dreadnought will bring 8 times more strength per space than regular battleship.

##### How to play Leviathan

As for the reason described above, the event is crucial powerhouse for your fleet strength. In the endgame you will always want to have your fleet full of LEV dreadnoughts. Always aim for the decompressor at the center. However, to access the decompressor, you need a portal system. There are three portal systems in between the hub systmes -the edges of Leviathan triangle. Ideally, as soon as the event begins, you and your alliance members should race toward one of the hub systems. You can "attack" a ring to occupy those hubs. There are bases and guarding NPC fleets. After that, you can gradually move to Portal, then Decompressor.

If your alliance may not be the strongest in your galaxy. In that case, either build LEV Battleships, compete for the Decompressor, or negotiate with the strongest alliance to schedule a week when you can occupy and make LEV Dreadnoughts. Given you amass enough EC to buy negative energy cubes and fermionic condensate for LEV Dreadnoughts, and you find another person (could also be your friend or additional account) to do friendly PVP and collect particles, you can print LEV dreadnoughts. Even without any research on dreadnought, each of them will give you roughly 90K-100K strength with only 48 fleet slots. In an active server, find another player from different alliance. Once Leviathan starts and core is occupied, set up an agreement to trade fleets of an eaual size. Each 50K destroyer crash should give you 1500-2500 particles.

During Leviathan, you can only build ships for 72 hours period after the decompressor is occupied which takes about 6 hours. A battleship takes about a day and dreadnought about two days to finish. Therefore, make sure you always save up as many shipbuilding speed-ups for Leviathan event. The building speed-ups are to build your infrastructure to sustain the high maintanence cost of Leviathan ships, research speed-ups are to enhance those Leviathan ships, and generic speed-ups are all-purpose. But I would recommend using them on Leviathan shipyards especially at the early stage of the game.

#### Why do you want to be stronger?

What are the perks of being stronger? By ranking higher in voidland, you can claim slightly more resource every day. There are single-fleet and multi-fleet (three fleets) sections in voidland. Plus, when you are twice stronger than the opponent, the loss is not half but rather close to a quarter of the opponent. Because of this, an extra strength will exponentially minimize your losses.

#### Resource gathering

##### Leader upgrade materials

There are a couple of things you need to be aware of, when you are new to game. First, it gets incredibly difficult to upgrade your leader from lv.80. This requires four Lv. 4 skill upgrades. Since each skill requires 4 components, which is made of 4 upgrade materials each, unlocking the leader from Lv. 80 will require you to spend 64 Lv. 4 leader upgrade materials. Well, how many are they? To create a Lv. 4 material you need more than a thousand Lv. 1 materials. But the upgrade will grant so many leadership points (jumping from Lv.80 straight to Lv.120, not Lv.100). Therefore, if you are going to spend cash on this game, spend it when a special promos pop up. There is a limited offer for 32 Lv. 4 nanobots and 32 Lv. 5 nanobots, which could save more than a year of resource-gathering.

As a F2P player, you will find yourself stacked up with leader EXP juices, as gathering the leader upgrade materials is extremely tenuous process. Therefore, it is recommended to adopt a materialism trait instead of spiritualism. However, if you are a P2W player, spiritualism is a must-have as leader EXP juices are extremely expensive in GCC.

#### First month strategy

During the first week of the gameplay, focus on maintaining minimum amount of infrastructures (resource, factory) while running moderately high level residences. Solely focus on building Lv. 16 Nexus. This can be done without spending a dime if you are highly active and always working on a building. The reward is especially good for reaching Lv. 16 Nexus. The event disappears after a few days of initial gameplay.Never save up any speed-ups during this stage. When you run out of your speedups, make sure you also use your GCC to accelerate buildings.

When you engage in a combat, always use a Move command near your target, then engage with your tankiest fleet. This will minize the heavy loss inflicted on the fleet that arrives earlier than others (typically fleet with the lowest tier ships). Always repair your ships in time, before shield depletes. When you repair a ship, always "move to dock" then repair there, so your corresponding commander can operate while the damaged ships get repaired.

After the first two weeks, always save up your speed ups in order to claim the highest tier rewards from construction / shipbuilding events. However, some events like Caraveener and Leviathan do not let resources carryover, so make sure you spend them all. For events that have to do with ship-building, enable alliance trait that grants ship-building bonus. In general, it is not packages in the stores that win in the game; it is the coordination among aliance members. Make sure you are communicating in real time when you do any group PvP.

The sector capital in Karos will grant huge amount of ship maintanance cost reduction. Try to claim the territory if possible. The following traits are also very useful early on: gain authoritarianism points each day, increase the caravan capacity of all alliance, allow aliance members to jump to specific coordinates within alliance territory.

#### Second and third month strategy

In this phase, you have weekly refreshing void shops where you can buy Lv.4 and Lv.5 leader upgrade materials. To buy them you need VoidCoinz which you can get from Void Galaxy missions. Void Galaxy missions should be done every day in early game since you'll only be able to clear the combination of entry level challenges. Combine three easiest challenges to qualify for "complete a scenario with at least 3 primary or more advanced challenges" mission. At 12/12 daily missions completed, you gain 3 enhance points and 400 VoidCoinz, totalling 1205 Voidcoinz and 11 enhance points every week!

Put those Lv.4 and Lv.5 leader upgrade materials into upgrading your commanders to Lv.120 and then 140. As a F2P, it is recommended to upgrade Emily first as all her abilities are passive fleet buffs and quite balanced. Always complete War In Heaven and Leviathan events.

To be compiled

First written 23-05-10

Updated 23-06-08