Alien Worlds Beginners Guide

Alien Worlds has exploded in popularity in the weeks following the project’s Binance listing. As Metahub authors are passionate miners in Alien Worlds, we hoped create a single guide that could serve as a complete guide to Alien Worlds game play elements and mechanics.

What is Alien Worlds.io?

Alien Worlds is a free-to-play game in which you take the role of a space explorer, aka miner. Players are equipped with a set of three mining tools and they can choose a planet to explore and mine Trillium (TLM) on.

In order to play Alien Worlds, you need to make a WAX.io Wallet. WAX is the world’s leading decentralized video game and entertainment network, focused on NFTs. You can make a wallet by linking a Google, Facebook or Twitter account, or by making a brand new WAX account.

After setting up your WAX Wallet, you will be asked to give Alien World a set of permissions to use it and you’re ready to start mining!

What is Trillium?

Trillium (TLM) is the crypto currency you gain by playing Alien Worlds. You get TLM by mining, and the amount you get is determined by the mining tools you have equipped, the land you are mining on and the currently available mining pot on the planet you’re playing on.

Mining Trillium takes anywhere from 2-3 seconds to 2-3 minutes, depending on your tools and the machine you’re mining on. We published a great article titled What actually happens when you mine in Alien Worlds? that goes in-depth about the code that supports Alien Worlds’ mining process.

What are NFTs in Alien Worlds?

While mining for TLM, the game will occasionally reward you with a special item – a tool, a minion, a weapon, maybe an avatar. These items are NFTs – Non Fungible Tokens – and they are harder to get than TLM.

You get TLM every time you mine, while the chance to get a NFT is determined by a combination of your tool’s luck and the land you’re mining on. We wrote more about that in our Ultimate guide to Alien World Tools.

Alien Worlds NFTs live on the blockchain and they can be freely traded. Players use the Atomic Hub Marketplace to trade NFTs, and this can be a viable way to earn money by playing Alien Worlds.

What are planets in Alien Worlds?

Planets are the first thing you will see upon starting the game, and they have two main metrics you need to be aware of:

Mining Pot, which determines how much TLM you will make from mining. Higher is better.
Fill rate, which is the rate at which the TLM on the planet is being replenished. Higher is better.

If you’re just starting out, it honestly doesn’t matter which planet you choose. A popular pick among players is Neri, but a lot of player just pick whichever one looks most appealing.

If you worried you aren’t making as much TLM as you could be, choose the planet with a good balance of Mining Pot and Fill Rate.

Staking TLM

You can Stake TLM to a planet. This will increase the total available Mining pot of the planet. The more players mine on a particular planet, the lower the mining pot is, so staking is essential to keep the economy a float. When staking, it’s best to join a group of people staking on one particular planet, because the Staked to Mining pot Ratio is about 1,000,000 to 1. Staking in groups is beneficial for everyone.

Lands in Alien Worlds

Each planet in Alien Worlds is comprised of Lands. Lands are the core of your mining process, as each Land has three key stats:

Chance to gain an NFT,
Amount of TLM you will get for mining,
and a Charge Time Multiplier.

When mining, these stats get combined with your Tools to determine the final amounts of luck, TLM and Charge duration you get. There are many different types of lands, and we suggest you check the Alien Worlds Lands List for a complete overview.

Our Complete guide to Alien Worlds Lands has a great breakdown of best Lands for farming TLM and NFTs.

Lands also have commissions. Commission determines how much money the land owner gets from everyone who mines in the land, so you will want to look for lands with lower Commissions.

Lands also have rarities, with determines their stats. The rarer the land, the more likely all the states will be higher. The downside is that they also have higher charge times, meaning you will have to wait longer before you can mine again. The Rarities go in this order:

Common (Gray)
Rare (Blue)
Epic (Purple)
Legendary (Yellow)

Tools in Alien Worlds

Tools are what you use to mine in Alien Worlds, and have four statistics associated to them:

Mining power,
NFT Chance,
Charge Time,
and POW.

You want tools with a high Mining Power, high NFT chance, and a low Cool down time. POW stands for proof of work, and it makes it easier for your machine to do the Mining process. POW is not something to be worried about, as they don’t become high until late game.

Similar to Lands, all tools have rarities and they are ranked as follows:

Abundant (Light Gray)
Common (Gray)
Rare (Blue)
Epic (Purple)
Legendary (Yellow)
Mythical (Red)

Only a few Mythical tools exist, and anything from Rare onwards is a quite lucrative sale on the Atomic Hub. If you are lucky enough to get one, say hello to the big bucks!

In order to help you out, we’ve created a few resources to help with understanding and comparing Tools:

Alien Worlds Mining Build Analyzer which calculates the total stats for your mining build
Alien World Tools List which lists all available tools with stats
Ultimate guide to Alien World Tools which goes in-depth about tool stats and formulas
Top 3 Mining Builds for Alien Worlds Beginners which does exactly what the title says

Mining

As we already shared, Mining is the key element of game play in Alien Worlds. There are two phases of mining:

Mining and
Waiting for your tools to recharge

In order to mine, press the Mine button and follow through the process. The game will reward you with TLM and a timer will be displayed in the top right corner of the UI. You can’t mine before this timer runs out.

The time you have to wait to mine is dependent on your Tools and Land cool down, while the time you spending mining is dependent on luck and your physical computer.

The amount of TLM you mine depends on your Tools and Land, as do your NFT chance and POW. This image sums up the formulas used to calculate the totals, and you can use our Alien Worlds Mining Build Analyzer to get exact numbers for your build:

Shining

Shining is a system in which you can increase the visual appeal and stats of a NFT. The shining levels go like this:

Stone (Gray)
Gold (Gold)
Stardust (Little specks)
Antimatter (Holographic).

All cards start at Stone level shine. Shining your NFTs requires a large amount of Trillium, depending on the Rarity of the card and on the current shine level. Shined NFTs have better resale values, but it does cost a handful of TLM to shine. The exact cost can be found here:

There are a few rules to shining:

Shining requires 4 of the same NFT
Shining also requires Trilium
After shining, your 4 previous NFTs are burned and instead you have a new NFT of the higher level of shininess, but the same level of rarity
Your new NFT will have a new mint number based on how many of the newly shined item have been created
You have to shine up step-by-step through the shine levels. You can only create an antimatter NFT by shining up 4 stardust, for example
NFTs shined up to gold, dust and antimatter will be rarer and rarer
You can’t shine up land

Why would you want a shined NFT?

In general, shined up NFTs will have better game play stats. They’ll also be much, much rarer so you might prefer to own them for your own collector’s pleasure. We’ll be revealing the stat benefits in due course.

Avatars

Avatars are cosmetic items. When starting the game, you have the choice between a Male and Female avatar. This choice is purely cosmetic and does not affect game play. You can mine up NFT’s for new avatars, but as of now, Avatars have no impact to game play and just look cool.

Weapons, Artifacts and Minions

While you may earn NFTs for all three of these categories, they have not been implemented into the game yet. Weapons, Artifacts and Minions will be used in an upcoming PvP game feature called The Thunder Dome (Mad Max reference, hooray!), but as of now they don’t have a use.