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Guides#

These guides will provide you an introduction to some of the more challenging unlocks in the game, such as those that involve Engineering. It is recommended to approach these guides with a trainer if you've not attempted them before.

Material Farming#

Materials are used to unlock Engineers as well as to engineer ship modules themselves. The following methods will quickly gather several high-grade Materials for engineering that you can then provide to a Materials Trader to get the whatever other materials you need.

Warning

The locations listed here are commonly known and widely used by the community at large. DO NOT approach or spawn into these locations in Open Play. These are popular griefing sites and you will be instantly shot upon getting close or spawning in. If you do accidentally choose the Open Play option from the Main Menu when you're doing a farming loop, Alt+F4 quickly during the loading screen to avoid being killed and relaunch the game in Private/Group Session.

Ship Engineering Materials#

Requirements#

  • Any ship
  • SRV
  • Detailed Surface Scanner (on first visit)

Steps#

  1. In a Solo/Private Group Session, go to System: KOLI DISCII Body: C 6 A (bookmarked as Raw Materials Site in Squadron Bookmarks) and perform a Detailed Surface Scan
  2. Fly to the Crash Site and land nearby
  3. Deploy your SRV
  4. Open your Contacts panel to target Cargo Racks
  5. Shoot at all Cargo Racks and collect the Raw Materials that spawn
  6. Quit to Main Menu and repeat until you fill the slots for all of the Materials you've been collecting
    • The ship will not tell you when you max out the storage for a Material - It will simply stop allowing you to collect more
    • You can see how much space a given Material has available when targeting from within the cockpit by looking in the lower-left corner of the HUD
  7. Trade these Materials away for others at a Raw Material Trader to make room and repeat from the start

Expected Materials Gathered#

Tip

Don't try to shoot at all Cargo Racks and pick up after as spawned Materials will have roughly a 5-minute timer before despawning. Shoot one cargo rack at a time and collect those Materials before moving onto the next to make sure you don't waste material.

Requirements#

  • Any ship
  • SRV recommended (not required)
  • Detailed Surface Scanner (on first visit)

Steps#

  1. In a Solo/Private Group Session, go to System: HIP 12099 Body: 1 B (bookmarked as Encoded Materials Site in Squadron Bookmarks) and perform a Detailed Surface Scan
  2. The Jameson Crash Site will appear as a target and you can fly to it
    • Once discovered, this will remain as a selectable target going forward when near the planet
  3. You can either:
    • Land and deploy your SRV or
    • Hover above the site - This is more challenging, but can be convenient, depending on your piloting skills
  4. Using your Data Scanner, scan the Comms Controls scattered around the site to collect Encoded Materials
    • Scan the ship itself for lore-rich audio logs! Press the play button at the bottom of the message to hear it.
  5. Quit to Main Menu to reset the Comms Controls and repeat until you fill your Encoded Material Inventory
    • The ship will tell you as you max out the storage for each Material and it will stop allowing you to collect more
    • Continue scanning until it shows that no Materials were collected at least 2-3 times in a row before returning to the Material Trader
  6. Trade these materials away for others at an Encoded Material Trader to make room and repeat from the start

Expected Materials Gathered#

Requirements#

  • Any ship
  • Supercruise Overdrive recommended (not required)
  • Collector Limpet Controller
  • Cargo Racks (Filled with Limpets, the more the better)

Steps#

  1. Open the Galaxy Map and set the following options:
    • Map Mode: Pilot's Federation > State > Boom
    • Population Range:
      • Minimum: One notch from the right
      • Maximum: Far right
  2. Fly to the closest filtered system and scan the Nav Beacon
  3. Target and fly to any High Grade Emissions signal source
    • These are often decently far from the system star, which is where Supercruise Overdrive comes in handy
    • Check the Time Remaining at the top-right of the HUD before setting out and make sure you have at least 5 minutes (10-15+ if you don't have Supercruise Overdrive), otherwise you'll likely miss the window and waste time flying to the target only to have it disappear along the way
    • If the system does not have any High Grade Emissions signals, you will need to go to another system and repeat until you do
  4. Use Collector Limpets along with your Cargo Scoop to collect all of the floating cargo until you see No Valid Collection Targets and your Limpets return to hover near your ship
    • If you still see floating cargo in the area after this message appears, skip to Step 7
  5. Return to Supercruise and repeat until all High Grade Emissions signal sources are gone
  6. Quit to Desktop (not Main Menu) and repeat until you fill your Manufactured Material Inventory
    • The ship will tell you as you max out the storage for each Material and it will stop allowing you to collect more
  7. Trade these materials away for others at a Manufactured Material Trader to make room and repeat from the start

As mentioned, these methods will quickly fill a few slots in your Material inventory and the ship will give an error when trying to pick up more of that resource. You can also check this from your ship or SRV (not on foot) by going to your Inventory tab in the Internal (Right) panel. Raw and Manufctured Materials share a tab and the game has an option the filter by Type. Raw is listed as Element here. Encoded Materials have their own tab.

You will need to offload these Materials to a Material Trader to make room for more high grade Materials. To do this, open the Components Trading page on Inara and choose the type of Material you're looking to trade (Raw/Encoded/Manufactured). You can also use the 3 Squadron Bookmarks for the 3 different types of Materials, found under Squadron Stations.

