With a friend raving about his enjoyment of No Man’s Sky, I decided last week I might return to Elite: Dangerous. I’ve pretty much done all I can in No Man’s Sky, including the Platinum Trophy, so I wanted to come home: for that is how Elite feels to me.
Changes since my last visit
I downloaded the game to my PlayStation 5 from my Adelaide hotel room (still amazes me) and jumped into some research on the current state of the game. My last noted achievement was 5 years ago and a lot has changed since then. Most notably, the developers have dropped support for the console edition and now only support PC. Many of the supporting tools have moved on as well.
When I first looked a moving to PC (I had a free copy of the game from the Epic store) it was possible to move my commander across but it was credits only and none of the ships or progress. I didn’t move because it was a bit like selling everything to move to a new country where I’d have to start again. Since the game is reporting I’ve spent 1900+ hours, that’s a significant catch up (not that I believe it’s anywhere near that many).
Now, in recognition of the PC only move, Frontier Games offer a free copy of the game to the same level of the console, and everything transfers over. It took a few minutes and thanks to a special on Steam, I purchased the whole game including the latest DLC upgrade for AUD$3.65.
Relearning everything, and more
My mistake in moving to the PC was the rabbit hole of choice. Although I had used Inara in the past for information and the now defunct EDDB for training, I started down the path of other apps. Those, with an under-appreciation of the game’s complexity have cost me most of the week. I’ve been flailing from one task to another.
Today was the first day where I made some progress. I had been distracted by new engine types, forgetting what each of my ships was for, needing to rebind the control mappings for my Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas 4 (along with the keyboard), enabling weapons, and more.
Finally, focus
My goal is to firstly unlock all the engineers in the game. I keep getting hamstrung by needing something that I don’t have access to. To unlock Zacariah Nemo I need to cultivate reputation with his governing body. Blew 13 million in credits attempting combat above my level until I remembered there were other mission options. I’m on the way.
Once the engineers are done I’ll likely explore. I have Elite Explorer and Elite Trader with Elite Combat to go, but it’s the puttering around the solar system I enjoy the most. Home is out in the black.