Experimental Branch 21/11

• The Exobiology, Blighted, Leviathan and Polestart Expeditions have been recreated as Redux editions.

• Redux expeditions are shorter versions of the primary version of the main expedition, with the same rewards, designed to offer players a chance to gain any rewards they missed from the year’s expeditions.

• The Redux expeditions will run over the holiday period and will be available on all platforms, including Nintendo Switch.

• As well as their previous rewards, Redux expeditions will also award bonus Quicksilver to all platforms.

• Community expeditions now carry a set of minimum difficulty settings, similar to Permadeath mode.

• Fixed an issue that caused the upper half of the mission details UI to occasionally spill out of its box. The entire mission description panel will now adjust its height and scroll as appropriate.

• Fixed an issue that caused the Life Support guide entry to unlock even when the Life Support difficulty setting was disabled.

• An “Other” filter has been added to the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion’s shop interface.

• Fixed an issue that caused the glow to be missing when locking on to a marker with the Pulse Drive.

• Fixed an issue that caused the glow around locked-on or tagged markers to occasionally be the wrong shape for that particular marker.

• Fixed an issue that caused fleet debrief markers to be visible while visiting another player’s freighter.

• Fixed an issue that caused an animation glitch on certain cockpit components while in pulse engine flight.

• Fixed an issue that caused supercharged slots to fail to appear in newly-purchased ships until the game had been reloaded.

• Fixed an issue that could cause ship landing gear to appear to be raised while the ship was landed.

• Fixed an issue that could cause your previously owned ship to immediately vanish if exchanging it for another ship at a trade outpost.

• Fixed an issue that could cause your previously owned ship to become uninteractable if exchanging it for a crashed ship.

• Fixed an issue that caused your previously owned ship to be available to reclaim for free after exchanging it with an NPC for their ship.

• Fixed an issue that caused the correct trade-in price to be missing when exchanging a Multi-Tool.

• Fixed an issue that could occasionally cause incorrect text on the subtitle of the exchange button while purchasing ships.

• Fixed a rare issue that could cause an extra mission marker to become stuck on the screen during the tutorial.

• Fixed an issue that caused the scrollbar to always display on Guide pages, even when scrolling was not needed.

• Fixed an issue that caused the “Summon Companion” icons to always appear greyed out.

• Fixed an issue that could cause additional or incorrect expedition rendezvous markers to occasionally appear on the Galaxy Map.

• Fixed a collision issue that could allow players to fall out of the Space Anomaly if they jetpacked in a specific location.

• Fixed an issue that made it very difficult to use the Analysis Visor while riding a creature, as the visor would always detected the ridden creature rather than the current target.

• Fixed an issue that could cause Multi-Tools to become immediately fully repaired after a reload.

• Fixed an issue that could cause unfixable damage to become stuck in Multi-Tools.

• Fixed a number of issues that could cause the Exosuit Upgrade Chart reminder to appear on screen either after all inventory slots had been unlocked or after already using or discarding the chart.

• Fixed an issue that allowed inventory filters to be clickable underneath the currently active popup.

• Fixed an issue that prevent ship maneuverability stats to be missing when comparing an available starship with your current ship.

• Fixed an issue that caused the inventory to always default to opening on the Multi-Tool when starting a new session, even if there was no damaged technology in the current Multi-Tool inventory.

• Broken technology is now highlighted more strongly in red to improve visibility within an inventory.

• Fixed an issue that caused the Mission Board to occasionally give the wrong reward instead of the one promised by the UI.

• Fixed an issue that caused some information to be cut off in specific enlarged mission notifications.

• Fixed an issue that caused the Neutron Cannon to fail to register any damage potential to the Multi-Tool UI.

• Fixed an issue that could cause some ship jittering at low speeds when using “locked” mouse controls to pilot the ship.

• Fixed an issue that caused too little salt to be available in particular underwater biomes.

• Fixed an issue that caused too few ferrite dust rocks to be placed on swampy worlds.

• Fixed a visual glitch in the third person character animation when running on slopes.

• Fixed an issue that could cause teleport destinations to fail to add automatically when visiting a base.

• Fixed an issue that could add an invalid freighter teleport destination to be added to the list.

• Fixed an issue that could cause the ship to automatically take off after reloading a save made within a landed ship.

• Fixed an issue that caused a UI mismatch for nanite costs when purchasing blueprints from a planet-based technology merchant.

• Fixed an issue that caused some cost details to be missing from NPC dialogue options on the Nintendo Switch.

• Added additional filtering and ordering options to the list of Expedition rewards found at the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion.

• Multi-Tools collected from Sentinel Hives are now free, though will have damaged slots that need repairing.

• Fixed an issue that prevented the cinematic black bars from being skipped in certain circumstances.

• Fixed a visual UI glitch when skipping the black bars.

• Fixed an issue that could prevent the “No” option from functioning in the new game warning when starting a community expedition as your only save.

