Getting Started

"Welcome to the broadcast. The Network has prepared everything except you."

This page covers your first hour or two: making a runner, getting through Intake, and staying alive on Floor 1 long enough to like it. Everything else in the Guides goes deeper. Start here.

1. Cast a runner

Open the Bar and choose Cast Runner. The intake form asks for a handle and a look, then a starter kit — the weapon and supplies you walk in with.

Blunt, Trigger and Blade are the easy starts: one weapon, used up close (Blunt, Blade) or from range (Trigger).
Cyber, Survival and Signal are more to manage: a droid, traps and catching, or a remote you tune to a channel later.
Random lets the Network pick.

The kit is where you start, not what you are. Every skill can be trained by anyone. The Starter Kits page describes all six.

2. Intake (Floor 0)

You arrive in a clean white room with a broadcast playing. Click to skip it if you've seen it.

Intake can't hurt you, and walking there is free. Press Q for the Pilot Directives checklist. Work through it in any order:

Examine your surroundings. Click anything, then choose Examine. Make this a habit everywhere: Examine tells you what a thing is and what it does, and it fills in that thing's entry in Your Reference (more on that below).
Equip your starter kit. Press I for your inventory, pick your weapon, and equip it.
Engage the calibration unit. Your first fight. It doesn't hit back hard.
Use a healing item. Something goes wrong and you lose some health. Use the Half-Empty Stim-Pad you were issued. Consumables are there to be used. Don't hoard them.
Open the way out. The door is locked. Get it open however your kit can.
Interact with the room. Search, repair, open and use things. The world is full of things you can do more with than look at.
Craft and equip your upgrade. The room hands you the last part your kit's first upgrade needs. Build it at the bench and equip it.
Reach the descent stair. Finishing pays out a few more stims, a Field Dressing and a Live Battery Cell, and teaches you the Field Dressing recipe.

Then you go down.

3. The two rules of Floor 1

Floor 1 is a real floor: things can kill you, and two things work differently from Intake.

Every step costs energy. Outside Sanctuary, walking costs 1 energy per square. When energy runs out you can't move until it comes back. Standing still brings it back slowly, and battery cells and charge packs bring it back fast. Before a long walk, look at your energy (⚡ in the header).

Health comes back slowly. Integrity (♥) only recovers on its own outside a fight, and it's slow. Stims, dressings and Sanctuary are how you really heal.

4. Getting around

Move: click a square. Short, safe walks just happen. A long or risky walk asks you to confirm first.
Act: click a thing to select it. Its action drawer lists what you can do: Examine, Attack, Pick Up, Open, Search, Talk, Use and so on. Double-click does the obvious thing (attack a hostile, loot a body, open a door).
Panels: I inventory, C character, K skills, M map, P party, Q directives. Press ? for the full list of keys.
Quick bar: 1–5 are your abilities, 6–0 your consumables. Put your stims there.
The header's "?" button opens the Broadcast Reference (see section 9).

5. Fighting

Combat is turn-based, room by room. When a fight starts, everyone in the room takes turns.

On your turn you get a few moves and one attack. Your weapon's techniques are the attacks you can pick. Each one shows its move cost.
Your turn is on a timer. End Turn finishes early. Moves you don't spend are kept as Footing, which softens the next hits you take. Holding still isn't wasted.
Some enemies wind up a big attack and the log warns you a turn ahead. Get out of the way.
Every enemy is billed by how hard it is: Warm-Up, Contender, Headliner or Closer. Examine one to see its billing before you start something.

If a fight is going badly, leaving the room is a real option.

6. Sanctuary

Sanctuary is your safe room. Floor 1 has several doors to it, and signs in the halls point to the nearest one. Inside you'll find:

The cot. Rest to get back a big share of your missing health. It has a long cooldown.
The respirator. Refills some of your energy.
The Med Alcove. Hands out a free stim and a charge pack every so often.
The workbench, for crafting (section 7).
Your stash, for gear you don't want to carry.
Sully, who sells supplies and has a job for you.

Walking inside Sanctuary is free. Come back whenever you're low. Most early deaths come from pushing one more room on an empty energy bar. The Sanctuary page has the rest.

7. Loot and crafting

Search containers, loot bodies, and pick up what looks useful. Scrap and wire aren't junk.

Combine two items into something better from your inventory. Many recipes need a workbench; some work anywhere.
Deconstruct an item to pull parts out of it. That works anywhere.
At a workbench, choose Recipes to see what you can make right now.

The Recipes page lists Floor 1's recipes.

8. Getting stronger

Skills get better by doing the thing: swing a baton to train Blunt Force Trauma, examine things to train Perception, craft to train Fabrication. You can also train on purpose from the Skills panel (K), which costs energy or health.

How far a skill can go depends on the deepest floor you've reached. On Floor 1 the cap is level 19. Going deeper raises it. See Skills.

9. Your Reference

Everything you spot goes into Your Reference, the header's "?" button. Every enemy, person, item, piece of gear, hazard and district. When something new is added, the log tells you.

Spotted gives you its name and picture. For an item, it also gives the numbers you'd see in your bag and what it's crafted from.
Examined fills in the rest: the description, and for creatures their billing, health and what's known about them.

Every floor you reach is listed under Locations, with an overview of the place. Things you haven't found yet show as ???. When you meet something you don't understand, examine it, then look it up.

10. When it goes wrong

At zero health you aren't dead yet. You're down, and you stay down for up to an hour.

A party member can revive you if they have the Mend skill and a Trauma Kit. They need to stand right beside you, not diagonally, and it takes a few minutes.
From the downed screen you can wait, call for help on Global, or give up and flatline.
While you're down, other runners can rob your body.

If you die for real, that runner is gone. Their body stays behind with everything they carried, and their skills start over. You cast a new runner from the Bar. Your account keeps its Reference and what you've collected, so you won't be starting from nothing.

11. Going down

Floor 1's stairs down open on the floor's own schedule. A sealed stair shows a countdown. When they open, you'll have about a day before Floor 1 closes, and anyone still on a floor when it closes dies. Watch the countdown.

The next floor is a different place with new rules. Its guides join the Guides list once you've been there.

12. Other people

You aren't alone down here.

Party up from another runner's card, up to five of you. Parties share Sanctuary and can revive each other.
Talk: LOCAL is the room, PARTY is your party, GLOBAL is everyone. Anything said out loud shows as a bubble over your head, and the show can film it. PARTY and DM don't. See Talking.

Next → Starter Kits — all six, and what each one starts with.