Hello! Wow, that post blew up! I had never imagined that my little journal about my space travels and how they were helping me in life would get so much attention. Writing has always been a challenge for me, despite my love of it, and I am glad that posting my writing here is something that y’all enjoy. To everybody that read or commented on Part 1, thank you so much. Your open ears and your kind words truly mean so much to me, and it has given me a lot of motivation to see this through! (Also, my first silver, ever! Wow – thank you so much!) There’s a lot more that I feel that I could say here, but in the interest of getting to the actual journal part of this post, I’ll just say that I am truly grateful for your support, and I’m incredibly glad that my stories have touched so many people’s lives. Seriously, this community rocks. If you are a new reader, you can find part one here.

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Today, I went adventuring. After a brief nap in my ship, I left to investigate the hills around the crash site. After a few minutes of climbing around and taking in the scenery, a radioactive storm suddenly came up on the horizon. With my hazard protection quickly depleting, I looked around frantically for a means of protection, and my eyes quickly settled upon an opening in a nearby hill. As I walked inside, and my hazard protection began to stabilize, I saw a wide cave extending downward in front of me. I had watched a few guides during my break at work today, and quickly crafted an analysis visor. After some quick scanning, I realized that a lot of the rock formations in the cave were made of cobalt! (And other minerals). Knowing that they were valuable from watching a guide, I decided that tonight, I was going to strike it rich.

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It was challenging, at first, to mine with such intensity. I knew around how much money I wanted to have from mining, but the tedium of the thing soon began to set in. As many of you know, I am playing this game as a way to help overcome my prior addictions, and once the game became all about mindlessly pointing the mining laser, my mind began to wander. I really did want to power through this feeling, both because I knew that getting a lot of money would really make the early game a lot more fun, and also to prove to myself that I could exercise a modicum of self-control. I turned on some Twitch in the background, and that helped a lot. I actually ended up getting distracted by the stream a bit, and lost track of time, so I ended up mining way past my goal. Whoops! I also found some things called “Vortex Cubes” – not sure what they do, but they look like one of them would make a pretty cool lamp.

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After my spelunking had concluded, I decided that it was high time for me to repair my ship. I set out in the direction that the map beacon was indicating, and immediately got distracted by something else. I found a crashed pod on the side of a hill, then from there, I found a tower, waaaay off in the distance. My curiosity was peaked, so I headed out in the direction of the tower, to see what it had to offer. It ended up taking a bit longer to walk there than I had anticipated, but it was really cool to see it grow in the distance. I managed to scale it with the help of my trusty jetpack, and accessed some old logs at the terminal on the top. Unfortunately, it seems that my real-life foreign language skills translate into the game, and I was left staring at letters on the screen. I’ll have to make a note and come back to this later.

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Finally, I jumped down and headed over to the beacon that I had found, scanning creatures and plants along the way, and reading facts about them in the pause menu. Apparently, the tentacled creature from yesterday actually doesn’t have any bones, which makes me wonder how it stands up, Truly, nature is beyond human comprehension. I soon arrived at the little settlement, consisting of two tiny houses, right next to each other. I accessed the terminal in one building to win some money via the stock transfer (is this legal?), and found a hermetic seal in the other one. After repairing my pulse engine, I decided to call it a night, as I have an early morning tomorrow. Thank you so much for reading and sticking around! Hopefully this is as enjoyable for you as it is for me – next time, we’re getting off planet, so help me god. I don’t know if I’ll have time to play tomorrow, since I’m gonna go visit some old friends, but we’ll see. Pics below.

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Spelunking!

Like the companion cube, but slightly more….. trapezoidal.

Caught this dinosaur sleeping in the sand

Apparently, this is a rock? Wild

Waaaay off in the distance is a crashed pod, near the bottom of the valley

The tower, but from really far away

A half marathon, maybe more

This alien technology looks really cool, holy cow

I want one

Saw a freighter on the way back to my ship. I hear that you can fly one?

I am posting this guide since a lot of us have kept our expedition characters until the end date, to get the most possible value out of them.

Here, I am trying to summarize every great tip about things to do before ending the expedition.

General Information

• When the expedition ends, the following will be copied automatically by the game into your main save (if you started the expedition inside another normal save):
• All units you own.
• All quicksilver you own.
• All nanites you own.
• You are also able to place 8 tech upgrades and 24 regular items in the “cargo slots” at the expedition end terminal.
• Any other items you still owned on the expedition character will be automatically converted to units or nanites appropriately, and will be transferred too.
• All of your bases and discoveries will also transfer to the main save.

