Getting Started

New to Nerospace? Follow these steps in order. Each step tells you what to get and what to build next. Click any link for the full page.

Tip: craft a Star Guide Book (Book + Raw Nerosium, or Book + a Nerosium Ore block) as soon as you can. It is this guide inside the game and always shows your next step.

Step 1 — Find Nerosium#

• Where: in the Overworld, underground, between y −24 and y 56. It is about as common as iron.
• Tool: an iron pickaxe or better.
• What you get: Raw Nerosium.
  • If you get the ore block instead, that's OK: smelt the ore block into an ingot, grind it into 2 dust, or use it for the Star Guide Book. (Normally this only happens with Silk Touch — if it happens without, please tell us on Discord.)
  • JEI doesn't show mining drops. Raw Nerosium only comes from breaking the ore, so you won't find a crafting recipe for it.
• Next: smelt Raw Nerosium in a furnace to get Nerosium Ingots.

Step 2 — Find Nerosteel#

You need Nerosteel for almost every machine, including every generator. Get it early.

• Where: in the Overworld, deep down, between y −56 and y 16. It is rarer than Nerosium.
• Tool: an iron pickaxe or better.
• What you get: Raw Nerosteel. Smelt it into Nerosteel Ingots.
• Collect a lot — roughly 60 ingots gets you to the first planet.

Step 3 — Make power#

Machines do not make their own power. You need a generator first.

• Combustion Generator: 7 Nerosteel Ingots + Furnace + Redstone. Burns coal.
• Passive Generator: 7 Nerosteel Ingots + Block of Nerosium + Redstone. Burns one Raw Nerosium for 20 minutes.

Place the generator touching your machine. It sends power by itself — no cable needed. Read Powering Machines if a machine shows 0% power.

Step 4 — Build a Nerosium Grinder#

• Recipe: 5 Nerosium Ingots + Furnace + 3 Cobblestone.
• Put Raw Nerosium in → get 2 Nerosium Dust. Smelt each dust into an ingot. That is double the ingots compared to smelting raw.
• Put a generator next to it, or it will stay at 0% power.

See Nerosium Grinder.

Step 5 — Make rocket fuel#

Every fuel recipe needs Blaze Powder, so go to the Nether and get some blaze rods first.

• Easy way: craft Rocket Fuel Canisters — Blaze Powder + Coal + Iron Ingot gives 2 canisters. Each canister holds 1,000 mB of fuel.
• Machine way: a Fuel Refinery turns 1 coal + 1 blaze powder into 2,000 mB of fuel. Store it in a Fuel Tank.

Step 6 — Build a rocket and a launch pad#

• Launch Pad: 8 Nerosteel Ingots + Block of Nerosium.
• Tier 1 Rocket: 5 Nerosteel Ingots + Block of Nerosteel + Rocket Fuel Canister.
• A Tier 1 rocket only needs one launch pad block. Bigger rockets need bigger pads: see the Launch Pad Build Guide.
• Fill the rocket with fuel: right-click it with canisters.
• A trip to another world costs 2,500 mB of fuel. Bring at least 2 extra canisters to fly home.

Step 7 — Get ready to breathe#

Every place you can fly to has no air. Without a suit you run out of air in about 5 seconds.

• Oxygen Suit (all four pieces): made from Nerosteel Ingots. A full suit gives you about 2½ minutes of air.
• You can breathe near a launch pad or landing pod (within 6 blocks), and inside the air bubble of an Oxygen Generator.
• Standing near an Oxygen Generator or a gas tank with oxygen refills your suit.

Step 8 — Fly to space#

Each new rocket is made from the one before it and still reaches everything the one before it did. The Orbital Station already has a 3×3 pad, so you can launch a Tier 2 rocket from there.

Step 9 — Better gear#

• Solar Panels (need Xertz Quartz) — free power from the sun.
• Thermal Suit (Cindrite) for Cindara, Cryo Suit (Glacite) for Glacira. Without them you lose air 4× faster.
• Quarry Controller — mines a whole area for you. See the Quarry Setup Guide.
• Universal Pipes — move power, fuel, oxygen and items between machines.

Step 10 — End game#

• Station Charter — build your own space stations.
• Cargo Pad and Cargo Rocket — send items between bases automatically.
• Terraformer — turn a dead planet into green land with air, water and animals. You need Glacite for water, so get to Glacira first.

Stuck?#

• Machine at 0% power → Powering Machines.
• Got ore blocks instead of raw items → your pickaxe has Silk Touch. Smelt the block, or grind it.
• Can't find Nerosteel → dig lower, below y 16. It is much more common on Greenxertz.
• Rocket won't launch → not enough fuel, or the pad is too small for that rocket tier.
• Still stuck? Ask on Discord.