As we've all said at some point before too, it's entirely possible that clues or info relating to Raxxla was added as more features were added to make use of newly available gameplay systems. These types of locations are prime candidates for clues, as you say!
The Quest To Find Raxxla
- Thread starter Macros Black
- Start date
There was nothing in the game from outset
Ah, the Big Bang Theory!There was nothing in the game from outset
Yes, these were added later. One such example was the ‘Silver Comet’ mystery.
Originally when you found the location there wasn’t anything really there, just a POI instance with a couple of elite ships which tried to kill you; now there’s a structure there which adds to the fun and basically acts like a sign post that ‘somethings there’, places to hide, dodge etc. The site itself doesn’t do anything.
These little mysteries were in game from launch and promoted via the old Gal Net and localised Station news…
Originally when you found the location there wasn’t anything really there, just a POI instance with a couple of elite ships which tried to kill you; now there’s a structure there which adds to the fun and basically acts like a sign post that ‘somethings there’, places to hide, dodge etc. The site itself doesn’t do anything.
These little mysteries were in game from launch and promoted via the old Gal Net and localised Station news…
Quaero
Banned
Like NMS and Fallout 76 then?There was nothing in the game from outset
Kinda ninja'dAh, the Big Bang Theory!
Just a heads up: there may be more to all those various firmware, security patches, and various encryption related data types. I legitimately believe some of the comms arrays and ship logs actually require specific types of data to access. Federation military permit PLX 695 being part of why with PLX 695 and In-depth Protection. This coded language of security strategy known as Defense In Depth.
Let's just say that there is a very good possibility not all is as it seems.
The shadow of light is darkness.
Coorespondingly, the shadow of darkness is not more darkness but light.
One cannot have light without a lot of darkness.
May I strongly suggest you read "The Comet's Trail" by Darren Grey. The story is one of the ones included in "Tales from the Frontier" book sold by Frontier Developments. It is canon to Elite Dangerous. There's more to the comet myth.
Elite Dangerous: Tales From The Frontier (eBook) - Books - Frontier Store
Each story in this outstanding collection features beautiful artwork created by Arto Heikkinen. 10% of the proceeds of this book will be donated to Plan who do wonderful work promoting child rights to end child poverty, worldwide.
Elite: Tales From The Frontier by Chris Booker and various authors
Elite: Tales From The Frontier by Chris Booker and various authors, based in the Elite: Dangerous universe, is a collection of fifteen stories from all over the galaxy. Each offers an individual look into myriad ways of human survival or destruction...
www.fantasticbooksstore.com
Looks like a normal tourist installation. 3 cargo bays, one "hackable comms array", usual defensive equipment, doesn't appear to have any log uplinks at all (a lot of installation types don't)
Unfortunately as I wasn't expecting to be visiting an installation this is the ship without the manifest scanner and recon limpets, so I can't verify that those are normal.
Unfortunately as I wasn't expecting to be visiting an installation this is the ship without the manifest scanner and recon limpets, so I can't verify that those are normal.
The Silver Comet (a mystery location previously linked to a Galnet story) is actually an amusing example of interpretational bias / poor communication.
It was like other various backer’s fictions - published at launch, included in game as a findable element.
What’s now amusing is when I first started investigating Raxxla, I first looked to this story to test my assumptions as to what was/wasn't in game, due to a rather large chip of incredulous disbelief. My thoughts being if this was in game then maybe it was worth finding Raxxla (at the time I wasn’t particularly receptive to DB statements and took everything he said with a brick of salt).
The mystery was rather simple, but technically was placed between two locations. At that time, going to the first location resolved in nothing for me, so I opted for the second, which seemed more logical, it being locked behind a very grindy permit. Long story short it was the wrong system, but I got rather rich from the endeavour, and learnt that (at that time) FD mysteries were actually very basic.
Cautionary tale - try not to overthink things.
It was like other various backer’s fictions - published at launch, included in game as a findable element.
What’s now amusing is when I first started investigating Raxxla, I first looked to this story to test my assumptions as to what was/wasn't in game, due to a rather large chip of incredulous disbelief. My thoughts being if this was in game then maybe it was worth finding Raxxla (at the time I wasn’t particularly receptive to DB statements and took everything he said with a brick of salt).
