Best way to explore lore in-game?
- Thread starter Malityr
- Start date
The Codex contains some lore summaries on the superpowers, Thargoids, etc. in the "Knowledge Base" area.
Much of the lore is written into the Tourist Beacons in the Lore-relevant systems. If you don't know where the "Lore-relevant systems" are (perhaps because you never played any of the prequel games) then a good way to find them is to fit out a passenger ship and take tourists about the place. It's a bit hit-and-miss doing it that way, though; the beacons that are simply labelled as "Qetesh Visitor Beacon", for example, usually don't offer much, but the ones that sound like Newspaper headlines eg. "Second Terraforming Attempt" are more promising; the beacon names are listed in the passenger missions and can be browsed through before you accept them.
Many of those lore-relevant systems are permit-locked: the three Superpower capitals and Sirius, for example.
Much of the lore is written into the Tourist Beacons in the Lore-relevant systems. If you don't know where the "Lore-relevant systems" are (perhaps because you never played any of the prequel games) then a good way to find them is to fit out a passenger ship and take tourists about the place. It's a bit hit-and-miss doing it that way, though; the beacons that are simply labelled as "Qetesh Visitor Beacon", for example, usually don't offer much, but the ones that sound like Newspaper headlines eg. "Second Terraforming Attempt" are more promising; the beacon names are listed in the passenger missions and can be browsed through before you accept them.
Many of those lore-relevant systems are permit-locked: the three Superpower capitals and Sirius, for example.
For the "historic" lore if you didn't play any of the older games... Id start with "the dark wheel" - It was a novella that came with the original game and much of the lore stems from it.
http://www.elitehomepage.org/dkwheel.htm
There is quite a bit of INRA stuff in game now which relates to the earlier thargoid war.
https://canonn.science/codex/inra-settlements/
Several books were written at the start of Elite Dangerous as well and have various tie-ins to the game
https://www.frontierstore.net/books.html
http://www.elitehomepage.org/dkwheel.htm
There is quite a bit of INRA stuff in game now which relates to the earlier thargoid war.
https://canonn.science/codex/inra-settlements/
Several books were written at the start of Elite Dangerous as well and have various tie-ins to the game
https://www.frontierstore.net/books.html
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A sadly neglected area.
Pretty much all the summaries in the Elite fandom wiki which have sources. There are very minor mistakes here and there though. So unless you are willing to play through the entire game and get every data log then the wiki is your best bet.
If you want to pick up the lore organically in-game then you're going to need a notebook and have to play space detective/archaeologist. Start with the Codex, Knowledge Base, and the Pilots Manual in-game, make notes of any names or systems you might want to learn more about. Try flying to those systems, look for tourist beacons and other points of interests. Dock at stations in systems you think might be significant, read the local newspaper feeds and look for any articles outside of the usual status report type stuff. Keep taking notes, keep flying to different systems. Follow the clues and see where it takes you. Sometimes you'll find something called a "listening post" or an "unregistered comms beacon" - scan it and see what info comes in. Often it'll mention other systems in its transmission, along with fragments of broken code. Decode the codes; find the other listening posts in the other systems; oftentimes there will be three beacons and each beacon will hint to the other two. Frequently there is an additional location to be found by triangulating the positions of the three beacons and finding an additional system partway between them.
Eventually your sleuthing will lead you to space installations, planetary surface sites, ship crash sites, and megaships. Most of these will have something in them that you can scan with your data link scanner to unlock a block of text or an audio log. Occasionally these logs will point you towards yet more systems and beacons and codes and so on, most of the time they will be the end of the line and you'll have to stumble across a new breadcrumb trail to find the next thing. There's your lore.
Eventually your sleuthing will lead you to space installations, planetary surface sites, ship crash sites, and megaships. Most of these will have something in them that you can scan with your data link scanner to unlock a block of text or an audio log. Occasionally these logs will point you towards yet more systems and beacons and codes and so on, most of the time they will be the end of the line and you'll have to stumble across a new breadcrumb trail to find the next thing. There's your lore.