Beginners guide to Once Human: Everything you need to know

Once Human can be a confusing game at first, since there’s plenty of different elements to take in. The UI alone can drive a new player nuts. It’s all fairly straightforward once you’ve been playing for a while (which I have), but here’s a full breakdown of everything you should know about as a beginner in Once Human.

Getting to know the map

No beginner’s guide to Once Human would be complete without helping you navigate the map, which can be a great way to focus your playtime where it matters. Understanding the map in Once Human is crucial to knowing where to get what.

Area Explorations in Once Human

Area explorations are a great way to get materials, new gear, and new weapons. Areas you can explore are marked by a white icon on the map, and incomplete areas with have a purple envelope on the bottom corner, while completed areas with have a green check mark. Hovering over the icon will reveal additional information such as area level and rewards.

To complete an Area exploration, head to the area you wish to explore. Once there, a list of requirements will pop up on the top left corner of your screen. These usually include finding crates, defeating normal and elite enemies, and activating the Rift Anchors.

Mystical Chests that can be found at these locations often provide blueprint fragments that can unlock new equipment. More on that in the “Blueprints” section below.

Special events in Once Human

Every so often, an event will spawn in the world. These range from fishing events to PVP events (even on PVE servers) to even blowing up a giant disco ball in the sky. They’re marked by red icons, and hovering over them will provide more information as well as potential rewards.

This is a great way to check and see whether an event will be worth your time.

Quests & Commissions

Quests are marked on your map by a diamond icon (it’s more like a tilted square, I guess?) as seen in the screenshot above. Side-quests are marked in blue and main quests are marked in yellow (or gold). You can also see all your current quests (Tasks in-game) by hitting L on the keyboard.

You can get new tasks by talking to NPC’s or visiting locations where the blue diamond appears on your screen. Commissions are another type of quest that you can get from a specific NPC in each Safe Zone in the game.

Look out for the clipboard icon above the NPC’s head. This is the NPC (they’re different in each town) where you can get commissions that have pretty significant rewards. They’re definitely worth doing.

Gear Guide in Once Human

You won’t have to worry about builds or specific mods until way later in Once Human. During the early phase, all you need to worry about is tiers. Gear and weapons come in tier I-V, with V being the strongest.

When you interact with your gear crafting bench, you’ll be able to set the tier at which you want to craft items. This isn’t important right away, but as you progress to new areas, you’ll want to upgrade your gear to the next tier so things don’t become too difficult.

With every new tier, you need to explore new areas to get better materials, so keep that in mind as well as you go through this fantastic game.

Finally, gear you find exploring can be used, but it cannot be repaired and will eventually break. So it’s always best to craft your own gear.

The most important UI elements

Now that you know a little more about the map, what elements of the UI (there are so many!) are the most important to grasp early on? There are three I’d put above everything else.

Memetics and specializations

Hitting “O” on your keyboard will open your Memetics screen, where you can click on Memetics to research new things to build or craft. Take a look through the Memetics to see what you can learn where and what might be most useful. You can also click on Specializations (the gold arrow) in the top left corner of your screen, where you’ll be able to unlock character-specific traits every so often.

It’s a good idea to save your Memetic Points until you’re sure which way you want to build your character — Memetics can be reset, but you don’t get your Energy Links refunded.

Hitting “O” and then clicking on your Cradle will open a screen where you can add certain buffs or perks at certain levels as they unlock. This is a screen not to be forgotten, as you’ll want to optimize your Cradle according to your build later.

Mods and gear

Hitting “K” on your keyboard will bring up the gear screen. Here’s where you can select and modify your gear. It’s where you’ll equip any new gear you craft or find in the wilds, and it’s where you’ll add Mods to your gear as well.

Left-clicking on a piece of equipment will open a screen with all the different equipment of that kind that you own. Right-clicking on any piece of equipment will open up the modify screen, where you can equip mods, add accessories, or change the look of your weapon.