The mystery was rather simple, but technically was placed between two locations. At that time, going to the first location resolved in nothing for me, so I opted for the second, which seemed more logical, it being locked behind a very grindy permit. Long story short it was the wrong system, but I got rather rich from the endeavour, and learnt that (at that time) FD mysteries were actually very basic.
Cautionary tale - try not to overthink things.
Care to explain what exactly was interpretational bias? For one, there is nothing in that GalNet suggesting that the "Silver Comet" was an actual comet.
Source: https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/27-JAN-3301
By my count, there are 6 systems potentially connected:
Quiness
Alioth
Silver Comet Assembly in Polus
Silver Comet Limited in Wu Te Ti
Silver Comet Limited in HIP 97950
Silver Comet Manufacturing in Egovae
In fact, I would be rather unsurprised if the Federation and Alliance didn't have black operations explicitly to deal with events that started as far back as President Olaf Smith. I have seen some of the stuff the superpowers do and there is a great deal intentionally hidden. The Elite Pilots' Federation is similarly not nearly the organization that is portrayed to the public. There are reasons The Consortium codex entry is adjacent to A.E.G.I.S. and Pilot's Federation. Not everything is simple and reality has a strange tendency to be stranger than fiction.
Olaf Smith
Olaf Smith served as the President of the Federation from 2866 to 2874.[1] In 2867, the disappearances of several traders near Zelada prompted President Smith to send a Federal Navy task force to investigate. Ships also disappeared in the Ququve and Aymiay systems that same year, totaling 13...
elite-dangerous.fandom.com
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A tendency to inappropriately analyze ambiguous stimuli, scenarios and events in the negative.
At that time having an opinion that FD could have been telling porky-pies.
That’s softened since obviously; due to obtaining a wider and better understanding, truly of the extensive work, and artistry actually undertaken by Brookes.
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I would counterpoint to that by reminding everyone of the Thargoid mystery, most particularly the UA's which were so obfuscated as to be one of the very few examples where Brookes had to drop a pretty major hint after the community wasn't able to solve it. Even after that, it took the combined efforts of quite a large group and quite a lot of time to actually figure out the entire thing.
The Thargoid mystery used a very complex set of nested mysteries, and fully used all the (then) available systems in game - and out of game - in order to resolve, almost all of it done without any clues or hints: First players had to notice the Fed convoys carrying mysterious Cargo and squawking odd comms chatter. Then they had to successfully pirate them to recover that cargo (they were Elite level, IIRC, so not easy). Then after getting a UA, it caused caustic damage, so players had to figure out how to 'care' for them to keep them in cargo (this was long before meta-alloys and CRCR). After that the investigations stalled, and the major use for them was UA bombing for a while! It took a comment on the forums from Brookes to galvanise the direction of investigation ("have you tried listening to them", or something to that effect). After that many more people got involved and lots of smart people started analysing the audio recordings - out of game - before things started to come together.
I can't recall exactly how long all this took but I think it was at least months between first finding a UA and figuring out what they did. Then after that there were additional mysteries with combining them with the Probes and Links later on which also included planetary searches and listening posts spitting out timed and coded audio clues etc. but by then the "method of solving" had been discovered - and not at all in any way simple! I doubt a single player could have solved the whole thing by themselves.
Also consider the Rift mystery; which was a different and simpler type of puzzle (a classic treasure hunt), which no-one actually solved - because quite frankly looking for drifting anaconda wrecks amongst thousands of stars is harder than finding a needle in a haystack. Thousands of people searched very, very hard and the area was just too big with only a vague directional heading to go off.
The Rift was Drew's baby, but he only proposed it and helped direct it - Fdev did the actual implementation within the game's systems. And bear in mind it was very much an easter-egg tie-in to one of the novels, unlike the Thargoid mystery which was baked into the narrative progression of the Thargoid reveals and used the full resources of Fdev to develop.
So yes, the Rift was "very simple" in that it was literally a findable POI location discoverable by a 'treasure map' of verbal clues - but the UA's and Thargoid mystery weren't by any means simple! Yet even the massed community struggled to solve both.
These two examples, I feel, are the best examples of the "mystery adventure quests" Fdev was playing with regarding deep mysteries in the early game - and we know Raxxla was implemented at the creation of the game, so it can use systems and interactions similar to both of these.
