With Starminer only entering early access on May 27th, 2026, hitting 100 hours already sounds crazy. If it was, in fact, way too easy to do. Starminer is just one of those games where it’s easy to leave it running. You can also pause the game, which so many “single” player games these days seem not to allow anymore.
A good 15 or so of those hours were from me losing progress. Starminer just entered early access, and there were some nasty bugs. Lots of having to reload from prior saves. Lots of realizing I needed auto save set up for a far longer amount of time, so it would stop rewriting it’s two deep backup.
From my water bugging out, killing my entire station's crew. This happened a few times. During such struggling moments. It was just better to lose what ever time rolling back to a prior save was. It was even more painful when losing officers, thinking they were doing anything for me, only to realize later they were, in fact, broken.
Along with so many hours of me crashing, trying to fight Motherships that spawned far off on the grid. These things are massive. Causes lag sometimes. There were so many moments where I was within 1 km of being able to hit a Mothership, and where the game would crash me on. They usually took a while to fly back out to try to work out if I could clear one out.
After a while, I just learned to turn down my graphic settings a little bit, and that solved things for me. Including some other random lag, I would get. It also helped at one point that I built a ship just for slaying the Mothership spawns. When they would come.
We also can’t forget resources just going missing. There came a huge struggle at one for water for me. Which I’ll be getting into later on. Then I mined a bunch of ice chunks. Only to realize, like an hour later, I was out of water. My station never refined the ice, or it went missing some other way. Water was not the only resource I’d lose or overspend trying to build at much higher costs than what the game was displaying.
The good new is a lot of that is either getting fixed soon or already has been for the main branch of the game. At one point, I switched over to playing the beta version of early access instead of the main stable version of the game.
One of my most viewed pieces of content for Starminer so far. Was also almost my breaking point. Which I thankfully was recording. It’s moments like that in a video game where you learn a whole bunch of different things in it. Not because you wanted to, but because you needed a solution. Most did not go great.
There were also quite a few times I’d have to reload a prior save in my attempt to destroy a Pirate Battle Station. I refused to use some rather hard-to-come-by fuel to jump back to the Sol system. Where I could have properly mined and regeared up for the fight.
Being stubborn was the slow way. I am, however, glad I saved the rare fuel. Many others in the game have become trapped once they ran out. It was also such a learning experience about different ship modules and combat in the game. I would not have had it any other way.
I also look back at that Pirate Battle Station in quite a positive manner now. That moment of finally getting a win despite everything going so wrong. That is a hard and fleeting moment in today's games.
Sure, if I had known from the start that campaign mode was far from finished. It also ramped up quite heavily in difficulty. I would have gone and just played in sandbox mode. Then I’d never have had those moments.
A lot of games these days. Playing the tutorial is mostly about telling you how to use a keyboard while walking around in-game. That’s more or less it. In a game like Starminer, the tutorial is almost a requirement.
You can also tell when someone has not spent 10 minutes in any of the three tutorials, let alone the couple of hours it takes to finish them. The most basic things, like trading and sending resources around. While not that complex. Are such a backbone of gameplay. If you don’t know them, you are not getting anywhere fast.
Not to mention things like building anything using a build point. How to merge multiple structures into one. Not very complex things. Most people just have to understand that when it comes to space games, they tend to be a bit more complicated. Once you master how to do different things. It just becomes magical.
Unless you have active threats going on in the map you are playing on. Starminer is just one of those games you can leave open and running. Now, while you are away, you are not being that efficient. There are, however, usually things that can be done. Over 20 hours of my game time had been just afk, checking in on the game once in a blue moon.
While the space station I use for refining has like 5 refiners on it. If I’m just harvesting everything, or find an area with dense asteroids in it. It’s going to take a while to refine it all. While I could build more refiners, that means more people, more water, more power.
This is one of those things where you don’t want to build so massively. That if you are not heavily active and only mining in dense asteroid fields. You find yourself not being able to keep up with the demand of what you have built.
There have also been many moments where I went AFK to let research points gather. Maybe I was going to unlock a new module or a bigger bonus for refining or mining speed.
