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Contents hide How to unlock emotes How to use emotes ✓ At A Glance
  • Equip emotes in the Cosmetics portion of the inventory
  • Hold X to bring up the emote wheel then hover over the emote you want to use and release X

Aside from greeting and hounding other players with some gestural communication, emotes in Once Human are also used to progress certain quests and complete various actions. It’s well worth getting to grips with how the system works if you plan on ticking off the many side quests littering the open world.

Though the game is stacked with tutorials and a beefy onboarding process in the early game, emoting isn’t explained in all that much detail. We’ll walk you through how to emote and how to equip specific ones.

Head to Cosmetics then Expression in the inventory to equip emotes. Captured by VideoGamer

How to unlock emotes

Before you can emote, you’ll need to unlock the feature. To do this, you’ll need to progress through The Eve of Evolution starting quest until you hit the open world and set up your first Territory base. At this point, you’ll unlock the Cosmetics tab in your inventory and also the emote wheel.

To equip an emote, press I to bring up the inventory and navigate to the rightmost Cosmetics tab, then select Expression in the top left. Call it a quirk on translation but Expressions are basically Once Human’s take on emotes. From here, you can drag and drop emotes on the left into the slots on the wheel on the right. You can have up to 8 different emotes on the wheel any given time.

You start with 12 emotes and can unlock more by completing sections of the Battle Pass, taking part in Active Events, opening Season Loot Crates, and buying them from the Season Shop. The starting emotes are:

  • Shivering
  • Chill Out
  • Flirt
  • Deny
  • Take a Bow
  • Upset
  • Bye Bye!
  • Feeling Glum
  • Coy
  • Hooray!
  • Wave
  • Shrug
  • Woah!
  • Respect
  • Push Up
  • Plead
Hold X to bring up the emote wheel. Captured by VideoGamer

How to use emotes

To emote, hold down the X key on your keyboard to bring up the emote wheel. Hover over and highlight the emote you want to perform in the wheel then let go of X. Your meta-human will then repeat the emote on loop until you use the movements keys. Keep in mind that some quests require specific emotes so remember to swap them out as needed.

About the Author

Tom Bardwell

Tom is guides editor here at VideoGamer.

Once Human

  • Platform(s): Android, iOS, PC
  • Genre(s): Adventure, Shooter, Simulation

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