What is this guide?

Note: This guide was written using the latest Continuous build. These builds are accessed through ESLauncher 2, which can be foundgithub.com – https://github.com/EndlessSkyCommunity/ESLauncher2

Endless Sky has a masterfully crafted main story that serves as a guide for newer players and helps them get acquainted with the game’s universe, setting, and mechanics, eventually culminating in the player obtaining a jump drive and meeting alien races. However, ES also gives experienced players the ability to completely ignore this story and start exploring the universe immediately after starting a new save. This guide will teach you how.

Prerequisites

For starters, you will need about 6-10 million credits, depending on how masochistic you are. Everything in this guide can be done with a Manta (4.9M for the hull, ~1.1M set aside for upgrades,) but for the sake of your sanity I highly recommend an Osprey (8.457M for the hull, ~1.5M set aside for upgrades,) and this guide will be written as such.

You can outfit your shiny new warship in any way you see fit, but make sure to follow these guidelines:

1. Full compliment of plasma cannons. Both the Manta and the Osprey can mount 4 of them.
2. At least one upgrade to your shield. You’ll need it.
3. Enough energy generation to sustain your weapon fire indefinitely.
4. At least 20 cargo space.

For example,

Acquiring your first jump drive: The longer, more beneficial, and moderately less painful way

Part 1: Space Rodents

So, you’ve just spent the better part of 10 million credits on buying and kitting out an Osprey. You must be ready for anything, right? Wrong.

Your next step is getting to Hai space to take advantage of their superior squirrel technology and get their storyline started for some extra credits. Hai space is (relatively) easy to get to from human space; all you need to do is locate the Ultima Thule system and traverse the wormhole found within. Ultima Thule is located above and slightly to the right of Ruticulus, your starting system. You will have to fly through a few pirate systems, but this shouldn’t be a problem in an Osprey.

After entering the wormhole, you’ll be spit out in Waypoint, which is just one short jump away from Hai space. After landing on Hai Home to begin the Hai plot, explore some of the sectors to the north and replace your ugly, inefficient human technology with glorious Hai equipment. In particular, I would recommend upgrading your shields, generators and engines. Make sure you have at least 1 outfit space available for one of these bad boys, though:

This cheap little stone is absolutely mandatory and will be your ticket to greatness. Finish up your purchases and prepare for the next leg of your journey.

Part 2: Space Chads

With your shiny new hybrid Osprey, you’re now ready to meet the Remnant. Head back through the wormhole into human space, and make the short trip to Ingot in the Tania Australis. Next, ensure that you have at least 500 fuel capacity or a ramscoop. When you’re ready, make your way to the nearby Terminus system. Use your Quantum Keystone to take the red wormhole halfway across the universe and navigate to Arculus, where you will land on Viminal to begin the Remnant storyline.

The Remnant storyline will begin with you being asked to pursue and destroy a crippled Korath ship in Remnant space. Locate the ship, and initiate my patented Korath fighting technique. This technique, known as BPCC, will allow you to disable and defeat Korath ships that would normally obliterate you in a standard clash. BPCC, put simply, means

(B)ackpedal – After pissing off the Korath ship, immediately start flying in the opposite direction. If done right, the Korath ship will only fire its repulsor beams at you, which will indefinitely keep you out of range of its other weapons.

(P)lasma – Bombard that lizard with everything you have, making slight thruster adjustments where necessary to prevent it from firing its grab-strikes. With your 4 plasma cannons constantly bombarding it, the Korath ship will overheat before its repulsors manage to kill you, and you can then properly disable and board the ship.

(C)hase – Sometimes the Korath ship will randomly decide that it’s done with fighting for the day and start flying away from you. If it does this, wait a few seconds until you’re out of grab-strike range and then start flying towards it again. When you get close enough it will aggro again and you can resume BPCC from the B stage.

(C)ry – This technique isn’t 100% consistent, and sometimes the enemy AI will perform incredibly baffling maneuvers that will swiftly result in your death. The important thing is not to lose hope. I have successfully used this technique in a Manta, so you can do it in an Osprey.

Proper utilization of BPCC looks like this:

Once you’ve disabled the Korath ship, make sure to board it and steal its damaged jump drive for a later Remnant quest. If you have the cargo space, I’d also recommend taking out and storing systems cores, heat shunts, and fuel processors, as these are all extremely useful outfits you can (at first) only acquire through raiding Korath ships.

Part 3: The Heist

Follow the Remnant storyline until you’re asked to join planetary defense ships to defend against a Korath invasion. This will be your time to shine. While you could find and lead one of the Raiders away and perform BPCC, your Remnant allies are more than capable of dealing with the invaders, and luckily for you they are very careful to disable instead of kill them. The best method, especially in your relatively weak Osprey, is to hang on the sidelines until the Remnant ships disable all of the Korath Raiders and then board one of them when the fighting stops. From there, just pluck out its jump drive and install it in your Osprey through one of the nearby outfitters. Don’t take too long, though, since once the Remnant ships neutralize all the Raiders they will begin to board and destroy them.

Congratulations, you’re now the proud owner of a jump drive!

Acquiring your first jump drive: The extremely fast yet incredibly tedious and painful way

So you just finished reading the guide and thought, “Nah, that sounds boring and would take too long. I want to get a jump drive immediately!” Well, lucky for you, it’s possible, albeit very tedious.

After outfitting your ship to the specifications of this guide’s Prerequisites section, you can head straight to the Durax system in pirate space.

This system borders Korath Exile space, and as such occasionally gets visits from marauding Raiders. The system also sees pirate and syndicate traffic, so prepare for

• Pirates attacking you
• Pirates attacking the Raider
• Syndicate attacking the Raider (they don’t even bother disabling it, they just blow it up)
• Syndicate and pirates fighting and blowing up the Raider in the crossfire
• The raider attacking syndicate or pirates instead of you and getting itself killed
• All of the above at the same time

Now, assuming you manage to get the Raider alone, BPCC still applies. However, you will now be dealing with a fully equipped Korath Raider and its two support fighters in an under-equipped Osprey. If the raider starts firing its grab strikes, you will go down very quickly. If you do manage to disable it, however, you simply board it, steal its jump drive, and begin your adventure. You’ll still want to do many of the things I talked about in the previous section, but now you have the freedom to do them and more in any order you please.

Uses for your new jump drive

With your shiny new jump drive, the world is your oyster. From here, I’d recommend exploring the galaxy and continuing the Remnant storyline. There’s very good money in it, and an Albatross makes one hell of a ship to take on the Republic Navy with. I’d also highly recommend getting friendly with the Wanderers to make use of their outfits (unfortunately, you can’t purchase their warships until after the Free Worlds campaign) and exploring the Kor Sestor and Kor Meretti sectors ( Kor Meretti ships in particular make great flagships if you can manage to capture one.)

Now go, and obliterate the Navy with ships they’ve never even heard of.

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