• Fixed an issue that prevented autosaving with 1 health pip even when the player is in no immediate danger of dying.

• Fixed an issue that allowed players to join invite-only groups in particular circumstances.

• Fixed a number of networking issues.

• Fixed an issue that caused some data types to be scrambled for mod authors.

• Fixed a rare hang when warping to a new galaxy.

• Fixed a rare but consistent crash that could occur when loading a save.

I’ve been keeping the wiki open on my phone while I’ve been interloping, it’s very handy for looking up crafting formulas and determining whether or not to keep something for later. But today it really came in handy when I stumbled across a relic gate in the wild. These things looked suspicious to me so I always ignored them in the past, but I thought to look up what they do and found out that they will send you somewhere random, sometimes to another galaxy even! So I took the dive and now I’m 500,000 light years from my origin planet on the other side of Euclid. What a ride.

So other day I decided it was time to grow my fleet of living frigates. After using up my small supply of two (2) anomaly detectors, I realized that I actually had no idea where they came from. A little digging on the wiki told me that they “occasionally” drop from destroying asteroids. Well… that’s vague. So I shot out into my local system’s deep space and began blasting some asteroid fields. One hour later, no Anomaly Detectors. After a little more research around Reddit and the Steam forums, I realized that nobody really does know how to efficiently farm these things, just that they “occasionally” drop from asteroids. I saw some theories here and there, but none with some good, solid evidence- so I took it upon myself to produce some.

To test, I decided to spend 15 minutes in various system types destroying asteroid fields. The timer starts the moment I find an adequate asteroid field, and paused if there are any interruptions (hostile ships, cargo scans, etc.).

Before I get on with the results, let’s establish what we do know about Anomaly Detector drops. Their wiki page says they drop from asteroids, but looking into the page on “asteroids” gives us another vital piece of information: they only drop from “small” type asteroids. Not the large ones that break piece by piece, and NOT the crystal type asteroids (which is the primary asteroid type in my initial system).

So without further ado, here are the actual numbers for the 13 systems I tested in order of most Anomaly Detectors to least, including their star color, primary lifeform (if any), and whether or not they are dissonant:

• Blue “abandoned” system (Gek), dissonant- 10 Anomaly Detectors

• Red “uncharted” system, dissonant- 8 Anomaly Detectors

• Red “uncharted” system- 7 Anomaly Detectors

• Red Gek system, dissonant- 7 Anomaly Detectors

• Red Korvax system- 7 Anomaly Detectors

• Green Gek system- 7 Anomaly Detectors

• Green “uncharted” system, dissonant- 6 Anomaly Detectors

• Yellow Gek system- 5 Anomaly Detectors

• Blue Vy’keen system, dissonant- 4 Anomaly Detectors

• Blue Korvax system- 4 Anomaly Detectors

• Blue “uncharted” system, dissonant- 3 Anomaly Detectors

• Blue “uncharted” system- 2 Anomaly Detectors

• Blue “abandoned” system (Vy’keen), dissonant- 2 Anomaly Detectors

So, what do our most successful systems have in common?

… basically nothing. In fact, the #1 system has more in common with the bottom 3 than any of the other top 3. Between 1st, 2nd, and the 4-way tie for 3rd place, we have red, green, and blue systems; uninhabited, abandoned, and populated systems; dissonant and non-dissonant systems- a little bit of everything. With the information gathered, I’m very comfortable in saying that the system you search in does not matter at all. It’s all RNG.

So that’s it? All that time wasted to find out it doesn’t matter?

Well, not exactly. Knowing that the drop rate is unaffected by the system type allows us to focus on other areas to maximize our collection: Not all of those 15 minute testing periods were built the same. Multiple times, I accidentally hit NPC ships mining asteroids as well. System freighters would warp in, despawning the chunk of asteroid field I was currently harvesting. I even had a freighter distress signal interrupt me without warping. Of course, I stopped my timer for the sake of testing fairly, but it did add to the actual time spent mining. So while they may not drop more Anomaly Detectors, uncharted and abandoned systems wind up being more efficient for farming Anomaly Detectors, as you’ll experience fewer interruptions.

So after over 3 hours of mindless asteroid blasting, I can definitively provide the most efficient way to farm Anomaly Detectors:

• Step 1: Warp to an uncharted or abandoned system. Any system color will do.

• Step 2: Locate an asteroid field and verify that it does not contain any of the “crystal” type asteroids. If it does, repeat step 1.

• Step 3: Blast to your heart’s content! If you install a Cargo Scan Deflector, you should have next to no interruptions whatsoever!

Hopefully somebody out there finds this post useful. I know it was a lot of text for a rather underwhelming conclusion, but at this point I was too far in to not post my results. And even if it wasn’t super productive, it was fun doing some actual research on a relatively undocumented topic in the game.

Anyway, now I gotta go figure out what to do with 72 Anomaly Detectors.

Happy hunting, travellers!