INFINITE Photonix Core + INFINITE Units (Get Rich)

• People want this item because it was a pre-order item for PlayStation in 2016 and this is the first time it returns. It’s treated by the game as a “high quality upgrade” and can be used to boost nearby tech slots. So people want enough of them to use in all their favorite ships.
• Most people know about the “easy way to get 3x cores”, but I know an even easier way to get INFINITE cores.
• Your expedition must be linked to your main save, otherwise this won’t work at all. So that means you must have started the expedition from your main save, at the Anomaly terminal.
• First, claim the Starborn Runner inside your Expedition character, by clicking the header bar in the Expedition milestones, where it says “Reward: Starborn Runner” at the top.
• Go into the Starborn Runner to make it your primary ship.
• Return to the main save. Do NOT end the expedition yet.
• On the main save, go to the Anomaly, then go to the expedition terminal, and use the option to “clone your expedition’s (primary) ship for 2800 nanites”. You will get a copy of it.
• Use the quick-menu, Utilities, and “Swap primary ship” and select Starborn Runner to swap your active ship at the anomaly.
• Fly the Starborn Runner to the space station (it helps to park the Anomaly next to a space station). Alternatively, use the teleporter to the left of the Nexus mission area, to go up to the Anomaly’s teleporter, and teleport to the space station.
• Go into the ship inventory, and package and extract the Photonix Core.
• Package and extract all other removable/storable technology too.
• Scrap the ship. You will get 55 million units.
• Go to a tech blueprint vendor (such as the space station vendors) and sell all the packaged technology too. This basically pays for the cost of cloning the ship. Keep the Photonix Core of course!
• Stay on the main save. Now go back to the Anomaly and repeat the ship cloning process as many times as you want, until you get bored. You can earn billions of units. Scrapping 18 ships = 1 billion units. Personally, I don’t like that (I prefer earning money “legitimately” with my automated mines), but I know a lot of people will like this trick.
• I’m surprised Hello Games hasn’t patched this exploit…
• When you are finally done and bored, go into your expedition save, extract the Photonix Core from the ship, put it in your “transfer cargo” slots when you end the expedition, to bring one last core over.
• When the expedition has ended, you can still claim 1 more Starborn Runner via your main save, at the Quicksilver Vendor (if you don’t have the option, you need to scrap your existing, cloned Starborn Runner).

Earning Units and Tech from Ships

• Extract all tech from your Expedition character’s ship. The only thing that raises a ship’s scrap/trade value is how many non-damaged Inventory slots it has. The game DOES NOT CARE what tech is installed or how many tech slots it has. So with that knowledge, just strip the tech out (store/package it) since it doesn’t add anything to the scrap value.
• Go to a ship scrapper and scrap all your ships. Just be aware that you can’t scrap your final remaining ship. So technically, it’s best to scrap the Starborn Runner first, since most people only have 2 ships on the expedition (the C-class starter and the Starborn Runner).
• Sell the resulting ship parts and tech.

Earning Units from Treasure

• This may seem really small compared to the “infinite money duplication exploit” above, but for legitimate players, this is a good tip.
• You’ve earned a bunch of treasures and various valuable items. If you end the expedition, they will automatically be converted to money at the basic rate.
• If you want a bit more, you should visit galactic trade terminals on your expedition character, and sell them in solar systems where there’s an extra payout. This is very easy to do. Just use your base teleporter to teleport to various Space Stations that you have visited.

Earning Nanites from Tech Upgrades

• Extract all tech you don’t want, from your ships, exosuit, exocraft, etc.
• Visit a tech blueprint vendor and sell them all for nanites.

Visit Anomaly NPCs for Extra Nanites

• On the right-side stairs at the Anomaly, there is a “meeting area” with two NPCs behind counters, one wants flora/minerals details and the other wants milestone data.
• Talk to them for extra nanites. It can easily be a few thousand after an expedition.

Upload your finished Fauna discoveries for extra nanites

• When you scan creatures on a planet, you get nanites. If you scanned all creatures on a planet, there’s a bonus payment which can easily be a few thousand nanites depending on how many creatures the planet has.
• To get the bonus, go into the planet in your Discoveries tab, then go into Fauna, and there will be a blinking header which you click to earn the bonus nanites. (If you don’t have it, look at the fauna list, you will see “???” and info about where the last creatures are found, if you want to go look for them. I don’t recommend bothering with any “Rare Underwater” though, since they are usually only found at ocean depth and will usually be extremely annoying to find.)
• You also get some bonus nanites for uploading discoveries. You can mass-upload them by looking at Discoveries, backing out to the big solar system view, and next to the name of each solar system there’s gonna be a “upload all” arrow. It’s worth doing for extra nanites.

