Welcome and i hope you enjoy this guide and game.
I am creating this guide based of my knowledge and observations of game after my first full playtrough (for 100% achievements), so i dont know everything, but i hope that this guide will help someone.

Keep your unlocked rooms upgraded as they provide coin multiplier for every drilling trip you complete. You can upgrade all rooms in "Rooms" tab, even those you didnt placed yet in your HQ and they also contribute to your multiplier.

In endgame, there is more rooms than spaces in HQ, so you will need to remove few starting rooms to place late-game rooms with better stats and to have as many crew in them as possible (at endgame your building efficiency with all crew and specific element resistancies will make the difference in 3rd/last quadrant).

To be able to replace room, you first have to remove crew members that are in said room. when the room is empty, there will be new button to remove room (on left side). And then just simply choose new room for that space.

There are few options how to get more coins per drilling trip, so here we go:
1. Keep your rooms upgraded for that multiplier
2. Pick stuff (chests, multipliers, stuff in big rooms) during drilling
3. Drill blocks of everything as it does provide lot of coins with other boosts
4. Upgrade your blocks in "Collections" tab to get more gold coins per mined block
5. Mine to Core when you can as it gives nice rewards

In the endgame you shouldnt have problem with coins, but you might be bit tighter in amount you have and want spent on upgrades during early to mid-game.

Recruit and assign new crew as soon as possible, so it can gather xp, level-up and provide your drill better stats.

Crew that is assigned in buildings in HQ, it gains xp per drilling trip (its written after drill in that end-table).

Check "Crew" tab regularly to upgrade your officers.

As for Recruiting new Crew, you need to mine the material and items yourself (or with Nano-drills) - if you wanna know on what planet/moon/asteroid/gas-giant has stuff you need, just look for it in "Collection" tab (faster) or manually click trought every discovered planet in "Astronomy" tab (slower)

Check "Collection" tab after every long drill (many blocks mined) or every few drills to upgrade all blocks and items that you can. Upgrading blocks and items boosts its coin value = you get more money per drilling trip.

As for Achievements Upgrade 360 Blocks and 360 Items - these would be last completed as its long way to collect it all - so dont sweat it untill you finish all the other achievements (because collecting stuff for every other achiev should put you around 300 blocks and 300 items out of 360, most of whitch will be from 3rd/last quadrant and you DO NOT get xp for them if you get them from nano-drills, you NEED to mine them manually (if i understood it correctly) - change in Patch #5, so you can get xp from nanodrills).

By upgrading Blocks and Items you get drill-bit items/stuff you need to upgrade your drill, so keep upgrading Blocks and Items when you can to get stuff to upgrade drill.

One user wrote this:
"You can get xp for items you make through block fusion. And you can get the blocks for that from nano-drills. Can be good if you have 4/5 xp and just do not want to make another trip."
- i personally didnt use fusion as i didnt need it or find it worhy of my time. It might save you some time, but in my personal opinion its faster to mine for that extra item than using nanodrills and clicking for a minute in collection tab. But it is valid point, so im mentioning it here.

Tile Tracker:
You can enable Tile Tracker by double left click in collection on any of the discovered blocks and little counter of how many of said block with block name will show in upper right corner of screen. To disable this, one right click on Tile tracker will do so. It only tracks how many blocks you currently have and it doesnt show picture of the block. This also works for tracking items.

You unlock research tiles 2 ways:
1. Completing research on planet by collecting Green Leaf coins from blocks, chest-like things with Leaf symbol or from big rooms with Leaf symbol coin (and it should take about 1-3 trips of long mining per planet to complete)
2. Finding Research Facility during exploration of Quadrants.

In "Research" tab, when you can research something, it has green arrow avaible, but IT DOES CONSUME that block or item for research.
Research only unlocks new Rooms and achievs as far as i know (as mentioned in Rooms section of guide, get them for that multiplier, but no need to rush it, you will get most of it eventually just by playing and in endgame i only needed to farm like 10-20 blocks or items to complete all - items and blocks from Nano-drills DO COUNT towards research, so thats nice)


Research Points (Green Leaf coins, they can drop randomly from blocks, chest-like things) are used in opening hangars (for getting drill upgrade) and in investments to get upgrades. You can get bonuses so they drop more (Research Coin Amount +1 in Coretium upgrades and there is also one investment).

What does "Research coin amount +1" do?
When a research coin drops when drilling, it will now drop +1.
so it helps you getting research coins faster

You get Nano-drills from "Market" tab, after you unlock them in exploring quadrants (in those Market drops) and then buying it. You can deploy them in "Astronomy" tab and collect stuff from them also there.

IMPORTANT: Blocks and Items gained from Nano-drills DO NOT count towards xp of said blocks and items, but you CAN use them in Research and hiring Crew.
This was changed in Patch #5, so items and block xp from nanodrills DO count towards xp of said block or item

so start using them as soon as you get them, they are nice addition to speed your progress and to mine less manually for crew and research.

