Odyssey Guide

Odyssey opens up new opportunities where curious Commanders can alight across previously inaccessible worlds and distant battlefields. Stand tall as you take in the view. 

If you’ve yet to upgrade to Elite Dangerous: Odyssey, it may help to know what the expansion adds aside from an airlock to the great outdoors. Yes, you can walk the same settlements and planetary surfaces you may be familiar with from inside your SRV, but you’ll have a greater variety of planets and moons to explore, with many more diverse and distinct geological features across them than exist in Elite Dangerous alone.

The increased variety is enhanced by the fact that there are billions of undiscovered bodies in the galaxy. You could be forever associated with many of them by being the first to set foot there, or by discovering the first stirrings of life within a thin atmospheric world. There’s a lot to find - and much profit to be made - if you know where to look!

Meanwhile, across settled space, you can disembark from your ship and gain a new appreciation of its size and any customisations you have applied to make it uniquely yours. Once you’re done gawping, simply take the lift up to the station concourse where you can shop, socialise and take on a variety of missions that will test your first-person combat and stealth abilities to the limit - and reward you with the materials to upgrade your gear. 

Also unlocked through Odyssey are two new ranking categories, Mercenary and Exobiologist. The former the on-foot equivalent of the in-space Combat ranking and Exobiologist a standalone expansion to the Explorer ranking. Currently you may be Defenceless and Directionless - literally and figuratively - but all that’s about to change…

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FIRST STEPS

Your ambulatory adventure began of course at Briscoe’s Legacy, where you will have discovered how to use TERMINALS to select and locate objectives within facilities, the ENERGYLINK TOOL to charge open and overload doors, the ARC CUTTER to cut through maintenance panels and the PROFILE ANALYSER to scan bodies and clone security profiles to gain access to restricted areas. Hopefully during the course of the engagement you will have become adept at manoeuvring in your Maverick Suit - including using jump assist to get to higher ground - activating your personal shield, replenishing your health, picking up any items that may be of use and using “Lasers for shields. Bullets for bodies” as Mr. Sylke so precisely put it. If you want to hone your newfound skills still further, you can relive the mission by exiting to the MAIN MENU and replaying SURFACE OPERATION from the listed TUTORIALS.

Relieved of your weapons and equipment, you will then have been returned to the settlement of Chamberlain’s Rest, where you are asked to pay a visit to INTER ASTRA, which is where you can buy and manage your ships and from where you will be reminded of your ship training. Next you need to head to PIONEER SUPPLIES, which is the chain of retail outlets for all your on-foot equipment needs, from suits and weapons to the consumables for any future assignment.

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DELIVERY MISSIONS

You’ll begin by acquiring your own MAVERICK SUIT, which is the main suit you should use for settlement-based missions, as it allows you to salvage more gear than the others and comes equipped with the ARC CUTTER. The lighter ARTEMIS SUIT is designed for exobiology and the DOMINATOR SUIT purely for combat, with its increased shield strength and extra weapons slot. We’ll get into both later.

Once you’ve found a TERMINAL and created and equipped your MAVERICK SUIT loadout, select the MISSION BOARD where you’ll see a few DELIVERY missions for the local system. Don’t worry, you won’t need to be armed to complete them, you just need to hand over whatever it is you’ve been asked to deliver in person, usually at another station or a settlement. To start your journey there, head back to the EXPRESS LIFTS and board your vessel.

After you’ve taken off from Chamberlain’s Rest and are no longer mass-locked, select the closest mission destination from the NAVIGATION tab of the left-hand EXTERNAL PANEL of your ship - it will be highlighted blue - then select LOCK AND SUPERCRUISE. If it’s a planetary settlement you are headed to, if you activate SUPERCRUISE ASSIST your ship will take up orbit around the target body. When you’re ready to attempt a landing, DEACTIVATE SUPERCRUISE ASSIST and aim for the settlement, making sure it’s not obscured by the curvature of the planetary surface (as shown by a dashed circle) and that your speed and angle of descent is not too high - 50-65 degrees is recommended. If you are coming down on the dark side of the body, you can turn on NIGHT VISION via the SHIP tab of your ship’s INTERNAL PANEL. Submit a docking request when you are within 7.5km of the settlement, then slow to zero as you would outside a station and allow your AUTO DOCK to set you down.

