Walkthrough: Guardian Vessel Blueprints

Note: I've written a guide for Guardian Module Blueprints here; Guardian Weapon blueprints here.

Greetings, Commander!

Let's talk about the Guardian Vessel Blueprints (now called Guardian Vessel Blueprint Segments). Perhaps you're interested in the XG7 Trident, with its plasma repeaters, or perhaps the XG8 Javelin, with its thermal shard cannon. Maybe you want to use the XG9 Lance and its Focused Gauss Cannon in Anti-Thargoid Interceptor combat? This guide should help you comfortably get through this.

First off, let's discuss expectations. You'll be jumping about 750ly out of the bubble to a Guardian beacon in Synuefe KU-F B44-4, activating that beacon, collecting a piece or two of cargo, then flying another 50ly to Synuefe EU-Q C21-15 and landing on Planet A1. There's a Nav Marker that you can spot upon system entry that guide you in. You'll land, and then you'll navigate the site in your SRV, and, while fighting up to sixteen guardian sentinels (probably not all at the same time!), you'll "charge" six pylons, which will then allow you to drop an Ancient Key, which you picked up from the beacon, into a hole and thereby release the Glowing Golf Ball Of Vessels, which you can scan for the reward of one blueprint. All the Guardian vessels require one blueprint each -so for each blueprint you'll need to complete this task, log out and log in before each run. You'll also need to collect other necessary materials during all of this! You'll want to budget about 40 minutes per run, give or take, though the first one might take a little longer. Also, I recommend doing this in solo or in a private group; doing it in open can often lead to weird results if others are there and not everyone is on the same page. If you do this in open, make sure to reset the instance!.

Note: Guardian vessel blueprints also require a lot of Pattern Epsilon data. See the note at the end about a quick way to get that.

What you'll need:
  1. A ship with a decent jump range and an energy weapon, such as this Diamondback Explorer
  2. A cargo bay
  3. An SRV (preferably two)
  4. At least one upward point defence systems (in your utility slots)
  5. SRV synthesis materials (I recommend, at a minimum, having 14 sulfur and 8 phosphorus, as well as half a dozen iron and nickel)
  6. Approximately 40 minutes of time per run
  7. A shopping list of materials you'll need, which you can make off the blueprints on Inara (lots of Pattern Epsilon is needed; see the bottom of this post for some ideas)
If you've gathered everything you need, let's fly out to Synuefe KU-F B44-4 A1! When you drop out of supercruise at the beacon, which you can get to using your nav panel, you should see something that looks like this (if it doesn't, go ahead and approach it and it should transform slightly):

ddxeb3j.jpg
Note the three wings with three energy balls. They look like this:

KEK6Eum.jpg
Shoot the energy balls with your energy weapon until they look like this:

QeAKelA.jpg
The beacon itself will transform and reveal a spinning sphere near its core. Select that and use your ship's data link scanner on it:

G8ZhyFR.jpg
Once scanned, the beacon will transform yet again and reveal an ancient key coming out of the far end. You can target it and scoop it up. Collection limpets work well, due to the tight pick-up area, but even in a large ship you can usually nudge the key into more open space.

F0LpW4F.jpg
After retrieving the key, you'll get a message that looks like this:

NLcZ0BB.jpg
You may repeat this process to retreive additional keys; you don't even need to re-instance!

Now, we take off for Synuefe EU-Q C21-15 A1, and aim for the Guardian Site there (again, you can find it in your nav panel.) Before you land, verify that you have as many keys as you need (one per blueprint) in your inventory. Then, as you approach the site, you should see this:

DZjlDC5.jpg
Here are some important landmarks and where you can park. While you can park an Anaconda there, I really do recommend using a smaller ship:

GxH4yfg.jpg
Okay, let's go ahead and disembark. Go ahead and drive up to the machine (see above), at the top of the map. Be careful not to stray too close to the "plus mark" areas on either side of the site until you're ready; they'll awaken four sentinels that are otherwise optional (two on either side of the site.)

At the top, you'll see two unraised pylon locations (unraised pylons looks like this). Behind it, you'll see an "X" on the ground right in front of it, with what looks like a small, white button sticking out of it. Parking on top of that should awaken pylon #1; you should hear it rumbling up above next to the machine. The second one should awaken on the other side of the machine, but, if it doesn't, driving up to it will get it to pop up.

