So, we just had an amazing war. You spent the war as a trader watching massive first-wavers getting all the glory while you were stuck watching Skype chat. Now you’re ready to become a first-waver yourself. But, what’s the best way to do it? Should you buy a Dominator? A Hawk? Should you buy huge guns and start blasting?

Nope!

Step 1 to becoming a first waver is to unlock the BBB or Boa. To get to a BBB, you have to kill lots of stuff and should have around 40 maneuver once you’re there.

Ship Setup

Big Brown Box (BBB) with 5x organic armor and NO GUNS. Yes, NO GUNS.

From there you fly to Vaereth or another skilling nook and proceed to engage swarmlings over and over. Within a couple of weeks, you’ll be trading in skills for advanced skills!

The reason you want no lasers is that lasers actually damage the swarmlings while not gaining you any trade ins. So, you’re best off just taking lots of hits.

What to do with your first trade ins

Now that you’ve been fighting Swarmlings for a few weeks or more, you’ve traded in your engineering a couple of times and your manuever once and you can now buy your first advanced skill! Your first advanced skill should be offensive combat 1 (OC).

Why OC1? OC1 will make swarmlings hit you more often which will raise your engineering more quickly in fewer AP. Once you have OC1, you’ll pick up combat efficiency 4 next… From there, you’ll be on to defensive combat, agility boost, time bomb 1, ambush fall back, and weapons mastery…

Once you have most the advanced skills, you can bring your maneuver up to 85 and you’re now in shape to take on Military Outposts! Be warned, to takes most players 2+ years to get to the point of fighting military outposts. Many of us have played for longer and still can’t manage it!