Alright bud.
It’s a bit mixed. Roseum Braintrees could be found easily prior to 3.3 if in the right area.
If you’re in an eligible area, you need to look for bodies with vulcansim, and a temperature between 200K and 500K, and with ejecta craters. If you fly to the middle of any of the ejecta craters you’ll be able to find Roseum Braintrees.
There’s nothing to tell in advance whether an area is a Braintree area - you need to check bodies to find out.
If you find a Roseum Braintree area then it will also have other types of Braintrees. Check the Codex for the criteria for the bodies they’ll appear on.
The other types of Braintree will be harder to find though as they don’t appear in a clearly defined place like the Roseum ones do.
Your best search method for the other types of Braintree (and all other types of biological and geological) is glide searching.
To glide search, start in orbital cruise, pick a line to search along, drop into glide and glide as steeply as you can until you see the altimeter suddenly jump. Once that happens, level out as much as possible (around 10 degrees usually) and glide for as long as possible. You’ll be travelling at 2500 m/s and so long as you’ve got a decent graphics card, you should be able to spot any geological or biologicals that you pass over on the POI scanner - you’re generally looking for a tiny POI indicator, but it can sometimes be a medium or large one which then shrinks to a tiny one, depending on the type of POI and the type of body. At the end of the glide you’ll need to go back to OC and start again. You’ll need to go past 90 degrees and head back slightly along your route when heading back to OC so that when you reach the level point of the glide you’re picking up where your last glide finished.
For Biologicals other than Braintrees, take a look at the criteria for them in the Codex. Just be aware that there’s a bit more to it than is expressed in the Codex, for example Bark Mounds appear in Nebulae, but they don’t appear in every Nebula - however if they’re in a particular Nebula then they’ll be in every eligible body therein.
A few additional notes / caveats:
- I never had any success with the glide method personally, but others had plenty. As far as I was able to determine this was primarily due to relative graphics card capabilities. (I’ve only got onboard Intel HD 520 graphics, so I’d imagine you’ll be ok on this front.)
- AFAIK everything under biological and geological in the Codex will appear on the ship’s POI scanner / radar, but I haven’t been to every single type so can’t guarantee it 100%
- I’m pretty sure Barnacles don’t show on the ship’s POI scanner / radar (please correct me if I’m wrong on this one
@PanPiper. )
- If you find Braintrees then you’ve also probably found a Guardian area (the relationship isn’t completely proven but it’s how it appears to be). Guardian sites should appear on your NavPanel and HUD so there shouldn’t be any issues for you in spotting them.
- There might always be things that aren’t in the codex. It’s not hugely likely but equally there might be a few exceedingly rare things out there. I can’t suggest anything on that front other than searching planet by planet but it’s worth bearing in mind that the Sinuous Tubers were in from 2.2 but weren’t found until the 3.3 beta, so things can be very hard to find using pre 3.3 methods (arguably more of an achievement that way though!
)
Hope that all helps mate, and I’ll add links to a few relevant guides when I’m not on mobile. o7
Edit - might have misread it as you wanting to do it without mapping whatsoever. Obviously it’s all a lot easier if you’re happy to do mapping of candidate bodies rather than having to use glide searching.
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