Just finished the Cartographers Redux and what started out as a rough journey ended up being an awesome adventure.

Someone already claimed a base in the vicinity of my spaceship so I thought I was screwed.

I stumbled into a cave and decided to dig my way upwards and I was fortunate to end up right in front of a settlement shop but unfortunately someone already claimed a base there as well.

I wanted to remember the location of that shop and set up a base as close as possible to minimize the grind. The closest spot I could find was in the middle of the desert surrounded by predators.

I decided to use my portable refiner as an arrow to point in the direction of that settlement shop from my spaceship.

Once I got my mech I had to travel at least 30 minutes to find water. I looked at my planet in the Discoveries tab and looked at my marker to see how far I was from water.

Finding the water was a pain in the ass but it’s been a while since a game had me this interested and engaged to figure it out.

*Edited for typos

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! 🙂