Sol Frontiers is a sci-fi idle game with strategy and auto-turn-based combat elements. In deep space, players must recruit new crew members, use drones and probes to collect resources, and evolve their mothership to continually explore the galaxy.
If players want to conquer all their enemies, they will need to manage resources wisely, be patient, and add a dash of luck.
But if they want some friendly advice, they can check out our Sol Frontiers – Idle Strategy: Game Guide With Tips and use tactics that will maximize their efficiency in this intergalactic journey.
Gathering Resources
Image by Early Morning Studio
Many idle games depend on provided resources to progress. In Sol Frontiers, as soon as you capture an asteroid or a derelict vessel, essential resources like crystals and metal accumulate every minute.
However, you need to actually capture them. As we attack enemy sanctuaries and expand the scope of our exploration, we also open up new regions in space to explore. When finding a mining point, we must activate it before it starts gathering resources.
Image by Early Morning Studio
Sol Frontiers presents four resources:
- Crystals: Basic resource used to evolve asteroids, increase crew size and max party size, and add new items in the store.
- Metal: Basic resource used to increase max party size, add new items in the store, and upgrade Research to add more skills.
- Credits: Used to buy new equipment in the Vault, research new skills, or speed up a crew member’s ship repair time.
- Dark Matter: The premium currency of Sol Frontiers. Used to buy gacha boxes.
We can invest resources to upgrade all resource points, increasing acquisition per minute. Moreover, some nodes allow the addition of new drones, further accelerating the quantity per minute of the respective resource.
Image by Early Morning Studio
Like any good idle game, the suggestion is always to upgrade and maximize material acquisition to the fullest.
A deep pocket is always favorable in the long run. Tapping the resources button in the bottom left corner gives you an overview of all your gathering nodes.
Image by Early Morning Studio
Engaging Enemies
As mentioned, to expand our exploration, we must engage in battles with our crew. It’s as simple as tapping on the enemy, choosing the desired crew, and waiting until they reach it.
However, if you don’t pay attention to the attributes of both your crew and the enemy, all that awaits you is defeat.
Image by Early Morning Studio
Each crew member has three attributes: HP, power, and shield.
- HP: The amount of damage the crew member can withstand before temporarily dying.
- Power: The damage the crew member inflicts on enemies when it’s their turn to attack.
- Shield: The amount of damage a member can soak before their HP is targeted.
But don’t take these attributes too literally. Theoretically, if a character has more shield than power, they should never take damage, but that’s not what happens.
A character’s attribute indicates the maximum value they can roll. So, for example, if a crew member has a shield of 5, they will reduce enemy damage by a value between 0 and 5.
Image by Early Morning Studio
Therefore, many battles that seem easy to win can end in defeat because luck doesn’t favor you, and the opposite can also happen. But if you are defeated, fret not. Your crew members will return to the base automatically, and your ships will go into repairs.
When a starfighter returns to the mothership, it starts its repairs automatically. The stronger it is, the longer you have to wait. If you don’t want to linger, you can use credits, watch an ad, spend Dark Matter, or use a repair kit to repair everyone instantly.
Image by Early Morning Studio
Crew Member Specialty
In addition to the base attributes, crew members have unique skills that provide a bonus in battle. They all start with one and acquire new ones every 5 levels, up to level 15. Among the bonuses are benefits like:
- Titan: +1 HP to the crew member.
- Adamantium: +1 Shield to the crew member.
- Fury: Repair Stairfighter for 1 HP on critical hits.
- Starseeker: +2 Power when fighting alone.
- Vortex: +1 Power for every 2 killed friendly Starfighters.
Image by Early Morning Studio
However, since few enemies come alone, crew members whose skills benefit them for fighting alone are quite disposable. We recommend picking those who gain passive bonuses regardless of the situation or when a friendly Starfighter dies.
Battling it Out
Battles in Sol Frontiers happen per turn. As soon as a crew reaches an enemy, all the crew members involved attack the enemy, causing their respective damage. Then, all enemies attack the crew members. Rinse and repeat.
Image by Early Morning Studio
It’s super straightforward, but there are some ways to create strategies that benefit you. After clicking on the enemy, you must choose a set number of party members to fly to the enemy field. Upon entering battle, party portraits are lined up next to enemy portraits.
By default, we recognized that allies always attack the enemy portraits directly in front of them. In other words, in a 3×3 battle, each member faces their respective enemy until it dies and then switches targets. In this target switch, we can take advantage of the positioning of party members.
Image by Early Morning Studio
The preview of which enemies we will face shows their order and the values of their attributes. The order in which we select our crew members for the party defines which ones they will engage.
So if the first enemy has a low attack but high defense, placing a crew member with a high attack is suggested, and vice versa if the enemy has a high attack.
If you are defeated, enemies continue to be damaged for a while from the previous battle. So, repair your crew and return them to the fray. However, there are some exceptions, like timed enemies.
Timed Enemies
Unlocking new systems and enemies ramps up the difficulty of Sol Frontiers considerably. In Helios Divide, for example, we encounter enemies paired with a timer.
