New Pilot Guide

Sources: the 0.7.0.0 patch notes and the Cycle 7 game client. Anything marked unverified hasn't been confirmed in game yet.

• Mining is cutting now. Asteroids are solid bodies with a crust and a core; your laser cuts pieces off, and ores are now regoliths in 5 families (Silicate, Carbonaceous, Metallic, Sulfide, Volatile) that float free for you — or anyone — to scoop up. Cutting needs fewer cycles than in Cycle 6, but 56 of the 64 regolith types are new and have no refining recipe in the client data yet; the new Regolith Collector module is also unverified in Cycle 7.
• Your ship's printer shrank. The Emergency Printer is now 10 cells (was 28) and prints 26 basics (was 58), including a ship Printer module (28 cells, 66 recipes) and ship Refinery module (16 cells, 22 recipes) that unlock the rest. The Material Processor lost 4 refining recipes to the Refinery.
• Gates and catapults. Mini Gate 210 KT + 46 BF + 8 SK, 105 ly (was 65 ly); Heavy Gate 1 060 KT + 231 BF + 43 SK, 365 ly. Mini Catapult 102 KT + 22 BF + 4 SK, 60 ly (was 65); Heavy Catapult 650 KT + 141 BF + 26 SK, 250 ly (was 365).
• Hulls, engines and fuel. You start in a Reiver (the LAI can still be built). The Propulsion Engine is split into R10 / R25 / R50 matched to fuel grade; engines don't stack (only the strongest online one counts), and fuel impulse went up (Unstable 8→13, D1 10→17, D2 15→25). Leap is twice as strong but one per ship, up to 2 Weapon Receivers fit, and the Gravity Sensor now carries the Directional Scanner.
• Tribes, standings, statuses. The wipe deleted all tribes; standings and tribe voting are gone (tribe contacts have their own tab). Status effects are now Heat, Corruption and Strain. LUX and EVE Points rates for Cycle 7 aren't known yet.

Renamed in Cycle 7

The ore budget below keeps the short labels PPM / FC / HSM for the three renamed ores.

Optional: run the Frontier Stack app (free, Microsoft Store) and this fills in from your mining logs automatically. Without it, just use the tables as a reference.

With your available ore you could build

Costs are ore-equivalents for the pure mining route (single-run blue goo recipe). Salvage makes the foam-tier items much cheaper, and tiny costs (sensors, lenses, fuel) are ignored — treat this as a planning compass, not accounting. Cycle 7 renamed ores to regoliths; reading them from your mining logs is unverified in Cycle 7 until the first Cycle 7 log has been checked.

You spawn in a Creche. Follow the tutorial objectives to the end (refuel, build a Network Node, resolve a signature, use the Leap Drive, build your Sanctuary, build and install a Cutting Laser…). After the last objective the game stops telling you what to do — that's where this guide begins. Since Cycle 7 you start in a Reiver (previously the LAI); you can build both hulls later.

Heads-up: what the tutorial calls your Sanctuary is a Refuge — the structure you can dock at. Same thing, two names (whether the Cycle 7 tutorial still says “Sanctuary” is unverified in Cycle 7). After the tutorial you should have: a flying ship with a Cutting Laser, your Refuge placed, a Leap Drive, and your first refine done.

Goals

• Complete every objective in the tutorial list
• Know where your Refuge (the tutorial's “Sanctuary”) is and how to dock at it

Space is full of signatures. From far away they show as unresolved — you know something is there, not what. Get closer and they resolve, or identify them from range with a Directional Scanner.

Goals

• Fit a Gravity Sensor
• Fit an Ion Sensor
• Build and use a Directional Scanner
• Resolve a Gravity signature and mine the asteroid you found

Your ship has no built-in cargo hold — space comes only from container modules. Every trip between the belt and your base is time not spent mining, so cargo capacity is the single best early investment:

Goals

• Open the starter fit in the packer and copy what you can
• Print 5+ Cargo Containers and fit them
• Do one full mining loop (belt → full cargo → unload) without feeling cramped

A base with a Refinery turns ore into goo — tribe slang for the three liquid components everything is made from: blue goo = Reinforced Alloys, orange goo = Thermal Composites, black goo = Carbon Weave (plus Printed Circuits, the fourth basic component). Without a Refinery you can't process ore; without a Mini Printer you can't make modules. Build these four, in this order:

Cycle 7: your ship's small Emergency Printer can also print a ship-module Printer and Refinery — handy, but they are modules, not the Refinery structure above or the base Printer (20 BF).

