Elite Dangerous (2020)

Space
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So I fired up Elite: Dangerous this weekend to see if the Void Opal mining rush was still in effect. There was a patch recently that was said to have adjusted supply and demand in mining, so I wanted to test it out.

Short answer:
It’s still extremely profitable to do core mining for Void Opals. I found a system buying them for 600k each. Its not the 900k I was getting before but still worth the time.

I quickly ran into the reason I left the game last year though. I just couldn’t find anything I wanted to do. I’ve dabbled in the engineers, took 1000 ly+ voyages, gained some guardian tech, and made tons of money. Basically I’ve done everything that doesn’t require a grind fest. I really enjoy the combat in the game, but the missions that require killing NPC’s require you to kill 40-50 of them to make any real money.

I’d like to start the thargoid stuff. Do you need to grind a bunch of guardian tech to be able to kill them? Maybe that’s where I need to investigate until the player carriers are released later this year.

Also if anyone is looking to get started in this game I can give you a cash boost to get going quickly. @Navynuke99 hooked me up with some minerals to jumpstart my career and it really made the early game a lot more fun.

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I’m back again to Elite after a little over a year away. Just dabbling, there is a good bit of new stuff and improvements (IMO) I’m investigating.

I have not done core mining for Void Opals, but have for the other expensive core types. Coming back home with $5 to $17 million per hour mining trip, not bad.

But I kinda feel like I’ve done mining before (and I have!), and am not really as interested.

I have done Thargoid combat, I’ve used a Federal Gunship, and a Corvette for this (but many ships are good options).

There was no grind for the AX gear. Just land on a planet at a Military outpost, and most all the AX stuff should be there for sale. With AX gear, I’ve killed dozens of the Thargoid Scouts, which IMO are actually a pretty fun bit of combat.

I’ve come close to killing a Cyclops Interceptor one time, it only had 1 heart left, IIRC. All using stock AX weapons. But this is (IMO) very tense combat, as the Cyclops has quite a few tricks and can literally hammer my Corvette in seconds (never lost the ship, though, but did come close once!).

If you do the Guardian unlocks, then supposedly it’s much easier to solo a Cyclops. I’ve been away though, and will someday look at this.

Lately, I’ve built two new ships. One is a Type-10D for mining and also maybe Thargoid combat later. The newest ship is a Krait Mk2 for exploration. This is my main current interest, as there area a few astronomical things new, and I’d like to see a few.

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I’m going to try to kill some scouts tonight. I read about Thargoid Combat Zones as well, where they just continually spawn in. Don’t know if I want to risk the Anaconda or Type 10 in there, Rebuy is like 55 and 20 mil respectively. I ran into one on accident several months ago, and it just shut my ship down and proceeded to blow it up in a few seconds. Have they changed the Thargoid combat?

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I’m still halfway around the galaxy, very, very slowly still jumping back- I’m curious to see what kind of profits I’ll get from my exploration data when I make it back. I hate that I missed the void opal/ double Painite gold rush, as I seem to be terrible at finding the easy ways to make money quick (been playing since launch, have yet to break a billion Spacebucks).

As for the Guardian/ Thargoid stuff, no clue- I’m almost as bad at combat as making money, so I’ve only gone after Scouts in instances with other pilots, and it’s been with turreted or gimballed AX Multis, as I hardly ever seem to be able to hit with my Guardian Gauss cannons. But I’d like to get better when I’m back in the bubble, and the Guardian stuff has been fun, once you get the hang of it.

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I too have been getting back into Elite Dangerous lately. Still doing the trader hauling stuff but I like to stop and explore planets on my routes.

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I just got my first Python “Allanon” and I’m using it to mine until I can unlock the guardian stuff.
In case anyone would like to wing up to make a proper party…
You know… One guy that actively digs asteroids, one that Limpets all the shards in and two that provide protection… Just an idea.

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Scouts are the little disc shaped guys, they are almost always in gangs of 4+ when I encountered them. If there are 6 of them, it’s something to be careful with (I’m not great at combat, though). When I’d drop in and there were like 8 of them (or worse, a Cyclops was there too)… Then I’d not even stop to deploy the hardpoints. OUT!

The Cyclops are the ones that can shut down the ship, and do worse. They are somewhat like the old video game end-bosses. They tend to have a pattern, and I’d memorize it and then head in, seeing how far I’d make it. Trying to observe each “sign” that the pattern was progressing, pacing myself to not get hasty, trying to stay ready to bail when things got bad enough.

Yes the rebuy is high on big Thargoid hunting ships. Sweat inducing combat, for sure!

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Beautifully said.
He definitely has a way with words and cognitive thought.

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Follow-up from Obsidian Ant on the mining “adjustment”

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Some more of OA keeping a cool head while others are furiously shouting NERF!

TLDR: It looks like over-supply of void opals may be driving the price drop - if this is so then I think it could be a good thing, as it will incentivise players to mine more variety of materials. Capitalism in action.

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Hah! You beat me to it by 3 minutes :grin:

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And I always say three minutes are an eternity, basically. :smiley:
My wife disagree. :thinking:

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Two minutes in heaven is better than one minute in heaven!

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That song absolutely cracks me up every time I hear it.

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Elite is calling to me again and I want to restart from scratch, using Rift-S and my X52 Pro. I like the idea of the new starter system, but I’m wondering if its feasible to go through the training and guided tutorials in VR?

The previous tutorial that involved another commander helping get your ship going and who gave you a couple of initial missions had the advantage of displaying the default keybinds (which helped in VR). is the new tutorial approach VR-friendly?

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You don’t have to reset your character to enjoy the new training suite.
There’s the option, IIRC, somewhere either in the main menu or in one of the tabs of the ship’s right hand console.

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Thanks @komemiute. I’d still like to mess about in the newbies system which i think require a wipe of my previous account.

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Yup, that’s for sure.
But at least you can check how VR friendly the new tutorials are beforehand.

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If I could restart without losing my elite status I would, but I can’t so I won’t.

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