Project Entropy Beginner Guide: 9 Things to Do Before You Pick a Faction

Project Entropy throws a lot at you in the first ten minutes: a faction choice, a hero pool, a base to build, and a tutorial that moves fast enough that it's easy to tap through the parts that actually matter. None of that is unusual for a 4X strategy/RPG hybrid, but a few of Project Entropy's specific mechanics — how faction synergy works, how a planet conquest resets your base, how steep the pay-to-win curve gets at the top — are worth knowing about before you spend your first week's resources, not after.

This guide is the practical companion to our full Project Entropy review, written for someone who has installed the game, maybe finished the tutorial, and hasn't picked a faction or joined an alliance yet. By the end, you'll know what to check before you commit to a faction, how to spend your first pulls, and which structural quirks to expect so they don't feel like bugs.

How we built this list

We pulled the recurring, independently repeated advice from community guide sites — Mobi.gg's tier list coverage, BlueStacks's beginner guide, and gimaxo.com's PC guide — cross-referenced against the pattern of complaints in Steam and App Store user reviews that our review already aggregated. Where a tip is genuinely a community consensus, we say so. Where we haven't confirmed something on our own account, we flag it plainly instead of presenting it as a tested result. See our how we test page for how that standard applies across the site.

1. Spend your first login learning all three factions before you tap anything

The three factions unlock as soon as you clear the tutorial, and picking one before you understand what it locks you into is the easiest way to waste your first resource pool.

• Open each faction's description screen and read what it says about starting heroes, sub-faction identity and available hero pool — most players skip this entirely.
• Faction choice shapes which heroes you can recruit into your first synergy trio (see #3), so it's a strategic decision, not a cosmetic one.
• Nothing about the tutorial punishes you for taking five extra minutes here. The resources you'd spend "getting ahead" during those five minutes are trivial next to the ones you'll spend correcting a bad early pick.

Beginner mistake: tapping through the faction-select screen the way you tap through terms-of-service text, then wondering three days later why your hero pool feels thin.

2. Default to Human Resistance unless you have a specific reason not to

If nothing about your goals points you elsewhere, pick Human Resistance — it's the faction most consistently named across independent community guides as the strongest starting point for new accounts.

• Human Resistance is commonly credited with the highest density of obtainable A-Rank heroes in the standard summon pool, meaning a new account can build a competent early roster without needing lucky gacha pulls.
• This isn't a "best faction forever" claim — it's specifically a beginner-friendly one, repeated by gimaxo.com and echoed in BlueStacks's hero tier list coverage.
• If you already know you want to build around a specific hero from another faction, that's a legitimate reason to deviate. "I liked the splash art" is not.

Beginner mistake: picking a faction based on which promotional trailer you saw first, rather than which one gives you the easiest path to a workable roster in week one.

3. Learn the same-faction hero synergy bonus before you level anyone

Combining three heroes from the same sub-faction is commonly reported to activate a passive attack-and-HP multiplier across every troop in that army, which changes who's actually worth investing in.

• Most new players default to deploying whichever three heroes have the highest star rating, regardless of faction alignment — that's the exact habit veteran players report growing out of.
• Check each hero's sub-faction tag before you commit leveling materials. Three matched heroes with a synergy bonus can out-fight three unmatched heroes with higher individual stats.
• You don't need to solve this perfectly on day one — just avoid locking in a mixed trio before you've checked whether a same-faction swap is available.

Beginner mistake: leveling three high-star heroes from three different sub-factions because each one individually looked strongest, then leaving the synergy bonus on the table for weeks.

4. Chase Star Ascension level, not hero rarity, on every pull

A fully Star-Ascended A-Rank hero is widely reported to outperform a base, 1-Star S-Rank hero, so materials and duplicate shards are worth more to a free or low-spend account early on than gacha pulls chasing rarity.

• Star Ascension raises a hero's power tier using duplicate shards and materials, independent of that hero's base rarity (A-Rank vs S-Rank).
• This exact comparison — a maxed A-Rank beating a fresh S-Rank — is repeated consistently enough across Mobi.gg, BlueStacks and gimaxo that it's treated as settled community knowledge, even though none of these are the developer's own official statement.
• Practical read: spend ascension materials on the A-Rank heroes you can reliably duplicate, instead of saving everything for a single lucky S-Rank pull.

We haven't verified this math on our own account yet. Treat it as a widely repeated community tip, not our tested result — TODO: verify on our own account once we've leveled a roster far enough to compare an ascended A-Rank against a base S-Rank hero directly, for our best heroes tier list.

5. Join an active alliance before your first session ends

Project Entropy is commonly reported to be most fun once you're coordinating inside an active alliance, and waiting until you "feel ready" just delays the part of the game most players end up rating highest.

• An active alliance means resource sharing, coordinated attacks and access to alliance-level tech and buffs from day one, not week three.
• Project Entropy's real-time cross-server chat translation is one of its more distinctive features — it's specifically built to make a multilingual alliance function smoothly, and it's wasted if you're playing solo.
• Look for an alliance description that mentions active daily check-ins or a Discord link; those are the two loosest, most reliable signals of an alliance that's actually coordinating rather than just existing.