Go ahead and charge the pylons. To do this, use your turret to shoot at the glowing balls, which charges each pylon. (A timer will start the moment you shoot the first pylon; this is a timed exercise, but each time you charge a pylon you'll get a time extension.) Keep shooting until a light beam comes out of the top, like this:

yg4Dhe9.jpg
But be warned! As soon as you activate the first pylon, you'll be faced with two sentinels. Quick! Four pips to WEP, two to SYS. A sentinel or two can't actually kill you if your ship is parked nearby and has point defense. Their kinetic attack can flip you over, though, so watch out for that. With a full WEP capacitor with four pips in it, I can usually get their hull down to about 30% before running dry; after that it's slower, but they're not especially hard to kill.

jmwv4tl.jpg
Between fits of shooting their blue disc kinetic attacks, they'll charge their missiles. After a moment of charging, they'll launch. Watching your ship's point defense destroy those is especially gratifying.

aOp8qxK.jpg
Okay, with those two sentinel dispatched, go ahead an charge Pylon #2, to the left of the machine.

Once those two pylons are charged, it's time to get the rest. I recommend charging them in order 3-6 as shown here:

ZFaffCX.jpg
When you've activated either Pylon 3 or Pylon 5 (whichever one you do first), four sentinels will spawn, two on either side of the site. Also, activating the last pylon will cause four more sentinels to appear! (Hint: looking around, "sleeping" pylons look like this.)

Once you've charged all the pylons and dispatched the sentinels, your site should look like this:

7LmDjNr.jpg
Now, make sure you've moved the Ancient Key from your ship's inventory to your SRV. It's time to head back up to the machine and visit the "X" on the ground in front of the machine. Remember that white thing that looked like a button in the middle of the "X"? It should have recessed a little. Park your SRV right on top of that and, from your inventory panel, jettison the ancient relic. Jettison and Jettison (Abandon) both work in this case:

60JeDhJ.jpg
As soon as you do that, you should see the machine open up and a blue spinning orb should float up. Target that with your turret and scan. Note: use your data scanner, not your composition scanner! Bingo, one vessel blueprint segment!

a1Yf4np.jpg
... But wait! The fun isn't quite over. You should have two more sentinels spawn around you. Destroying them wraps up the Vessel Blueprint experience!

If you want to do this again for another blueprint, you can drive out about 500 meters from the machine where you should be able to log off and log back on to reset the experience. (If you're doing this with friends, you can re-activate the pylons without logging off and have each person drop an ancient relic in the site. Once everyone has done it once to get the blueprint, then you can reset it. Each person can only scan the blueprint once per reset.)

If you want to scan some obelisks while you're here, since there is a large requirement for Pattern data (especially Pattern Epsilon), here are the locations of the four active obelisks on site:

AIG2ATa.jpg
Drive up to them. They should glow blue and then you can scan them with your data scanner, upon which they'll go dark for a bit. (You can scan them once per relog.) Be warned, though: as I mentioned earlier, visiting the left or right obelisks (whichever you do first) will activate four sentinels, two on either side of the site. Make sure you have everything you need, then you can return to a Guardian Tech Broker to unlock a new fighter!

HFhbDlq.jpg
If you need Pattern Epsilon quickly, I wrote up a Reddit post with a way to get it reasonably quickly from Synuefe NL-N C23-4 B 3, coordinates 48.1808, -48.3718 (near the module blueprints).




If you're interested, all images are available here: [IMGUR]CZsgBC0[/IMGUR]

Edit: noted name change to blueprint segment, emphasized using data scanner, added note about the note about Pattern Epsilon data
 
Last edited:
Thanks for writing the detailed guide, it certainly was helpful!.

If I could suggest adding a little warning however about making sure to reset the instance:
When I unlocked the first vessel blueprint (So on the surface at the guardian ruins), I was able to activate the Pylons again and thinking (wrongly of course), that I could go repeat the process without logging off, I placed an ancient key down...which made the ball appear, but I wasn't able to read the blueprint off it again. So I lost the ancient key and had to retrieve a new one in order to repeat the process again...lesson learned, always reset the instance! (in my case flying ~4km from the guardian ruins logging off and then back on).

But thank you for creating this excellent guide (and the weapon blueprint version was useful since the system is only one jump away).

cheers!
 
Awesome sauce step by step guide. Just flew out there tonight in preparation for a little session tomorrow.

Only a 13 jump trip in an Asp with a guardian FSD module. Absolutely crazy. Would have been 25 jumps in the "Olden days" before Engineers and Guardians. 750ly in just over a quarter of an hour is an incredible pace. LOL.
 
Thanks for writing the detailed guide, it certainly was helpful!.

If I could suggest adding a little warning however about making sure to reset the instance:
When I unlocked the first vessel blueprint (So on the surface at the guardian ruins), I was able to activate the Pylons again and thinking (wrongly of course), that I could go repeat the process without logging off, I placed an ancient key down...which made the ball appear, but I wasn't able to read the blueprint off it again. So I lost the ancient key and had to retrieve a new one in order to repeat the process again...lesson learned, always reset the instance! (in my case flying ~4km from the guardian ruins logging off and then back on).