You get new Drill Head by upgrading your Corporate level. There are 6 Drill Heads in game and you should switch to new-one after you match atleast Power and HP stats with upgrades.

You get new Drill Body by exploring space and buying it there in space garage/hangar with coins and Green Leaf Coins. As far as i know, they only add xp boost for crew for every drilling trip and abilities from crew. There is 6 Drill Body in game.

Crew abilities:there is a lot of crew abilities, but what i recommend using is ability "Healing from Chest" as that gives you heal for every chest you break. (it saved me couple of times).
What abilities you choose is up to you, but to keep upgrading Drill Head i would suggest not unlocking last pilot/crew slot on Drill body as its expensive in Drill-bit stuff.

There are few enemies in game, but im not gonna spoil for you what all of them do (find it for yourself :P ).

However, i will tell you 3 things:
1. TNT explosions (and it chain version) can kill the enemies if they are close enought to it (except the big worm, i didnt try it on that-one), but clear-the-horizontal-line Block will not kill the enemies, only Blocks that have explosion (fixed in patch, horizontal-line is be able to kill enemies now, i tested it on jelly-fish enemy)
2. They are not active if they are out of screen or at the edge of it (most of them, but Jelly-fish enemy and big worm are not affected by this, once they go, they go)
3. Restart level, you might get better RNG with enemies and they might you bug less (unless you are unlucky and they will find you either way)

Monster Infestation - it occures mostly on comets and a few moons (but not on planets or gas giants). Its just lot of one enemy spawning and its guarantied event, that you CANT skip or do rng-reset like for anything else -you just have to live with it)

If you are missing a crew member or planet in your list, its probably due to not clicking on it in map. (Map only registers on Map view Uncovered tiles, but anything you find you need to interact with, for it to be avaible to you - so if you are missing planet or crew, then its probably somewhere on map marked as New)

Also, Arcades are only in Quadrant 1 (shooting car) and Quadrant 2 (rockets) but none in Quadrant 3.

There are 7 throphies that were added in Patch #5, that help boost late-game. They can be viewed in the Office.

1. All the Cores - Drill every core in the game
2. Coretrium Complete - Complete the Coretrium
3. All the Crew - Obtain and max level all crew
4. Champion Explorer - Uncover all maps
5. Upgrade all Items - ... all items upgraded
6. Research Genius - Complete all research squares
7. Material Master - Upgrade all tiles

For all achievements you need all except 4 coretium researches/upgrades.
For late-game trophy, you need to unlock them all.

As for order of unlocking, i went for HQ-upgrades first and then unlocked from cheapest to most expensive.

Developers did change to 1 Coretrium (late-game) research/upgrade, but if you did unlock it, you wont have new-one, but old boost it provided.

So, some changes within patches might only be seen in new game, so starting new save might be worthed if they change more stuff or you want to re-play the game.

Old saves should work fine, unless devs specifically say so (or atleast i expect them to as courtesy).

Patch #5 added some late game optimalization and xp for items and blocks from nanodrills (+ few other minor stuff to make life easier; read changelog of the game if you want all the info)

Important settings:
Particle Reduction: ON (it helps a lot to reduce lags)
Screen Shaking: off (this is not as important, only if you want stable screen)

Important note: all the settings get reset do default after major patch (this includes resolution, sound/music, particle reduction, ....) so be sure to check them after updates and return them to how you want them. (even when they are supposed to be saved locally, it still resets them)

Windows settings: some settings in windows might cause issues with certain resolutions of the game and scalling of stuff (mainly text).
DISCLAIMER: TRY THESE AT YOUR OWN RISK. It shouldnt break the game or anything else but i warned you (worst case you can return them to what it was before and hope your computer likes it)
there are currently 2 advices on what might help with that:
1. high DPI Override - in steam folder locate file GalacticMiningCorp.exe, click right on it and select properties. then select "Compatibility" tab. click "Change high DPI Settings" button. Under "High DPI scaling override" tick the box "Override High DPI scaling behaviour" and set the "Scaling Performed By" option to "Aplication". Click OK and close DPI settings. Click OK to close the game executable properties. Launch the game and check if it worked.
2. disabling scalling to small screens: right click desktop - choose screen settings and there should be slider for text zoom (right above resolution drop menu). if its not there, then it is in Settings - Ease of Access - Display (windows love to make things hard to find)
-courtesy of GMC developer and Discord discusion on official group

Thank you so much for reading this guide. I will probably add more stuff as it comes to mind or someone requests something to explain, update or corrects me (nobody is perfect and i just want to help). I know its probably not the best guide, but i hope it helps someone.

Feel free to add me for questions or write below guide with your feedback.

01. 01. 2025
added only this in changelog (and will only update date once a while):
Guide is still up to date, since no new updates or changes ingame

05.10. 2021
added some stuff to settings section

19. 07. 2021
added changes from Patch #5, added Galaxy Map

03. 06. 2021
added this Changelog, added Coretium section, added Patches and Saves section, added/corected stuff from Patch #4, corrected few typos