Once Human: How To Play With Friends And How PvP Works

Once Human puts you in a hostile world full of vicious monsters and desperate people–including other players. Under the right circumstances, you can team up with or battle with your fellow Meta-humans, helping you secure some of the best loot and resources, both out in the world and in your fortified territories. However, like a lot of things in Once Human, it’s not very clear how things like teaming up or PvP work. If you’re on a certain kind of server, you might not realize you can play PvP at all.

Here’s all that you need to know about finding friends, creating groups like Hives and Warbands, and taking on other players in PvP in Once Human.

It’s All About The Server

First, if you’re jumping into Once Human with friends, you want to pick the same server. There are two types–PvP and PvE–which we’ll get to in a minute. Regardless of what kind of server you pick, make sure you and your pals are on the same server when you start. If you and your friends develop characters on separate servers, there’s currently no way to transfer a character to a new one; instead, you’ll have to start a new character and progress from the beginning all over again. So be sure which server you mean to play on.

Most of Once Human is the same regardless of which server you’re on, but there are key differences between the PvE and PvP variants. A big focus of this is on endgame and seasonal events. The Manibus event is the PvE version of the endgame, with the seasonal story focusing on cooperative events to deal with a big boss. Evolution’s Call, on the other hand, sees the endgame activities and story heading in a more PvP direction. As Once Human adds new seasons, it seems likely the names of these scenarios and their focuses will change.

Both types of servers offer PvP gameplay, but the difference is that fights against hostile players are much more limited on PvE servers than PvP servers. Essentially, if you want a less hostile and more cooperative experience, choose a PvE server, where you’ll have to opt into fighting against other players. If you like things a bit more chaotic and for fights to happen against other players somewhat more frequently, especially for earning high-end rewards, choose a PvP server.

Add Friends, Create A Hive And A Warband

Once you’ve either got friends in your server or you meet other players in Once Human and you want to band together, you can add them as friends pretty easily from the game’s Get United menu, which you can access from the main menu when you hit the Escape key. From there, you have access to four tabs: Friends, Team, Hive, and Warband. The Friends tab shows anyone you’ve befriended in the game, which you can do by accessing their profile when you see them or visit their territory; alternatively, you can search for names to send friend requests.

If you’re looking to team up with other players to take on an activity, without necessarily forming a long-term relationship, use the Team tab. This is Once Human’s “looking for group” option and lets you either see possible groups you can join, or create one yourself. If you click the gear icon when creating your own team, you can add notes and restrictions for who can apply to join, and also specify exactly what activity you want to take on.

A Hive in Once Human is kind of like a guild in other MMOs. It’s an affiliation of players that give you people to team up with. You also get additional gameplay benefits, like the ability to merge territories or teleport to Hive members’ territories, instead of just your own.

Finally, there’s the Warband–what you might consider a clan in Once Human. Warbands can have up to 50 players and in these groups, you create territory, take on specific high-level activities, capture territory, and battle other Warbands.

How To Play PvP In Once Human

Activate Chaos Mode

You can fight other players in both PvE and PvP servers by activating something called Chaos mode. You do that by pressing and holding the “P” key. In a PvP server, once you activate Chaos mode, either intentionally or because you’ve entered a Chaos mode area of the map like a Stronghold, you can attack any other player–even if they haven’t activated Chaos mode.

Meanwhile, on a PvE server, Chaos mode is opt-in. Certain events still put you into Chaos mode, but for the most part, you have to choose to play against other players by turning on Chaos mode. When you do that, you can only attack other Chaos mode players, unlike in a PvP server where a Chaos player can attack anyone. In either case, you have to be at least Level 10 to participate in any PvP, which keeps high-level players from griefing lower-level ones.

Chaos mode runs on a timer, and when it runs out, you’ll be kicked back into regular PvE mode. Attacking and killing other players extends the timer, and your goal generally is to stay alive and do as much damage as you can before you’re finally taken down.

Find PvP Events

You can also find PvP activities on both kinds of servers. Cargo Scramble, for example, is a public event where you and other players attack a Rosetta truck, and when you do so, a monster is released that will then possess one of the players in the event’s area. That player’s goal is to kill the others in order to earn a special currency reward. When you’re possessed, a timer runs down, but killing other players extends it. If you die while possessed, the creature will leave you and possess another player. Throughout the Cargo Scramble event, you can revive yourself with no penalty to keep the fight going. When it ends, your reward is based on how well you did in fighting other players.

Other certain events can be triggered in PvE servers to create PvP situations. The options expand as you join a Warband–Once Human’s take on a clan. These organizations have you forming up with other players to build bigger, more involved bases. On PvP servers, Warbands can also take over specific resource-heavy locations, which they then have to defend from other Warbands who might try to come take the territory.

As you reach the higher levels of Once Human and later events unlock in the season, there will also be tough PvPvE areas to explore. There’s high-quality loot within, but everyone who ventures into the area goes into the Chaos mode and is flagged for PvP, so you might encounter other hostile players while you’re searching. These areas apparently exist in both PvP and PvE servers, although I didn’t encounter one in a PvE server, suggesting they only become available at very high levels and in later areas–which would make sense given how tough they likely are.

Use the Stardust Resonant Filter

In either server, you can activate an event where you need to defend your territory by using the Stardust Resonant Filter. That’s a machine you can construct in your base that turns items you find in dungeons, Echo Stones and Cortexes, into Starchrom, a rare currency. When you activate the Resonant Filter, you also start an event called Territory Purification. Monsters are drawn to the Resonant Filter and will attack your base and try to destroy it, and you have to defend it for a certain amount of time to finish the process.

Territory Purification also activates Chaos mode for your whole territory. So in either server type, anyone who also turns on Chaos mode can attack your territory to try to stop your Resonant Filter and gain some rewards for themselves. in an event called Territory Purification, and you’ll have to hold them off until a timer runs out. Setting up strong defenses and teaming up with other players can be essential.

Additional Echo Stones also sometimes appear on the map in PvP servers. If you get near an Echo Stone to try to claim it, you’re automatically kicked into Chaos mode, making it possible for other Chaos mode players to attack you and take the Echo Stone from you.

The goal is to get the Echo Stone back to your base as quickly as possible to secure it, which you need to do before a timer runs out and before some other player hunts you down. Once you get the Echo Stone back to base, you need to dump it into your Stardust Resonant Filter–which means you then have to fend off other players in a Territory Purification event, too.