Overview
This guide gives you a quick overview for all the activities you can do with your starter-ship and that allow you to get credits as well as teach you the gameplay basics.Before starting you should already know the most important basics that you can read in the handbook and try in the tutorial missions.All activities can be done more efficiently with a bigger ship (like the Adder), but come with higher insurance cost. In order to learn the basics you should use your Sidewinder first. Then you can move on to using bigger ships.
1 The game Elite
The first three Elite games threw the player into a brutal galaxy where he had to make his own way, earn money and survive by luck and skill. The reward was a huge procedurally generated sandbox.
Elite Dangerous is no different from that.
1.1 How to play / how not to play
Elite Dangerous lets you play your own way. Meaning: you can do what you want, whenever you want. Many players come with the false intention of wanting too much too soon and then get frustrated because “it is such a grind”.
You can buy an Anaconda within 24 hours of playtime. But what would be the benefit? In Elite most ships can do a bit of everthing. The largest ships can do the same things, only faster or for longer. You won’t miss out on anything when flying around in a small ship. So don’t pressure yourself to gain credits or ranks as fast as possible. These things come as you play along.
In order to have fun don’t concentrate solely on the most profitable activity. Instead try different activities and switch between them from time to time.
1.2 How to win in Elite Dangerous
Most players agree that the only way to truely win in Elite is by owning all ships, have lots of money and still preferring to fly around in a Cobra.
Buy a Cobra mkIII yourself and you have as good as won. The rest is having fun while flying around. 😉
1.3 How to survive in Elite
The basic rule of survival is: Outgun what you can’t outspeed and outspeed what you can’t outgun.
A good pilots knows when to run away and fight another day.
In Elite you can always jump to a different system. Even when you are mass-locked and can’t engage supercruise.
While travelling around the stars you will get interdicted from time to time. This is no reason to panic with these simple steps for escaping:
- when getting interdicted set throttle to zero to submit
- as soon as you are in normalspace hit boost
- put four pips to engines and two pips to shields
- select a random system from the navigation list
- hit boost again
- your FSD should be cooled down by now. Spool up your FSD!
- Hit boost again while your FSD charges
- you are now jumping away from the danger to a different system
Binding a key to “reselect previous route” is very helpful.
2 Little travelling required
All the following activities can be done in the same system. This can even be the starter system.
Only minimal modification is required.
2.1 Bounty Hunting
You can gain easy credits with your starter Sidewinder by helping the police. To do so drop into the nearest Nav beacon or ressource extraction site (RES) and fly along with the cops. When they attack a wanted ship, help them out by shooting at the ship as well. Be careful not to hit the cops here. As soon as the wanted ship is destroyed you get the bounty voucher.
After some bounty hunting you can cash in your bounty vouchers at the nearest station un der “Contacts”. You just made your first few bucks and might want to reinvest them in better ship modules.
2.2 “Legal” salvage
When flying around in interplanetary space you can come across signal sources. Weak signal sources and salvegable wreckage are the desired ones in this case. Drop into one of these signal sources and scoop up whatever cargo is floating around there.
Since most stations don’t aknowledge your good intentions you will have to sell your legal salvage on the black market.
Owners of Horizons can also do this on the surface of planets and moons.
The salvaging business is unfortunatelly not very good paying and very time consuming, so you might move on to something else.
2.3 Commodities trading
Now this is a very honorable profession. It is advised that you install the best FSD for your ship and maximise cargo space, too. Then start buying low and selling high elsewhere. This easy to use tool will tell you where to go for some profitable routes: [link]
Sidewinder Commodities Trader build[coriolis.io]
2.4 Mining
Mining is hard work that requires specialized equipment. But it is very relaxing and can pay a lot when done right.
For mining you have to install a refinery in your Sidewinder. Other euqipment like limpet controllers will make it easier and faster. Unfortunatelly you don’t have space for such fancy stuff in your Sidewinder.
Before heading out of dock, remember to install mining lasers, too.
You can now fly straight to the nearest ring or asteroid belt that isn’t depleted and start diggy diggy hole. However with a cargo hold this small in the Sidewinder we want to go where the best stuff is. This are pristine metallic rings. The following two sites tell you where the nearest pristine metallic belt is situated:
[link]
[link]
Drop into the rings with less than 1 Mm/s of speed and you should be fine.
Shoot your mining lasers at the nearest rock and target the chunk that broke off in order to see what it contains. If a nugget contains more than 10% of either platinum, paladium or painite you can scoop it up. Other valuable metals are silver, gold and osmium. Discard all the other stuff you might pick up. When you cargo hold is full you can mine a little more to fill up your refinery.
After that you can head off and sell your cargo. For best profit this is done at refinery stations but can be sold everywhere for a little less profit.
Sidewinder Mining build[coriolis.io]
3 Much travelling required
The following activities require more travelling and/or more ship modification.
3.1 Exploration
In Elite there are 400 billion star systems to explore. So better start now. 😉
Equip your Sidewinder for maximum jumprange. You should also invest in a detailed surface scanner and an intermediate discovery scanner if you have the money. But remember to cover the insurance.
Now you can fly to systems you have no data for and honk them with your discovery scanner.
Scan the star and the nearest planest for some extra credits. Within the bubble there are some systems with rare and exotic star that pay more money. A filter on the galaxy map helps you find those.
For more unexplored systems you should fly away from the bubble. Just fly in any direction. In case you want to discover a system no Commander has been to before, you should either fly up or down from the galactic plane.
After having scanned a fair amount of systems you can cash in your exploration data at the nearest station.
Sidewinder Exploration build[coriolis.io]
3.2 Rare goods trading
Rare goods trading is extremely profitable for small ships. The price of rare goods isn’t dictated by supply and demand but by the distance you have travelled from the system you have bought it in. It starts to get very profitable at a distance of 140 LY. The optimum is at 160 LY.
There are several systems that offer rare goods. You can fly fancy circles between some of them if you have more cargo space. Keep in mind that rare goods trading is profitable as long as you are at least 140 LY away.
Here is a good route for the Sidewinder:
- Orrere, Sharon Lee Free Market, buy Orrerian Vicious Brew
- 39 Tauri, Porta, sell Orrerian Vicious Brew and buy Tauri Chimes
- Orrere, Sharon Lee Free Market, sell Tauri Chimes and buy Orrerian Vicious Brew
- repeat the cycle
Sidewinder Rare Goods Trader build[coriolis.io]
3.3 Long range hauling
Long range hauling is good if you want to travel even further than what you did with rare goods trading and you can see more of the galaxy, too.
To do so you have to find a system that is a couple hundered lightyears outside the bubble.
Due to the limited maximum jumprange of the Sidewinder I chose the Te Kaha system as our target.
Now, install a fuel scoop and lots of cargo holds and head out to Te Kaha. Dock at the station there.
On the bulletin board you should find a wide selection of missions that require you to fly back to the bubble. But be careful! Some missions fail if your ship gets successfully scanned.
Sidewinder Long Range Hauling build[coriolis.io]