If you set up a tourist ship, don't put any cargo bays in there - that will let you ignore your passenger's demands for "home appliances" to "make the journey more comfortable" with a clean conscience.
I always ignore my passengers demands.
Passenger: I want clothes, I want domestic appliances, I want tasty biowaste!
Me: You'll get nothing and like it!
Unlocking the Engineers will expose the player to every role the game has to offer as well as provide the player with Rank, Reputation, Ship(s) and a decent stack of credits. In the end the player will have not only much more capable and competitive ships along with some valuable experience. Unlocking the Engineers could also help give the player ideas on how to best proceed further in the game. o7
If you set up a tourist ship, don't put any cargo bays in there - that will let you ignore your passenger's demands for "home appliances" to "make the journey more comfortable" with a clean conscience.
I always ignore my passengers demands.
Passenger: I want clothes, I want domestic appliances, I want tasty biowaste!
Me: You'll get nothing and like it!
Unlocking the Engineers will expose the player to every role the game has to offer as well as provide the player with Rank, Reputation, Ship(s) and a decent stack of credits. In the end the player will have not only much more capable and competitive ships along with some valuable experience. Unlocking the Engineers could also help give the player ideas on how to best proceed further in the game. o7
If you know the old Elite Original: I used to look up two systems and started to trade between them: Ra and Relaes. Relaes is not in the recent E universe (bummerly).
The bubble is too big to me. I have made good friends ingame and started to make a living up at the Colonia Bubble.
You can do Elite many ways. Probably creating a lore-story around your Commander helps either.
The Guardians are worth a trip. The FSD Booster and the Trident-Fighter. You will probably love them too.
If you know the old Elite Original: I used to look up two systems and started to trade between them: Ra and Relaes. Relaes is not in the recent E universe (bummerly).
The bubble is too big to me. I have made good friends ingame and started to make a living up at the Colonia Bubble.
You can do Elite many ways. Probably creating a lore-story around your Commander helps either.
The Guardians are worth a trip. The FSD Booster and the Trident-Fighter. You will probably love them too.
I do remember the old starting station Lave, but I can't recall names the of the systems that were close by ,it was a long time ago after all, haha, I do remember that you only had 8 light year jump range though. And yes, trading was fun.
As for creating a story, I just remade my commander as I regretted my first commanders name, so I've started all over, my name ingame is now "Old Rusty" a old space trucker
Aye, that is what I thought, Engineering is "end game" stuff from what little I know about it. I will look into it later, but it's not on my to do list right now.
One thing I would suggest you consider with regard to engineering in the early game is having a look at unlocking either Felicity Farseer in the Deciat system, or Elvira Martuuk in the Khun system. The reason is that they both provide frameshift drive upgrades which can significantly increase the range of your jumps, which is useful no matter what stage of the game you're at. As pretty as the hyperspace tunnel is, the novelty of looking at it does wear off quite quickly; even if you're just doing simple trade missions at the start of the game, a 50LY journey being reduced from four jumps to two means less time passively looking at the screen and more time actively playing the game.
Even the lower grades of FSD upgrade make a good difference to your range and it's an easy way to begin to get your head around engineering materials, where to find them, what to do with them and so on. That's relevant because there will come a point when you do want to get into engineering and realise just how many opportunities to pick up necessary materials you might have missed in your earlier gameplay because you didn't know what all that stuff was for
Engineering in a min/max was is definitely 'end game' stuff, you can spend an awful lot of time on it, but there's a significant quality of life boost from basic engineering and far from being something you need to be super-skilled to do, you can literally land on a planet and shoot a few meteorites, or scoop up the stuff that an npc drops when you blow him up, and have what you need to do grade one engineering.
As others have said though, the most important thing is to have fun. I think they way you're going about it is a good one - small steps and let your gameplay be driven by what you want to do, not what you think you should be doing.
I will look at Engineering sooner or later, yes extra jump range is cool, but right now I feel I have so much to learn about the basics, the game is huge and I have all the time in the world to explore it, I love it so far
Welcome back to ELITE, Cmdr. There's a lot of good advice here. Be sure to do what is fun! I'm in the same boat as you; I played the original back in the day, then life got in the way - about 3 decade's worth. I just returned this past May. What a difference!
I felt a distinct pull to return to the systems known in Elite, so I visited Lave, Diso, Reorte, etc, etc. That was cool although
many of those systems don't have very vibrant markets (imo).
There's so much to do in ED! I didn't really feel the need to have a 'home' system; ships don't get lonely if you leave them. The advice to visit Li Yong Rui's systems to purchase is a good one. You'll spend quite a lot less at those on the same gear.
I also felt little urgency to start engineering, just because I just didn't feel the pull. I have since begun to dabble.
I had a ton of fun when I purchased my Cobra Mk-III; that's a fun little ship and a wonderful upgrade from the sidewinder. I very strongly got that feeling: why did I wait so long?!
