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Your first day

This guide takes you from the tutorial to a charged pickaxe, a gang and a Siege base. It covers your first two hours and says what to leave for later. The reference pages are Welcome to Ancients and Your First Steps.

Before you start

  • The address is play.ancients.gg. The server runs Java 1.21.11. Bedrock players use the same address. See Playing on Bedrock.
  • Accept the resource pack when the server offers it. Menus and custom items are drawn with it.
  • AncientsMod is a free, optional client mod for Java. /mod gives the download link.
  • The server day turns over at 11 AM Pacific. The level cap, daily bonuses and Siege attacks all reset then. See Maps & Resets.

The tutorial

Click The Foreman, take his pickaxe, mine 25 coal ore and keep mining to level 10. At level 10 the quarry closes, your mining tree opens and spends your first points for you, and chat gives you a Go to spawn button.

Finish it and do not type /skip: skipping leaves without the rewards. It takes a few minutes and you can't die in it. Arriving at spawn pays the Miner title, 100,000 Ancient Energy, a Simple Contraband and an Enchanting Supply Box.

Type /kit while you are still in the tutorial. Your Starter Cache is handed to you on the spot.

Your first ten minutes at spawn

The Getting Started quest line opens when you leave the tutorial. Its steps can be done in any order. Start with these five. The quest step each one finishes is in brackets.

  1. Enchant your pickaxe (Enchant Your Pickaxe). You land beside the Wormhole when you leave the tutorial. Open your inventory, pick up the Ancient Energy and click it onto your pickaxe. Hold the pickaxe at the Wormhole and press your drop key to throw it in. A ring of enchant options opens, and each one shows its chance before you left-click it. If Efficiency is on the ring, take it first: everything you earn scales with how fast you mine. Energy Collector is next, because energy pays for every other enchant. An option you click comes back as the same enchant until it is maxed, so keep clicking it. The full order is in the Mining guide. The quest step finishes when the pickaxe reaches level 10. Nothing else you can buy on day 1 makes you mine faster, so all of your first energy goes here.
  2. Right-click the Enchanting Supply Box and the contraband. The box gives one enchanting item, most often Enchant Dust, which you drop onto the Wormhole ring to raise your next roll. The contraband pays energy and a Money Note.
  3. Join a gang (Find Your Gang). Use the recruit board at spawn or type /g recruit. Outposts need a gang, and gang upgrades give every member up to 20% increased energy, XP and ore. See Gangs.
  4. Leave the mining tree on Auto. You start on the Energy preset, and every level spends its own point. Refunds and full resets are free, so nothing is locked in. Change the preset with /miningtree auto once you know what you want.
  5. Type /mines and go to the Iron Mine (Into the Mines). You are level 10, and a wooden pickaxe mines iron from level 10. The step asks for 500 blocks and finishes itself.

A pickaxe has its own level, separate from yours. It goes up by one each time an enchant lands at the Wormhole. A new pickaxe starts at level 0.

The rest of the line, in the order worth doing:

  • Gear Up. Buy anything from the shopkeepers. /shop warps you to them at spawn, and a wooden sword is $100. See Selling & the Spawn Market.
  • Lucky Strike. Mine until a jewel drops. It opens the Beyond the Mines line.
  • Mine for Coin and Level 30. Both come from mining. $100,000 is also the price of your first base.
  • Enchant Your Gear and Prestige. Leave both for later. The first needs 2.5M energy spent on gear. The second is pickaxe prestige (/prestige), not Ascension.

/quests shows the reward on every step. See Quests.

Your first hour

Follow the mines up. /mines lists them. Coal is level 1, iron 10 and lapis 25. Each ore pays more energy and money than the last. See The Mines.

Bank your money. Ore sells itself as you break it and pays a Money Note into your inventory. Right-click the note in a safe zone to bank it, or type /claim there to bank every note you hold.

Spend energy as it fills. Mining charges the pickaxe in your hand. When it is full you can't mine with it until you enchant at the Wormhole or run /extract. Type /spawn and enchant whenever it fills.

Walk through your first vault door. At level 20 a pair of bronze doors opens in the ore wall beside you. It stays open for 60 seconds. Nothing can hurt you inside, and you keep every reliquary you open. See Vaults of Plouton.

Mine lapis at level 25. A wooden pickaxe at pickaxe level 25 can mine lapis. Each block takes 1.8x as long as it would with a stone pickaxe.

At level 30:

  • Buy a stone pickaxe in /shop for $350. It starts at level 0 with no enchants, so keep the wooden one until the stone one has a few levels. Treat that as a starting point. See Your Pickaxe.
  • Buy a Low Security base with /cell for $100,000. Mining only pays Drachma and kills only pay Tribute while you own a base, so every block you mine before that pays none. The first post you build is free and a new base can't be attacked for 24 hours, unless you attack first. See Siege Bases and the Siege guide.
  • Gold armour is usable, and /shop sells it from $750 a piece. You drop armour when you die in the mines, so wear what you can afford to lose.

Hitting the level cap

The level cap on day 1 is 30. It rises every day at 11 AM Pacific, and /levelcap shows the schedule. At the cap you stop gaining XP. See Levels & The Level Cap.

Keep mining anyway. At your cap, mining pays 50% increased Ancient Energy. Other things to do while capped:

  • Build the free post on your base and spend your first Drachma.
  • Run an Expedition with /expedition. You keep your inventory if you die. See the PvE and Expeditions guide.
  • Take every vault door that opens.
  • Clear the three daily bonuses in /daily.
  • Enchant your armour and weapon. Only a pickaxe charges from mining, so run /extract on your pickaxe in a safe zone, click the energy onto the armour piece, then drop the piece in the Wormhole. See Gear & Armour.

Things that cost new players their stuff

  • The mines are full loot. If you die there you drop everything except your pickaxes and satchels. PvP is on in the mines, so other players can kill you there. See Death & Item Loss and PvP Basics.
  • Energy on your pickaxe is not safe. When you die, the energy stored on it is taken out and dropped, minus your rank's extract tax. Enchant or extract before you carry a full pickaxe around.
  • Run /extract in a safe zone. It is free there. Outside one it is taxed from 20% at the lowest rank to 5% at the highest.
  • A Money Note is an item until you bank it. Notes can only be claimed in a safe zone, so type /spawn and bank them. Don't sit in the mine on a stack of notes.
  • Do not hit other players near guards. If a guard kills you, the guards take your drops and nobody gets them back. See Guards.
  • Logging out does not save you. See the logging out rules on Death & Item Loss.

Free things to claim

  • First Week. /daily has seven login rewards for new players, one per day. Any 7 days inside 14 days of your first join count.
  • Referral. If a friend invited you, type /referral <their name> as soon as you are in. The window is short. See Referrals & Giveaway Codes.
  • Discord. Type /link in game, then run /claim in the Discord server for a free Starter Pack while the giveaway runs. In game, /claim only banks Money Notes. See Discord Linking.
  • Votes. /vote lists the sites. See Voting.
  • Season Pass. /pass has a free track for everyone. See Season Pass.
  • Kits. /kit opens your Rank Kits and G-Kits. See Kits.

Where to get help

/tips is a menu of short tips sorted by topic, and /help opens it. /quests shows your next steps. /discord prints the invite. Every command is on Useful Commands.

Where to go next