X4 Foundations

DLC Tides of Avarice

Curs plot

The Curs plot is a short tutorial plot that can be completed very early in the game. The purpose of the plot is to teach the player how to do pirate activity. I have to admit, this game sort of needed this because even as someone with thousands of hours in the game, I didn’t know most of this. Then again, I usually stay on the up and up.

This plot can be started in one of two ways.

1: Do the Stranded start where you start in jail. Presumably you were already guilty of something but it is also possible that you were innocent.

While that start is pretty cool to experience since you get to break out of jail and there are two different ways to go about it, I wouldn’t continue on with a full play through of X4 from that story.

2: Use a different game start and fly into Windfall Union Junction with something illegal.

If you go to the Curs ship without illegal wares then they will turn you away.

It is very easy to get something illegal in X4. 90% of the time when I cam carrying an illegal item, I didn’t know I had it. I accidentally picked it up while fighting Xenon. Fly into Windfall with the illegal thing and you will be contacted by radio and told where to go.

The plot will give you a number of missions. Each mission will teach you one aspect of being a criminal in X4.

To set the stage, here are the things you need to know about the plot.

Group name: Empyrean Curs
Members: Maestro (Split), Axiom (Paranid), Ace (Teladi)
Maestro’s ship: Arcadian Endeavor
Ace’s ship: Golden Flea
Curs Enemy: Ministry of Finance
Ministry boss: Kris Mellerd
Prototype Ship: Raven
Trader ship: Iron Pelican

Maestro is a Split who wants you to carry illegal stuff from Windfall to Hatikvah’s Choice 1. The illegal thing is only illegal in the Silent Witness part of the flight path. So as long as you can get to the gate to Hatikvah’s Choice, you’ll be fine. Dock at that station and trade the item.

What you learn: some stations do actually want to buy illegal wares. If you can get the wares to them without getting caught then you can sell those wares.

This mission is very short and could have been better. You get zero cash for completing this mission. I guess your reward is knowledge. It would have been better if this mission would have come as the second mission.

Next Maestro will teach you how to set up a black market connection. Normally, you can not buy or sell illegal wares at stations. Also, the trader at the station will not buy or sell illegal stuff. The exception to this is the trader at the Hatikvah FreePort. I guess also at the Scale Plate Pirate Base but those guys are rude.

However, you can scan a station for a signal leak and accept a black market job. While the black market job is active you have access to a room on the station called a Bar. In the bar there is a black market trader. He sells illegal stuff the same as the trader at the Freeport.

The missions you get from signal leaks vary but this particular mission will always ask for unstable crystals. So, how do you get unstable crystals?

1: Find some asteroids with crystals on them. Shoot the crystals and some of those crystals will be the unstable kind.

2: Fly to the Freeport. Go to the trader. Buy the crystals.

3: (I’m not making this up.) Dock at the station where you accepted the quest. Go to the Bar. Talk to the black market trader. Buy the crystals from him. Exit the dialogue. Talk to him again. Choose to deliver the crystals you just bought from him.

Once the crystals are delivered you’ll be contacted by radio to come back to your boss.

This mission should have been the first mission. Yes, it is more complicated than a simple transport run but it would have made more sense for actually teaching the player what to do. The missions should have gone like this.

Maestro needs someone to set up a new Black Market connection so he asks you to do it. Then once that connection is established Maestro tells you where you can get a discount on the spaceweed he wants to smuggle. You go there and buy the spaceweed with cash that Maetro gives you. You smuggle the spaceweed to the station with the black market connection. You sell the spaceweed for a profit. You then use the profit from the spaceweed to buy the security protocol that Maestro wants.

If the first two missions were switched around then the player would know to occasionally make runs to that black market for profits. As it is in the game now, the player will likely forget that the black market connection was even made and never visit that station ever again.

Ok, let me get this out of the way. I can tolerate the other characters in this plot. I can tolerate Axiom. I can tolerate Maestro. I really don’t care for Ace. He rubs me the wrong way and he’s the reason I dislike this plot.

Case in point. Ace wants to teach me how to rob a merchant ship. While establishing a black market contact is something I would do in any playthrough, I don’t rob merchant ships. I didn’t even know how to do it. But maybe that’s why Ace is here to teach me.

