Newcomer / Intro Help me p[lay without "cheating"

So I play ED a fair amount, and I'm trying to do so without "cheating" (e.g. without resorting to the various online utilities)
I'm currently exploring Guardian sites - which I can do via the Galaxy Map filtering for Guardian locations.
But I confess I had to google what I was supposed to do once I found all 6 pylons (drop an ancient relic).
Q1. How in the name of Jameson was I ever meant to work that out myself!?
So now I"m on another Guardian site, activated the Pylons, dropped the relic and ... nothing.
I confess to googling again after the 143rd attempt!
And I find that I need to drop a key.
What the absolute &*^T()! ?
I have never heard of a key, haven't seen a key, there's nothing I can find in game about a key.
Q2. How in the name of Jameson am I meant to work this stuff out for myself?

Am I missing something? I mean, surely Frontier don't expect players to google for help about this stuff?
It took hours to work out what the symbols were on the obelisks, and then load up with them and scan successfully - and that was with the help of the "Decoding the Ancient Ruins" mission giving hints!

Am I just meant to pass this by until I somehow find the information in a mission?

I just don't get it?

Does everyone else simply 'cheat'?

And, if so, how in the name of Braben did the first player find this stuff out? Or was it leaked by Frontier?
 
Elite is pretty notorious for not providing information in-game and letting the spaders figure it out and put the solution on a wiki.

That or they'll introduce something with a galnet article as the clue to go somewhere, then once that article has vanished off the galnet feed, they won't bother putting it in the codex or providing any kind of narrative missions.

Honestly I can't see why they can't do something like have a mission board at some relevant engineer bases to provide some one-time scripted missions that amount to little more than telling you how to do a thing. You know, like the "source a ton of fish" newbie mission in eravate that was put in before the newbie zones. Have Ram Tah send you to the guardian beacon and activate it. That's it, that's the mission. You don't need any more since the guardian beacon, once you activate it, gives you the coordinates to a surface site that takes the key already.

Likewise, if you dock at Farseer's after getting the invite and haven't got her the meta-alloy, put a thing on the mission board there which tells you where to obtain a meta-alloy from and gets completed when you obtain one.
 
Try things, see what happens, try some other things, with judicious application of thinking.

Its easier with lots of people trying things and having ideas, but it is how it was done. It wasn't actually a vast number of people, 6 or so AFAIK, and it didn't take long. As normal, I went to bed to 'oh look what someone has Found', and woke to the completed solution.

+This is the 2nd guardian mission, the first one took lots of players many days to work out full map of all sites and all obolisk combinations, partially because it was bugged+
 
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Elite is pretty notorious for not providing information in-game and letting the spaders figure it out and put the solution on a wiki.

That or they'll introduce something with a galnet article as the clue to go somewhere, then once that article has vanished off the galnet feed, they won't bother putting it in the codex or providing any kind of narrative missions.

Honestly I can't see why they can't do something like have a mission board at some relevant engineer bases to provide some one-time scripted missions that amount to little more than telling you how to do a thing. You know, like the "source a ton of fish" newbie mission in eravate that was put in before the newbie zones. Have Ram Tah send you to the guardian beacon and activate it. That's it, that's the mission. You don't need any more since the guardian beacon, once you activate it, gives you the coordinates to a surface site that takes the key already.

Likewise, if you dock at Farseer's after getting the invite and haven't got her the meta-alloy, put a thing on the mission board there which tells you where to obtain a meta-alloy from and gets completed when you obtain one.
I love your ideas - they would make my life much more enjoyable!
I guess my immediate problem is that it is possible to find a guardian site that requires a key - with absolutely no clue at all that a) that's what you need or b) how to get one. And I'm in the Ram Tah mission, so at least he could say "Hmm? looks like you need some sort of Key to unlock that! I've heard rumour of keys being obtained from <location>" at least a clue!?
 
