It's been nearly a decade since I played and truthfully I didn't play a whole lot when I did so it would be safe to just treat me as brand new, especially with all the updates
Welcome back. This is a great time in ED.
There are some things you should/may not know about the game and the galaxy.
There are currently 3 major releases of Elite Dangerous:
- (December 2014) Elite Dangerous - The original release. Spaceships in the procedurally generated Milky Way galaxy where one can trade, fight and explore their way across 3 play modes (Open, Private Group and Solo).
- (June 2016) Elite Dangerous: Horizons - Paid DLC - Added planetary landings, a vehicle (SRV "Scarab") to drive around them on, Engineering for ship modules and some other stuff.
- (May 2021) Elite Dangerous: Odyssey - Paid DLC - Added thin atmosphere bodies and the ability to get out of ships and SRVs, walk/run/jump around, scan plants, shoot things, perfect your burglary skills, take settlements offline and some other stuff. Odyssey also upgraded the graphics and looks different than Horizons above.
NOTES:
- 1 and 2 above have been combined and are now what is currently called "Elite Dangerous".
- Odyssey will, in most cases, require, at minimum, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070/1080 equivalent GPU or better AND a decent processor with DDR4 memory to get a reasonable frame rate with ultra graphics settings. With Odyssey, the graphics engine was rebuilt from scratch and it needs some horsepower behind it.
- Odyssey has had, to date, 18 major updates, with U18.04 being the most recent release in May 2024
Somewhere along the line, so far, two alien races have been introduced a) the "Thargoids" with powerful bio-construct spaceships, the focus of the current Thargoid war in the human bubble, and b) the long dead and highly warlike "Guardians" whose technology we've begun unlocking to improve the technology in our ships and weapons.
In 2020, player Fleet Carriers were released which players can use as a mobile base for all of their ships/modules and which can also provide various "services" the same as/similar to those found in star ports and can also jump up to 500LY every 20 or more minutes, depending on galaxy wide fleet carrier jump activity. Fleet Carriers cost 5Bil CR and come with 25,000 units of cargo storage. Services cost additional CR and use cargo space. Each week an Upkeep cost is charged for carrier maintenance and admin of the installed services. With all services and a few jumps per week, the upkeep cost is slightly less than 36Mil CR
In November 2022, the galaxy was copied. There are now 2 Elite Dangerous Galaxies - Live and Legacy
- Legacy - This galaxy contains the shared game world for the combined 1 and 2 above on both PC, known as Elite Dangerous: Horizons v3.8, and consoles. Requires approximately 25GB of hard disk space. Nothing really changes in Legacy, its on life support, thought there are a large-ish number of players who still play it intentionally.
- Live - This galaxy contains the shared game world for the Elite Dangerous v4.0 series client and all continuing new content. It requires around 75GB of hard disk space and has 2 separate ways of loading the game:
- Live - Horizons - This is a version of the "Odyssey" game client which can be used by players who have NOT purchased Odyssey. It excludes the "on foot" and landing on thin atmosphere bodies (and plants) parts of the game. Players can use this to play all of the space ship, no atmosphere landable bodies (no Odyssey plants) and SRV portions of the game, just as they can in Legacy.
- Live - Odyssey - This is the full blown Odyssey release in its current state for players who HAVE purchased Odyssey.
NOTES:
- In the Live galaxy, your character, ships, credits, etc... currently exists as it did wherever you left off last, all those years a go.
- Progress in Legacy does not transfer to Live and vice versa. They are two entirely different game worlds with two entirely different commanders.
- Commanders in Live Horizons and Live Odyssey cannot instance together. Players must be in the same Live Mode in order to instance together. Odyssey owners CAN use Live Horizons mode.
The Thargoid war:
A 200+ year old mad scientist built, with the full help of the players, a Guardian technology based bomb on a Thargoid surface site in HIP 22460 in an attempt to rid the Galaxy, then bubble, then region, then system of Thargoids forever. The explosion temporarily stunned the Thargoids but they came back with a vengeance in the form of 8 Titans landing in the Bubble and taking over 1000+ star systems.
Currently, 3 of the 8 Titans have been destroyed by the players with the next one predicted to go down within the next 4 weeks.
New Content in Live (Odyssey Updates 18.03 and 18.04 (U18.04)):
A new mode of the Frame Shift Drive, called Supercruise Overdrive (SCO), has been added. It basically allows one's ship to temporarily boost while in in-system supercruise travel mode.This can greatly reduce the travel time between bodies in a system. It requires purchasing a new "Frameshift Drive (SCO)" for your ship(s). It takes some finesse to use SCO, um, to one's benefit...
The Python MK II was pre-released on May 7th to be purchased for ARX (IE: can be bought for real money) and which will be released into the game, as purchasable with in game credits, on August 7th. The currently purchasable variants are a pre-built Stellar model for 33,000 ARX and the Standard model for 16.520 ARX. Some of this content "may" be available in Legacy. The Python MK II is the first new ship since December 2018 and as of the Python MK II release, there are 40 ships in 3 sizes: 14x Small, 17x Medium and 9x Large as well as 6 different ship launched Fighters and 2 Surface Reconnaissance Vehicle (SRV) variants.
Some pre-built ships are now available for purchase for 25,500 ARX:
- Laser Mining Jumpstart Type-6
- Exploration Jumpstart Diamondback Explorer
- AX (Anti Xeno) Combat Jumpstart Alliance Chieftain
- Update 19 - Powerplay v2.0 - A complete revamp of the Powerplay system as presented in, so far, two episodes of Frontier Unlocked
- Update 20 - A "completely new feature" is being added to the game by the end of this year, 2024.
- up to 3 more new ships this year, the first of which will/may be the Type-8. There are currently (May13,24) 43 separate ships in the game
Looking for some advice on getting into the game at ground level, fresh, and make decent money while also having fun. Not trying to look at asteroids for 20 hours or spend the next 2 weeks hauling passengers between systems. Stuff like that is why I quit the first time.
There are a variety of thing to do. With Odyssey, much more so.
You can also purposely "work the BGS". The BGS (Background Simulation) can be intentionally manipulated. Basically, successfully completing missions for a faction increases your "Reputation" with them and their "Influence" within the system. Killing ships reduces the influence of their faction. Other actions like selling commodities at a profit and turning in exploration data also increase Influence.
Once every 24 hours, the Influence changes are tallied and compared across the factions in the system and new influence levels are assigned. When the influence of two factions are within a small proximity of each other, it creates a conflict which can take the form of an Election or a War, each opening new missions and available things to do for the duration of the conflict.
Many different mission types are available providing variety.
I tried my hand at combat and got smoked pretty hard. First mission I did plopped me into a fight vs 4 medium ships in my sidewinder. Didn't end well. I want to mix things up. Try a lot of stuff but I don't know where to begin. What's fun? And what's the best way to get into doing bounty hunting?
What's fun is entirely up to you.
One way to get into bounty hunting, is to get a combat capable ship, go to a planet with mine-able rings looking for Resource Extraction Sites (RES). They come in 4 varieties. Low, Medium, High and Hazardous (HAZ). Low will have easier enemies that you can bounty hunt in smaller and less capable ships, while in a Haz Res, you'd best be bringing your "A game" and appropriate equipment.