Ace directs you to a station. You are on the look out for a ship. Follow the ship until it gets some distance from the station. Attack the ship until it drops it’s cargo.

What should happen at this point is that you should pick up the cargo and let the merchant ship go. However, Ace is a bit blood thirsty. He continues to attack the ship until it is destroyed. He’s a jerk.

The M size merchant ship will drop more cargo than your S size fighter will be able to carry so to prepare for this mission, get your own M size ship and get it into position ahead of time. I liked to use the free derelict Osprey you can find in Company Regard. Once the mission is over, order your ship to collect the drops. Sell the wares for profits. And also, give the evil eye to Ace for killing the target after they had complied. That is bad business. If you get a reputation for always killing the target even if they comply then no one will ever comply. They will always make a run for it and take their chances.

Will you be robbing merchant ships in X4. Hard to say. I’m usually tooled up for fighting Xenon, which means I want to do as much damage as possible. I had to go back to a previous save on this mission a few times because I did a one hit kill on the merchant ship by accident. The idea seems to be to not damage the ship too fast so you need weaker weapons that are good at taking down the shields but not destroying the hull.

But really, for the amount of time it will take to find the right merchant ship, attack, and get their cargo, you’ll make a lot more money much faster if you just build a solar panel station in bright promise. The mission you do with Ace will net you about five thousand credits in profit. That’s it. I make that much in the time it takes to sneeze.

Axiom is the hacker of the group. He will teach you how to make the hacking tool you need in order to get a station to release wares from storage. Think of it as a station dropping its cargo.

The items you need are readily available at the Freeport trader or the black market you established. Buy the items, craft the thing you need. Which items specifically do you need? Does it matter. I could list them here. 5 HC, 1 IU, 1 D. The mission will tell you what they are and you just go buy them.

But there is also another way. Instead of paying money and doing crafting, you can instead go to a Xenon gate. You can shoot Xenon and collect the drops. One of those drops will eventually be the hacking tool you need, or at the least the items you need to craft it. Now you can do it for free.

Craft the hacking tool. Once done, you will be contacted by radio to go to a station. Go there and go to the engineering room. In the engineering room find the storage terminal. Hack it. Easy.

Amazingly enough, at that moment Maestro’s big ship will show up to steal some of the wares. A battle ensues. Maestro’s ship is supposed to be invincible at this point in the story so it can do some serious damage to the station. In order to save as many of the lives on the station as possible you need to get out of there.

You can also pick up some of the wares yourself or have one of your ships do it but keep in mind that you will get a rep hit and might be fired on. To make the encounter stop in order to play the rest of the storyline, leave the area so Maestro’s ship can get away.

On a small side note, you can prepare a bit more for the end of this mission by crafting not only the hacking tool you need but also the hacking tool to hack the station’s turrets. If you do that then you can hack the turrets so they don’t work and then make the station drop wares from storage. That way you can have your own ship nearby ready to take wares without getting shot at. This would have been a great opportunity to learn about that by doing it instead of just hearing about someone else doing it.

I like Axiom because he isn’t bloodthirsty. However, he’s not a good teacher. In a plot that is supposed to be mostly tutorial, you should not have to look at this guide to know what you need to do.

For this mission Axiom will ask you to get a spacesuit EMP bomb and a bomb launcher. If you play this game normally then you should already have those. At least I always do. Whenever I first start a new game one of the first things I do is get the blueprints for the two recycling modules in Bright Promise.

For this mission Axiom will teach you how to get station module blueprints with an emp bomb. For the record, you don’t actually need an EMP bomb. If you scan leaks on stations in your spacesuit you have a chance to get a blueprint any time. The connection modules are automatically available through leaks but if you have the HQ you can do research on how to get other modules.

Anyway, you are directed by radio to go to a station and then once there you are directed to emp a certain connection module. Here is how to do this.