DISEMBARK and look for a TERMINAL, which are shown as monitor icons on the radar in the top left of the screen. There, select the name of the person you need to meet from the STAFF LIST and they will be highlighted on the compass at the top of your screen. Head over to them to complete the delivery. Be still if you are stopped by a member of the security team and targeted for a scan as they don’t need much of an excuse to draw their weapons. If you’re armed and accidentally draw your weapon, quickly holster it. You won’t be given a second warning. 

Once you’ve completed the delivery, see if there are any new missions via a nearby TERMINAL, then take off and either head to the next rendezvous, or head back to Chamberlain’s Rest to claim your rewards.

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INFILTRATING SETTLEMENTS

Once you have enough credits to augment your suit with a primary weapon and a few consumables from PIONEER SUPPLIES, it’s time to broaden your horizons and take on something more challenging. However, rather than charge ahead into the different types of missions where failure might cause you to incur a criminal record, it’s best to head somewhere where your mistakes won’t be so costly. Think of it as a practise run for all that can - and probably will - go wrong

Bring up the GALAXY MAP and select the GOVERNMENTS tab under the PILOTS’ FEDERATION Map Mode, then toggle ANARCHY. You’ll want a system that has a number of planetary settlements, which is hard to discern if you’ve not explored the system. The best candidate close to Chamberlain’s Rest is HIP 97704, which is three jumps away in your Sidewinder. When you arrive, open the SYSTEM MAP and target the third body orbiting the second gas giant. As you near it’ll register as HIP 97704 2 C and you’ll be able to target the tiny agricultural settlement of Lai Botanical Habitat. Tiny means fewer humans to deal with and agricultural means more civilians relative to trigger-happy goons. With its administration being an Anarchy, while the local population will react in kind to any unlawful killings, it won’t besmirch your good standing in the galaxy.

You can either disembark at the settlement or land just outside and drive closer with your SRV. For larger settlements with more robust defences, you may want to keep your ship close by but out of danger, while an SRV can provide a handy loot drop-off and rearming point. Its turret might come in handy as well.

It’s up to you how to secure the settlement, but it’s best to begin stealthily and if things take a turn for the worse, you can switch to an all-guns-blazing approach. Start with deactivating the alarm system, which will stop security from calling in reinforcements. Often the alarm console is in a building with level 3 clearance, which in this case is the Power Centre. You can target it by selecting FACILITIES from a nearby Terminal. While you are there, check out the STAFF LIST and consider targeting anyone with a level 3 clearance. As you did at Briscoe’s Legacy, you can use your PROFILE ANALYSER to clone their security profile and gain access that way. However, you need to be careful here when dealing with the living. Having a weapon readied or any of your equipment switched to in an illegal mode while in full view of someone will either generate a warning or invite outright hostility. Similarly, if you are carrying any illegal or stolen items, or if you are spotted in an area you shouldn’t be in - regardless of your borrowed security clearance - you can expect your hosts to turn on you.

Get used to using the radar for sneaking around. If they are not facing you, you won’t be seen by any NPC outside of the red circle. For those within it, try to remain crouched and outside their field of vision. Then you can sneak behind them and steal their security profile without being noticed. You can also use your ENERGYLINK in OVERLOAD MODE to silently take them down. 

While stunned and dead bodies will arouse suspicion, unless you’re seen committing the crime and the alarm is raised, you can continue about your business. This makes sniping from atop buildings a good way to take out guards before entering any buildings, as they will only activate their personal shields when threatened. However, it’s likely you will be spotted and the pretence will be over, hopefully by which point either the alarm system will be deactivated, or the enemy will be reduced enough to be able to deal with whoever's left without too much trouble. Once you are the last person standing, salvage as much material as you can carry and leave. The more Anarchy settlements you subdue in this way, the better prepared you are for more demanding missions and the more materials you’ll collect to upgrade your equipment.