When you tap on them, a description shows that if all enemies connected with an hourglass are not defeated, they will respawn within a set of minutes.
Image by Early Morning Studio
These types of enemies significantly increase the difficulty of the game. After facing an enemy, the crew often returns battered and goes into repairs. The repair time is high, requiring an investment of a repair kit or credits to speed up the process.
Additionally, there is the travel time between starfighters and enemies, requiring haste from the player.
And, if by chance, we fail to defeat one of the paired-up enemies, they can respawn, and you need to face them all over again. The idea is to ensure repair resources are available or that the crew is strong enough to withstand two sequential battles.
Enemy Ship Bosses
Image by Early Morning Studio
Each new region of Sol Frontiers is blocked by what can be called a boss. The icon on the map is of an enemy ship and presents an extremely strong individual with a robust HP value.
These should be faced only when you finish a region because it signals that you are prepared for the next one.
The best way to face them is to put your best crew member first since they will take all the initial damage and hope for victory. Once you defeat a boss, a new intergalactic system opens up for you.
Sol Frontiers – The Vault
As you progress in Sol Frontiers, you will unlock The Vault, which is the store in Sol Frontiers. There are four types of equipment to equip your starfighters: weapons, armor, shields, and boosters. Despite the different names, they all increase the crew’s base attributes.
Image by Early Morning Studio
You need credits to buy items in the Vault, and the most practical way to acquire credits is to complete missions, watch ads whenever the game offers one, or buy them for real money.
Image by Early Morning Studio
As credits are a bit more scarce than crystals and metals, we recommend investing them only in buying new items and not in ship repairs, for example, which can be done for free.
Research new Skills
Sol Frontiers will unlock Research as you advance in missions. Research allows you to unlock new upgrades that benefit your entire battalion, be it the starfighters, the probes, or even the total resources collected in idle times.
You need to spend credits to research new skills. Once you select one, it will start being researched. The time until completion is quite lengthy and cannot be reduced.
Image by Early Morning Studio
It’s possible to evolve Research to unlock new skills. There are six tiers in total, which implies a significant resource investment. We suggest getting skills that match your active playtime.
Remember that Sol Frontiers is an idle game, so we always prioritize the Increased Idle Time buff, which increases the amount of resources collected when idle. After all, no matter how active you are, we all need to sleep and turn off the game. Managing resources passively is the ideal way to increase your galactic empire.
Then, although increasing a starfighter’s movement speed or health is important, it is not as crucial as increasing the quantity of resources collected by probes. Remember, he who gathers the most funds in idle games is king.
Do Your Missions
Image by Early Morning Studio
Sol Frontiers missions are the best way to collect quick resources while you have a goal on how to progress. Besides, they help unlock new features of the game.
As soon as you start the game and complete the tutorial, you will be presented with the main mission of discovering what happened to The Crown of Dahlia.
But if you notice, the location is still far beyond your reach. Tap on the ones below it to find more viable local missions.
Then, by tapping on location, it will take you to the location where the objective must be completed. Often, these are missions to defeat an enemy or capture some reliquary.
Image by Early Morning Studio
Use the missions as a guide to what you should do next. Sol Frontiers is relatively new and doesn’t have much content. But at the latest, the missions will be your beacon of which path is best taken.
Sometimes, you’ll find another interstellar base among the stars in Sol Frontiers. Those will show you some lore or story tidbits, allowing you to jump into another nearby system. The enemies will be the same as the previous region, but new side missions will unlock.
Premium Boxes
Image by Early Morning Studio
Sol Frontiers respects the sacred organization of mobile games and offers its players a gacha system in the form of boxes. There are three types: common, rare, and mythic.
- Common boxes can be opened by watching an ad or investing a small amount of Dark Matter. Their rewards are modest but worth it if obtained for free.
- Rare boxes cost 75 dark spheres and already provide better rewards, such as uncommon or rare equipment or a large number of credits.
- Mythics are the best of all but the most expensive. Priced at 300 Dark Matter, it can provide up to 2000 credits in a single draw or epic equipment. Remember that, despite showcasing various items, you only get one of them with each purchase.
Redeem Codes
Image by Early Morning Studio
Sol Frontiers will also have codes for players to redeem some juicy rewards. However, this is not the case yet.
Since the game has recently launched, the developer Early Morning Studio still needs to provide codes. However, we know this will change soon; otherwise, they wouldn’t have included this option.
Image by Early Morning Studio
Conclusion
Sol Frontiers is a spatial idle game that may rely on idle a bit too much. Being new, it may still be fine-tuning and adjusting the balance of resource acquisition and other elements because, at the moment, players spend much more time waiting than playing, even in the beginning.
However, it seems to have immense potential, given the vastness of its setting – space.
We can only wait to see what the developer Early Morning Studio has up its sleeve. Since they developed Vampire’s Fall: Origins RPG and it’s a success, we can bet our chips on Sol Frontiers becoming a great idle mobile game in the future.
And you, are you playing Sol Frontiers? Do you have any tips for us? Comment below!
