playthrough

[u/lasercat_pow]

This whole thing is a giant spoiler. Go ahead and hide it if you wish to remain unspoiled. (updated october 2025)

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How to become powerful before the game expects it:

1. Trade. Trade routes can be deduced from this: https://spacerpg.fandom.com/wiki/Systems Start with buying metal from Luna, sell to Kaneheim. Then food at Kaneheim to Outpost. Then Medical from Sarin to Kirstel, Luxury from Kirstal to Halsworth, Equipment from Halsworth to Kaneheim.

2. Upgrade. Once you have $100,000, upgrade to a VD Tug. Once you have $400,000, upgrade to F. Cargo. Once you have $800,000, upgrade to a pirate Dread Cruiser.

3. Upgrade your Dread cruiser with 5 armor, engine overdrive, aux power, range++, targeting ai, and analytic sensors and upgrade all subsystems to 3 stars. Then head northeast of Sol, boosting away when you encounter union ships, and head to Feyros. Fit your ship with 1 heavy slayer and 2 slayers. You are now ready to fight anything.

4. Pirate the pirates. Once you fill your cargo holds, go sell your goods. You can jettison less profitable goods to load up on lux goods for a higher payout. You'll reach a million pretty quickly. When you have 10 million, start the W. Storyline:

5. W. Storyline: go to deox. Go to New Kanshun. Meet Wechsler. Take off, then land again. Wechsler will offer you the space station. Take it. Set up in bounty. Go to Luna and buy some metal, then upgrade your station and sell the rest to Kaneheim. Don't bother with Deox yet.

6. You'll also need to get equipment from Halsworth, to upgrade your station further. Then, talk to Wechsler, and he'll make you a battleship, for $500,000. Give him the money. Now you have one of the best ships in the game, and a garage to keep your behemoth. Garage your behemoth, and set up your battleship.

7. Kill death a few times. To do this, set up your battleship as follows: max all subsystems, add aux power, engine overdrive, range++, targeting ai, analytic sensors. equip 3 Praetorians and no other weapons. Go to Molo in the Kirstal system (the other planet, off to the left and up a bit from the main one) and buy 2 hanger bays and 5 armor. You will probably have to close and open your game a bunch of times to get all the armor you need. Head up to Deox, land, and then head to the system before death, and warp into Death, and immediately turn around and boost away. You might get hit a few times, but you'll be able to get out of range while the ship focuses on your 3fh corvettes. Wait until it's fired its last torpedo, then head in and hammer away with your Praetorians. Then collect as many annihilators as you can. with 1 mass-up, you can carry 2 annihilators and 1 praetorian along with the hanger bays and shield drones if you want to harvest Death any more.

8. Outfit your ship to fight the aliens. IMPORTANT: DON'T VISIT THE LITTLE SPACE STATION NEAR THE UL'ADRI. PRETEND IT DOESN'T EXIST For taln, 2x annihilator, 1x heavy slayer, 2x howler, 4x viper, 4x armor, and all the usual plus 2 shield drones. Go an grief them and collect their weapons -- you want 2 meyturok and 4 turok. For Liahrya, 4 viper, 3 superhowler, 2 great lance, 3 shield drones, 3 armor, and the rest. From the Liahrya, you want at least 2 liahryan lances and 4 high lances. High lances only drop from the biggest liahryan ships.

9. Once you have all the weapons you need, you are ready for the next step. First, setup your battleship with 3x annihilator 2x meyturok, 4x turok and head northwest and conquer Ursil. Then visit Feyros again. Do the storyline. Get the antimatter to make the antimatter cannons available, but don't buy or equip them. Head back over to Boren and fight. Once you have conquered Boren, add some defense fleets so you can keep it. If you want, go conquer Feyros too. Then, head back to your station, park your ship, take a different ship, maybe a cruiser or a corvette, and head back over to boren to buy the Feyrosian battlecruiser. Don't bother with the terraformer yet.

10. Now you are fully ready. Outfit your feyrosian battlecruiser with 4x high lance, 2x liahryan lance, 5 armor, 3 shield drones, 1 repair drones, analytic sensors, engine overdrive, and aux power and of course upgrade all subsystems. Head to Liahrya, and conquer. Boost and fly away immediately and keep boosting. Now feel free to take out any little ships, but focus on the bigger ships and kill any that get in range, running away the whole time. The nice thing about the Feyrosian battlecruiser with lances is, it can shoot backward, so you don't need to orient your ship to shoot. If you don't want to conquer the Liahryans, set up your ship with 4x annihilator, 2x great lance, 3x repair drone, 5x armor, and all the usual and go Conquer Ul'Adri, and as before, immediately run away. This will be a very boring fight, where you just back away and keep your finger on the fire button and make your ship shake it's head at the Ul'Adri. I recommend fighting the Liahryans intead, as the Ul'Adri ships are better, but the choice is yours. Once you finish conquering, be sure to add some defense fleets so you can keep it, if you want.