I think Raxxla is a combination of these two styles of mystery-puzzle. Clearly there were no clues originally (like the UAs). But unlike the Thargoid mystery, Raxxla was the work of a small team, or possibly only Brookes himself, and it's little more than an easter-egg, and was implemented at a time when everyone was super-busy building the game! So it's more likely to be closer to the Rift mystery, but with elements of the complexity and challenge we know Brookes thought very highly of. We can expect it to use the same game systems as the Thargoid UA mystery and the Rift mystery (because frankly they cover the full range of what was possible at the time). We as investigators have to consider what's it's likely to be, given the resources and technology in use.
What does this tell us? That any/all/combination of things are fully possible in relation to the Raxxla mystery:
The Thargoid mystery used a very complex set of nested mysteries, and fully used all the (then) available systems in game - and out of game - in order to resolve, almost all of it done without any clues or hints: First players had to notice the Fed convoys carrying mysterious Cargo and squawking odd comms chatter. Then they had to successfully pirate them to recover that cargo (they were Elite level, IIRC, so not easy). Then after getting a UA, it caused caustic damage, so players had to figure out how to 'care' for them to keep them in cargo (this was long before meta-alloys and CRCR). After that the investigations stalled, and the major use for them was UA bombing for a while! It took a comment on the forums from Brookes to galvanise the direction of investigation ("have you tried listening to them", or something to that effect). After that many more people got involved and lots of smart people started analysing the audio recordings - out of game - before things started to come together.
I can't recall exactly how long all this took but I think it was at least months between first finding a UA and figuring out what they did. Then after that there were additional mysteries with combining them with the Probes and Links later on which also included planetary searches and listening posts spitting out timed and coded audio clues etc. but by then the "method of solving" had been discovered - and not at all in any way simple! I doubt a single player could have solved the whole thing by themselves.
Also consider the Rift mystery; which was a different and simpler type of puzzle (a classic treasure hunt), which no-one actually solved - because quite frankly looking for drifting anaconda wrecks amongst thousands of stars is harder than finding a needle in a haystack. Thousands of people searched very, very hard and the area was just too big with only a vague directional heading to go off.
The Rift was Drew's baby, but he only proposed it and helped direct it - Fdev did the actual implementation within the game's systems. And bear in mind it was very much an easter-egg tie-in to one of the novels, unlike the Thargoid mystery which was baked into the narrative progression of the Thargoid reveals and used the full resources of Fdev to develop.
So yes, the Rift was "very simple" in that it was literally a findable POI location discoverable by a 'treasure map' of verbal clues - but the UA's and Thargoid mystery weren't by any means simple! Yet even the massed community struggled to solve both.
These two examples, I feel, are the best examples of the "mystery adventure quests" Fdev was playing with regarding deep mysteries in the early game - and we know Raxxla was implemented at the creation of the game, so it can use systems and interactions similar to both of these.
I think Raxxla is a combination of these two styles of mystery-puzzle. Clearly there were no clues originally (like the UAs). But unlike the Thargoid mystery, Raxxla was the work of a small team, or possibly only Brookes himself, and it's little more than an easter-egg, and was implemented at a time when everyone was super-busy building the game! So it's more likely to be closer to the Rift mystery, but with elements of the complexity and challenge we know Brookes thought very highly of. We can expect it to use the same game systems as the Thargoid UA mystery and the Rift mystery (because frankly they cover the full range of what was possible at the time). We as investigators have to consider what's it's likely to be, given the resources and technology in use.
What does this tell us? That any/all/combination of things are fully possible in relation to the Raxxla mystery:
- Nested mysteries (a larger mystery that can't be solved without solving smaller mysteries first)
- Positional / directional clues (required to physically be in a location to get a clue or resolve a mystery)
- Audio clues (sounds in the game world that can be any other type of clue listed here)
- Text clues (written text in the game world that can be any other type of clue listed here)
- Coded clues (morse code, binary, octal, cyphers, triangulation, timed)
- Audio and visual steganography (images encoded into audio)
- Conditional clues (not all clues are available at the start).
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Just updated my axis of Chaos hypothesis.
Post in thread 'The Quest To Find Raxxla'
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-10304929
This hypothesis was developed independently of the various aspects named. What’s solidified it more for me was the inclusion of Olorun of the Yoruba religion.
I had been aware of the similarities for some time, highlighted by other Cmdrs, to John Miltons concept of a golden chain, but this is the first time I’ve actually looked into Olorun and its location relative to my hypothesis.