Once there, select any low or empty Material and request the max amount in trade for one of the Materials you just collected to empty space for more Material farming. Continue to repeat this to make room for the Materials you maxed out and repeat as you see fit. This will make more room for another round of farming to gather more Materials.

The Material Trader works as follows. Each horizontal line represents a single Material type. The columns are arranged by Grade 1-5, left to right. Counter-intuitively, trading "down" or "up" often refers to trading between Materials of the same type (visually horizontal in the Material Trader interface), while trading "sideways" refers to trading from one Material type to another (vertical in the Material Trader interface). Trading up or down is at a much better exchange rate than when trading sideways, so it's generally advised to first fill out all of the same material type, then start filling out your other sideways trades.

Feel free to explore this mechanic as you see fit as it's the primary method of gathering materials to make a powerful ship in Elite. Eventually, you can trade all Materials up, down and sideways to fill out every Material, guaranteeing a long-term supply of Materials for future upgrades, but this certainly not a requirement to get started with using the system.

Recommended Starting Materials

These materials can be used in the Synthesis section of your Inventory (Right) panel to generate useful refills and utilities in a pinch. When trading for materials, I recommend prioritizing these so you always have spares available and fill out everything else after. Many of these also used quite heavily in Engineering.

Raw#

Item Material [Grade]
Life Support
Limpets
SRV Repair		 Iron [1]
Nickel [1]
SRV Refuel
SRV Ammo Restock		 Sulfur [1]
Phosphorus [1]
AFM Refill Nickel [1]
Zinc [2]
Chromium [2]
Vanadium [2]
FSD Injection Carbon [1]
Vanadium [2]
Germanium [2]

Manufactured#

Item Material [Grade]
Chaff Compact Composites [1]
Filament Composites [2]
Heatsinks Basic Conductors [1]
Heat Conduction Wiring [1]

Odysee/Suit Engineering Guides#

These guides have not had a written companion prepared at this time, but still contain lots of useful information for those looking to gain a head-start.

Suit Engineering

Odyseey Material Farming

Odyseey Ultimate Weapon Farming

Guardian FSD Booster#

Wiki | Video Guide#

The Guardian FSD Booster is a permanent unlock that allows you to purchase an Optional Internal Module as many times as you want using standard credits that can boost your jump range up to +10 LY, no engineering required.

Guardian Site

Requirements#

  • Medium or Small ship
  • 8+ Cargo Space
  • SRV Bay
  • Point Defense Turret (Topside)

Steps#

  1. In a Solo/Private Group Session, go to System: SYNUEFE PX-J C25-8 Body: 7 A - You may want to request a Fleet Carrier jump as this is approx. 600 LY from the Bubble
    1. Land at the Guardian Structure where indicated in white, or as close as possible
      • There will be anywhere from 1-4 Guardians shooting at you during this mission
      • They will shoot both low-power laser weapons that your SRV shield should be able to handle without issue as well as missiles, which your ship's Point Defense Turrets will help defend against.
      • It is recommended to have at least 3 pips in Weapons with the rest in Systems. Concentrate fire on one Guardian at a time. It should take only 3-5 seconds to fully destroy a Guardian.
      • DO NOT get out of your SRV during this time
      • DO NOT dismiss your ship - If you do, leave the area immediately and recall it to reposition
      • Your SRV's turret mode will make aiming much easier for this section
      • If needed, board your ship to fully repair the SRV
    2. Shoot the metal panels off the indicated pillars marked in blue
    3. Collect the ejected Materials with your Cargo Scoop - Make sure to target it and to open your Cargo Scoop or you will destroy the material!
    4. Reapeat this for all pillars and relog until you have 21 Guardian Power Cells and 21 Guardian Technology Components
  2. Collect a Guardian Relic found at one of the pillars marked in green by shooting at it and collecting with your Cargo Scoop
  3. Drive your SRV directly over the main center structure and jettison your Guardian Relic at the marked arrow in white - You will get a confirmation message if done correctly
  4. With your SRV Pulse Laser, shoot at the blue light on each of the pillars marked in red until you get a confimration message
  5. Use your Data Link Scanner on the sphere to gather your Guardian Module Blueprint Fragment
    • You can use the turret view when using the Scorpion, but if you're in the Scarab, you'll need to drive onto the structure to tilt the front of the vehicle and point at it from the first-person cockpit view
  6. Return to the Bubble
  7. Farm/Trade 24 Focus Crystals - Can be traded at a Manufactured Material Trader, See the Manufactured Material guide for gathering materials to trade
  8. Purchase 8 H.N. Shock Mounts - See Inara Commodity Market
  9. Go to a GuardianTech Broker - Can be found in Inara with Search Nearest
  10. Unlock the Guardian FSD Booster with the Tech Broker Contact
  11. You can now purchase Guardian Frame Shift Drive Booster from any station that sells them
    • You can perform an Outfitting Search on Inara to find one
    • Make sure to update the search to use your current system

Stock up!

While you're at one of these stations, you can make life easier for yourself by stocking on a few spare modules. Use the Buy and Store Modules option in Outfitting. I personally recommend picking up a range of options so that you still have something useful for the occasional small ship.

Material Checklist#