Nibiru is a dark blue, rogue gas giant passing through the Solar System. It usually destroys The Moon and Earth sequentially within approximately one hour. As a gas giant, it is barren and lacks a solid surface, making it largely useless for direct interaction. Players can track its approach using the Nibiru Tracker located on Earth.
Since Nibiru has no surface, ships flying into it won't be destroyed immediately; however, approaching its core results in ship destruction. Falling into Nibiru without a ship leads to death near the center.
Gameplay Mechanics[]
- Surface Interaction: No solid surface to land on; ships and players are destroyed when approaching the core.
- Colonization: Requires a Space Colony Creator due to lack of surface. Resources (metal, water, gas) must be imported via drones or junction/depot chains. Colonization must be completed before Nibiru exits the Solar System; otherwise, the colony switches to the "Space" team.
Nibiru Tracker[]
Located behind Koller in North America, the Nibiru Tracker measures Nibiru’s distance from Earth in Earth radii, starting at 30 and counting down to 0 (when Earth is destroyed). It has two indicator lights:
- Jupiter Light: Activates near 20 Earth radii, indicating Nibiru is closer than Jupiter.
- Moon Light: Activates near 2.5 Earth radii, indicating Moon destruction or Nibiru’s Solar System exit.
Related Badges[]
- Melancholia: Earned when Earth is destroyed by Nibiru with no other active spawn points.
- Dance with the Devil: Awarded for successfully colonizing Nibiru using a Space Colony Creator,one of the game’s toughest challenges.
Variations[]
Introduced in Patch 20.18, these random variations affect Nibiru’s trajectory and appearance:
- 1/10 chance Nibiru hits Earth from the South Pole, leaving the Moon untouched.
- 1/3 chance the trajectory reverses: Earth hit first from the east, then the Moon last.
- 1/5 chance Nibiru has rings similar to Uranus, which persist after Earth’s destruction.
- 1/20 chance for an alternate “Melancholia”-inspired texture, based on Ganymede, reverting after impact.
- 1/100 chance Nibiru spawns with a rare ":3" face texture.
Trivia[]
- Nibiru slowly drifts away and eventually leaves the Solar System after impacting Earth.
- Lightning flashes and thunder effects were removed in Release 16 for lagging the game, but readded in Release 19. You can hear when you are close to the planet.
- Unless it approaches from the poles, Mars witnesses a "Nibiru Transit" or partial eclipse during its passage.
- Nibiru is sometimes called "the big blue planet" or misspelled in‑game.
- Named after the mythical planet linked to the 2012 apocalypse scare, debunked by scientists.
- When near Earth, players can hear cracking sounds referencing a Minecraft tornado mod.
- April Fools events include random misspellings of “Nibiru.”
- In private servers, Nibiru could be paused to prevent impact, but this feature was removed due to a bug where it did not work.
- A major bug in earlier versions caused Nibiru to stop just before reaching the Moon—preventing it from destroying the Moon or crashing into Earth. This broke the Melancholia ending, making the Melancholia badge unobtainable, and stalled late-game progression like Mars terraforming because players knew Earth would remain intact. The root cause was Nibiru’s collision detection prematurely triggering on Earth due to planet size increases. This was fully fixed in Release 17.
- The Nibiru Tracker used to be constructed with a Material box for 100 Cash, which adds up to 200.
