New here? This is the whole game in ten steps. Nothing is hidden behind a wiki — every rule below is the rule the code actually runs.
The welcome kit is a whole PC in boxes, with its own screen on the desk. Put it together, wire it, press POWER — your first boot pays $1,000. The quest board and the customers who knock while you play fund every build after that.
The Workshop is a node editor. Wire the CPU to its socket, RAM into DIMM slots, the PSU's ATX + EPS to the board, the GPU into PCIe plus ALL of its power plugs, a disk into M.2 or SATA. A wrong socket simply will not seat. Hover any connector and it explains itself.
Press POWER on the PSU. DEL during POST opens the BIOS (overclock profiles and fan curves). On the desktop run SimBench — that score sets both the sale price and the mining rate. Heat throttles the chip at Tjmax; an overclock that asks more than the supply can give trips its protection and the machine stops. Nothing crashes at random.
A fresh rig boots to a bare command prompt and earns NOTHING until you set it up. Buy an OS from the wholesale Software aisle — Winux is free and mines well, Bindows runs everything, PakOS pays task apps the most, Khali is the free security distro with the best hashing. Software is a NODE: drop it on the floor and wire its "install" cable into a DISK slot (OS into "OS / boot", apps into "App 1-3"), then restart that rig.
Customers ask for PCs: the 📦 button in the game lists them — build to their spec, power it on and DELIVER (inside 10 minutes they tip 10%). Or sell any PC from its FARM card: right now at its fair price, in your shop window at your own price, or in your SimNet store for other players. Or keep it: every complete tower runs on its own power button and mines in parallel.
Wholesale prices drift with the news — buy the dips, sell into the spikes. In the classifieds you can haggle for second-hand machines: strip them for used parts, or buy one to run as-is. Junk from boxes and strip-downs becomes real gear in the CRAFT tab: recipes combine it, the tune press moves a part up its real model ladder.
The parts economy is split into eleven sectors. Whoever moves the most goods in one over the last 30 days holds its throne and may levy up to 3% on other sellers there. The seat is earned from trades the server recorded — it is never for sale, a baron never taxes their own sales, and no single seller can be farmed for more than $20 a day.
The exchange runs on cash you move in from your wallet — and back out whenever you like. Market makers keep a two-sided book around the clock and step aside when real orders arrive. News hits the wire and moves prices for real, so arm a price alert and go back to building; the game tells you the moment it triggers.
Your router has one address and one switch. Open the door and your miners also work a pool: they earn 10% more, but that extra waits in the pool instead of your wallet until you claim it — and it is the only thing anyone could ever take from you. Close the door, or claim often, and there is nothing to lose. The other way round: Khali is the toolkit. From its terminal, sweep finds the doors out there, scan reads their weaknesses (a default password, firmware nobody updated, no firewall), crack tries one attempt a minute, and inside you can read what they share, see what they run and take a slice of their pool — never a wallet, a part or a listing. Leave without wiping and the owner changes their password. Right now those doors belong to nobody; other players are not reachable. Prefer buttons? On a Khali desktop the Hacknet window has every tool, and Settings → Network → Door to the world has the switches for your own door.
Miners hash up to +10% faster the longer the game stays open, night electricity (22:00-06:00) is 25% cheaper, and machines keep earning for up to 8 hours while the game is closed. Your best SIMBENCH run goes on the ladder — the NPC runners tune their rigs a little every day, so keep upgrading.
Everything you earn and spend — parts, sales, customers, mining, the electricity bill, coins — moves through one wallet the server keeps. Your PC only shows it, so nobody can invent money, and a market everyone shares stays honest.