All this time Cmdrs, and I'm still on just my 2nd purchased ship. Talk about taking your time!
Get out there, do stuff that catches YOUR attention, and discover. When I first dropped into a system with a neuron star (no planning ahead whatsoever mind you)... Wow, it's hard to describe that feeling! I envy you that opportunity!
Welcome back to ELITE, Cmdr. There's a lot of good advice here. Be sure to do what is fun! I'm in the same boat as you; I played the original back in the day, then life got in the way - about 3 decade's worth. I just returned this past May. What a difference!
I felt a distinct pull to return to the systems known in Elite, so I visited Lave, Diso, Reorte, etc, etc. That was cool although
many of those systems don't have very vibrant markets (imo).
There's so much to do in ED! I didn't really feel the need to have a 'home' system; ships don't get lonely if you leave them. The advice to visit Li Yong Rui's systems to purchase is a good one. You'll spend quite a lot less at those on the same gear.
I also felt little urgency to start engineering, just because I just didn't feel the pull. I have since begun to dabble.
I had a ton of fun when I purchased my Cobra Mk-III; that's a fun little ship and a wonderful upgrade from the sidewinder. I very strongly got that feeling: why did I wait so long?!
All this time Cmdrs, and I'm still on just my 2nd purchased ship. Talk about taking your time!
Get out there, do stuff that catches YOUR attention, and discover. When I first dropped into a system with a neuron star (no planning ahead whatsoever mind you)... Wow, it's hard to describe that feeling! I envy you that opportunity!
Thank you, nice to see another old timer I have just made it to Diaguandri, Ray Gateway station. Some 20 jumps, felt like like 1000! Whew, I was so nervous haha.
ED continues the tradition in Elite games for having a game universe that's far, far larger than it really "needs" to be. Original Elite could have made do with just a couple dozen stars; they didn't "need" eight 256-star "galaxies" to play in. The sequel, Frontier:Elite II could have made do with just a couple thousand star systems, they didn't "need" an entire 4 billion star galaxy. Likewise, ED would have worked perfectly fine for most non-explorer players with maybe 10,000 star systems - instead, they created an entire 1:1 scale replica of the Milky Way's 400 billion star systems.
In short, try not to be overwhelmed with the scale of the galaxy. Just find a part of the galaxy you can call home, short-term or long-term, and make do with that. Or you could choose to go a-wandering throughout the galaxy, if you prefer; just be aware that you will never "finish" exploring it all.
You may at some point hear some advice on how to quickly max out your ship, 100 million credits per hour earnings, get to Elite and an Anaconda in a day, that sort of thing. While you're entirely welcome to follow such advice, personally, I wouldn't recommend doing those things, as the game wasn't really designed to be burned through in that way. You will probably get more long-term enjoyment out of the slower progression through the ships, learning the quirks of each one.
I would, however, second the advice given by others above, to do some engineering. You are given introductions to some Engineers right from the start of the game, including one (Felicity Farseer) who can really soup up your FSD to give a significant boost to jump range - which really does help in getting about the galaxy, especially if you like flying ships with awful baseline jump ranges.
Just be aware, the gankers and PKers know all about this particular advice-to-newbies too; they know that the intro Engineers, especially Farseer, are magnets for newbies who are flying small, weak, non-Engineered ships and probably flying in Open because they don't know any better. So if you choose to fly in Open, you will quite likely be attacked, for no reason other than "you exist", if you visit Deciat. Most people don't actually enjoy getting blown up for no reason, so to avoid that, consider switching to Solo before arriving in Deciat.
ED continues the tradition in Elite games for having a game universe that's far, far larger than it really "needs" to be. Original Elite could have made do with just a couple dozen stars; they didn't "need" eight 256-star "galaxies" to play in. The sequel, Frontier:Elite II could have made do with just a couple thousand star systems, they didn't "need" an entire 4 billion star galaxy. Likewise, ED would have worked perfectly fine for most non-explorer players with maybe 10,000 star systems - instead, they created an entire 1:1 scale replica of the Milky Way's 400 billion star systems.
My mind was blown when I zoomed out to see absolute size of the map. I knew from experience that Elite had big galaxy maps, but good lord I was not prepared for this.
In short, try not to be overwhelmed with the scale of the galaxy. Just find a part of the galaxy you can call home, short-term or long-term, and make do with that. Or you could choose to go a-wandering throughout the galaxy, if you prefer; just be aware that you will never "finish" exploring it all.
You may at some point hear some advice on how to quickly max out your ship, 100 million credits per hour earnings, get to Elite and an Anaconda in a day, that sort of thing. While you're entirely welcome to follow such advice, personally, I wouldn't recommend doing those things, as the game wasn't really designed to be burned through in that way. You will probably get more long-term enjoyment out of the slower progression through the ships, learning the quirks of each one.
