BUX AND DOVE SPENDING GUIDE

The two premium currencies in Pixel Starships are Starbux (bux) and Doves.

Starbux can be obtained through selling things on the market, opening the daily chest on the blue dropship, spending real life money, retrieving bux from your fleet base’s printer, watching ads, and clicking on floating bux as they go by your ship.

The floating bux and the ads have a 120 bux total combined limit per day. If you’re F2P, try to watch those 40 ads a day. It’s pretty easy and mindless to do if you’re watching TV, and should supply you with enough bux for a good crew or room once per week. You can trigger an ad to spawn by going into a full-screen menu, like visiting your fleet’s starbase, or selecting PVP and then running away.

Do what you gotta do

Doves are the super premium currency that can be obtained through monthly tournament rewards, or spending real life money. They are precious, especially for F2P, so spend them carefully. You can get to the dove shop by clicking on the bux in the top left, then Bank, then the dove in the top right.

What should I spend my Bux on?

Below are the most important things to spend your bux on, starting with the most important. The “daily sale” is the one that shows up on the left of the screen when you are in the Shop. Remember that any daily sales you missed in the last 30 days can be purchased on the Pixel Starships site for a 25% markup. Just login with the credentials you linked to your account in step one.

Four construction slots

Do the research “Advanced Engineering” that allows you to build four rooms at once. This construction research is super good value for speeding up your progress through the game. Leave one building slot open to put extra minerals into your armor and lifts, until those are maxed for your level. You can also unlock five construction slots at once, but it is not necessary. If you do, you may find that your researches lag behind your rooms too much, since you’ll only ever be able to do one research at once. You’ll max out your rooms and armor for a ship level, but still have weeks of research to do.

Crew rooms in daily sales

Crew rooms are the best way to strengthen your ship since your crew have a large impact on battle performance. Also, having more crew speeds up your progress because you’ll have more crew earning xp during every battle. Always keep 1500 bux in your bank to buy a crew room if one appears in the daily sale.

Hero draw

Once you research beer draw, do one of the cheaper bux draws for crew (the one that says “3+ get!!”). It will be a guaranteed 5* and probably your first! After this first draw, don’t use the bux draws. They get expensive quickly and it’s better to wait for daily sales to guarantee you get the crew you want.

Crew in dropship

There will be crew for sale most days in the blue dropship. The price depends on how many crew of that tier and above you already own. They will start out cheap and you should buy good crew here before the price goes up. You can ask in the PSS discord if a particular crew is worth it at your price. Once the price becomes exorbitant, the crew in daily sales are better because the price is fixed.

Crew in daily sales

Join a fleet’s discord server, most of them have a daily post about if the crew purchase is worthwhile. Over time, you’ll be able to determine for yourself if a crew is good, or if it helps you prestige to a great crew.

Armor beacons

Five armor beacons that provide 5 armor each can be purchased for bux. This is equivalent to your regular armor at ship level three, and half as much as the armor you’ll have at ship level eight. Still, armor is precious and the more you can have the better. You’ll want to unlock all of these eventually.

Items

Your crew needs items to maximize their stats. Once you have solid crew, take a look at their slots, and then think about the role that crew is accomplishing. Buy cheap gear from the market to fill those slots and assist your crew in their role. You can always buy better gear later, but at least make sure each crew has full slots of common gear. It’s not that expensive to obtain. Later when you have more free bux, buy better gear or combine gear you already have.

Dolores body parts

Constructing Dolores is an expensive process since she requires a head, body, two arms, and two legs. You can acquire most of the pieces through normal play, but if you want to finish construction of this crew, you’ll probably have to buy a few pieces from the market. Dolores is definitely a good crew, but this bux purchase is up to personal preference.

Don’t buy:

Just keep walking…

Building speedups

Unless you’re about to leave for vacation and really want to start another upgrade while you’re gone, spending bux for room upgrades is a bad value. It’s relatively expensive (roughly 100 bux a day) and upgrades are nearly endless, so it can suck up all your bux. Rushing room upgrades also is not beneficial since it will put your rooms well ahead of your research and crew levels. If you’re going to rush anything – rush research.

Resources (minerals and gas)

Don’t buy resources for bux, the exchange rate is awful! The only exception is if you want to upgrade the coal reactor or aquarium before your ship can hold that many resources. You’ll pay a lot of bux for that privilege, but if you are not F2P it may be worth it to you.

What should I spend my Doves on?

Many thanks to Jellob for writing the first draft of this dove guide. 🙂

Cryopod

This crew room is nearly never on sale for bux (it was sold once), so spend your first doves to acquire it.

Tournament grand prize

This depends a little on if you are F2P – if you are, you won’t have the doves to spend on the tournament prizes every month. If you have the doves available and already have the key rooms for your ship strategy, try to get the “Grand Prize” each month. For 2020 it contains HP boosting gear that is useful for nearly all crew. In 2019 the tournament gear was ability boosting gear which was very useful for making 100% rushers. Also, if you’ve purchased all the items you need from the dove store, buying the tournament prizes is the best way to convert doves to bux since you can sell the tournament gear for high bux prices on the market.

Cat house, aquarium, and garage

These three crew rooms are important, buy them if you have doves and don’t want to wait for them to come on sale for bux. Each one is typically sold twice a year in the daily sales.

Coal reactor

The coal reactor room gives two more power and is an important end game room since power is crucial to running your ship. Don’t worry about this room until you’re at least ship level nine since it requires space and armor, which can be tough to come by in the smaller ships. Like the crew rooms above, this will be sold in the daily sales for bux eventually so skip it if you are F2P.

Workshop

The workshop provides extra capacity for storing items. Buy it when you are running short on item space and have the room on your ship to include it.

Squiddy and Meowy

Squiddy is an excellent end-game repair crew, and Meowy is an end-game critical defense crew. Buy these as needed to augment your existing crew.

Energy barrier

The energy barrier is a room module that grants HP, like sandbags. It gives the most HP of any of those modules type with +6 HP. It is useful for literally any ship and can provide a good initial defense in rooms with low HP.

MML for pen spam

The MML is a key room for pen spam, and may be used infrequently in other strategies that need it for its low power usage. Buy if you want to pen spam.

KB for gunship

The KB is not an amazing weapon (see DPS chart), but if you’re looking to put every available gun on your ship, pick this up.

Galaxy gym

The galaxy gym provides more crew training slots, since you can include it on your ship along with your regular gym. It only becomes useful once you have a lot of crew that you need to train, have the room on your ship to include it, and have maxed training research.

Items

The chopsticlaw and mini cannon are some of the best +atk weapons in the game. Pick them up if you need them.

Don’t Buy:

Other items for sale in the dove store are not that useful, or wouldn’t be used except in very niche situations. If you have extra doves, follow the advice above under Tournament Grand Prize.

What should I spend my real life money on?

First, if you are going to spend any money on this game, get the subscription first. For only a few dollars a month, you get 50% more loot from every battle! It really adds up and can help you max your armor and lifts while keeping all your construction slots active. In addition to the loot, you’ll get a “scratchy” lotto ticket from the daily dropship that gives fairly good rewards, or can be sold for bux on the market.

Second, use patience when converting real life money to bux and wait for good sale bonuses – the extra stuff you get when buying bux. Most large fleets have a discord channel that will perform a daily report on the quality of the sale. Most of the time, you should wait until a good end-game crew is offered as a bonus. If you’re just looking to get more bux (say to buy a missed daily sale), then a 13% extra bonus is good, 14% is great, and 15% is amazing.