Beginner's Guide

If you are a beginner and have no idea what to do, this guide will help you get started by giving you a few pointers and some goals to aim for.

The first thing you should do is switch your mine to mining gold. The reason for this is that the starter market has a huge amount of excess items. A yellow starter item will normally take a long time to sell, and will only get you 1g, while mining gold will give you 1-4g each time, with no waiting for items to sell. Higher items are worth more then higher gold finds eg. 600g gold find is equivalent to a purple item which would sell for 1500g+, but I believe mining gold is much better at the beginning. Next, you should get a full set of flimsy mining Equipment. This will speed up your mining significantly, and more finds = more gold. After you have a full flimsy set of equipment try and get 10 melds. The reason for getting your equipment first is that melds don't really do much, and getting equipment will really speed up the process of getting gold. If you are not very active, or having trouble keeping your battery going, it might be worth getting some melds before you start getting your flimsy equipment. To do this, mine items for a bit, then switch back when you have enough melds. While you're building up your meld count, buy a yellow vehicle and send it out to explore other cities. It's a good idea to get the routes known before starting a profession. Once you reach 10 melds you have the difficult choice of picking which profession to take - but don't worry, you can change freely. A mistake that a lot of new players make is to go pirate. Consequently, they get stomped on by the better equipped players and are forced into debt by guards and bounty hunters. It is a good idea to become a Guard when you're starting off. The next thing you should do is save up for standard equipment. If you can get your BPH up you will be getting more finds. A full standard set of equipment is pretty expensive for a new player, but it is worth it. After you have done all this it is time to save up. There are 2 things that you should save up to buy. The first is a good vehicle, probably a sidecar motorcycle, which is around 450-600g. You can use this to hunt and earn some extra gold, run it empty and you wont lose anything, or use a few yellow weapons; though you will probably lose the weapons, you could potentially earn more gold. The second thing to save up for is another starter mine, This will take a long time. Starter mines sell for around 3800g on Aso and about 1k less on Bromo. If you are not very patient, you can buy credits. If you are patient, save, keep using your sidecar, and eventually you will get there. When you get your second starter mine, you will effectively double your income, so you will be able to afford more stuff. Remember, that you will need to buy a whole new set of equipment for the new mine. You can probably try and get 20 melds and buy a raft to go see Daigard. this is not necessary, but if you want to, go ahead :) Their isn't much to see on Daigard, except for a big sign that says, "Owned By Manifest, The Pirate King." Now with your doubled income you might want to buy some vans to transport goods, you can earn a bit of gold doing this. Remember to bubble if you want your cargo to get through, and do not risk anything too valuable in your vans. You can find good trading oppurtunities with a Spreadsheet, or by looking at an item's Foreign Spread on its page, which shows the highest bid and the lowest listing in each city for the item as Highest Bid - Lowest Listing (e.g. 2 listings for 10g and 5g, 2 bids for 1g and 2g, Foreign Spread is shown as 2g - 5g) Then you have to save your gold again. This time, you can either buy another starter mine, or save 3000g, sell 1 starter mine and buy a music mine. A music mine is much better than a starter, you can sell the items for a lot more. Note: If you get a music mine, mine items not gold. Each mine you get will increase your income even more, allowing you to buy more and more stuff. When you have your third starter or a music mine, you can increase your vehicle fleet, get more melds, buy some ships and risk it on the high seas or save for another mine. Try and gradually upgrade your equipment to hardies, and get better mines. Looking for good trading opportunities.
 * Switch To Mining Gold
 * Get All Flimsy Equipment
 * Get 10 Melds
 * Explore Other Cities
 * Pick a Profession
 * Get All Standard Equipment
 * Hunt For A Starter Mine (mwuahaha, extreme fail puns)
 * Get More Rich With Two Starter Mines And Maybe Try Getting 20 Melds And Discover Daigard (it seems this guide is for Aso mostly)
 * Maybe Become A Trader And Transport With Van Bubbles
 * Buy A Third Mine
 * Upgrade, Upgrade, Upgrade (and try being a Manifest impersonator)
 * There's No Reason To Be Bored On Minethings 

Trying to get more melds so you can reach the top.

Frequently inspecting other people's items, bids, and listings so you can find out how to do #1 and #2.

Suggest things you would like in the game on the forum.

Selling the items you mine.

Upgrading your mining bots' equipment.

Winning a bidding war.

Winning a listing war.

Sending and receiving PMs.

Sending ships/vehicles.

Chatting on the forums or the IRC chat

Working in a factory.

Experimenting and having fun with new patches and future releases :)
 * By now you should be doing very well, have fun and enjoy playing MT :)

-Scatz and fatcom4 (I added some stuff, and took a bit from the original MT wiki, and edited a bit of Scatz's outdated info :D)