1: Aim your ship at the module and back away a bit.
2: Get into your spacesuit
3: Launch the EMP with the weapon trigger and watch it until it attaches to the station.
4: Use the secondary weapon trigger to detonate the EMP. This will cause police in the area to come and investigate so do NOT immediately go to the signal leaks.
5: Get back into your ship.
6: Fly close to the signal leaks. DO NOT TURN ON SHIP SCAN MODE.
7: Get out of the ship. Now your spacesuit has a different license plate number than the one you had when you first launched the EMP. And thus the police don’t know it was you who launched it. You laundered your spacesuit.
8: While in the spacesuit, turn on scan mode.
9: Move the spacesuit close to the signal leaks to scan them and get the blueprint as well as a permanent trade subscription.
10: Get back into your ship.

At this point a cut scene will happen and Axiom will want you to pick him up and take him back to Maestro’s ship.

Again, I will point out that Axiom is entertaining but he is not a good teacher. If you would have done it his way, you’d have been busted by the cops. Instead, I had to write a guide to let you know how to hack safely in a way where you don’t get busted and don’t lose rep. Axiom needs to attend a semester at normal school.

Ace will teach you how to do boarding. This is something that a lot of X4 players do but I never got into because I didn’t understand what I was doing. So I guess that is why Ace will teach me. (I still don’t like him.)

Ace will direct you to a ship that incidentally belongs to the “Civilian” faction. That is the same faction as Ace by the way. What gives?

The trader ship only has 2 crew on it. One is certainly the captain and the other can be either service crew or a marine. Either way, if you can get just two marines, then this ship can be yours. Almost all S class ships have space for at least 2 marines.

I should point out, that normally no ship will ever be this way. This is a special ship just for doing this tutorial on boarding. All other ships will have dozens of crew on them and you won’t know how many of those crew are marines. It will almost never be the case that you can board an M or L size ship with only the two marines on an S size fighter. In order for that to happen you’d have to delete the shields and get the hull down to less than 50% and wait for crew to leave. That can take a long time so Ace doesn’t teach you about it. Instead, he conveniently finds you a ship that will never happen in the real game to teach you how to board.

Anyway, the boarding happens in three phases but you have no control over the third phase. What you do have control over are the first two. You can set how strong the hull should be in order for the marines to do their job.

Phase 1: marines flying to the ship and attaching their pod to the ship’s hull. If the ship has turrets then this is dangerous because the marines can die by being blown up en route.

Phase 2: Cutting through the hull

Phase 3: Fighting room by room and taking over the ship

So, for this lesson Ace tells us to go get some marines. I found a couple who were both two stars in boarding. They were expensive but I figured I was paying college tuition. Now I have to veteran marines on my fighter.

Next, Ace will point out the ship. Follow it until it is far from any stations. It might already be far, in which case you can start to attack it. Attack the engines so it can’t get away. Then attack any turrets so they can’t endanger your marines.

Next start boarding. For phase one, set the hull strength to Very strong. Very strong equals 100. For phase two, set the hull strength to very strong. We do this for both because we don’t expect the two crew on the ship to bail. Our marines can handle it two on two. We don’t want to damage the ship. So, set both phases to very strong and then we don’t have to shoot anymore.

Boarding will take time. Fly around and if an engine gets repaired, destroy it again. However, do not destroy the repair drones. Leave them alone.

You wait and eventually the ship becomes yours. Ace wants us to deliver the ship to Windfall.

Ok, so at this point we have two things we can do.

A: Deliver the ship as is and the mission is over. But if you do that, then you’ll lose your expensive marines. There has to be a better way.

B: Take your two marines back. Set some other crew you’ve already hired for another ship to be the captain. Make sure to select a service crew guy who has Zero skills. Send the ship to Windfall to complete the mission. Ace will contact you by radio to transfer ownership. As soon as that is done, you’ll notice that you are very far from any station. And the ship has returned to the Civilian faction again. Right. What do you suppose we could do? Yep, attack the engines. Board the ship again with your two marines. The ship still only has the one crew, which is the captain you hired who has no skills. Wait for boarding to finish a second time. Now the ship is yours to keep.

If you don’t want to do the boarding a second time right away, have an S size ship you own dock on this ship. It will never be forced to undock. With that ship on the trader with only 1 crew, you will know where it is at all times and you can come to board it again at a later time of your choosing.