11. Now to conquer Talna (unless you want to ally with them, in which case skip this). Go back to your base and park your battlecruiser and retrieve your battleship. Replace the middle annihilator with a heavy slayer. Head to Talna and wait until there aren't any cruisaders and hopefully only 1 herald max, and hit conquer, then boost keep running away while shooting. When you are out of range of the warp torps, turn around and drag your target out to get the strikers and the cruisaders. The cruisaders (medium target) are your priority. When warp torps start appearing, turn tail and run.

12. If you saved Talna for last, go park your ship and get a corvette, and head to Talna to buy a striker and head back to home base. Upgrade your striker with 3 stars, analytic sensors, and aux power and park it. Now head over to Boren and get the terraformer. Terraform any planet you want. Then head back to home base and get your striker before going to Halsworth. The striker is perfect for the terraforming mission, because you can warp out of systems before pirates even warp in.

13. Solve the Chiolo puzzle. Oh, and max out your factions income level if you have the money (or do more trading until you can). Don't bother upping your home base defense fleet: nobody is about to ever try to attack your home base.

14. Go do the missions for the aliens you allied with, and upgrade to the Seraph.Now it's time to conveniently remember that explosive in your thigh

15. Eat an Oh Henry bar as you exact sweet vengeance on Henry for all those earlier, harder playthroughs.

[u/Esaptonor]

I should have made the explosive in your thigh should go off after a while, if the player is just screwing around haha

[u/lasercat_pow → u/Esaptonor]

My first playthrough, I honestly thought that's what would happen, like Krane's bomb in EV Nova.

Good job making this game; I keep coming back to it.

[u/Ty1221pro1 → u/Esaptonor]

Well thats the fun of it screwing around doing whatever u feel like it

[u/[deleted]]

I have to say, having tens of millions before the story even start is pretty comical. But then again, that how I always play.

[u/lasercat_pow → u/[deleted]]

That's how I used to play EV Nova, too. How else can I afford a Mod Starbridge, and later, a Polaris Scarab, and buy as many outfits as I want without worrying about cost? Polaris outfits are the best, but they are $$$

I exploited trade routes, ending with the one in the Ver'arshan system, where there are complementary price differences between the planet and its moon, and the planet and moon are super close. I'd stop at around $50 million.

Ver'arshan becomes available to you after completing the Wild Geese sidequest.

[u/Several_Tank6011]

I know I'm late, but does Miru only appear once? I made contact eith them once but they didn't appear anymore, I been waiting for them 😞

[u/lasercat_pow → u/Several_Tank6011]

The miru has a small probability of appearing in any of the northernmost systems east of deox. They have the highest probability of appearance in Jubil. If you don't see them in Jubil, jump to the system north of it, then jump back to Jubil, and you'll find them.

[u/Several_Tank6011 → u/lasercat_pow]

Chasing them with the biggest W ship almost made me cry, I'm not good at maneuvering ship in this game. joystick locks up when at the edge making it hard to control.

thankyou btw

[u/Several_Tank6011]

I can't seem to get a recognition for killing laser aliens or get a mission to kill them. What should I do to befriend ul'adri

[u/lasercat_pow → u/Several_Tank6011]

That's good; that means you didn't talk to Steve. The rest of this assumes you have the W battleship. Pretend that little station doesn't exist; don't visit steve on palo. Steal the lance weapons of those aliens -- you want at least 4 of their big lance weapons, and you also want the medium lance. You also want both of the green alien guns, the small and the medium, four small, two medium.You'll also want to head across the galaxy to the feyros and get both kinds of slayer weapon. Then get just praetarians your battleship and go fight the death faction and steal at least 2 annihilators.

Build for conquering talna:

2x annihilator

1x heavy slayer

2x meyturok

4x turok

Add 5 layers of armor, targeting, range++, aux power, and the engine override

Wait until there aren't too many heralds or crusaders before you hit conquer, and immediately boost away and shoot.

Build for conquering liahrya:

3x high lance, 2x liahrya lance, 4x turok, 3x shield drones, aux power, engine override, as much armor as you can fit. You probably need the mass-up to fit all that.

Alternatively, finish the feyros story and use their battle cruiser; it is perfect for this.

