How did people find out about Meta Alloys?

At the beginning there was something called GalNet. A place where articles about things happening in the universe appeared.

basically, Fdev dropped clues there, people went, looked and found things.

Ahhh GalNet... 'All Galaxy, All Net.... All gone'.

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It is my recollection that "meta alloys" were first "discovered" in-game by somebody noticing them included in a certain station's commodity list. This was just after Horizons released, back before there was an Engineer that requested meta-alloys and before stations had separate "buy" and "Sell" lists; all commodities a station was interested in, to buy or to sell, were listed on the same screen. The item description stated that meta alloys were findable at "large barnacles", but gave no hint as to where or how such "large barnacles" could be found, nor why that particular station had them on the commodity list while other stations did not.

The barnacles, and the subsequent obtainment of meta-alloys, were eventually found by cmdrs who were investigating the "unknown artifact" mystery. Spoilerized, in case you are sufficiently masochistic to attempt to solve the puzzle all by yourself, when it took a team of hundreds of CMDRs several months to solve it.

Unknown artifacts (now called "Thargoid sensors", as they are no longer "unknown"), when found floating in space, always pointed towards a certain star. Go to that star, and an unknown artifact released there pointed to a certain planet, then a certain moon of that planet. Lots of people, naturally, then scoured that moon, looking for anything out of the ordinary. This was before anything that showed up surface POIs from orbit; the "scouring" had to be done manually, by eye, by flying randomly about. Eventually, someone found it.

As you can see, it wasn't really a puzzle designed or intended for a single player to be able to solve.
 
Smile... If you like discovering things yourself, you'll be testing everything that exists in ED! Nothing is properly explained in game. All you'll get is very incomplete info at best. Even the module descriptions are incomplete, deliberately leaving out key facts about hidden functions, features and game mechanics. You'll find it a frustrating journey without asking for help sooner or later. I admire your desire to find out yourself - but I also pity you because I know how painful that is going to be for you!
 

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Hmm... the first "Barnacle" GALnet entry, I remember that.

It read like "Most Explorers have already seen many of these" - all while the entire Exploration Community was like "Barn..... who ?! what ??! WTH are these guys talking about ? Is that fake news or really a thing?" .

At least this time around, it pointed to something in-game... if only its sheer existence.

Then the discovery by Streamers running DB bobbleheads and moving around in an extremely inefficient way (one CMDR in slow SRV and rough terrain, another idling in a Ship nearby)... yeah, that looked totally legit lol
 
I only found out where meta alloys were last week.

I looked on google, found a video and the adventure getting them was awesome!

I've also been reading the "unique ruins" posts on another thread and book marked some places mentioned. I have no idea what everyone was talking about in that thread but I intend to go there and see something different!
 
Ah, the wonders of beige patroling planets for hours on end just on the basis of some guesstimated parameters back in the days. I don't think I ever found something I didn't have the coordinates of. And even then I missed the mark in two of three cases XD
 
Hi there - newcomer here.
This isn't a question about Meta Alloys itself, it's more of a question about how people found out where to get them??
I don't like spoilers and I don't like having to look up answers. I much prefer help on how people found out things for themselves.
Everywhere I look - people just say 'go to the XXX system' but someone somewhere must have first found this out?!
This could give me more insight into how the game works and how you can search for things that you have no idea about!

Thanks!
A lot of the mysteries in this game were mentioned in the galnet news feed from the various stations.
I'm not sure if these still exist but if they are, they're worth taking a look at if you're interested in looking for interesting things without outside help.
 
Great thanks. I might try and 'forget' where those alloys are and try and find them. I take great pleasure in playing a game without any help at all, but I was beginning to feel like I HAD to look it up. Not so! Thanks everyone.
Cmdr im sorry to say you will lose interest in this game rapidly if you refuse to use the tools provided by the ed community. Before eddb it felt like luck would be the only way to find anything. The people that made all these third party sites and youtube how-to's put in a lot of effort to keep people from feeling like they are floating in space lost in a galaxy that doesnt want you to find anything. You shouldnt write them out of the equation in such a way. In real life everything is done in some third party way. You went to school? You have an employer? Those are third parties in a way. Truck drivers use websites to find loads to haul from city/state a to city/state b using third party websites irl.

To me the connectivity of the community and the vast amount of research/reference tools make it all more immersive personally
 
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Also, good luck with any guardian or thargoid stuff with out a third party in some way. The codex might tell you where to find them but theres a whole bunch of hoops to jump through and none of it is obvious.

I remember the first 5 times i tried to fight a goid. I didnt know i needed special weapons, the game didnt tell me in anyway that was obvious and im still pretty sure it doesnt.

I give him a month before we see a rage quit thread or he starts using eddb and inara like the rest of us civilized swine
 
There's also another thing.
Few months ago there was Intersteallar Initiative centered around searching for new Thargoid Barnacle sites, because old ones were running dry.
Whole Galaxy seemed to be involved. All superpowers invested time and money to claim their share, players worked hard to help. It wasn't a mystery to be solved by a player, it was something everyone on civilized worlds could hear about. Everybody who played then knows where new barnacle farms are.
If new players joins today, can he learn anything about that from the game, without looking through old articles stored on internet site? Let's not forget they might just not realise that those archives even exist.
I don't think it's game design to force new players to rediscover those things. It's rather an ommision in design.
 
I'm willing to bet many people have no idea about existence of such thing.
I know that it took me a long while to accidentally discover that there could be something like "local" GalNet article in station menus.

They stopped doing that long before shelving GalNet :( On the one hand it was annoying as things could disappear before anyone saw them, on the other hand this automated "news" in stations are so... sterile.
 
My CMDR followed some random people to the Pleiades to shoot at them around the time of the Horizons launch and found an undiscovered barnacle with a Mk I eyeball.

Regarding GalNet...I'm not sure if they pulled the old stories, or they are just too old at this point. I seem to recall being able to scroll back through at least a year or two worth, but those are all gone, in-game.
 
I'm willing to bet many people have no idea about existence of such thing.
I know that it took me a long while to accidentally discover that there could be something like "local" GalNet article in station menus.
On top add that there was 1 article corrensponding to game activity vs. 10 fictional articles and players running out of things to do in game started running after clues for each of them.
Do you remember how many people looked for Gan Romero? 😅
 
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