Hive Moon is a real-time strategy browser game that can be played with a Hive account. It has everything from planet management to PvP. There is even a chance to get a moon.
If Hive Moon looks familiar that is because if you were around on the blockchain before there was Hive. I know those were some dark days back then. There is a chance you played it like I have. It went under the name Nova.
This game has since been rebooted by Hive’s very own Pizza Guild. You can even collect an in-game resource called Pizzabits.
To be able to play this game is super simple. It’s free to play and requires either having a Hive account or email. Frankly, if you don’t already have a Hive account you are a dinosaur that would never survive the age of space exploration let alone managing multiple planets. So just go get a Hive account (referral link) today.
The first step even if you already have a Hive account is signing up for the game. If you are on the main landing page, you can just click on the register button at the bottom of that page.
If you do have a Hive account, the next step is super easy. Just go to the bottom of the registration page where it says register with Hive and type in your Hive name. Check that you agree with the rules after reading them. Then click on the register with Hive button so you can sign the transaction with Keychain. You are now all done!
If you still don’t have a Hive account, you are filling this form with stone and chisel as if it’s 3000 BCE. Many hours after you have finished inputting a username, password, and other information. You agree to the rules after reading them and clicking on the register button.
Once you have done that simply return to the landing page and login via the method you created a game account with.
Now that you are logged in it’s now time to get started building your empire. If you are new to this game or this type of game in general, it can be a bit overwhelming looking at all the tabs there are on the left side of the screen.
Many of those tabs hold quite critical information for managing and better understanding of the game. For now, we are just going to focus on the Buildings tab. After all, you can’t conquer the galaxy without setting up your first planet.
This game has four standard resources and one special one. The first four are going to be your focus for the first few days.
Since all buildings require energy to produce it’s best to spend some of your starting resources that were given to you by first building a Solar Power Plant. This will give you 22 energy that you can use to cover the hourly energy cost of other buildings.
Like all city builder types of games, the lower tier of buildings takes a short amount of time and costs just a couple of resources at first. In the first couple of hours of starting this game, you can be quite active.
The game is nice enough to display a timer in the browser tab showing any remaining building time. This is one way to semi-keep an eye on if you are building something in the game or need to check in on things.
While waiting on the Solar Power Planet to finish building the first level of it. Why don’t you go ahead and click on the actual name of the building itself? Doing so opens a separate window that shows how much energy is produced per level and the difference between each level.
This same type of information is also displayed for the other types of resources metal, silicon, and uranium. If ever in doubt if you want to get an upgrade just check to see what the next level provides.
Since all buildings consume energy to be active. Energy is a resource that you just need to make sure you have a high enough level of a building to cover the requirements of everything else.
Now that Solar Power Planet level 1 should be done. It’s time to turn your attention to Ore Extractor and Silicon Refinery. These two produce metal and silicon. These two kinds of resources are critical to get some levels in early on.
Since metal is more needed to get you started, I tend to focus on that one first. I tend to get my Ore Extractor to level 2. By then you need more energy, so I raise Solar Power Planet to level 2.
After that, I got a level into Silicon Refinery followed by another two levels into the Ore Extractor. You might notice following this path will go into negative energy. Yes, your energy can go into the red that however comes at a cost of produce.
For those who love to do math and work out the min/max of things. There is good news. You can adjust production levels to reduce the energy required for a building. Until you want to turn it back to full once you have enough energy again. There are many advantages to doing so as upgrades tend to increase the yield output in many situations where it is running at 90% or even lower is far better than just going for your next Solar Power Planet first.
This can be found by clicking on the Resources tab on the left-hand side of the screen. Then on the right-hand side, you will see 100% drop-down menus next to each of the resources. You can simply adjust till you are back being at least break even on Energy.
This is quite a useful tip later in the game when you find yourself in situations of not having enough power but needing a certain resource being gathered over others. It’s good to get into such a habit now of thinking about such things.