One final comment on boarding you should know if you want to do boarding outside of this tutorial. Look for ship that are only half full. If they are more than half full, then damage the ship until some of the crew bail. Or don’t waste your time and keep looking for a ship that is only half full. You are only allowed to board with as many marines as the ship has space for crew. That means that if the ship can hold 44 crew, then you can board with only 44 marines. If the ship is 100% full, that means 44 marines versus the 44 crew. If the ship is half full, with only 22 crew, then that means your 44 marines versus only 22 crew. Those are better odds while your marines are low level. Boarding will go faster once your marines level up.

Maestro wants you to go flying with Ace. You are to get police attention by attacking a police ship and then lead the police away from a station. There will be a big bubble and you have to stay within that bubble and survive for a certain amount of time.

Keep flying around until the timer is up. Once it is up, Ace will lead you to an anomaly the same as you went through for the Boso Mission for the HQ. Fly through and you should show up in Silent Witness. One of the police followed you but now it is you and Ace versus one ship instead of a fleet commanded by a destroyer. The cop runs away and the mission is over.

I am not sure what this mission was trying to teach. Maybe this one was just padding with a bit of a challenge to keep the plot from feeling too much like school. Maybe this mission was to teach the player about anomalies. If so, then it did a bad job. I ignore those things almost all of the time. They just aren’t useful.

Maestro will tell you a story. Then he wants you to infiltrate some woman’s office at a particular station. You can’t just fly there and get into that office. In order to gain access you have to do a favor for the group that she runs and then ask to meet her as your reward. To find the guy you have to talk to you have to go to the casino and in the casino find the Bar.

Inside the bar you have to talk to the guy on the second floor.

BUT hold up. Wait a second. There are other people in here. This Bar is only accessible during this mission. There is a Teladi in this bar. He is selling a ship. Ok, it’s not a great ship but it is cheap. It would cost over a million credits to buy this ship new at the wharf. The Teladi wants to sell it. You can offer him different amounts but he won’t sell it for less than 250,000. But that’s 250,00 and then you can sell the ship for a million. Or keep it and set it to do trades for you.

Anyway, buying the ship is optional but I like doing it. It appeals to me for whatever reason.

On the second floor a guy will say that the Split NPC on the first floor needs transport. So go talk to the Split. You can be interested in the story or you can just go through the dialogue until he agrees to let you take him onto your ship. From there, go dock at Woodworm Scrubs. It is a prison station that might have some production attached to it.

A cut scene will happen when you land and you’ll now have access to the office. In the office you’ll find a woman. Talk to her and for whatever reason, she turns her back on you to take a phone call. (Yes, a phone call.) While she is distracted, go to the terminal and touch it. There is some more dialogue but the mission is almost over.

Fly back to Maestro’s ship. A cut scene will happen.

So again, I don’t know what this mission was trying to teach. It seemed to be centered around telling the story of the plot and setting up the final mission.

Missions 8 and 9 are mutually exclusive. If you do one then you can not do the other. You can do a mission for either Axiom or Ace.

If you choose Axiom, then he has a hacking tool that he just left in space. It is in a lockbox. Shoot the lockbox, collect the item, and return it to Axiom. Super easy and super useful because by doing this it means that in the final mission the station turrets will not shoot at you.

Ok, so the player learns that lockboxes are a thing and that you can open them. It would have been better if the player had been tasked with actually hacking the turrets because that is the only panel in the Engineering room on a station that requires a different hacking tool from the other panels. Ideally, the player would have been tasked with hacking two panels at the same time. That way Axiom would have had a reason to say “Make sure you use the correct hacking tool on the correct panel.” It is impossible to use the wrong one but at least there would have been a story reason for Axiom to say this. Or, you pick up the hacking tool from the Lockbox and go to hack the turrets but it is the wrong hacking tool and therefore Axiom sends you on a side mission to craft the correct hacking tool and then fly back to hack the turrets.

As it is, the player doesn’t learn anything unless they are trying to pay attention. Axiom is a bad teacher. If I were his supervisor then I’d be calling him into my office to discuss pedagogy. And if I fire Axiom and his union rep wants to argue about it then I’ll point out that Axiom is likely a convicted felon so I don’t want to hear it.

Here’s the deal with former convicts who want to be teachers. If you are good at your job then you can do the job. If you are not good at your job, then take a hike and leech off of someone else. You’re fired.