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CONFLICT ZONES

If you have awakened a taste for combat, or wish to take on a more persistent heavily-armed foe, with your DOMINATOR SUIT equipped visit FRONTLINE SOLUTIONS at any station concourse and you may be able to join a CONFLICT ZONE within the system. CZs can take place in space between ships - which you can just fly to - or over a ground-based settlement, to which Frontline Solutions will transport you and literally drop you off. However, if there are no local ground CZs, you will need to head to the nearest system that is either in a WAR or CIVIL WAR State, which you can find via the STATE tab of the PILOT’S FEDERATION Map Mode of the GALAXY MAP.

On foot CZs are effectively 12vs12 team deathmatches, with NPCs filling in for human players. Upon nearing a ground CZ you will be asked to join one of the sides and will thereafter spawn on that team. The aim is to bring the opposition’s point score down from 1,000 to zero before the same fate befalls your side. Points are lost by being “critically injured”, or by losing control of any of the six control points. All combatants will receive Combat Bonds for their contribution, which can be turned in upon your return to Frontline Solutions in return for Influence and credits. All unused consumables picked up from the battlefield are removed at the end of the conflict.   

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EXOBIOLOGY

If abiogenesis and the discovery of new life interests you, exobiology can be one of the most rewarding career choices you can make - quite literally, as the volume of per-hour credits to be earned from cataloguing nascent civilisations is among the highest. Of course, you’ll need to do a little more than turn over the nearest rock, with lengthy travel required to reach the space that no one has gone to before to secure the best returns. 

Before you head out, you'll need an ARTEMIS SUIT and a suitable exploration ship. Your Sidewinder will suffice if all you’re looking to do is sample the life of an exobiologist, but the further you can increase its jump range with which to escape the Bubble the better. As well as the best FSD you can afford, you’ll need a Detailed Surface Scanner and a Fuel Scoop

Exobiology is essentially an expansion of exploration, which you'll find outlined here. Basically, once you’ve completed a surface scan of a nearby planetary body, the heat map will tell you if there is life to be discovered. If there are multiple biological signals, it is often best to make your way towards the one that appears to have colonised the smallest areas of the planet, since it will likely overlap with one of the bigger signals and you may be able to take numerous samples without having to take off and land too many times.

You will need to collect three samples of each lifeform using your suit’s GENETIC SAMPLER, with then needing to be some hundreds of metres apart (distances vary depending on the lifeform). You may need to utilise an SRV to reduce the travel times between sample sites, although it’s often easier to get back into your ship to figure out where they are from above. Once you’ve collected the three samples, you will need to register your claim at a branch of VISTA GENOMICS to secure your reward. The amount of credits will be much higher if you are the first to scan the body where the samples were taken, the first to make a footfall and the first to register the lifeform. However, if you lose your ship on the return journey, all your claims will be lost to the void.

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LAST WORDS

Whether you choose the quiet pursuit of science, the thrill of infiltration, or the adrenaline of frontline combat - or would rather rest your legs and enjoy the home comforts of your commander’s chair - you should now have all the information you need to plot your course ahead, whether your journey takes you through entire systems or across the worlds within them.

One of the great benefits of Odyssey is that as well as full access to the most up-to-date and active version of Elite Dangerous, as new ships are fully incorporated into the game’s economy, you’ll be able to purchase them with in-game credits. So, if there are any recently-added ships you’ve passed on for whatever reason, with Odyssey you can sate your curiosity once the ARX early access period for a ship has ended. 

However you acquired it, unlike the verifiable rocket science that goes into mastering your ship, becoming a proficient mercenary or exobiologist essentially revolves around the three specialised suits: Artemis for exploration, Dominator for ground combat zones and Maverick for stealth and infiltrating settlements to gather valuable engineering materials and data needed to upgrade your gear. This material gathering is crucial to advancing on foot (as it is in space), as engineered weapons and suits are essential if you hope to compete with and alongside more established Commanders. A subject for another time, perhaps...

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Commander Righton first blasted off from Lave more than 40 years ago, with a head full of dreams and a pocket full of change. This was back when 100 credits could get you a long way, despite the 7 ly jump limit. After a lifetime exploring other galaxies, he's returned to impart his dubious wisdom, baffled at the parlous state of zero-g cricket and how his home planet has become more notable for a radio show than its once-famous tree grubs.