Keep all Exo/Ship/MultiTool Inventory Upgrades!

• Many of the expedition milestones give you inventory upgrades. When you gain inventory upgrades for your expedition character, the game will automatically open an interface to “install the slot”.
• You must hit back or the red “Leave” UI button to cancel the installation.
• That means you get to keep the upgrade as an item instead, which can be transferred to your main save via the “end of expedition” terminal’s cargo slots later.

Keep all good Exo/Ship/Multi Tool Augments

• This goes without saying, but you can transfer up to 8 tech upgrades when you end the expedition.
• So pick your 8 best ones and transfer them over!
• Warning: Tech can ONLY be moved via the 8 tech slots. It doesn’t matter if it’s been installed (packaged) or if it’s not been installed yet (“unknown tech”). They can only be transferred via those tech slots. BUT, any ITEMS which convert into upgrades can be moved via regular inventory slots instead, if you haven’t converted them yet. So you should NOT USE/SPEND your “Memory Fragments” or “Salvaged Glass” or any other items that convert from “regular item” to “blueprint” when you use them. Keep those as a regular item to be able to transfer a whole stack of those bonus items instead. 🙂

Keep all Rare Items

• You’ve probably earned a few special items, such as “Anomaly Detector”, “Carrier AI Fragment”, “Memory Fragment”, “Salvaged Glass”, etc.
• You can bring up to 24 items via the end of expedition tab, so remember to bring the ones you want to keep on your main save.
• See the warning above about NOT converting/using any regular items that will turn into tech upgrades. Transfer them as unused, regular items instead, to be able to transfer much more tech.

Don’t forget your bonus Expedition Phase rewards!

• The Expedition GUI has more rewards than some people might realize.
• At the top, there’s the “expedition” header which grants the Starborn Runner.
• Next, there’s a list of phases to the left (as I am sure everyone knows).
• Within each phase, there’s 7 objectives to the right.
• There’s also an optional objective, which is well worth doing. Usually it’s just “scan 3 creatures/plants/rocks on each rendezvous planet”. If you missed any of them, use space station travel, since each station is labeled with the “rendezvous” number as a subtitle, so you can easily go there to finish them.
• And lastly, every Phase of the expedition has a button in the bottom right which grants extra bonuses. This is the one people may not realize is clickable.

Earn extra Quicksilver from Nexus Missions

• While you are on expedition, your expedition character is treated as a “separate character” at the Nexus mission terminal.
• This means that your main character and the expedition character can BOTH do the 1800 quicksilver weekend mission and the 400 quicksilver daily missions (which can store up to 3 days of past missions). This is a great way to earn extra quicksilver.
• Since all quicksilver transfers back to your main, you should just keep it all after doing the missions.

Earn up to ~40k extra Nanites from Blueprints

• When the expedition ends, all of your base building blueprints will be converted to nanites at a rate of 120 nanites per blueprint.
• The expedition also already gave you a ton of Salvaged Data.
• Therefore, I recommend that you go the Anomaly, to the base building blueprint terminal (in the room with all the blueprint vendors).
• Buy all of the cheapest blueprints that cost 1 data each, then all that costs 2 data each, etc, to be the most efficient. You can hover over items to see their cost even if you haven’t unlocked the whole tree yet, so just look around to see efficient branches of the tech tree. But as a general hint: Decorations usually cost 1 data, and are the most efficient trees to follow.
• Tip: Press the “Back” button (PC: Right click, Xbox: B button) to abort the “info popup” as soon as it appears after you buy recipes, to efficiently mass-buy recipes. Doing this takes you directly back into the recipe purchasing interface, and saves a ton of time.
• You can easily earn an extra ~40k nanites or so from doing this.
• If you need more data, remember that it’s easy to farm. There’s always a buried data module under every “crashed machine pod” in the world. And considering that each salvaged data gives 1-4 data (often 3-4), you get 120-480 nanites per data you dig up. Could be worth relaxing and digging a bit. Or at the very least, convert all the data you currently have!

Anything else?

Did I forget anything else? If so, let me know below! 🙂