If you choose to go with the short idiot Ace, he wants to get a bigger ship. He directs you to an M size ship, usually a Minotaur Raider owned by Scale Plate. You attack the ship and weaken it but not destroy it. Keep shooting until the pilot bails and then you can take over the ship.

Spoilers: If you go with Ace, and do mission 9 then Ace will die during the final mission. That M size ship is garbage and you deliver it with only 70% hull. Ace won’t fix it either.

You have the opportunity to fix the ship yourself before you deliver it. You can also order it to change equipment to have better shield and guns. But in the end, this is a Minotaur Raider. It is doomed go get blown up in the final mission.

On the other hand, if you leave Ace in his smaller ship, he will likely survive the final mission. This means you chose Axiom who will hack the station’s turrets to fire not at you but instead at your enemies. This is very useful.

Another thing to think about is the fact that in the final mission you are given a choice. You can choose to betray the Curs. If you do that then those station turrets will turn on you. It is a good thing they have a certain range and you can stay out of range. The issue here is with Ace. If he is flying the M size ship, it has no useful mods on it. If he is flying his usual S size ship, then it will drop some useful mods you can pick up once you take him out.

So think about it. If you want to help the Curs and give Ace the best chance of surviving, then he needs to be in his S size ship. If you want to betray the Curs, again, you want Ace in that S size ship. Just imagine it, you are in an S size ship you just got with basic equipment going up against Ace in an M size ship. That doesn’t sound good to me. Ace will still die but then he doesn’t drop anything. No, we leave him in his S size ship and when we take him out in our own S size ship, then he drops some useful mods for us. That is a better deal.

So what I am saying is, choose Axiom.

My final point about this mission, at least the player does learn something. Ace, for all of his bad personality, is an effective teacher. If a player had never caused a ship’s captain to bail before or ever picked up a derelict before then the player will be learning something useful by doing this. Getting pilots to bail and claiming derelicts is something the player will be doing all the time.

And honestly, the best way would have been for the player to do both missions 8 and 9. Mission 8 should have been fixed so that the player actually learns about hacking turrets

To prepare for this mission, assemble your own fleet with a destroyer in 18 Billion near Woodworm Scrubs. I always get the destroyer in Faulty Logic. It is free and more than powerful enough to deal with this big battle.

Also, MAKE SURE you have a spacesuit laser. If not, then you better get one. You should have been taken care of that a long time ago. Why did you wait until now? Get all of your spacesuit gear as soon as you can upon starting a new game. Seriously.

To begin the mission, Axiom will summon a callisto vanguard that he will fly. You just get on board. He will take off from Maestro’s ship and land at the prison station. You take the elevator to the prison area. (The player should have been tasked at this point with hacking the station turrets but whatever.)

Walk around and find the guy in jail. He has funny dialogue. Talk to him and eventually the door will unlock. You can open it now. Once open he will follow you.

Next, you have to use your spacesuit to get to the next level. You are at level 1 and you need to escape through level 3. But level 3 is locked. Even level 2 is locked. Here is how to do this.

Fly into the big wind tunnel. (Yes, a wind tunnel in space.) In this wind tunnel near level 3 is a fan that will mess with you. To avoid it, use the airlock or one of the alcoves for cover. The alcoves have doors on them that are locked. You have to hit the doors with your spacesuit laser. That will open the door and you can take cover in there. Two of the doors will also have an extra lock that you can shoot on the inside. Those locks will unlock the two airlocks to the second level.

Go into the airlock on the second level. Run around until you find a switch. When you press it, it will uncover some other locks. But those locks are not our goal for now, we just want to uncover them.

Get back into the spacesuit and fly to the other side of the second level. Use the airlock and run around again until you find the next switch that uncovers the next group of locks.

Now, in the wind tunnel there are five locks all next to each other. Your job is to shoot them until they are all turned off. When you shoot one, it will switch either from on to off or from off to on, depending. It will also switch the two locks next to it.

Here is how to understand this. We’ll use 3 locks to explain.

Lock 1 is off. Lock 2 is on. Lock 3 is off.

If you shoot lock 2, then it will turn off, but then 1 and 3 will turn on. We need all the locks to be turned off so how do you solve this?