It's not cheating.
It was always Frontier's intention to form a community to share things and give out advice to others.
That's why in quoted the word "cheating".
the problem is in the limitations such a community impose. Spoilers abound, and it is genuinely hard not to just be given too much information. I think sometimes that's why folk complain of the 'grind' - it is a grind sometimes - but more so if you're just following someone's step by step tutorial rather than having the pleasure of discovery/.
 
Try things, see what happens, try some other things, with judicious application of thinking.

Its easier with lots of people trying things and having ideas, but it is how it was done. It wasn't actually a vast number of people, 6 or so AFAIK, and it didn't take long. As normal, I went to bed to 'oh look what someone has Found', and woke to the completed solution.

+This is the 2nd guardian mission, the first one took lots of players many days to work out full map of all sites and all obelisk combinations, partially because it was bugged+
Yeah - the thing is I want to work it out, to have the pleasure of discovery etc. Where's the fun in having someone else discover the location of all the pillars, then just follow around grabbing all the info? It's like infinite lives and invulnerability in Space Invaders!!
 
Try things, see what happens, try some other things, with judicious application of thinking.

There is literally no way on Earth (or beyond) that doing that would ever lead me to finding a guardian key - without this apparent 2nd mission - that I haven't been given yet.

So, as a player, I am in a puzzle situation where there is literally no discoverable solution!

I mean - for all I know, I might need to have my ship temperature above 100 degrees, have sardines in my cargo, have recently visited a white dwarf - a billion billion possibilities with no clues.

I imagine that the second mission will give some clue, once you have the key, as to where to go and so there's a hint - but I've discovered the destination before the source and so, because I had to google, the excitement of getting a guardian key is diminished.
 
Yeah - the thing is I want to work it out, to have the pleasure of discovery etc. Where's the fun in having someone else discover the location of all the pillars, then just follow around grabbing all the info? It's like infinite lives and invulnerability in Space Invaders!!
The games clock moves continuously so clues that led to these discoveries aren’t showing up as new things anymore.

If you want to work it out for yourself don’t look at the external sources but it will be much harder in some ways than it was.
 
Guardian beacon sites are mentioned in the codex but as mentioned it doesn't give you much beyond that.It's almost nigh impossible to complete the set narrative without resort in some form to 'external sources'.(lore books etc.)Asking here was a smart move.Treat it as the local watering hole for tips and rumour,or just ask questions.And there's a search function which may help.
 
I guess my immediate problem is that it is possible to find a guardian site that requires a key - with absolutely no clue at all that a) that's what you need or b) how to get one.
No - you're absolutely correct I'm afraid. If you happen to spot the Guardian Beacon first then scanning its core will give you a message which leads you to a corresponding Guardian planetary site that needs a key, but, if you happen upon things the other way around, landing at a site that needs a key rather than a relic, you have absolutely zero chance of figuring out what to do without consulting the internet. Some aspects of Elite (galaxy sim, sound, flight model, etc) are worldclass - others are face palmingly poor I'm sad to say
 
So I play ED a fair amount, and I'm trying to do so without "cheating" (e.g. without resorting to the various online utilities)
........
.......

So in short, you want to role play a character that stumbles around a galaxy without communicating with other people? ;)

Surely you must be able to imagine that in the future people will share information - just because the communication tools are outside the game doesn't invalidate their use. There is no shame in you utilising the results of research by Canonn Research Group for example - it certainly isn't in any way "cheating". Even Newton said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
 
So I play ED a fair amount, and I'm trying to do so without "cheating" (e.g. without resorting to the various online utilities)
I'm currently exploring Guardian sites - which I can do via the Galaxy Map filtering for Guardian locations.
But I confess I had to google what I was supposed to do once I found all 6 pylons (drop an ancient relic).
Q1. How in the name of Jameson was I ever meant to work that out myself!?
So now I"m on another Guardian site, activated the Pylons, dropped the relic and ... nothing.
I confess to googling again after the 143rd attempt!
And I find that I need to drop a key.
What the absolute &*^T()! ?
I have never heard of a key, haven't seen a key, there's nothing I can find in game about a key.
Q2. How in the name of Jameson am I meant to work this stuff out for myself?

