The WAX blockchain has been hurting for a long time needing a decent, long-term playing game. Most of the latest projects are either a rehash of a PFP collection chase, or a simplistic arcade game approach with minimal offerings, expensive buy-ins, and whale-centric benefits. So when I stumbled across Far From Home, I was more than pleased. Finally, a viable, strategy and long-term building game was available and worth digging into. 

Far From Home isn't immediately new. The project has been in development since early 2022. It launched it's first pre-full game asset offering this summer, with the basics of mining ships, equipment, fuel components and the overall environment. Everything is driven off of a WAX wallet ID, and players build up their fleet accordingly with the same and use of the in-game currency, SOREN. 

Starting out, you will need at least one mining ship. Early adopters went a bit bananas with something upwards of 50 ships, but there is plenty of room for a beginner to get in at an affordable level. The most basic mining ship is the NAFFAR class, a Tech 1 model for basic mining.

From there, you could elevate up to the SVAROG, which is a bit better but the same Tech 1 class, or make the leap to a MARDEN or BOREA in Tech 2 class. The higher level carries more cargo, lasts longer in mining and produces more results when you return and refine your harvest. And this last part is important.

Refining breaks down raw ore or ice harvest into usable minerals. From there, you can decide to sell it for SOREN if the market is buying, or you use the components to build fuel cells which you need to run your ships. Fuel comes in two modes: STL for short local travel, and FTL for warp drive travel. FTL is the more important one and harder to build. You need it to move around to the different systems with asteroids, and then from there you use STL to get to the asteroid itself. 

If you don't immediately have enough, no worries. Keep mining and you build up more over time. The fuel burn rate is slow enough you can get in a lot of mining cycles and learn the game before needing to fuel up. That said, since Tech 1 ships are now usable, there's a lot more miners and a more competitive chase for key minerals that produce the best components. For example, you need Helium to make FTL drives.

That only seems to come from Fusion ice, which is mined with a BOREA class ship. You can immediately see the in-game limitations that create production challenges. If you don't have the right assets, then you either need to buy the right ship or get the consumables on the secondary NFT market. 

The Far From Home game itself is still under development, and there are clearly additional phases that are going to come into play. One of the most anticipated is the ship-building feature. To make this work, a player will need a ship blueprint NFT. Those are only available in Ship packs or on the secondary market. Once the ship packs are fully sold, the secondary market will be the only source for blueprints. While this feature is not yet active, it will clearly be the long-term ROI for early game players who were either lucky enough to get a blueprint in a pack or who have whaled in heavily.

Environment-wise, for those who've played the MMPORG, Eve Online, Far From Home is going to feel very, very familiar. If the devs are going in that direction, there's a lot more yet to come with this WAX game in terms of expansion and future features, including the possibility of player vs. player ship attacks, unknown space, and massive trading markets. While that would take a lot of work and time to program, it's really nice to see the level of detail already present and applied in the early stages.

The game will also have a familiar reward tier system for participants each season. Those with a season pass will get more rewards and non-pass players will get a scattering as they develop experience and play through the season. This phase is yet to come, but it clearly offers the needed add-on components that were only provided in pre-game drops and now no longer available except as secondary purchases on the WAX NFT markets. 

So if you want to get into a long-term space mining game, now's your chance. Far From Home is definitely stabilizing into a very active community online with their Discord expecting more to come.

New ship packs (haulers - not active in game yet) are still available on NFTHIVE. Make sure to get the PROSPECTOR'S PACK, and not the Support Pack. The latter is for NFTs that you stake in the game to earn SOREN. Instead, you could opt to just stake SOREN and WAX on ALCOR exchange liquidity pools and earn SOREN that way too, being far more affordable for the budget-minded.

Other Articles on WAX's New Intersteller Game, Far From Home, and How to Play

See here for valuable quick start guides and how to get into space smart instead of being confused:

• Ship Navigation (how do I steer this darn thing?!?)
• Space Fuel Management (don't run out of gas on the far side of an asteroid!)
• Market Linking Active (time to sell what you mined in space!)

Where to find ships on the Wax Network:

• How to get started with Wax
• Wax markets: AtomicHub, NeftyBlocks, NFTHive (buying ships and resources)