You can shoot lock 1 to turn it on and then clock 2 will be turned off. This will not affect lock 3. So now the locks are 1 on, 2 off, 3 on. You can then shoot lock 3 to turn it off, which will flip lock 2. Now the locks are 1 on, 2 on, 3 off. Now you can shoot lock 1 again and that will flip both 1 and 2. So now all three locks are turned off.

The puzzle in the wind tunnel is like that but with 5 locks instead of the three in my example.

Once you get access to level 3 both airlocks to that level open. If you go into the wrong one, then it leads to no where. If you go into the correct one then it leads to the hanger where your escape ship is waiting.

I know. I know. If you happen to go into the correct one first, you don’t know for sure that the other one is a dead end. You have to go look. Yes I know. We all do it. So, if you happen to choose the correct one, as soon as you know it is the correct path, turn around, use your spacesuit, and check the other side just to be sure. See. It really is a dead end. Yes, you wasted your time but you now have peace of mind knowing that you made sure. File that under things we do in games that we don’t do in real life. At least think of it this way, if you never would have gone over there, you never would have seen those walls. You paid for the game and those walls are in the game, so why shouldn’t you be allowed to go look at them. There, now you’ve seen them. Finished? Now head back to the hanger with your escape ship.

You’ll be in your spacesuit again. Use your laser to destroy the clamps on either side holding the ship in place. At this time Axiom and your prisoner will want to get on the ship. Shoot the two panels on either side of the docking doors to open them. Shooting one will open the doors half way and shooting the other will fully open the doors.

Now, fly to the underside of the ship. Axiom will transfer ownership to you. Dock and take the pilot’s seat.

This ship is not a great ship. It is basically a cargo transport ship that happens to have a mod installed on it so that the cargo can’t be scanned. This means pirates and the police will leave you alone no matter what you are carrying. When I played through this I already had a ship like this that I used to deliver illegal stuff for the Paranid plot when I was building their capital for them. You can learn how to make these mods and put them on any ship as part of the HQ research. But for someone just staring out this could be useful.

While you are en route to take your passengers to Maestro you get radioed by the enemy. They want you to dock with them instead. So now you have a choice.

You ignore the enemy. You dock on Maestro’s ship. Maestro needs to get away but he can’t do that with all the cops around him. You have to disable the engines on the big enemy destroyer. Ha, ha, ha. Not in a cargo ship I’m not.

Get another captain to take over your new cargo ship and you get into your trusty fighter. If you planned ahead and brought your own fleet with a destroyer, then you can ignore the part about damaging the engines. Just destroy the destroyer. Now the Curs can get away.

At the conclusion of this branch you get to keep the cargo ship with the mod on it. You also have low rep with MIN and at least once while flying around some MIN ships will target you saying that they know you are a member of the curs. That is can be a headache but you got to keep the cargo ship. I use the cargo ship to deliver food and medical supplied to MIN stations one at a time to increase my rep with them. Eventually I’ll get to 10 and then 20 and it looks like all is forgiven at that point. Buy a police license from them and eventually they seem to leave me alone.

As for the Arcadian Endeavor, it just sits in Windfall doing nothing. Maestro does not offer recurring missions. In fact, he won’t even talk to you anymore. The NPC becomes broken.

Ok, let’s admit it. They had this coming. The only window of time you can do this is before you dock the cargo ship onto Maestro’s ship. You instead have to dock onto the enemy destroyer. At that time your passengers will be arrested and the cargo ship with the mod will be taken from you. You can’t keep it. Instead, they will give you a Falcon.

Oh great. A falcon. Sigh. Just like the half dozen I already have from completing the Hatikvah plot and forcing the Scale Plate pilots to bail. They want me to use that falcon to target the engines on the Maestro’s ship.

Now Maestro and Ace both become enemies. Fly your new falcon to your destroyer. Dock. Let your detroyer take care of the Maestro’s ship and Ace. Mission completed.

At the end you get a huge boost to MIN rep.

Well, it sort of doesn’t matter. This is X4, not Skyrim. What I mean by that is that the Curs will not offer you any new missions. They just exist in Windfall not doing anything. Their ship can’t be boarded.

