How to play GPU Valley

Getting started

Open the game, pick a name and a look, and you're in. You can play as a guest if you want to try it first. Your progress saves in your browser, and if you connect a wallet later you keep all of it.

You start with 100 credits, a server rack, a GPU and a fan. There's a tutorial with twelve steps that pays you credits for each one, so it's worth following. By the end you'll have picked up 340 credits and a free solar panel.

1. Claim a plot. Walk south into the datacenter area and press E at any terminal that says Free plot. It's yours now.
2. Place your rack. Select it from the hotbar (1) and click a square inside your plot.
3. Put your GPU in. Select the GPU (2) and click on the rack. The lights on top show how many GPUs are in it.
4. Add your fan. GPUs get hot, and heat is what usually ruins a farm. Put the fan (3) on any empty square.
5. Collect. Press E at your plot terminal and hit Collect. Your farm has been running this whole time.
6. Sell. Take the compute north to the Compute Exchange and sell it for credits.

Your farm keeps going when you close the tab. The only thing that stops it is running out of storage.

Controls

The town

There's one town and everyone online is in it, so you'll be mining and trading next to other players.

The datacenter area is south of the plaza. It has 24 plots and each player gets one.

Gathering

Stand next to a rock or scrap heap and hold E. Each one can only be hit a few times before it disappears, and then it grows back after a while.

Every time you gather something there's a 6% chance you also find a Core. Cores are rare, you can't buy or craft them, and you need them for both upgrade kits. That's why gathering stays worth doing even once you have credits.

When a Meteor shower starts, everything gives double and grows back instantly. Head to the quarry.

Crafting and the shop

You craft at the Workshop. Here's every recipe:

The Parts Shop uses credits. Coolers and generators can't be crafted, so you have to buy those here.

The materials for a GPU would only sell for 14 credits, but buying one costs 400. Craft your GPUs, and don't sell your materials unless you really need the credits.

Your plot

Your plot is a 4 by 3 grid, so you get 12 squares. Racks, fans, coolers, solar panels, generators and batteries each take up one square.

A rack holds 4 GPUs, or 6 if you use a Rack Expansion Kit on it. GPUs go inside racks, so you can't put them on an empty square.

Each rack can store 600 compute. When it's full, it stops making more until you collect. A rack with 4 GPUs fills up in about 50 minutes.

Twelve squares fills up faster than you'd think. Every fan you place is a square you can't use for a rack, so it pays to cool efficiently.

Heat and power

Most of the game comes down to this. Your plot terminal shows two numbers: power and temperature.

Power

If you don't have enough power, your farm keeps running but everything slows down to match. Put 8 GPUs on 12 power and they all run at half speed. The game doesn't warn you about this, so it's easy to miss. Check your power whenever you add GPUs.

GPUs without enough power also run cooler, so cutting power can look like it fixed a heat problem. It didn't. You'll just be making less.

Temperature

What happens at each temperature:

• Under 70°C: full speed.
• 70°C to 90°C: your farm gradually slows down, from full speed at 70 to 30% at 90. At 72 you'll barely notice. At 88 it's crawling.
• 90°C and up: you're stuck at 30%, and each GPU has a 2% chance every second of burning out for good. A rack of four at 90 will lose a GPU within a few seconds, so don't let it get there.

One liquid cooler takes off more heat than three fans, and it only uses one square. Once your plot starts filling up, coolers are how you make room for more racks.

An example build

Three racks with 12 GPUs total:

• Power: 12 GPUs times 3 is 36. The grid gives you 12, so you need 24 more, which is exactly one generator.
• Heat: 22 plus 12 GPUs times 4 is 70°C, right where it starts slowing down. Add one liquid cooler and you're at 54°C.
• Space: 3 racks, a generator and a cooler is 5 squares, so you've still got 7 free.

Day, night and batteries

A full day in the game is 12 minutes. Solar panels depend on the sun, so they barely produce anything at night. At the darkest point they only get 8% of their normal output, which is less than half a unit of power per panel.

You've got two options for nighttime:

• Battery: stores up to 200 power and can charge or discharge 6 per second. It charges up from any extra power during the day and covers the gap at night. It's free to run, but it only helps if you actually have spare power during the day.
• Generator: always gives 24 power no matter what time it is. It costs 1,200 credits and you can't craft one, but once you have it you don't have to think about it.

Generators also keep working normally during Grid strain, which cuts your grid and solar power in half. If you run on generators, you won't even notice it.

Overclocking

An Overclock Kit (2 Cores, 3 copper, 2 silicon) unlocks overclocking on one rack, permanently. After that you can turn it on and off whenever you want, for free.

It's worth it as long as you've got enough cooling and power to stay under 70°C. Heat goes up faster than output does, so if your plot is already running warm, overclocking it is how you lose GPUs.

During an Overclock Window event, overclocked racks don't get the extra burn risk at all. That's the best time to turn them on.

The other upgrade is the Rack Expansion Kit (1 Core, 6 scrap). It lets one rack hold 6 GPUs instead of 4. If you're running out of space, expanding a rack is better than building a new one, since you get two more GPUs without using another square.

Selling compute

Collect from your plot terminal, then take it to the Compute Exchange.

Each compute you sell gets you 1 credit, or more if you have a holder boost. Credits are what you spend at the Parts Shop and the Market. They stay in the game and can't be cashed out.

