Note: I've written a guide for Guardian Vessel (Fighter) Blueprints here; Guardian Module blueprints here.
Greetings, Commander!
Let's talk about the Guardian Weapon Blueprints (now called Guardian Weapon Blueprint Segments). Perhaps you're interested in the guardian Gauss Cannon (small or medium) for excellent anti-Thargoid Interceptor absolute damage, or you want the Guardian Shard Cannon (small, medium, or large) for shotgun-like thermal damage (also great against Interceptors!) Or perhaps the Guardian Plasma Charger for excellent damage (also against human targets!) at the cost of a drained weapons capacitor? This guide should help you comfortably get through this.
First off, let's discuss expectations. You'll be jumping about 800ly out of the bubble to a Guardian site in Synuefe EU-Q C21-10 and landing on Planet A3. There's a Nav Marker that you can spot from 1000 ls away to guide you in. You'll land, and then you'll navigate the site in your SRV, and, while fighting roughly six guardian sentinels (not all at the same time!), you'll "charge" six pylons, which will then allow you to drop an Ancient Relic, which are available at the site, into a hole and thereby release the Glowing Golf Ball Of Weapons, which you can scan for the reward of one blueprint. All the Guardian weapons require one blueprint each - unless you're looking for the medium/large turreted versions, which usually require two - 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! 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.
What you'll need:
Ideally, you'll land close to the site itself. If you the picture above, there's a nice place to park a small- or mid-sized ship in the upper-left or lower-right quadrants of the site. See here:
So let's disembark and get started. Go ahead and drive up to the machine (see above), at the top of the map. You'll see two unraised pylon locations (unraised pylong 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 "raise" pylons #1; you should hear it rumbling up up[ from the ground in front of you. Your view should look something like this:
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; both pylons activated should look like this:
Now it's time to activate the other four pylons - that's 3-6 in this picture:
If you do them in numerical order, you should encounter a lone sentinel at sites 3, 4. At site 6, two sentinels should activate, one at 6 and one back at 5. (The one at 6 is super-shy, so you may have to move back toward the site if he keeps dropping out of sight.) Sentinels look like this:
Fighting a sentinel, you'll want four pips in weapons and two in sys. Sentinels have two attacks. They shoot blue plasma discs at you, which are a kinetic attack and can, in some cases, cause your SRV to roll over, and they can fire indirect missiles toward you. The good news is that, one on one, there's very little chance a sentinel could damage your SRV. Even if everything they shoot at you hits, you shouldn't take more that about 50% damage to your shields before they take a break. They'll pause for a while, and then they'll charge up missiles for an indirect attack. You'll see them charge, and sometimes, if you can't kill them quickly enough, they'll launch missiles at you. This is why you have point defense on your ship, though. Your ship's point defense will shoot down the missiles! Destroying a sentinel can take a bit of ammo. Even with four pips to weapons, I drain the capacitor and have to still keep firing for a while to destroy a sentinel. Remember to pick up everything they drop; many of the dropped parts you'll need for your weapons.
Now that all the pylons are charged, the timer will stop. Now, go pick up an ancient relic. You may have heard additional rumbling as you're driving around. Approaching an ancient relic site will cause a tower to emerge from the ground, looking like this:
Target the blue glowing bit at the top and shoot it; an ancient relic should fall to the ground. You'll want to pick that up. (After the first run-through, you can pick one up as you're going around, instead of waiting until after all the pylons are charged.) Ancient relics can be found here:
Also on that map are obelisks. There are four active obelisks at this site. When you approach them, they should glow blue. You'll want to select and scan (with your SRV's data scanner) each one of them; this is where you'll get the Pattern Data (Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon, or Gamma.) Like an ancient relic, you can also scan these as you pass them. They look like this:
Okay, so you've got an ancient relic at this point, and all the pylons are charged. Go park your SRV on top of the "X" in front of the machine, where the relic drop point is at on the first map. You should be parked here:
Now, from your inventory panel, jettison the ancient relic. Note: Jettison and Jettison (Abandon) both work in this case. 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 weapon blueprint segment!
... But wait! The fun isn't quite over. You should have two more sentinels spawn around you. One often behind the machine, and one toward pylon 5 (though the locations sometimes differ). Destroying these will wrap up this experience. You can drive out about 500 meters from the machine and 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.)
Note: you'll need Guardian Technology Components and Guardian Wreckage Components for the blueprints. The Technology Components sometimes drop from sentinels, but you'll also see the occasional tower with targetable panels; shooting those panels will occasionally cause Technology Components to drop out. In fact, any non-obelisk structure that has glowing blue panels on it might be targetable; check anything you see. The Wreckage Components only drop from Sentinels. Given that there are only six sentinels at this site, it might be tough to get what you need. Consider hopping over to Synuefe NL-N C23-4 B 3 and visiting the Guardian site there (where the module blueprints are). Twelve sentinels spawn, which gives you more chances to get what you need.
If you're interested, all images are available here: [IMGUR]Z4XeTDN[/IMGUR]
Edit: noted name change to blueprint segment, added emphasis about using data scanner
Greetings, Commander!
Let's talk about the Guardian Weapon Blueprints (now called Guardian Weapon Blueprint Segments). Perhaps you're interested in the guardian Gauss Cannon (small or medium) for excellent anti-Thargoid Interceptor absolute damage, or you want the Guardian Shard Cannon (small, medium, or large) for shotgun-like thermal damage (also great against Interceptors!) Or perhaps the Guardian Plasma Charger for excellent damage (also against human targets!) at the cost of a drained weapons capacitor? This guide should help you comfortably get through this.
First off, let's discuss expectations. You'll be jumping about 800ly out of the bubble to a Guardian site in Synuefe EU-Q C21-10 and landing on Planet A3. There's a Nav Marker that you can spot from 1000 ls away to guide you in. You'll land, and then you'll navigate the site in your SRV, and, while fighting roughly six guardian sentinels (not all at the same time!), you'll "charge" six pylons, which will then allow you to drop an Ancient Relic, which are available at the site, into a hole and thereby release the Glowing Golf Ball Of Weapons, which you can scan for the reward of one blueprint. All the Guardian weapons require one blueprint each - unless you're looking for the medium/large turreted versions, which usually require two - 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! 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.
What you'll need:
- A ship with a decent jump range, such as this Diamondback Explorer
- An SRV (preferably two)
- Several point defence systems (in your utility slots)
- SRV synthesis materials (I recommend, at a minimum, having 14 sulfur and 8 phosphorus, as well as half a dozen iron and nickel)
- Approximately 20 minutes of time per run
- A shopping list of materials you'll need, which you can make off the Guardian Weapons blueprints on Inara
Now that all the pylons are charged, the timer will stop. Now, go pick up an ancient relic. You may have heard additional rumbling as you're driving around. Approaching an ancient relic site will cause a tower to emerge from the ground, looking like this:
Note: you'll need Guardian Technology Components and Guardian Wreckage Components for the blueprints. The Technology Components sometimes drop from sentinels, but you'll also see the occasional tower with targetable panels; shooting those panels will occasionally cause Technology Components to drop out. In fact, any non-obelisk structure that has glowing blue panels on it might be targetable; check anything you see. The Wreckage Components only drop from Sentinels. Given that there are only six sentinels at this site, it might be tough to get what you need. Consider hopping over to Synuefe NL-N C23-4 B 3 and visiting the Guardian site there (where the module blueprints are). Twelve sentinels spawn, which gives you more chances to get what you need.
If you're interested, all images are available here: [IMGUR]Z4XeTDN[/IMGUR]
Edit: noted name change to blueprint segment, added emphasis about using data scanner
Last edited:
