...the ultimate borderline... (sorry)

So you've started a new game, and now you're in space. What next?



Well there you are in sector 1, with a sea of unexplored blueness between you and the conveniently-revealed space station (don't get used to that, you've got to find it yourself next time).

Start moving. Use the num-pad keys to move in 8 directions. (WASD or arrow keys only give 4 direction movement, and that's often not going to cut it here). If you're a rogue-like vet you're probably familiar with HJKLYUBN for movement...

Or hey, you can use the mouse! Right-click where you want to go. Click closer to your ship to arrive in a more predictable path. There is an auto-explore feature, but sometimes feels like an auto-explore bug.

Eventually you will uncover some planets.



Move your ship on top of a nice blue terran (earth-like) planet and press "D" for "dock" , or space or numpad 5 for "smart action", and you will send a shuttle down, complete with a landing party to explore the surface.



Movement is the same, but suddenly you've got to worry about oxygen. You thought this planet was earthlike, so you could just breathe the local atmosphere? Well, you can, but you know what else terran planets have? Germs! You really wanna take a chance?

When your oxygen gets low, head back to the shuttle and let it fill up. Then keep exploring. Now what if this wasn't a terran planet? Asphyxiation! Your landing party will start to take damage with every move, until they either get more oxygen or ... die!

You can find all kinds of loot on planets, but there is also danger... Like here I am, running away from some alien snakes, and I run right into MORE SNAKES. Sonic shotgun, don't fail me now!



Now I've got to fight. Your landing party always carries 2 weapons:

1. A ranged weapon, like a pistol, rifle, or shotgun. They all have different damage, range, spread, and speed. But the advantage over most monsters here is that you can hit them before they hit you.

To fire your ranged weapon, you can hit [F] to target, then [F] again to fire. If you want to hit a different target, press [+] or [-] to cycle. You can also left click monsters to shoot them. Finally, you can hit [PgDn] to fire wildly into the crowd ("auto-fire")

When you target a monster (or ship in space), you can get some information about it:


2. A melee weapon. Stab, slash, smash, or eviscerate. To use a melee weapon, you just move into a monster (bump to attack). Melee usually does more damage, but they can hit you back if they survive.

So these snakes are going to hit me back. The landing party loses some hit points. How does health work in this game. Do my crew just start falling down dead? No.



So here we have 12 HP left, 62 oxygen, a full bar at the bottom that says 4 (0*) , and then a pink bar that says 30%. That 30% is your survival chance. If your away team left right now, each member has only a 30% chance to survive. If you launch the shuttle, at least one person will always make it back, but those still aren't good odds.

What's the 4(0*)? '4' is how many crew are in the landing party, and 0* is how many officers are present.

You can bring officers? Yep. They'll be represented as blue figures instead of red. And if you bring the captain, they get a nice gold uniform.

So once you're done exploring a planet (and you do not have to explore every inch of every planet), just head back to the shuttle and press [D] or [5] or [space] again. You'll head back to the ship with all the loot you've found.

Just be aware there is a cooldown between launching the shuttle. You have to wait 7 turns after either landing on a planet or returning to space, to take off again. So don't go someplace that you won't survive, ok?

So you finish exploring that planet, now you know what you're doing, and you do a few more. Now your supplies are getting low and your cargo hold is full. What to do?

Go to the space station!

As soon as you dock, you're in the lobby. Here you can replace your crew and supplies, repair your hull, and sell the data that you've gathered. Hopefully you'll do better than breaking even.

Then head to the commodities exchange to sell your loot.



There are 13 different commodities in Approaching Infinity, and an ever-changing economy behind the scenes that drives prices up, down, and sideways. In the early game, unless you're playing a trader, you'll just want to sell everything you pick up.

But there's actually a lot of information on this screen. Notice that it's more expensive to buy something than you can sell it for, no matter what. More importantly, notice the "best" columns along side the buy and sell. Best means which sector you've seen the best price for that item, whether it be for buying or selling.


Let's move on to the Starship Outfitters. This is where you can buy new equipment for your ship and crew. Weapons, shields, engines, space suits, pistols, whatever, they have it all. Just not all at once. There are some + and - to help compare to your existing gear, but we won't go into depth about that here.


By default, anything you buy in the shop is automatically installed. You can change this in the options menu.

Hit [4] for the pawn shop where you can sell equipment like outdated laser cannons and your spare pair of water-walkers.

[5] is Quests where you can get paying work. [6] to donate to Pay It Forward, which is disabled in sectors 1-5 , and also in non-perma-death games. [7] is the shipyard, but that's way too expensive right now. And [8] is leave.

So leave.

Finish exploring the sector (or don't) and then head for the warp point. This allows travel to more unexplored space, and the game continues. Just make sure you've topped up your supplies before you go.

Look what happened: I entered a new sector right next to radiation belts and two hostile ships. Lucky I'm in a cruiser, I can take them out easily. You want a cruiser? Install 3 weapons and 6 devices in your ship. You'll get one.



Next I decided to explore a shipwreck. I found better loot, but also a horde of cyber-zombies.



Really, that's it. Go explore space. Find stuff, kill stuff, sell stuff.

No, not really.

You've probably found some "clues" by now, right? Well, see where they lead!

Maybe you're read the Terran Times? If you find all issues of that, it'll take you somewhere too.

Then there's all those aliens you've encountered in space. Have you been making friends or enemies? If you get friendly enough with any of the 12 races they'll invite you into their embassies, tell you their stories, and ask for your help. It's up to you what you do about that, but helping the aliens is how to achieve 8 of the 9 currently available victories.

And have you seen those planets you can read? What's that about?

And did you see sector 50? Wow!

What about the caves in sector 20, is there something in there?

GO FIND OUT!