There are also officers. Back when I thought they were doing something. I’d let them train and leave the game going. A bigger bonus for damage or refining. That was a huge deal early on.
It also just became easy to do so. I’d be working on making dinner. I’d move a mining ship around once in a while. Other times I’d be editing content. Starminer just has the kind of mining in it that, at least how the early game is for now. You can just sit back and casually do so.
Then came the moment when I was almost out of water. The downside to maybe having 20 or so hours of leaving the game running to let it run. My mining fleets were mostly AFK. Once in a while, I’d move them to a new asteroid if that.
I had mined all the ice I could find in a few areas. I had bought out all the water I could from any station that had any. Then I found what was perhaps the last ice asteroid left in the Earth region. I mined it, and then I got nothing from it being refined due to a bug.
Shortly after that. Starminer came out with a patch where water usage was reduced by 50%. A few days later, there was a beta patch with a way to reduce water usable by 45% using research.
While it was clear that water needed some rebalancing. In fact, a lot of things I’m sure will get some kind of rebalancing at some point. The game is, after all, only just entered into early access.
It was also quite a laughable moment. I just had one mining ship out exploring and re-exploring areas. Everything else I left behind so it would not use any water. I was down to an hour left of water for everything, and then that was it. It would have been all over. Then that patch came out, and I loaded an older save back before I lost the only ice asteroid I could find remaining. From there, I was able to recover, and now I have so much water. It’s crazy.
Most of my game time has just been enjoying Starminers content loop of just mining. For the longest time, I had just a single mining ship. I’d sit there and just strip mine about every asteroid I could find in every area.
It did not take too long before I had my first 1 million credits. Then two million. I’d also spend a lot on new officers and later buying fuel. Not to mention, I’m sure millions on water alone. I also very stupidly sold loads of cobalt, not realizing just how needed and harder to find it would become. Mistake where made on my part. Thus, I’d have to go out and mine even more.
With Starminer being so easy-going and casual. You can sit back and watch a movie or chat with friends out of game. While mining. It’s the kind of relaxing mining experience I wish I could have in Eve Online. I find mining to be just a nice, relaxing activity in most games. While I’m usually deep underground in some cave mining in a game. For once, I get to enjoy doing so in a spaceship high above a planet and deep into an asteroid belt.
I’ll admit I’ve stayed up way too many nights playing Starminer till 3 AM or sometimes even 5 AM. As I’ve said earlier about the game, it’s just fun and addicting mining. Even with the storyline in the campaign stopping not that far in till more of it is worked on. I still found more than enough to keep me busy.
Perhaps the crazy part of it all is. I don’t even have the first four T4 Solar Factory built yet. I have two done and enough materials to build a third if it ends up costing me what it should to build it, and not a bunch of extra resources.
Now I’m sure, based on what I know now. Once all the bugs are fixed. Not selling too many harder-to-get resources like Cobalt. I should have already had the four T4 Solar Factories built. It’s also not something I’m in a huge rush over either. As the game is quite early into early access. They are still adding new points of interest to the Sol system. Going elsewhere might not even be a great idea for now.
The crazy part of it all. Even after everything from the crashing, my struggle with the Pirate Battle Station. Along with already hitting 100 hours of gameplay. I could see myself playing another 100 and not being bored.
I’m even half tempted once a major patch comes out fixing a lot of things. That I might just start over in sandbox mode. A fresh start and being a lot smarter with limited resources. I could get rather far a lot quicker. As things like station restocking and asteroid respawning are not a thing in Starminer. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. While you get an insane amount of playtime out of just the first couple of planets. At some point, you have to move forward and go elsewhere in the game.
I have somehow only managed to explore planet Earth and Jupiter. While I’ve been on a couple of other planets. It was only for the storyline and for quite a short amount of time.
Here is hoping the next 100 hours of game play is as interesting, rewarding, and fun as the next. Starminer was just the kind of mining game I was looking for. You can start it up even for a few moments, then save and come back later. In my case, leave it running while you work on a bunch of stuff. Slowly moving your mining ship around and refining ore.
Screenshots were taken, and content was written by @Enjar about Starminer.
Disclosure: Based on the game in early access.