Here are the consequences for each choice.

Choice A: You get the Raven cargo ship with the mod. You get some news items saying that things are bad and the pirates are winning. MIN ships might occasionally attack you.

Choice B: You get a big bump in rep with MIN, you know, a real faction that offers additional missions and trading opportunities. You get a Falcon. The Curs do not exist anymore in Windfall. There is news that things are looking up because the pirates are either in jail or killed. You don’t get attacked by the MIN ships.

I have to say, that second option is looking pretty good. That Mod on the Raven isn’t all that special and the Curs do deserve to get put in jail.

But wait. Before we decide 100%, let’s take a look at what happens if you start over with budgeted game start. In budgeted game start you can choose A: Wildcard or B: Curs Arrested.

Wildcard: You get the Raven and news that the pirates are bad. That’s it. At least the MIN ships don’t attack you. However, what you don’t get are:

No trader that you could have boarded twice
No access to the bar black market connection
No access to the bar in the casino
No ship you could have bought in the bar
No connection blueprint
No recognition by the Curs. They exist in Windfall but won’t talk to you.

Curs Arrested: You get rep with MIN and news that the pirates are arrested. That’s it. The Curs ship is missing from Windfall. You also do not get:

No Falcon
No trader you could have boarded twice
No access to the bar black market connection
No access to the bar in the casino
No ship you could have bought in the bar
No connector blueprint

If you play with budgeted game start then Wildcard is clearly the better answer. If will get you a free ship where as Curs Arrested will only get you easily obtained rep with MIN.

So, if you play through the actual story, there is an argument to be made that siding with MIN is the better choice morally. Honestly, that mod on the Raven isn’t that good. Don’t get me wrong, it is good, but is it worth being surprise attacked by MIN ships? You can research the mod with the HQ and be able to put it on all of your ships. Like I said above, I already had a ship with that kind of mod on it.

On the other hand, the Falcon is a poor substitute for the Raven and I don’t like owning a ship and then the game taking it away from me. Since I owned the Raven first I feel like it is rightfully mine and I should keep it. Plus, if I’m playing the story with immersion then I’m a full member of the Curs at this point. Why would I betray them? Ok, I don’t like murderer Ace, but why else would I betray them? Ok, they steal. But by participating in this storyline I steal too.



Ok, let’s look at it from another way. If you play through the quest and side with the Curs, your goal in the final mission is to get away and then the Curs say you can keep the Raven. Sorry, it was already mine. Now for the rest of the game until I start over I might be attacked by MIN ships.

If I side with MIN then my goal in the final mission is to keep the Curs from escaping so their ship can get blown up. If Ace is flying his S size ship then he drops mods you can pick up when he dies. Ok, so that is a bonus. Next, I can’t board the Cur’s ship. It is destined to blow up. I can’t board the MIN destroyer either. But I can board that trader from the boarding tutorial again.

So, by siding with MIN you sacrifice a ship that has a nice mod on it. A mod, by the way, that you can make yourself with the HQ. You remove some pirates who have no further use to you after the story. You get the mods on Ace’s ship. The crew murdered by Ace on that merchant ship are avenged when Ace dies. That Split slaver you met in the prison goes back to prison. Axiom goes back to prison.

Man, if only you could keep the Raven and get the Falcon. If only.

Ok, stick with me. This might work for you or it might not. It depends on if this has been patched out.

To prepare for this do not board that trader ship from the boarding tutorial for a second time. Instead, have one of your ships dock on it and just wait. That way you’ll always know where it is. Your ship that you dock on it will have to be an S size ship. Make sure the ship has two marines on it.

Go back to that moment when you first took control of the Raven. Fly it to space and listen to the conversation on the radio. In the meantime, get one of your pilots to be the captain of the Raven.

Land on the MIN destroyer. Do NOT talk to the MIN woman you met in that office. Just get out of the ship and back away from her.

If you research it online then in forums players have talked about trying to use teleportation to get on the MIN ship without ever having the Raven touchdown. There is also talk about using a spacesuit to cross over from ship to ship. However, it looks like if the Raven does not touch down then you can not proceed. I’ll test it and put an update but it doesn’t seem like it will work.