Beginner mistake: playing solo for the first week to "get good" before joining an alliance, which mostly just means missing the early resource sharing and coordinated defense an alliance provides while you're most vulnerable.

6. Decide mobile or PC/Steam deliberately — it's not quite the same game

Our Project Entropy review found a real quality gap between platforms — 4.1 to 4.4 out of 5 on the mobile app stores versus only 52% positive on Steam — so pick your platform based on what that gap actually means for you, not on whichever app happens to be more convenient to open.

• Mobile is where the game is best-reviewed and best-supported day to day, with reviewers pointing to a smoother, more finished experience.
• The Steam client's lower score is driven mostly by UI and feature-parity complaints — a UI built for touchscreens showing up on a monitor — rather than a fundamentally different core game.
• If you're specifically weighing a PC build around this game, the listed Steam minimum spec is low enough that almost any gaming PC from the last decade clears it; see our PC requirements breakdown for the exact numbers, and our step-by-step gaming PC build guide if you don't have a PC yet and want one that clears far higher bars than this game asks for.

Beginner mistake: assuming the Steam version is a straightforward upgrade over mobile because of the bigger screen, then being surprised by a rougher, less-finished interface.

7. Expect the planet-conquest reset, and don't mistake it for a bug

Conquering a new planet is commonly reported to force a meaningful reset or rebuild of your base progress on that planet rather than a clean continuation, so go in expecting a known structural quirk, not a glitch worth filing a support ticket over.

• This pattern shows up repeatedly and independently in Steam user reviews, some of whom read it as "fresh start, new strategy" and others as "my progress got wiped" — it's the same mechanic, read two different ways.
• Practical move: don't dump every spare resource into a base right before you're about to conquer a new planet. Bank a reserve of ascension materials and building resources you can redeploy after the reset instead.
• We haven't played through a full conquest cycle ourselves yet to confirm the exact scope of what resets versus what carries over — that's an open item we're tracking for a future update to this guide.

Beginner mistake: assuming your base got wiped by a glitch and contacting support, instead of expecting this by design and planning your resource spend around it.

8. Discount whatever ad brought you here, and judge the actual core loop instead

Deceptive advertising is one of the most consistently cited reasons players report uninstalling Project Entropy, so if you clicked in expecting the exact scene from an ad, reset your expectations to the real feature set before deciding you were misled.

• The actual core loop is hero recruitment, mech customization, fleet and base building, planet colonization, and alliance-driven PvP/PvE — not whatever cinematic sequence played in a pre-roll ad.
• This complaint pattern is real and well-documented across Steam discussions, and we're not going to pretend it isn't just because we link to an affiliate offer for this game below.
• If you judge the game against its own official feature list rather than third-party ad creative, the mismatch mostly disappears — the frustration is almost entirely about marketing, not the shipped product.

Beginner mistake: judging the whole game off one YouTube pre-roll ad instead of the official app store listing or feature page, then feeling baited when the actual game looks different.

9. Set your pay-to-win spending ceiling before you hit the PvP wall

Early and mid-game content is broadly playable free, but competitive alliance PvP is where paying "VIP" players with maxed heroes and mechs consistently outpace free accounts, so decide your budget — even if it's $0 — before that wall shows up, not in the moment you're losing.

• There are no hard progression walls in standard PvE content that require spending; that part of the game is commonly described by free players as fair.
• The gap shows up specifically at the competitive top end, where dedicated spenders have a real, well-documented advantage that a small reactive purchase won't meaningfully close.
• Deciding your ceiling in advance — "$0," "$20 one time," or "I'm here for PvE, not the leaderboard" — removes the exact decision point where players report making a series of regretted $5 to $10 purchases.

See our full breakdown, is Project Entropy pay-to-win?, for exactly how steep this curve gets and where the line actually sits.

Beginner mistake: making a string of small, reactive purchases once you start losing in alliance PvP, instead of deciding your ceiling ahead of time and sticking to it.

Ready to start?

Project Entropy is free to start, and nothing above requires spending a dollar to try it — the honest version of this guide is that the faction pick matters less than the habits you build in your first few sessions.

Play Project Entropy Free →

FAQ

Which faction should beginners pick in Project Entropy?

Human Resistance is the faction most consistently recommended for new accounts across community guides, credited with the highest density of obtainable A-Rank heroes in the standard pool. Deviate only if you have a specific hero or strategy in mind.

Should I focus on hero rarity or Star Ascension first?

Star Ascension. A fully Star-Ascended A-Rank hero is widely reported to outperform a base 1-Star S-Rank hero, so spend materials ascending the heroes you can reliably duplicate rather than saving everything for a rare pull. We haven't confirmed this math on our own account yet — treat it as a community-reported tip.

Do I need to join an alliance to enjoy Project Entropy?

You don't need to, but community sentiment consistently describes the game as most fun once you're active in an alliance rather than playing solo, thanks to resource sharing, coordinated attacks and the game's real-time cross-server chat translation.

Why did my base reset after I conquered a planet?

That's a reported structural quirk, not a bug: conquering a new planet is commonly described as forcing a meaningful reset or rebuild of your base progress on that planet rather than a clean continuation. Bank spare resources before conquering so the reset costs you less.