Two dirt-cheap quality-of-life buildings — they cost raw ore, no processing:

The mining shopping list — the Core Four refined down to ore:

Want to plan bigger targets? The board's Goal Planner breaks any blueprint down to raw materials recursively.

Goals

• Mine the shopping list (~650 PPM / ~720 FC / ~1 270 HSM, raw builds included)auto
• Refine it all
• Build a Network Node
• Build a Refinery
• Build a Mini Printer
• Build a Relay
• Build a Field Storage and a Refuge
• Print your first goo batch in your own base

One Refinery becomes a bottleneck fast. Industry jobs run in parallel, so the real limit is how many facilities you have (and how much clicking you tolerate). Priorities, in order:

1. More Refineries (15 blue + 15 orange goo each) until ore never queues.
2. More Mini Printers so components and modules print side by side.
3. Mini Storage (250× Crustal Anorthosite Crystals + 250× Massive Ataxite Matrix, raw) for overflow.
4. Keep growing cargo — the packer's best Cycle 7 fits reach 1 288 m³ on the Reiver (33 Cargo + 4 Emergency Containers) and 2 244 m³ on the LAI (54 + 12). These are heuristic results, not a proven optimum (use the packer).
5. Utility modules everywhere: sensors on every ship, Hull Repairer, Autohelm.

Goals

• Second Refinery running
• Second Mini Printer running
• Mini Storage built
• Cargo fit above 1 500 m³

Everything past the starter tier — Printer, Storage, Heavy Printer/Refinery, Nest, gates — is built from Building Foam (10 BF = 65 blue + 65 black + 65 orange goo). Foam is expensive via mining:

Salvage shortcuts all of this. The bulk split (20× Salvaged Materials → 1 black + 2 orange + 6 blue goo, unverified in Cycle 7) means 20 BF ≈ 2 600 Salvaged Materials, and salvage fields yield fast. Priority (Cycle 6 order, unverified in Cycle 7): Cargo Debris > Crystalline Refuse > Debris (Crystalline Refuse is the only source of Kerogen Tar, needed for gates). Salvage fields exist only in some systems — ask the tribe where.

Goals

• Print your first 20× Building Foam
• Build a Printer (the 20-BF one) — unlocks bigger recipes
• Build a Storage
• Complete your first salvage run (join a tribe trip)
• Upgrade your fit with Emergency Containers (25 m³, no fit limit!)

You're self-sufficient now. What comes next is shared: Mini Gate (210× Kerogen Tar + 46 BF + 8× Still Kernels, 105 ly range) up to a Heavy Gate (1 060 KT + 231 BF + 43 SK, 365 ly — roughly 349 000 ore-equivalent, the same figure the tribe board's goal cards use). Catapults are cheaper, shorter-range options (see What changed in Cycle 7). Nobody builds these alone. The current project — what's being built and how far along it is — lives on the tribe board (“Current tribe project” card); coordination happens at the alliance level, on Discord — ask there what's needed right now. The Cycle 7 wipe deleted all tribes, so the board shows a project again once the tribe is re-founded.

Goals

• Move out of the starter pocket — ask in tribe chat (or in game) for a warp to where the tribe operates
• Contribute to the current tribe project (gate / catapult materials) — see the tribe board or ask on Discord
• Tell the tribe which system you settled in, so others know where you are

• Mining lenses are destroyed when you deactivate the laser — carry spares (unverified in Cycle 7).
• Feral Data is the only source of LUX (≈12 500 LUX each — Cycle 6 values, not yet verified for Cycle 7). Never trash it, never sell it cheap.
• Death is expensive. When in doubt, warp out — cargo you saved beats ore you almost mined.
• Asteroids are layered: the outer crust differs from the core. Cut the crust away to reach the valuable material.
• Recipes and costs change every patch without detailed notes. Trust the tribe dashboard over old forum posts.
• The server wipes periodically (cycles). Skills in playing well survive every wipe.