Am I missing something? I mean, surely Frontier don't expect players to google for help about this stuff?
It took hours to work out what the symbols were on the obelisks, and then load up with them and scan successfully - and that was with the help of the "Decoding the Ancient Ruins" mission giving hints!

Am I just meant to pass this by until I somehow find the information in a mission?

I just don't get it?

Does everyone else simply 'cheat'?

And, if so, how in the name of Braben did the first player find this stuff out? Or was it leaked by Frontier?
Hey cmdr,

Large response incoming with lots of info.

First though, let me say I like your attitude in trying to do all this stuff for yourself! (y) I try and take a similar approach with a lot of stuff. But not all - and why's important...

So what needs to be recognised first of all is that it is not a single player game, and that some aspects of the game are tied to player actions on a mass scale.

When it comes to puzzles and mystery stuff, there is a suite of stuff with different difficulties, ranging from 'easy for an individual player to do on their own' through to 'extremely difficult even with large numbers of the community involved'.

What FD have also done is take things on the latter end of that scale, and once they've been solved by the community, make changes so that they're more towards the 'can be done by an individual player' end. It's actually a very good way of handling things, but like most things in reality isn't perfect for everyone.

Anyway, that's more of a bigger picture view to set the scene.

For specific questions:

Q1. How in the name of Jameson was I ever meant to work that out myself!?
This is probably going to sound a harsh response, but... the same way other people did.

Not sure how you're approaching it, but when those type of sites were first found, we were just exploring them and seeing what happened. Investigating the sites to see what happened and what was there to find was the intent. Not sure if you're doing similar, but it's worth making the distinction as some people just go to the sites with the intent of getting things needed to unlock modules for their ships.

Personally, I didn't look at the forums until I'd worked it out for myself, and others will have done similar. It is worth noting though that that was individual choice and that lots of people were at the sites looking at the time, so the option of taking a collaborative approach was there if wanted at the time. As soon as people had figured it out, they were posting how to do it. So in this respect, googling the result isn't really cheating, it's just a way of making up for the fact that at the point in time you're doing it, the option of collaborating with other players on it isn't there.

(Also, for info, the difficulty of that particular puzzle hasn't been changed and I'd say that IMHO it's about right overall.)

I have never heard of a key, haven't seen a key, there's nothing I can find in game about a key.
Q2. How in the name of Jameson am I meant to work this stuff out for myself?
This is a more difficult one, and yeah, I can imagine the annoyance.

What's happened here is due to the fact the galaxy moves in real time.

The sites which need keys were all found quite a while after the other sites, and that followed the discovery of the space based Beacons from which the keys are obtained, and which say which planets their respective surface sites are on.

So when that stuff was first found it was pretty easy to work out to use the key. Unfortunately the links are kind of one way so it's not obvious if you find the surface site first.

Again though, bear in mind that there will have been a large collaborative effort at the time, so googling isn't really cheating, it's jut availing yourself of the previous collaborative efforts. Kind of the equivalent of looking up previous papers on subjects prior to (or as part of) doing your own research.

Am I missing something? I mean, surely Frontier don't expect players to google for help about this stuff?
Hopefully I've kind of already explained this one above, but it comes down to the multi-player nature of the game, the fact the galaxy (and events/discoveries) progresses in real time, and things being on a spectrum from 'easy for an individual' to 'extremely difficult as a collaborative effort'.

With that in mind, a bit of info on this:

It took hours to work out what the symbols were on the obelisks, and then load up with them and scan successfully - and that was with the help of the "Decoding the Ancient Ruins" mission giving hints!
This is actually something that has been shifted more towards the left hand side of the spectrum.