Funny you should mention that, when I was searching for some newbie video guides on YouTube, I came across so many, get rich quick doing void opal mining, or dual-painte mining.
And it kinda annoyed me, as I was just looking for getting started learning the basics of flight control, sure it will come handy down the road for when I want to get some easy credits.
Right now I do not "need" a Anaconda, I'm quite happy with my baby Cobra Mark III
I would, however, second the advice given by others above, to do some engineering. You are given introductions to some Engineers right from the start of the game, including one (Felicity Farseer) who can really soup up your FSD to give a significant boost to jump range - which really does help in getting about the galaxy, especially if you like flying ships with awful baseline jump ranges.
Yes the game sent me a mail from a npc named Tod Mc..something, can't remember his full name, but I have his system bookmarked.
For now I want to do some missions for credits, so I can upgrade my Mark III, fuel scooping with a class 1F was not fun, lol
Just be aware, the gankers and PKers know all about this particular advice-to-newbies too; they know that the intro Engineers, especially Farseer, are magnets for newbies who are flying small, weak, non-Engineered ships and probably flying in Open because they don't know any better. So if you choose to fly in Open, you will quite likely be attacked, for no reason other than "you exist", if you visit Deciat. Most people don't actually enjoy getting blown up for no reason, so to avoid that, consider switching to Solo before arriving in Deciat.
Ah yes griefers, I've played a lot of mmo's over the years, started back in 99. The first generation of mmo's had full looting, meaning when someone killed you, they could loot all your weapons and armor, so it's no big deal here in Elite. And I am awhere you can jump back and forth between open and solo play, if you get harassed by someone.
But it makes me so happy how welcoming you all have been, all the advice and general kindness you have shown me. It makes me proud to be part of this community ❤
Welcome back commander. I've spent many hours trading in Elite Dangerous just as I did on the BBC micro. With the addition of trade missions and inara.cz. Worked my way to 60 MCr before I got into mining. There is no hurry. Establishing a home system is useful to build rep for better rewards and inara will tell you the best routes associated with that system. Look for a system that can generate about 5000 Cr per unit on return trips to fill any remaining space on missions.
Welcome back commander. I've spent many hours trading in Elite Dangerous just as I did on the BBC micro. With the addition of trade missions and inara.cz. Worked my way to 60 MCr before I got into mining. There is no hurry. Establishing a home system is useful to build rep for better rewards and inara will tell you the best routes associated with that system. Look for a system that can generate about 5000 Cr per unit on return trips to fill any remaining space on missions.
Yet another Elite veteran o7. I played on a Commodore 64, good times.
As for mining, I don't think it's viable in my Mark III. I've done mostly mission. Now some may think it's boring, but I find it rather relaxing, and I've yet to lose a interdiction, but those pesky pirates sure do like to try, lol.
Many good tips were already given, I'll add "take your time, and enjoy the journey". If you don't like a certain activity, don't do it - few are really necessary except for the odd engineer unlock. The game has lots to offer, think about who your CMDR is, if you have any roleplaying reasons to do or not do certain things (I don't trade slaves for examples - weapons are fine though), if you want to have company (many great squadrons out there, take your time to find one, or use chance meeting ingame) or prefer solitude.
Be careful around hollow triangles, but don't be afraid. Most CMDRs are ok, some are helpful, a few altruistic, a few might like your specific cargo, a few the way your ship explodes. If a player pirate asks for cargo, play along. Both of you will have a better experience.
Many good tips were already given, I'll add "take your time, and enjoy the journey". If you don't like a certain activity, don't do it - few are really necessary except for the odd engineer unlock. The game has lots to offer, think about who your CMDR is, if you have any roleplaying reasons to do or not do certain things (I don't trade slaves for examples - weapons are fine though), if you want to have company (many great squadrons out there, take your time to find one, or use chance meeting ingame) or prefer solitude.
Be careful around hollow triangles, but don't be afraid. Most CMDRs are ok, some are helpful, a few altruistic, a few might like your specific cargo, a few the way your ship explodes. If a player pirate asks for cargo, play along. Both of you will have a better experience.
I will look at Engineering sooner or later, yes extra jump range is cool, but right now I feel I have so much to learn about the basics, the game is huge and I have all the time in the world to explore it, I love it so far
When overwhelmed, why not look down instead of up? Could you have fun exploring one landable planet, flying all around it, naming its craters and mountain peaks, landing and exploring some of them, understanding everything in the info panel about it, doing a detailed surface scan? Could you write up a report and post it on the forums so the planet is forever known as Old Rusty Planet?
Some people even enjoy themselves attempting to circumnavigate planets in an SRV.
To me that sounds somewhat masochistic, but hey, that's the magic of E: D - do what you want to do!