When an AI demand surge is on, compute sells for double. Surges last 90 seconds and come around every few minutes. If you save up your compute and sell it during a surge, you get twice as much for the same work.

$GPU and NVDA rewards

The game's token is $GPU. There's a 4% tax on every buy and sell, split 50/50. Half of it (2%) gets swapped into tokenized NVIDIA, and Pons sends it to $GPU holders automatically, based on how much each wallet holds. The other half (2%) pays for development and goes to the treasury.

You don't have to claim anything, and it doesn't depend on how much you play. If you hold $GPU, the NVDA shows up in your wallet.

Holder boost

Holding $GPU also helps in the game. If the wallet you play with holds $GPU, you get more credits every time you sell compute:

The game checks your balance when you connect and every time you sell.

The Market

You can list pretty much anything at whatever price you want: materials, Cores, GPUs, machines and both upgrade kits.

• Whatever you list is held until it sells, so a listing can always be bought. You can't list something and then use it.
• You get paid even if you're offline, minus a 5% fee.
• You can have up to 8 listings at a time, at up to 100,000 credits each.

Most Cores get traded here. If you need Cores for an Overclock Kit and you've got credits to spare, buying them is usually a lot faster than waiting on the 6% drop.

Friends and tune-ups

Add people by typing their name or clicking on them in the world. You can have up to 50 friends. Message someone with /w name message and reply with /r message.

You can also tune up other people's plots. Walk up to someone's plot terminal and press E:

• Their farm gets 15% more output for 30 minutes.
• You get 15 credits right away.
• You can do it once an hour, and each plot can only have one tune-up at a time.

It doesn't cost you anything, and it shows up as a daily quest pretty often. Do one whenever you walk past the datacenter area.

Quests and achievements

You get three quests a day, picked from a list of ten: mining, crafting, selling, collecting, tune-ups, the Market and chatting. They're the same all day, so refreshing won't give you easier ones.

Finishing all three opens a bonus chest with 250 credits and a GPU, plus 50 more credits for every day in your streak. At a 7 day streak that's 600 credits a day on top of the quest rewards, and it also unlocks an achievement worth 500 credits and 3 Cores.

There are 13 achievements for things like installing GPUs, selling compute, gathering, crafting, making friends, tune-ups, Market trades, your first overclock, a 7 day streak and holding $GPU. A few of them give you Cores, which is one of the only reliable ways to get them besides mining.

Town events

Events hit the whole town at once, one at a time. Each one lasts 90 seconds and there's a new one about every 5 minutes.

Tips for progressing

Once you've done the tutorial, this is the quickest way to build up.

A good routine

1. Check your plot. Make sure you're under 70°C and your power covers what your GPUs use. Fix that first, since a slowed-down farm wastes all the time you spend doing other things.
2. Mine while you wait. Your farm makes compute whether you're watching it or not, so spend the waiting time in the quarry and scrapyard instead of standing around.
3. Craft what you mined into GPUs and racks, and put them in.
4. Collect your compute, but hang on to it. See the next section.
5. Tune up someone's plot on your way past, once an hour.

Sell during surges

This makes the biggest difference. A demand surge doubles the credits you get, and one comes around every few minutes. Compute you're holding doesn't go bad, so keep it and sell it all when a surge starts. Selling 2,000 compute during a surge gets you as much as selling 4,000 without one.

Just keep in mind that each rack stops making compute once it has 600 stored. Collecting moves it into your inventory and frees the rack up, so collect often and sell during surges.

What to build, in order

1. Racks and GPUs first, up to 4 GPUs. The free grid covers exactly 12 power, and 4 GPUs only reach 38°C without any cooling, so your first rack doesn't need anything else.
2. Then power. Once you go past 4 GPUs you won't have enough power and everything slows down. Solar panels are cheap to craft. A generator solves it for good.
3. Cooling at around 12 GPUs, when you get close to 70°C. Get a liquid cooler instead of three fans. It does the same job and saves you two squares.
4. Rack Expansion Kits once you're running low on space, for two more GPUs per rack.
5. Overclock Kits last, once your cooling can handle 80% more heat.

Be careful with Cores

You only get Cores from the 6% mining drop, a few achievements, or other players. A Rack Expansion Kit needs 1 and an Overclock Kit needs 2. Get the expansion first. It's cheaper, it adds output without adding any heat, and there's no risk of burning anything out.

Smaller things

• Hold E when you're mining instead of tapping it.
• Don't sell your materials at the shop. They're worth a lot more turned into GPUs.
• Do your three daily quests first. The streak bonus adds up fast.
• Aim to stay just under 70°C. Cooling it down any further doesn't help, and those squares could be racks.
• Look at the event banner before you sell or go mining.

Common mistakes

• Letting your racks fill up. A rack stops at 600 compute. A full rack of 4 fills in about 50 minutes, so if you're gone longer than that you're missing out.
• Adding GPUs without adding power. Nothing tells you. Your whole plot just slows down.
• Running at 90°C. It doesn't just slow you down. Each GPU has a 2% chance every second of burning out, and three times that if it's overclocked.
• Overclocking a plot that's already warm. Heat goes up faster than output, so sort out your cooling first.
• Selling as soon as you collect. Wait for a surge and you'll get twice as much.
• Too much cooling. Every fan you don't need is a square that could have been a rack.