The obelisks didn't originally show the symbols for the required artefacts. They were just showing a changing pattern. A lot of work went into trying to decipher that pattern, but ultimately to no avail. It was changed to show the symbols in 3.0.

Also with reference to:

I'm currently exploring Guardian sites - which I can do via the Galaxy Map filtering for Guardian locations.
The 'Civilisation' galmap functionality was also only introduced in 3.0.

Quick note on the Galmap Civilisation functionality - it doesn't show every system with Guardian sites, or at least didn't the last time I checked. (don't ask me why).

Another change was made in 3.0 to make something else more obvious too. No one really seems to have seen that one though. (Well 'seen' is very much the wrong word ;) but you get what I mean.)


Does everyone else simply 'cheat'?
No.

With the exception of the Pylon puzzle which many just did for themselves, it was all done via collaboration of players in large numbers.

Here's the broad strokes history of what happened through to 2.3.

(Taken from the Guardians Discussions/Canonn Thread, but written by me in the first place, so no credits needed.)

1) Guardians content came as part of release 2.2

2) The first site was found via triangulation from a trailer video – there are two key point from this:
a) It was a great piece of work.
b) Consequently FD’s plan for how we would find the ruins was completely skipped and we never found out how we were supposed to find them in game.​

3) Lots of work and investigation was done into the first site. Most of these areas of investigation are still open.

4) A CG ran with players scanning the obelisks to collect ancient data types (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon)

5) With release 2.2.03, the first site was changed to a revised model and the Ram Tah mission was released.

6) It was found that the Ram Tah mission couldn’t be completed at the first site and the focus went to finding more sites.

7) Several Galnet articles provided locations for other sites.

8) A further site was discovered via triangulation from a trailer and enabled the mission to be completed in Open – this was as a result of a bug in open mode which gave extra scan data then should have been accessible at the sites.

9) With the first completion of the Ram Tah mission the sites become visible on scanners when within 1,000ly, and more sites were discovered.

10) With release 2.3 changes were made to the active obelisks and available data at the sites and the cannon have been working to map these out as they are in 2.3.

Key things to add to the above.

Prior to 9. the Guardian sites didn't show up on scanners, so had to be found via searching of planets.

After the first site was found, no more sites were found for a long time. It wasn't known what the site actually was for quite a while, and there being more wasn't evident until it after the Decoding the Ancient Ruins mission was released. Even when it was known there were more sites out there, none were found until Galnet articles gave specific systems to search.

Once the Decoding the Ancient Ruins mission was completed for the first time (again this was by a massive collaborative effort over quite some time), the scanners were upgraded to be able to detect the sites, and finding them became much easier.

Essentially what happened in terms of the puzzle/mystery side of things in 3.0 is then:

  • Decoding the Ancient Ruins was moved to the left of the spectrum via changes mentioned above
  • A new harder mission was added at the collaborative end of the spectrum - the Decrypting the Guardian Logs mission (though still much easier than the Decoding the Ancient Ruins mission in its original form.)
  • Something was made more noticeable
  • A new puzzle (the pylon puzzle) was added towards the left of the spectrum

3.2 then added the Beacons and key sites (with the, I assume, unintended side effect of throwing in some confusion if its not known if a site is a Relic site or a Key site.) The Beacons have their own stuff going on, but I think only a few people have looked into that stuff in detail.

3.3 then added the FSS, which made a whole load of stuff more accessible to everyone (things which had previously required full Mk I eyeball searches of planets to find, for example.). The Codex discoveries section also brought a lot of stuff into the game which had previously been limited to a small number of forum threads and a few other places, and made it accessible to everyone. The Codex Knowledge Base also did similar for a lot of general info, plus added some which was completely new for everyone.


Anyway, lots of info there.

You can find a lot more info on Guardians stuff on the Guardian Discussion sticky thread here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/guardians-discussions.380519/

It does need a bit of an update to the first couple of posts, as a couple of items from 'Open areas of investigation' have been resolved, but most of it is still accurate.
 
