I was jotting down the clues for finding the Formidine Rift and thought I’d post a summary here for anyone else interested.
The Formidine Rift incidentally is often written about by Drew Wagar in his Elite novels as the home, or at least a connection to Thargoids. The most recent Elite: Reclamation is an official Elite Dangerous novel which provides clues to the location of the rift.
Clue 1:
The novel mentions to find the rift, line up Reorte to Riedquat and keep going.
Lining up these two stars takes you away from the core and will eventually take you to the out rim. It's logical to assume then that the rift is on that path
Note: Drew has also dropped a clue referencing the ‘core of the matter’ which does cast some doubt on this. Core could however reference the core of a cluster or sector and not necessarily the core of the galaxy.
Drew also mentioned to watch GalNet over the next few weeks/months as this will make the problem ‘less nebuless’. On the way to the outer core there is the Heart and Soul nebular, both of which have been heavily explored, including myself and cmd Poseidal. Given Drew’s comment we have excluded searching in nebula’s.
Clue 2:
The novel mentions the stars thin out and you can see the whole galaxy just hanging there.
That would appear to indicate that we need to head away from the core rather than towards (you wouldn’t see the entire galaxy from the core)
Notes
Reorte and Riedquat are not exactly on the same plane, so given enough ly, the eventual destination could be above the galactic plain.- - not correct. Both are on Y:48.75 - thanks for correcting me
So the reference could be related to looking down on the galaxy from above. The reference also seems to indicate that its some considerable distance away.
Clue 3:
Drew has said that the inspiration for ‘Formidine’ comes from the Latin for fear, terror, dread etc.
Myself and cmd Poseidal have made our way beyond the Persus Arm (some 12k ly from Sol) and have been trying to cross an area where the stars thin out, ie a rift. It’s a difficult area to cross and captures the fear pretty nicely. You will experience dread when you hit 5 or 6 unscoopable stars in a row and watching you fuel tank drain.
The clues we have are pretty vague at best, but that’s why we love a mystery. Based on what clues we have, my guess is the rift is beyond the Perseus Arm and between the area known as the New Outer Arm. Why? because the direction matches up with clue 1. It’s far enough away that it matches clue 2, and as I mentioned, it’s pretty hairy trying to get across the rift which matches clue 3.
In the excellent community mapping post by cmd Erimus, also came to the same conclusion (see the
map)
Would FD put content so far away from the core systems where so few would be able to visit?
Arguments against
Very few players are going to make a 15k+ ly trip to visit the Thargoid home world.
With nowhere to dock it’s unrealistic get it to any space battles
There don’t appear to be any permit required systems out there (at least not discovered yet)
Arguments for
There is no reason why aliens would be living in our back yard. It’s more likely that they are far away
No one has said they have to be unfriendly, it may be possible to dock at a Thargoid station and do missions for them. (there is a Thargoid major faction in the program files)
From a story perspective it would make sense that an explorer stumbles upon an alien inhabited sector
What do I expect to find?
Good question. Currently we are looking for a needle in a field of billions of haystacks. To make matters worse, we don’t know what the needle looks like, or even if they needle is in the haystack yet. It's highly possible that we could have fully mapped the systems but the content hasn't been added.
David Braben has said that there is stuff in deep space. The recently unknown artifacts were not deep space objects in my opinion (they are found in cargo holds of ship convoys) so I still believe there is something out there waiting to be discovered. More likely an inhabited sector rather than a single planet in the haystack.
If you are hunting for the rift, feel free to add me (cmd Lestenio), I dare say cmd Poseidal who is a few hundred ly away from my location also trying to traverse what we think is the rift, would love to hear from you too.