Another tip is you can queue up multiple buildings to be leveled up. If at the time of starting the queue, you had the resources to build it. Keep in mind the game checks before it starts building the next item in your queue. If you lack the resources, then it gets removed. So, doing some basic math on your end to make sure you will have enough resources by then is a good idea.
After getting Solar Power Planet to level 5 or 6 most start thinking to get at least one level into Uranium Centrifuge to make Uranium. Since Uranium is not needed to level up the basic buildings for resource production. It’s a building most choose to have lagging in levels from the rest in the first couple of days. However, it should not be forgotten entirety.
Early game Uranium is going to be needed to level up the Robot Factory, Shipyard, and Research lab. The Lab is used to research different technology to advance.
You might also notice not all these things are unlocked and showing in the buildings tab either. You need to meet certain requirements. More on that down blow.
As far as what to build next hopefully by now, you start to see a bit of a pattern. There comes a point where most players want to have all their resource buildings around the same level unless you are a more advanced player and know exactly what you need.
As far as upgrading storage goes. If you can be an extremely active player staying on top of everything you can get away with not upgrading these for a couple of days. If you are more of a casual player, you should work out the math of how long you expect to be gone and multiply that by hourly production. Then upgrade as needed.
Keep in mind other players can raid you for resources. So, if you are someone constantly having many resources that tends to not be very active. That tends to make you a bit of a target. There are however quite a few rules regarding PvP in this game which you should have already read about as you were signing up.
At some point, you will start wanting to raid inactive players for resources. Along with starting a colony on another planet. Those things however go beyond the scope of this post.
There comes a point in this game where you need to start planning your next big thing to work towards. Thankfully there is an in-game tab that shows you all the requirements for unlocking other buildings, ships, and other things.
This is a tab I highly recommend new players invest some time looking over. If for instance, you needed to know the requirements to unlock the Shipyard you can see you need a level 2 Robots Factory to do so.
You can also click on the different item names in this tab to get a general idea of what a certain building or ship is about. Like what in the alien technology is a Phalanx Sensor? The game is kind enough to display, and you will quickly learn some things you won’t be using for quite some time.
While this tab can be quite overwhelming. It is also quite a fun one to explore. Even more on things like ships where you see this game has a Death Fortress! That however is not something you will be getting close to having for quite some time.
Instead, you want to focus more on the basics such as small cargo ships, light fighters, and some basic planetary defense. At some point, you will even want to start building towards getting your first Colony ship to claim another planet.
If this ends up being a game you want to play beyond just checking it out. I strongly recommend finding and joining an alliance. There are a few important reasons for doing so. Most are new player friendly and there is a sense of protection in larger numbers.
The best way to find an alliance is simply joining the game Discord which there is a link to it in the game. You can also click on the statistics tab to see what alliances the top 100 players are in.
Some alliances have their own Discord with lots of detailed information in them. There also tend to be some new and veteran players who are more than happy to help answer questions.
Being in an alliance is also a sign that you are an active player in the game. An alliance can only have so many players in them. Inactive players tend to get purged. When lots of players are looking to farm players, they want easy targets. Being in an alliance makes you look less like an easy target. Some alliances might even have rules about which if any alliance you are even allowed to attack.
It makes sense a game being run by the Pizza Guild would have a resource you could collect called Pizzabits. Some say the entire Hive Moon universe is just a giant pizza.
As far as what you can spend the tokens on. They are used to recruit officers and get short-term buffs. The officers and buffs can be found under the Officers tab.
As far as earning the resources. Some things you just go play and figure out for yourself. This is not a tradeable resource so keep that in mind.
It’s quite a fun game if you can make the time for it. The middle-to-end game can start to become quite intense when massive fleets and weeks to months spent building up an armada are on the line.
There are also these things called a Moon. You might notice the game is named after them. Even Discord has a channel to announce when such an occasion occurs when a moon is formed. This game has some mysteries to unpack and space adventures to be had. Among many other tabs and features, this post did not go over.
Disclosure: I earn zero monetary rewards from any referrals used in this post.
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Hive Moon.
