Star Explorers – Tips (including minor spoilers)

Guide for Star Explorers – Tips (including minor spoilers)

Exploring systems

• Keep an eye on your fuel, since it is possible to find yourself stranded. Note that you can always buy more at the mothership for a reasonable price, or find it in caves on the majority of silicate worlds.
• Stars you have already visited will have a name when you scan them.
• Be wary of the gravitational pull of stars while moving through a planetary system; sometimes it will be almost impossible to extricate yourself! If you are in trouble, select a planet and choose to orbit or warp quickly to another system. This will always allow you to escape.
• When you enter some systems, you will be attacked by UFOs. They move unpredictably left to right which makes them difficult to lead. Its usually easier to rapidly shoot behind them as they travel, so that they take a hit as soon as they switch direction.
• Damaged UFOs can be boarded by moving close and right clicking on them. However, their interiors are quite confusing and don’t contain a lot of interest at this point. At least the map the is visible on the scanner. Look for rounded bulkheads marked in blue/green rather than the tight corridors in grey; these usually contain chests. You can sometimes find loot on the bodies of aliens after you… pacify them.

Exploring worlds

• As your upgrade your suit, worlds with hazards will become progressively more manageable. At the beginning, the most important factor is temperature. Make sure that the planet temperature is within your current suit capabilities (minimum and maximum) or you will take constant damage.
• Worlds are quite small and can be walked around in less than a couple of minutes. Use this to your advantage especially where there are strong winds that make it difficult to head in the opposite direction.
• Planets will usually have at least one surface chest and one cave (sometimes containing other chests). Occasionally, chests or cave entrances may be under liquid. Depending on your suit protection, they may be effectively inaccessible.
• Its best not to enter a cave with less than 50% oxygen; they can sometimes be quite extensive and running out of air is a possibility. You can refill oxygen by standing near the gangway to your lander, or using a tank (100 units is equal to a full tank).
• Caves you have not visited are marked in red, those you have are marked in blue. You can drop a marker while the scanner tool is active with the left mouse and remove it again with the right; these appear in yellow.
• Caves can be confusing due to the lack of landmarks and poor visibility on the scanner. Use manual markers to indicate branches you have already explored.
• The minerals that you find in one cave are representative of all caves on a given planet. If you are after something in particular and don’t find it in the first cave, no need to search for any others.
• If stalactites are blocking your progress, you can destroy them with a rocket launcher or later the alien pistol. However, note that rocket launcher ammo is comparatively rare.
• Most aliens are practically harmless and will only damage you slightly on contact and only then if you get too close. However, there are a few exceptions… Some will explode on contact or death and deal serious damage to your suit, others will fire projectiles that do the same. Three or four hits from these and you are dead. A couple of them can be spotted on the surface and dealt with preemptively; exploding acid eyeballs are brown spheres on the ground before they rise up and attack, and tentacles will erupt out of the ground once you are within a few metres. You have time to single-shot kill these before they are a threat. Enemies in caves are more difficult; if you hear the sound of an animal during the cave loading screen, best to back out of there immediately, then select your best weapon and go back in, as you will often be attacked immediately.
• You will constantly find blueprints for health kits, air tanks, cold and radiation suit upgrades. Other blueprints are rarer.

Inventory management

• Items can be held in your personal backpack as well as your ship’s onboard storage. However, both of these are very limited at the beginning and you will quickly run out of space.
• Two inventory upgrades are available from the mothership. However, they are reasonably expensive at approximately 1500 quants for the first to upgrade your craft and 3500 to upgrade your backpack. Note that each upgrade is offered progressively and you must by the previous one first, starting with the offered upgraded star chart for around 500 quants. Once you have a fully upgraded inventory, space is no longer an issue.
• Inventory items of the same type will stack, except for weapons and blueprints. You can use this to your advantage by keeping stackable items over non-stackable items, particularly ammunition.
• You will find weapons that appear the same, but have different stats. You will need to manually compare them to identify which is superior; the other can be sold at the mothership.
• Heat resistance upgrades for your suit are particularly hard to come by and should be purchased when offered for trade by the mothership.
• When a mothership quest is completed, it will reset with a new item the next time you visit.
• You generally do not need a large amount of materials and volumes greater than 40 units can be sold if required, which is helpful early on. The exceptions are blue (not diamond)/green/red crystals, which can be crafted into something useful (blueprint required)…
• Chances are that you won’t run out of money or equipment after the first few systems, so don’t worry too much about abandoning loot that you can’t carry. However, if you do want to come back for it you can make a note against the planet on the system map and return later; chest contents are saved.

This is all that we can say about Star Explorers – Tips (including minor spoilers) for now. I hope this post helped you. If there is anything that we should add, please let us know via comment below. See you soon!