But thank you for creating this excellent guide (and the weapon blueprint version was useful since the system is only one jump away).

cheers!

You're quite welcome! I added some a note about re-setting the instance and emphasized my recommendation for doing it in private group or solo.
 
Only a 13 jump trip in an Asp with a guardian FSD module. Absolutely crazy. Would have been 25 jumps in the "Olden days" before Engineers and Guardians. 750ly in just over a quarter of an hour is an incredible pace. LOL.

Back in 2016 I played for a couple hundred hours and had not-quite A-rated my Asp Explorer. She only had a 23 ly jump range. Credits were scarce back then, and jump ranges were short. Now I can jump 65+ light years at a time, and someone on Reddit was saying we needed to get high jump ranges. Maybe I need to start shooing kids off my lawn, but I can make it to Colonia in 4.5 hours and I can get out to the Guardian sites in 12 minutes... jump ranges are awesome now.
 
I did the "lazy way", must say it has worked pretty well:

1. Drive around like a lunatic so all pylons spawn (ignore all sentinels)
2. Board your DBX and wrack all enemies. You could also keep ignoring them as long as you have P defense and 4 peeps to sys
3. Charge all pylons using the ship's lasers
4. Land right in front on the X that will receive the key so that your back is facing the orb's spawn location
5. Very quickly, deploy your srv, transfer the key, drop it on top of the X and board again
6. Scan the beacon with the ship's scanner and as soon as you get the blueprint, gain some altitude and quit to main menu. You might need to wait a few secs but that's alright, you should be safe(ish) by now.
7. Rince and repeat
 
re: The location to gather Pattern Epsilon data, the coordinates lead me to a point of interest called Ancient Ruins (1). Might make it easier to find for folks.

Excellent guide, btw, it was really helpful.
 
Can the ancient key be used at any guardian site to get vehicle blueprints (e.g. - the site from your module blueprint walkthrough), or do specific items have to be used at specific sites for specific results?

In other words, what happens if I clear the Guardian Site at Synuefe NL-N C23-4 B 3 and drop an ancient key instead of the relic? Will it pop a vehicle blueprint? Pop nothing at all?

Thanks!
 
Thank you so much for this guide; it is really helpful :)

If I might ask, how do you find out things like this? Like, which system the beacon is in, and which system to go to for the correct ruins? I mean, space is pretty big....
 
I've just spent 30 minutes shooting the energy balls on the wings with a pulse laser. All 3 of them, 10 minutes each. They didn't transform, so the central thingy didn't change, so I got no further . Any idea why? What am I doing wrong?
 
I've just spent 30 minutes shooting the energy balls on the wings with a pulse laser. All 3 of them, 10 minutes each. They didn't transform, so the central thingy didn't change, so I got no further . Any idea why? What am I doing wrong?
Were you hitting them from the 'outside' edge? Gotta be lined up correctly. If you are lined up correctly, a couple of seconds should power up/activate it, then a timer starts. Immediately move on to the next one.

I don't think you're hitting the right bit.
 
Yup, from an old thread (I assume this is activating beacons):

I just did my beacon with 2 small pulse lasers. The area you need to hit is by far not shown well and you need to free aim the weapon because the lock-on doesn't work and is the wrong spot.

I know from using beams you need to hit the right spot even with a continuous beam weapon it won't charge if you're slightly out.
 
I've just spent 30 minutes shooting the energy balls on the wings with a pulse laser. All 3 of them, 10 minutes each. They didn't transform, so the central thingy didn't change, so I got no further . Any idea why? What am I doing wrong?
I've only ever hit those with a continuous beam. I'm thinking your pulse lasers are too weak. I've not seen anything about a minimum energy threshold, but there might be.
 
Were you hitting them from the 'outside' edge? Gotta be lined up correctly. If you are lined up correctly, a couple of seconds should power up/activate it, then a timer starts. Immediately move on to the next one.

I don't think you're hitting the right bit.
I was hitting the right bit - I upgraded the pulses to beams, did it no problem. Seems the pulses were not up to the job. Just need to find out now where I go to find module and shield reinforcement blueprints.
 
Great guide, although a harder location than your module blueprint guide. Oh well, at least I got most of my materials at the module ruin so only had to do 3 runs here to get all the ship blueprints I will ever need
 
Hello CMDRs,
I have got an ancient key from guardian beacon. Traveled to Guardian site.
Activated all the six pylons more than once and NOTHING happens.
Jetison ancient key does nothing. Have been lucky and could take it up again.
Think this maybe is broken since update 14?
Anyone facing the same issues? Or am I doing something wrong?
 
Top Bottom