The First Time User Experience (FTUE) is designed to introduce the player into Dual Universe and provide guidance on the core mechanics of the game. Dual Universe is a sandbox MMO where every player you meet is a real person, there are no NPC characters or quests and only limited number of pre defined missions. Nearly all of the content in the game world is created by the players. This guide will walk you through the FTUE, its main objectives and will give you some pointers on where to look for essential information.
The Beginning[]
As you watch the cinematic backstory of the demise of earth and see the Arkship touchdown on the fertile rolling hills of Alioth, you prepare yourself for the beginning of your journey. As a new Novean you are about to be awakened from cryogenic sleep sometime after the Arkship has landed. The beginning of your user experience is character creation
Your Character Creation[]
Players can select gender, which is unchangeable, and the colour of your suit. Player names are given outside of the game at dualuniverse.game when your initial account was created. Players can change their names on this website once every 6 months, names must be five characters or more and can no longer contain spaces. Players can come back and customise their character appearance by selecting Avatar in the free look menu. After confirmation of character creation you will be presented with outpost selection
Select an Outpost, Speeder and Location[]
This initial task of the FTUE is to select an outpost type, a speeder type and a location on Haven. There are 10 outposts to select from, each with its own unique style. All of the outposts have approximately the same initial elements and it is purely an aesthetic preference to the outpost a player will choose.
Players can cycle through the outposts to select one that appeals to them the most.
The the outposts are not DRM protected and players can save blueprints from the cores, the ten outposts are listed below.:
The following links will take you to an itemised list of the components of each outpost. Platform, Pilot, Villa, Dojo, Mod, Tri, Cosy, Wave, Blockhaus, Station.
After selecting the outpost the player will need to choose a starting vehicle, there are four choices. Again this is an aesthetic choice, all four vehicles are termed ground vehicles that have, without modification, limited ability to gain altitude. The vehicle can be modified quite easily to rectify this if desired.
The following links will give you an itemised list of each of the starter vehicles: Novark Speeder Mk 7, Novark Racer Mk 3, Novark Exacutus Mk 1, Novark Cursor Mk 1
After confirming the outpost and starting vehicle the player is next presented with the map view of the planet Haven. The scroll wheel will zoom in and out and click and drag will rotate the planet. Haven has three types of terrain; snow and ice, grass lands, arid desert. There is no bodies of water on Haven and the topology has undulating hills. There are markets spread out on the planet some of which have shuttles to Alioth and Sanctuary the twin moon, see page on understanding map icons. Choosing your starting territory is a permanent choice and cannot be changed at a later time. After some time you will leave Haven and venture to other planets where you will have more choice of territories, biomes and topography. This is simply the territory you will start your journey.
Once selected and confirmed the player will start their journey to Haven.
Your Journey to Haven[]
Although the Arkship lands on Alioth your first land claim or territory is on another nearby planet called Haven. You leave the Arkship on Alioth, board your landing pod and travel to Haven. At this point you are introduced to Aphelia the Arkship AI and your landing pod is falling to Haven's surface above the tile you have chosen as your first territory. Your first objective from Aphelia is to land on haven, the player must enter the pilot seat by selecting the interact key F. Follow the instructions of Aphelia and you will land without a problem. As a general rule to land a craft without collision damage, the pilot must be travelling less than 100km/h. Your speed is indicated in the top right hand corner of the screen.
First Steps[]
Stepping out of your craft you will follow Aphelia's beginning tutorial which includes movement, inventory, flatten tool as you look for a place to deploy your outpost. Once your outpost is deployed Aphelia will take you on a tour of the building. The next waypoint will introduce you to elevators, resurrection nodes and mining units. Aphelia will then direct you to the VR Surrogate Station in your outpost, accessing VR is a great way to explore the game world without travelling, each VR location is somewhere within Helios, once in a VR session the player can select M to bring up the interactive map to find current location.
After visiting the surrogate station Aphelia will lead you outside to deploy your speeder, you speeder is built on a dynamic core where your outpost is built on a static core. Deploy your speeder and experiment with the controls. A lot of piloting activities can be controlled by a scripting language called Lua. The heads up display (HUD) can be extensively modified and there are many community provided HUD's and scripts including autopilots and waypoint managers to assist you. Its always good to understand and experiment with the default flight controls in case you have to revert to them at some point.
Lander[]
The lander that brought you to Haven belongs to you and you can freely salvage all the elements and honeycomb. In build mode hold Alt key while using the deploy element tool, usually in slot 1 and then LMB each element to send it to your nanopack or linked container. You will need to empty containers and fuel tanks before you can salvage them. To select honeycomb use the area select tool, usually slot 7, by selecting two voxels it will select the area between the voxels, hitting Del will salvage the honeycomb. The parts list of the lander are here.
Tutorials[]
The last place Aphelia leads you to is a desk with a screen displaying the Personal Objectives Assistant Manager screen. These will give the new player an overview of Talents, Mining, Building, Markets and Social Features. Ensure that you do not have any of your tools selected in your hot bar when clicking the screen. The player can come back to this screen over time to check off more objectives.
Exploration[]
After a while you will want to go beyond the starter tutorials, atmospheric flight and your Haven territory. Taking the shuttle to Alioth and then a teleporter to the Alioth Exchange where you will see other player and organization exhibits is a good place to start exploring. Asteroid detection and mining is a good source of revenue and exploration. On you way between planets players can discover wrecks. Visiting other players bases is an enjoyable activity and many players display the 'Welcome' sign on the interactive map. see the travel pages for more information. Missions by selecting F8 is a good way to explore the Helios system delivering parcels for Aphelia or other players.
Next Steps[]
Although you can play Dual Universe without interacting with other players and each player has the ability to be fairly self sufficient, this does limit the benefits of playing an MMO. There are various avenues a player can take to discover all aspects of Dual Universe and its community. By simply hitting the enter key you will open the chat windows where you will find online help. The codex using the F1 key is another great place to find information. Selecting F5 brings up the hints screen that lists all in-game hints which helps explain some of the functions of elements without having to be in front of the element to press H. The official Discord Server is where players can find out of game help and connect with other players and organizations.
Quanta[]
Dual Universe has an open in-game economy where players can buy and sell goods. Each player will be given a basic login bonus. Players can also take the challenges via VR once a day to earn 480,000 quanta. The markets on Haven are seeded by bots for some essential items that will enable the player to fast start their play time. For example it is much quicker to take the daily challenge and buy Assembly Line M with the profits than to build an assembly line. Here is a list of some of the bot orders on Haven.
Getting Help[]
If you get stuck in game and need help, hit enter to open the chat page and select the Help tab. There is usually players that can help, just ask your question. Community Helpers on the official discord server are usually always available. If you need help from a game manager. go to the Help chat channel and type @GM followed by your request eg: @GM please refresh my construct <construct_name> There is usually support staff always on line although you may have to wait a while if they are busy. Your last avenue of help is logging a support ticket using the support portal. Support staff are usually quite quick to respond.