It's dangerous to go alone in The Cycle: Frontier. If the beastly creatures masquerading as fellow players roaming the lands weren't bad enough, there are also tough enemies waiting to ambush the player at every looting spot scattered across Fortuna III.
To maximize the chances of survival and have more fun with the game in general, playing with friends is recommended. The game doesn't make it obvious how the system works, however. This guide will help players add their friends to an in-game friends list before squadding up and taking on the hostile planet together.
Where To Find Usernames
As mentioned previously, The Cycle: Frontier has a bizarre friend making system. Simply knowing a friend's Steam username isn't enough, as players also need to know the five numbers on the end of a friend's username. These are randomly assigned by the game.
To reach the screen shown in the screenshot above and find out their full The Cycle: Frontier username, players need to press the tab key (or open the inventory) while in the game's hub area. There, navigate to the Play tab on the far left. It's in that screen they will find a list of their current quests, a prompt to deploy to Fortuna III, and their full username.
Adding a Friend
After learning their usernames, players must then navigate to the friends list menu by pressing the 'O' key. There, they can see:
- Incoming friend requests
- Incoming squad invites
- Friends that are currently online and what they're currently doing
- Friends that are currently offline
- The 'Add Friend' tab
Thanks to the previous step, players are a few short steps away from adding their friends as in-game friends.
- Type a friend's full name (including numbers) into the search bar in the 'add friend' tab.
- Click the magnifying glass icon.
- Click the plus icon that appears next to the desired friend's name.
- Wait for the friend to accept the request.
Adding Random Players as Friends
In addition to playing with friends, players may sometimes want to add an interesting-looking player in the hub to their friends list. To do so, simply approach the player and hold F to open a context menu. It's then quick and easy to click the 'add friend' option, at which point the player will receive the friend request in their friends list menu.
Squadding Up
Adding a friend is all well and good, but moral support won't fill a player's bullet wounds. Adding friends to a squad is the end-goal, after all. To do so, open the friend list menu again. After accepting a player's friend request, they'll appear in the list with a variety of icons next to their names. To add them to a squad, click the icon depicting multiple people, then wait for them to accept the invite.
After that, open the deployment menu by physically approaching the launch area (or navigating to the 'play' section of the menus). There, all squad members need to equip any items they want to bring to Fortuna III, and select 'ready up.' When all players are ready, the group is deployed to the planet together. Just try not to leave anyone behind while extracting!