So I play ED a fair amount, and I'm trying to do so without "cheating" (e.g. without resorting to the various online utilities)
I'm currently exploring Guardian sites - which I can do via the Galaxy Map filtering for Guardian locations.
But I confess I had to google what I was supposed to do once I found all 6 pylons (drop an ancient relic).
Q1. How in the name of Jameson was I ever meant to work that out myself!?
So now I"m on another Guardian site, activated the Pylons, dropped the relic and ... nothing.
I confess to googling again after the 143rd attempt!
And I find that I need to drop a key.
What the absolute &*^T()! ?
I have never heard of a key, haven't seen a key, there's nothing I can find in game about a key.
Q2. How in the name of Jameson am I meant to work this stuff out for myself?

Am I missing something? I mean, surely Frontier don't expect players to google for help about this stuff?
It took hours to work out what the symbols were on the obelisks, and then load up with them and scan successfully - and that was with the help of the "Decoding the Ancient Ruins" mission giving hints!

Am I just meant to pass this by until I somehow find the information in a mission?

I just don't get it?

Does everyone else simply 'cheat'?

And, if so, how in the name of Braben did the first player find this stuff out? Or was it leaked by Frontier?
It's no more cheating than googling something you don't know in real life. consider the immersion to be, as a space Commander you used the internet to find something out
 
There is literally no way on Earth (or beyond) that doing that would ever lead me to finding a guardian key - without this apparent 2nd mission - that I haven't been given yet.

So, as a player, I am in a puzzle situation where there is literally no discoverable solution!

I mean - for all I know, I might need to have my ship temperature above 100 degrees, have sardines in my cargo, have recently visited a white dwarf - a billion billion possibilities with no clues.

I imagine that the second mission will give some clue, once you have the key, as to where to go and so there's a hint - but I've discovered the destination before the source and so, because I had to google, the excitement of getting a guardian key is diminished.
There isn't a mission for the Beacons and key sites.

It's just this Galnet article: https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet/uid/5b85650c7833577a59438189

You could try and follow that, but bear in mind that the Galnet article would have resulted in a community effort with large numbers of people whereas following it now, it'd just be you on your own.

Good luck regardless! o7
 
What's the difference between asking on the forum, using Google or using third party apps? Answer: No difference, so help yourself. The chance of you figuring out how to play the game without using these resources is pretty close to zero.

They tell me that if you take an infinite number of monkeys, give them each a typewriter and an infinite amount of time, one or more will randomly type the entire works of Shakespeare, another will type War and Peace, and one will type out a complete explanation of the optimal way to the play the game.
 
I actually like that the game makes us work together to figure stuff out. There's no "start" or "end" to any of the story, or to our individual stories. It just keeps going on, with or without us. If you weren't here when "we" were all figuring this stuff out, then yeah, you missed it. But it was fun to figure it out at the time.

Personally, I did manage to figure a couple things out by myself, but a lot of it was figured out by others and we discussed it here in the forums and other places, and slowly pieced the thing together.

I would not want to change it in favor of some sort of forced player story or quests or whatever. ED is not that kind of game. We have enough of those types of games, anyway.

Anyway, there's no cheating going on here. It just collaboration, based on the info we have at the time. And then time moves on, and all that new info becomes history.

My only advice is: "Don't take a break from the game, you'll miss stuff!" lol.

Or better, just understand that the galaxy will move on, with or without you.
 
To each his own and all, but if it weren't for sites like Inara, Coriolis and EDDB I wouldn't be playing. Essential stuff. I'm all for role-playing, and house rules and self-imposed restrictions. But Elite needs some companions. Should it be that way? Probably not. But it is.

I never would have found Dav's Hope, or Guardian sites or countless other things, or have known what to do, without third party sites and friends to take me along and show me the ropes.
 
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