To date I believe it does go someways towards the probability that there is an axis that originates in the Underworld, granted it could still be a coincidence.
Post in thread 'The Quest To Find Raxxla'
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-10304929
This hypothesis was developed independently of the various aspects named. What’s solidified it more for me was the inclusion of Olorun of the Yoruba religion.
I had been aware of the similarities for some time, highlighted by other Cmdrs, to John Miltons concept of a golden chain, but this is the first time I’ve actually looked into Olorun and its location relative to my hypothesis.
To date I believe it does go someways towards the probability that there is an axis that originates in the Underworld, granted it could still be a coincidence.
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Correct.
Some megaships also function as taxi services; you can dock at them and be transported to other systems.
The itinerary/destination(s) is listed in the "Local News" portion of the station menu.
-for non-taxi megaships, the initerary can be found by scanning "Ship Log Uplink".
Do you have a post here of the deities relating to your spatial findings?
While looking up the Yoruba mythology I found a few system names with spelling matches plus a few similar sounding names:
Babalung - similar to Babalu-Aye
Obaluaye - a Yoruba orisha with dominion over Earth and smallpox
Ayethi - derivation of Aye?
Eshu - orisha of Trickery, Crossroads, Misfortune, Chaos, Death, Travelers, Messenger
Oyas - Oya is the orisha of Storms, Wind, Thunder, Lightning, Dead
as well as another solar deity - Yhi - female creator spirit and personification of the sun
Lists for reference
There’s various posts linked. I’ve updated the post to include as many of these as possible 07.
Honestly I’ve probably not included ‘every’ Yoruba deity. The difficulty starts in knowing where to start, and where to stop, but I believe I’ve plotted ‘enough’ systems named after various deities, so as to satisfy my curiosity and to acknowledge many were placed intentionally.
I believe there to be a great deal of intentional obfuscation as well, granted but that a certain percentage do have an intentional alignment.
Spacial mapping might not highlight this perfectly but I believe it outlines its influence. As to if this is by design or if it simply uncovers an unconscious hand we can’t yet know?
It’s a big question to answer ‘how’ much of all this is actually really by design and what is just an abstraction.
We always must acknowledge humans love to resolve patterns out of chaos. All this could just be total bio-fuel.
I don’t ever presume to state my findings are 100% true, I try and identify there’s a probability towards them being so, my objective is always to look for ways to focus resources to where they might best yield an outcome - as if to ask ‘is this a good enough reason to look in this area’…
It’s up to everyone to assess if it’s valid or simply space-madness.
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There was nothing in the game from outset
Waiting at the heart of the galaxy, in the spaces inbetween the nothingness... An ancient construct lies hidden from view, filled with antique and sinister secrets that no man should know. It has weathered the ages as the lives of uncounted civilizations rose and fell. There is no legend so old as to give it a name, or to recall that it ever was alive; but it is told of in whispers among secret societies and raved about by soused wives home from the bar. It was of this place, that Gan Romero the mad mechanic dreamed of - on the night before he hyperspaced out of Vega singing his unexplained couplet:
"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die."
or something like that I think...
I had no idea that CocaCola vending machines were that old!
(But the bottles I used to drink as a boy seem quite a while ago)
The UA mystery was long and hard. It wasn't overly complex in the beginning, but it was hard to pick out the morse code.
MB actually dropped the 'have you tried listening to it' hint well before we found the first UA. There was a lot of searching, due to the WIngs trailer.
On mai 4th 3301 FD tweaked something that made the convoys spawn. At least three UA were captured that day. Due to a multiplayer bug, these actually multiplied. Quite a few commanders had one and a lot of recordings were made. Nothing came from the extensive sound analysing.
The mores code was discovered by commanders Jmains and QorbeQ (who had a friend with practical morse experience), by listening to the recordings. The code spelled 'Sega Port'. The name of the station instance where the recording was made.
The community was later able to extract the graphical representation of each letters dash and dot sequence, but this was done manually by listening.
For each update after that, the UA evolved. They started to point to Merope (5C). They started spawning in the wild (first in the Pleiades, then in a 50 ly shell around Merope). Finally they started to morse the layout of our ships, if we were close enough.
All this happened while we didn't know if it was Thargoid or something else.