I am now working on this guide again, albeit slowly when I have free time. If there are any sections in particular you would like to see or prefer me to work on first, feel free to let me know in the comments.

The comments I have received so far have been very encouraging so thank you.

I am aiming to make the best guide on Steam for Uplink, so if this guide helps you please leave your honest rating or feedback in the comments.

This guide is currently a work-in-progress.
So please be patient if you don't see something you need, also if you have any suggestions or corrections please feel free to leave them below.

Uplink is a very old game by now, releasing in 2001, but it is still fun to play even today, although with the help of a mod to modernise the UI.

Uplink is an extremely old game by now, at the release of this guide the game is 22 years old. The UI for the game on release by today's standards is extremely ugly and also lacks some more modern day functionality such as modern day resolutions. Playing vanilla is not recommended for a satisfying experience.

The "UPLINK OS" mod is essential for a great playing experience and this guide will show you how to install this mod and will assume you have it installed from here on out.

To download the mod go to the following page:
Website link

With you looking at this steam guide I will assume you are playing on Steam, so click the following button to download the mod.



This takes you to the next page that contains this section:



Click the red download now button.

This takes you to an empty webpage except for the following text:
"Click to download UplinkOS v104 GOLD STEAM.3.zip if it doesn't start automatically or try another mirror."

Here you can just wait for your download to begin or if after a few minutes nothing has happened then click the underlined text.


Once you have the mod downloaded installation is as easy as unzipping into your Uplink installation folder. Which you can access by right clicking the game in your library and clicking "Manage" then "Browse local files".


The last step to installing the mod is to delete your original "uplink.exe" and then rename the "uplinkOS.exe" file to simply "uplink.exe" in effect replacing the original file with the modded file.

That's it! You are now ready to begin playing with a modern looking UI capable of many different resolutions.

After going through the user setup you will be offered to go through the tutorial. I highly recommend you play through this tutorial as it will teach you the basics of the game and of the user interface. I'm not going to rehash anything from the tutorial in this guide.



Before we are allowed to take any jobs and start earning some money we have to first hack into the Test Machine and steal the test data. This is practically identical to the first jobs you will be taking to earn money so it's good practise.

One of the first things I recommend doing is collecting as many IP addresses as you can/want. This is because we are going to use these to bounce our signal around the world. The more addresses you have the longer a path you can create for anybody tracing you, and therefore giving you more time to hack.

To make use of this properly you will need the HUD_ConnectionRandomiser app upgrade from the Uplink Internal Services System. However I advise filling your address list as soon as possible and doing it manually until you have the 2500c needed for this upgrade.

To obtain all these addresses (Some of which you will need/collect following missions later) connect to InterNIC and click Browse/Search. Hover your mouse over an address and press "B". This will add it your bookmarks and therefore the connection map.

After this go back to your list and find the ones you are going to use often such as InterNIC and the Uplink Internal Services System, and on these addresses press "F" to favourite them. This makes it easy to quickly access them from the map screen.

NOTE: You can use the filter function on the server list page to find the important ones quickly such as the Uplink Internal Services System.


Make sure that whenever you are connecting to a target machine that you are bouncing signals around as many addresses as possible to maximise your time but most importantly, always make the first connection InterNIC. This is because this site has no active trace this address will simple not trace you at all, ever. On top of this the admin password never changes, meaning you don't have to re-hack everytime, you simply log on.

All this means that making this your first bounce makes it the last stop to tracking you, but you can simply log on quickly and easily and remove all traces of you being there, meaning they can never track you back to your system. Unless you get careless.


What I mean by this is that once you have accepted a bunch of missions you can tackle them in any order, or more importantly at the same time.

What this means is that you can accept a whole bunch of missions that you feel comfortable with and a bunch of these may be at the same address. So hack in and then complete all those tasks together. This way you only have to hack in once, remove logs once and you can cash them all in at once. Can you imagine doing a full hack>task>cover cycle to then find your next mission is the same target...



If you are sure that you have enough bounces to buy you enough time to break a password then don't waste your CPU bandwidth on the trace tracker at the same time as the password. It's better to hack the password first and then to bring up the trace tracker to see how long you have left. This means that the password is being broken more quickly and it also less waiting around.As you upgrade your CPU this becomes less important but will still be a good practise.

Before you can buy any bypassers you need to buy the HUD_ConnectionAnalysis HUD tool first and this is fairly pricing at the beginning at 20,000c so make sure you prioritise this after your first beginner hacks.


Decrypter
Work In progress.








Decypher










Dictionary_Hacker










Password_Breaker

The first missions you want to focus on to bring in money are the ones that involve breaking in. Stealing a file and returning it to the client or just deleting the file and then telling the client the file has been deleted.

These are really easy and should be farmed to net you, your first cash haul.