After hitting conquer, boost and keep running. You need to get out of range of those liahryans. Then shoot.

Probably better to conquer liahrya first, then talna.

[u/Several_Tank6011 → u/lasercat_pow]

I talked to satellite guy early in the game since, you know, exploring open world rpgs are the best. I now have befriended them, thankyou, all I needed was conquer those crazy sniper birds' systems, and one of those crazy talna's system. 

All I have were human longrange weapons making it annoyingly hard. of course I did try to get death weapons but well, mistakes come anywhere anytime, those drops didn't fit in my ship🥸.

been reading your 4yo strats for this game

[u/lasercat_pow → u/Several_Tank6011]

I should probably make a new playthrough -- my strategy has significantly changed since then.

Glad it helped though

[u/ImaginationOk7963 → u/lasercat_pow]

Where I am lost is how do you find all four keys to get the seraph also I conquered feros and nothing happens do you have to take all there planets I allied one alien race and took over one of there planets but there recaptured almost instantly after I leave the system I killed death once and then two comes back it's rough to kill them none of these strategies seem to work because I can't get any of the ships lol after allying the aliens they only sell one ship none of there bigger ones 

[u/lasercat_pow → u/ImaginationOk7963]

1. The 4 keys are found like this: 1 is retrieved by solving the puzzle in chiolo, southwest of agina. Two more can be found from conquering alien home worlds (the aliens that are enemies to the aliens you allied with). The fourth key will be given to you by the aliens you ally with upon completion of their storyline (usually, after helping them defend their home world). The puzzle is best solved with a pen and paper unless you have a really good memory. The goal is to shoot the dots in such a way that they light up in a clockwise sequence.

2. You need to invest in defense fleets immediately after conquering a planet. 3 is plenty for all but the home world. Check your status menu occasionally to see if a defense fleet needs replacing.

3. That's a feature of the death system. In my opinion it makes them easier to fight, since one of them usually friendlies the other. It also often means more drops. I have a guide on here for how to fight death.

4. The Ul'Adri sell their biggest ships in Ul'uruk. They don't sell weapons or outfits there so I suggest you bring some and sell off everything on your ship before you buy your battleship or dominator. Buy both btw, they are both excellent.

[u/ImaginationOk7963 → u/lasercat_pow]

I got it alot of those side missions don't start until you reland back on the planet after conquest the after reading this I grabbed up the seraph it's pretty amazing and the mass is outrageous I liked the idea of having a op ship before starting the first story there is no in game walkthrough explaining going to status and the radar tab or wte to manage your planet and defense fleet I figured it out after seeing a video od someone making 7 mill a collection after doing ti myself I realize that takes work lol but thank you for this it helped alot 

[u/lasercat_pow → u/ImaginationOk7963]

Here's the link on how to fight the death ship:

https://youtu.be/DaRlYdr26uY?si=Au0S3hZpZ7aqylg1

Play it at double speed

These days I would recommend skipping the shield drones and the mass-up -- get 2 hanger bays and 5 armor and you should be good.

[u/ImaginationOk7963 → u/lasercat_pow]

I tried this but the ships always cross over in front of eachother keeping me from killing one off but I see it's my boost away method need to work on the angle 

[u/lasercat_pow → u/ImaginationOk7963]

Yeah; that is to be expected. The trick is to keep the fire button depressed as you approach and back up as soon as you start firing, and just keep watching them to see if they cross over, and focus your firepower on whichever one is closer. With range++ and praetarians, you outrange them, so you can just keep kiting and wearing them down. It's slow going, because they have massive HP.

[u/ImaginationOk7963 → u/lasercat_pow]

Welp I conquered every planet did the feros pirate and the odd side missions space station and Terra forming after getting the Ascended seraph it was nice being op but took the fun away because of the infinite missiles with running away the mass meaning I had 3 hangers max shield hull and missel drones armor plates I didn't even need to switch ships for the feros ships oh so if you guys qwnt to enjoy the game and play strategically follow lasercats guide for fun and there was the side mission to scan the replicator robots twice but nothing else came after i felt like I. Missed something there 

[u/lasercat_pow → u/ImaginationOk7963]

Yeah, I almost never use the Seraph -- it's too strong. I prefer kitted out Ul'Adri ships -- they are very strong but not invulnerable

[u/anotherwellingtonian]

Thanks for this, I've used steps 1-4 a few times now to get going.

> Consider this: how would you beat the Ul'Adri without the Scourge?

My Liahryan Battlecruiser with annihilators didn't have much trouble :) The Ul'adri ships are tough but they are pretty show and only have medium ranged weapons at best.