New pilot guide

Your first session, in the order it actually happens.

1. Enlist

Open the hangar and connect a wallet. Sign the message, which costs nothing, moves nothing and authorizes no transaction, then choose a callsign.

You are handed an AF-01 Interceptor, a pilot from one of the four island schools, and 5 cards. See Enlisting.

2. Look around the base

You arrive at Harrier Field. Your aircraft is parked on the apron and your pilot is standing next to it. Six building plots surround the runway; two are built and the rest are waiting.

The rail along the edge opens every panel: Airbase, Wing, Hangar, Stores, Showroom, Runs, Encounters, Skills, Tasks.

3. Go and get something

Board the jet and the island becomes an archipelago. Fly to a resource node (ore, timber or fuel) and harvest it. That spends energy, which refills on its own at one point every three minutes up to 150.

Come home and land on the runway.

4. Build and craft

Spend what you gathered. The Workshop is what lets you machine hardpoints, so it is usually the first thing worth raising. Then craft a tier one hardpoint, a Cannon Pod or an Armor Plate is a sensible first pick.

5. Fit it

Open the Hangar panel and fit the hardpoint into a slot. That hardpoint now grants its card to your deck, every match, without you choosing it.

Slots are 1 + hangar level, so raising the Hangar is how you carry more.

6. Fly an encounter

Open Encounters and launch the first one on normal. Five battles, and the opponents get harder as you clear them.

In the fight: 5 action points, 5 cards, 15 seconds a turn. Read the cost in the corner of each card, spend the round, end your turn.

7. Repeat, and think about dilution

That is the loop. The one judgement call that separates good pilots from busy ones: every hardpoint you fit adds a card to a fixed 16-card deck, so it makes everything else rarer.

The right question is not "what else can I fit" but "what is worth diluting the deck for".

Common early mistakes

Fitting everything you craft. See above. A focused deck beats a full one.

Saving action points. They do not carry over. Spend the round.

Farming until energy is empty, then stopping. Combat costs no energy. When gathering runs dry, go and fight.

Buying hard mode too early. Hard pays double but is genuinely harder; clear normal first and use what it pays.