Spoiler-Free “Guide” (FAQ) About Purple Stars

When I first started playing the game I was really confused by this stuff about purple stars. I was lead to believe you could go anywhere at any time in this game. Apparently that’s mostly or almost true, but not completely and always true. Purple stars are the one major thing you can’t get to without a late-game “unlock” and some game text is a bit misleading about this.

This is for new players to help keep them from wasting time trying to search the map for purple stars, get purple star materials, and otherwise stop worrying about the purple stars before their time has come. It also mentions some of what you don’t even need purple stars for.

It doesn’t tell you exactly how to get there, just warns you about what kind of stuff you have to do first (like finish storyline missions) before it’s even possible to find a purple star.

Purple Stars (which, like green stars, don’t exist in reality) are essentially part of a free “DLC” campaign expansion for the game that was created for people who had “finished the game” already. As a result, it’s impossible to find purple stars until finishing all storyline missions. However, not everything that was added requires purple stars.

Below I mention some mission names, some things about materials (that you know exist because you can already see them listed in some advanced blueprints), and just enough about waterworlds to explain how they differ from non-waterworlds that just happen to be covered almost entirely with water. I even left out most stuff mentioned in release notes.

First off, don’t bother searching the galaxy map. The purple stars don’t even show up there without certain missions being completed or game save edit cheating.

These stars are essentially “hidden”, for lack of a better term, until completion of the mission needed to unlock them.

To give you some idea, these are the names of storyline missions that you have to complete before you can even trigger the “purple star” mission track:

• The Artemis Path must be finished which means completing the last part called The Purge regardless of what decisions you make while completing it.

• After that, an expansion mission track, They Who Returned, becomes possible. This must be found and completed.

• The Atlas Path must also be completed (either before or after the previous two) even if it’s rather repetitive and doesn’t seem to be leading you anywhere.

Finally it becomes possible for the mission track that “unlocks” purple stars to start.

What this amounts to is that you need to finish all main storyline stuff and even some stuff I’d categorize as expansion to that before the needed mission track will start.

Note that (probably to make things seem more spontaneous and random) the game often doesn’t trigger a mission or track except after you warp to a new star system in a normal starship or corvette (i.e. not a freighter). So don’t always stay in one place, always use a teleporter, or always warp in your freighter. It doesn’t usually matter what system you warp to, but if warping triggers something else like a pirate or freighter battle then it won’t trigger whatever else is waiting on a warp and you’ll need to warp again to trigger anything else.

This section is about what resources you can and can’t get before finding purple stars, and to clear up some confusion where the game seems to be suggesting you do currently impossible stuff like find lithium when you can’t do it.

“Miscellaneous purposes” refers to possible minor uses for a resource like upgrading settlement buildings, mission requirements, and all the stuff that’s difficult to enumerate but seldom encountered.

This is NOT exclusive to purple star systems, but I wanted to make sure to mention that it isn’t because it might at first seem like something that is if you were just browsing the construction research station. If you don’t know where Atlantidium is but want to find it, look for star systems of any color with any previously unfamiliar characteristic tags in the galaxy map. No special warp drive is needed beyond whatever is needed for the star color. This is worth doing because there’s other new stuff there too.
These are the purple stellar metals always found on planets around purple stars, but except as keys to gate crafting of one late-game tech item, or miscellaneous purposes, they are not needed. They have exactly the same value for making Chromatic Metal as Indium and Activated Indium do, so in generic terms they’re no better than Indium and only unlock an item that is not a massive “OP” leap in progression: the Exocraft Summoning Unit.

This means they basically just gate some mission rewards so you get some reward but don’t represent a huge crafting advantage of any sort.

This is a sort of oddball biome-specific mineral for the Gas Giant biome. You can’t mass produce anything valuable with it, so again it’s just another gate on building the Exocraft Summoning Unit and some miscellaneous purposes like maximum settlement upgrades.
This is the oddball biome-specific mineral for the Waterworld biome. Let me describe this biome some because the game misleadingly tries to suggest you can find Lithium on just any planets with lots of water which is not possible.

While there are normal planets of some biome that happen to be 99% covered by water, these are not Waterworlds even if the whole planet is 100% covered with water. Planets of Waterworld biome type are only found around purple stars and if you’re on one you will know because on Waterworlds the water is around 1000u deep. That is, so deep that they’re intended to be impractical to explore without a submarine, high pressure exosuit tech, or both.

So ignore any vague misleading game prompts about Lithium. You won’t find it except on planets around purple stars with previously unseen Waterworld type descriptors like Waterworld, Oceanic, Waterlocked, Drowning, etc.

You can’t mass produce anything valuable with Lithium anyway and the only thing it’s used for aside from miscellaneous purposes is crafting is the Dredging Laser, a terrain manipulator for the submarine exovehicle. So basically it’s another mission rewarded unlock gated through its own boutique, but otherwise mostly useles, resource. The main value of Waterworlds is the biome itself and not Lithium.

This is the biome atmospheric gas for the Gas Giant biome, but it is possible to create it before being anywhere near the end game as long as you have at least an Atmosphere Harvester in each biome temperature category (hot. medium, cold). You just need enough of each atmospheric gas for the methane required and a large refiner:

• Nitrogen ×3 + Sulphurine ×3 + Radon ×3 → Methane ×1

Notice that this is super inefficient, so it’s only good for making it possible to craft the Mounted Flamethrower for exovehicles or miscellaneous purposes.

Methane is the only new resource from purple stars with any significant refining purpose, though it’s only a marginal improvement. See here for more on methane, though for creating plants you’d need to extract it because the super inefficient refiner method above is much too wasteful for large scale use.

Now that I’ve sounded unenthusiastic about the new resources added with purple stars and how you’re not going to get rich from them, I just want to mention that what I think really matters about these systems is the new biomes.

Your main reward for finding these will be the newer Gas Giant and Waterworld biomes and the ability to explore those, plus anything else that might be more likely to happen around purple stars on other planet types.

There’s more stuff to see and find but I won’t spoil any surprises.

I think this is everything that I can think of that I found confusing or misleading as a new player, plus some “yardstick” information to give you a better sense of whether to expect any purple stars yet based on how much of the storyline you’ve completed.

Please leave comments if you have any but please leave out any A or D words so as to be as spoiler-free as possible. (I’m trying to even leave out release note stuff just to make sure.)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3679976925
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3647979303
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3677621728
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3717353393