EL Quick guide - First 10 hours - First Million credits

Tips, tactics, and general discussion for Evochron Legacy.
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XenonSurf
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EL Quick guide - First 10 hours - First Million credits

Post by XenonSurf »

This quick guide contains the most basic game mechanics without combat. No spoilers.

After 10+ hours into the game, I made my first million credits and got the Deploy Constructor, without any combat and maximizing my ship capacity. Here my thoughts for a quick money-building that will get you in a starting point to do pretty all you want.

First thing to do, sell all your secondary weapons, your secondary primary weapon (keep just one particle cannon).
Second, buy a Mining & Tractor Beam. Without it, guess, you are doing plain nothing...
Third, hire a Scientific Officer with good Loyalty and go to the "Crew managment" page often to adjust his wager. See end of doc to know why this guy is important.

Then, go to shipyard > Frame Config and make it to 5 hardware points, 4 cargo bays, 1 crew, 2 fuel tanks. Eventually you will have to do some simple missions (see after) if you start with less than 40.000 cr. and you cannot afford these changes immediately. Changes in the Shipyard don't always cost something, cargo, fuel tanks, more equipment slots will cost something, but if you revert to lower slots you get your cash back also.


When you got rid of all unnecessary equipment, it's time to do some lucrative missions, or do some mining.

Mining:
If you do mining, then carefully compare where you get the best price for your material. If you are a trader, you want to buy low and sell high. You do this by going into

Nav Map > Quadrant > Territory or Technology > zoom the map.

Go with your mouse over the systems and on the left you will see how prices change for the different materials. Below the price graphs are toggling prizes for individual goods. The first number is the overall medium price (100%), the second one the real prize in the system where you navigate with your mouse.
You can also have an overview of your local system prizes from the Inventory > News.


Missions:
What missions should you pick at the start? Think about the time involved: If you have to simply fly to a waypoint and get paid 20.000 for it, this is worth more than if you have to fly there and then return to a station for the same 20.000 wager. Also the same missions may pay differently. Compare the different missions! You shouldn't care about how far away the waypoint is, you don't consume any fuel while jumping.
One thing you should always do before accepting a contract is: look at the items you can buy, maybe the station has already those required for a mission and you can do easy money without going anywhere :)
Also when on a planet city, and you plan going to space, then look if there's a satellite or goods delivery mission to a ship, you are flying there anyway, so at least get paid for it...

These were the missions I did:

Finding items on planets
Easy if you know what to do: Fly to the waypoint, and try to spot the item on your radar. This is your only chance to spot it, forget about looking around, you won't see it. You need to look for a PURPLE DOT on your radar scope. Occasionally press NUM-1 or NUM-0 to lock to the nearst object (in this case your possible item). Fly to it and beam whatever it is on board. Return to the city/station. Done!
Of course things are not always that easy. Your radar can only look 10K away, so you may have to do some concentric flight around your waypoint to get a positive radar ID, also your waypoint keeps moving! That's because the planet is rotating and your waypoint is simply a fixed point in space (Thanks Marvin to point me to that!). One easy way to remember the waypoint location is right when you start from your base: remember the exact course you do towards the waypoint and its distance. If you are good in navigation you will know that when you come from an opposite course towards this location, you can do a "triangulation" in your head to find it. Generally, I didn't need to do it as the item was usually near to the waypoint, but I may just have been lucky...
Tip: Although the 2D radar would be more useful on planets, use the 3D radar because the purple dot will be much more visible.

Retrieving biological samples from plants
Very easy, fly to a tree or plant, hit BACKSPACE to come to a halt at min. altitude, point to the plant and press B. In your Inventory (F3) you can see the increasing amount. Once you hit 25 or 50 (read the mission description to know how much you need), you are done, fly back to the base.

Catching 5 birds
These pay much more than the above missions, on Saphire I get more than 200.000 cr.
Fly towards the waypoint at 2500 speed, keep low below 70.000, and deactivate your Hud to better spot the birds. Once you spot one, fly towards it and reduce speed to 300-400 while intercepting. Point to it and hit B when you are close. Find 5 birds and it's time to go home to your city base.

Doing these easy missions will quickly raise your purse, but you can also pick up containers in space. If you have played Evochron Mercenary before you surely have noticed that now it gets hard to find these cargo containers! I don't want to spoil too much here, but I give you some generic tips:

- Speak to friendly NPC ships, when you trade with them, there's also the option to get information.
- Your scientific officer may have valuable info for you! Watch the message box when entering a new sector.

By doing all the above you should quickly get your first million. Congrats. Now the real fun begins.

Buy a Deploy Constructor. With this you can find containers en masse. White dots, I say no more...

Combat, defense:
We have never discussed combat or defense above. Well, that's because this doesn't matter as long as you don't have enough money to improve your ship, it's as simple as that. For combat, you need a SUBSTANTIALLY better ship than you have now, as for a tip, all I can tell you is: Carefully study the Shipyard and know how it works! For a good starting combat ship, you need substantially more Equipment slots, secondary weapon slots, you need a better frame, better wings, defensive and offensive ressources that are all expensive. It's futile to speak about that before you have, say, at least 2-4 million credits to comfortably pay for all this.
As for defense, it's very simple: you don't need canons, lasers or such things: you need a quick finger to hit ALT-F8 which will jump you to a maximum distance. That's it.


I hope you enjoy this quck guide, have fun with Legacy!

XenonS
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