Equipping mods is a great way to boost your power in-game, so as soon as you find some, you know where to go to make yourself just a little bit stronger.

Blueprints

As you begin to explore the world of Once Human, you’ll find that sometimes you get Blueprint Fragments for weapons and armor. How to actually get the gear is poorly explained though, so here I am to help you with that. You can bet I needed it when I got started!

From your gear screen, you can click on the “Blueprints” tab above. That’ll open up all the Blueprints you currently own or know about. It’s not clear when they actually appear here, but that’s where you’ll find them.

When you find a new blueprint and you have enough fragments to unlock it, it’ll have a yellow icon in the top left corner, as seen below.

This means you can unlock this gear to craft it at a gear crafting table. Simply click on the blueprint and hold F to unlock it. And that’s about it for blueprints. One last thing before we move onto building.

Season Goals

Season Goals are a great way to get super useful rewards in Once Human. To get there, you’ll hit Esc and then click on the event (currently Manibus in Season One), and then navigate to the Seasonal Goals tab.

Here you’ll see the requirements you need to fulfill, and once you reach the milestones on the left of the screen, you can claim those sweet rewards. Very handy to know early on, so you know what to focus on.

Building in Once Human

Building can be a lot of fun in Once Human, but what isn’t fun is breaking down your four-story house with 50 rooms to make space for production facilities. I love building in games, and spent some time building the dream house, only to later realize it’s not all that practical.

So that’s something to keep in mind as you play. Build the house you want, but leave plenty of space for production facilities later. Your first build doesn’t matter that much, as you’ll only need to worry about this after you get the territory upgrade.

There are two main things to keep in mind for later.

Base Defence

There’s something called a Territory Purification, which you’ll learn about later on. It all starts with your Stardust Resonant Filter. During this event, you can get Starchrom by purifying certain items you find. The catch is that monsters will attack, and they’ll destroy anything between them and the filter.

So placing it in a room in your house is just asking for mandatory renovations. Leave enough room to build a proper gun tower later, specifically for these events.

Resource production

You’ll also need some space for resource production later on. Acid and Fuel become very important in the late game, and you’ll basically never have enough of it. If you’re curious, I’ve done guides on how to get more fuel and how to get more acid in Once Human, but the point is that you’ll need free space in your territory to build these production facilities.

Since they both require water pumps, building on your roof just won’t cut it. Keep that in mind and you’re good. But let’s talk about another type of “building” in Once Human — player builds.

Player Builds in Once Human

There are various different builds you can apply to your character in Once Human. These include:

• Shrapnel
• Bull’s Eye
• Frost Vortex
• Fast Gunner
• Power Surge
• Bounce
• Unstable Bomber
• Burn
• Blunt DMG
• Fortress Warfare

Don’t worry if none of that makes sense right now, it’s all explained in-game, if you know where to look. Some of the weapons and gear have these traits mentioned above, and certain mods can act to strengthen these traits.

It’s good to be aware of them in the early game, and have more or less an idea of what you’ll be building in the late game. This is so that you don’t (like I did) accidentally throw away or dismantle anything you might need later.

To access the keywords screen, right-click on any item that has a special keyword. Hover over the keyword, which will be highlighted in yellow, and hit “X” to see all keywords.

Food Production in Once Human

Food production isn’t really a required practice in Once Human, but having the right meal can help you perform just that little bit better and solo that boss or clear that silo. You also have different meals for different builds.

It’s worth taking a look through your cooking menu and finding out which recipes will compliment your build. For example, as a Shrapnel player, I always have a few canned meats on me in case of emergency.

One more thing to keep in mind as you progress through the game.

And that’s pretty much all you need to know to get started in Once Human. Everything else can be figured out during the course of play, but if you keep the above aspects in mind, you’ll end up with a powerful character at the end of the day, and you’ll be able to farm for the right mods far more effectively.

You’ll need every little bit of help when you reach the Forsaken Giant. Good luck!