Order the captain of the Raven to dock on the trader belonging to the civilian faction from the boarding tutorial. Incidentally it is called the Iron Pelican. That ship still only has one crew on it, that pilot with zero skill. With the Raven docked you can take your pilot away now.

Alternatively, if you already boarded the Iron Pelican for a second time, send the Raven to dock on a Scale Plate ship that you can board later with no rep consequences.

A third option is to order the Raven to land on the Erlking. You are going to board and take that ship later anyway. The only limiting factor is the time it takes for the Raven to get where it needs to go while the battle is happening.

Once the Raven lands on the Iron Pelican and you reassigned your pilot you can now talk to the MIN lady. The moment you talk to her the ownership of the Raven will switch from you to MIN. The woman who is the MIN agent will give you a Falcon. Fly the Falcon to your destroyer. Use your destroyer to damage Maestro’s ship and kill Ace. Once the dust settles, use the Falcon to collect the mod drops from Ace’s ship.

The story is over and the MIN will not harass you. You get a rep boost to MIN and might even be invited to a promotion ceremony. But before that, we have some unfinished business.

Remember the trader from the boarding tutorial? That Raven is still on there. Your other ship with the two marines are still there. That trader still only has one crew. So you know what we are going to do? Yep, we are going to board it again with the Raven on board. Once the boarding is complete, we not only gain ownership of the Iron Pelican but also the Raven that was docked there.

Again, unless this was patched out. If it was patched out then you can at least get the Iron Pelican back. There will be at least four ships called “Raven” flying around from place to place. You can attack one and get the pilot to bail. That seems out of character if you just sided with MIN and are reforming your reputation. Another way to get a “Raven” is to take that ship you bought from that guy in the bar for 250,000 and put the cargo mod on it. Then just rename it to “Raven”. I know, it isn’t the same as getting the real thing. I know. I mean, functionally there is no difference. They ships even look the same. But you’ll know it isn’t the real one. Maybe that’s ok. You can wag your finger at MIN and say you don’t need their stupid “official” Raven ship. You can make your own. But deep inside you’ll know it’s not the real one.

Or, look on the bright side. Once you know how to make your own version of the Raven, start making a bunch of them using your own branding. At this point in time I already owned more stations that MIN anyway. I control seven sectors. I can establish my own product as the “real” one and then the Raven is the knockoff.

If this work around to keep the Raven is not patched out, then clearly siding with MIN is the best option here. You can get two ships instead of just one. I like collecting ship, especially from the stories. I often praise budgeted game start but I have to play through all the story states from the beginning so I can get all of my ships.

While we are here let’s talk about another ship you can get in Windfall. This time it is Windfall, the hoard.

There is an easy way and a hard way to get this ship. The Erlking can only be obtained by boarding it and it has more than 200 VIG crew on it when you first discover it. It is also right next to a Vig station.

Option A: the hard way

You fly near the station that has the Erlking. The station doesn’t want you near it. You try to board the Erlking. The station attacks you. You better be ready to defend yourself. Also, your rep with VIG will take a hit.

Once the Erlking is yours, the station and the VIG ships will attack the Erlking. It could be destroyed. If not then congratulations. You better make a save file and cherish it. Just about everyone who does this will see the Erlking destroyed unless they show up with an Asgard ready to destroy the station in order to get the ship.

Option A.2: Power Core

If the Erlking was destroyed (90% chance if you do this yourself) then you have to fly around the wreckage and find the power core. Boso at HQ will do some research and you can now rebuild the Erlking if you own a station that can fabricate XL size ships.

Since you are under attack, maybe fly away first and then let VIG calm down. Then fly back and look for the power core.

Option B: The easy way

Do not go to Windfall The Hoard. Stay out of there. Go to Argon Prime. In Argon prime buy two L size ships called Shuyaku. These ships can hold 225 crew each. The Erlking has a capacity for over 300 crew but there will likely only be 200 VIG crew on it in the beginning. The Shuyaku ships do not need expensive stuff. Get them for cheap by skipping shields and weapons. You only need MK 1 engines. Really, really, really, get it for cheap. Even with almost nothing you’ll be spending about 3 million on each ship and you need two of them.

As for crew, no service crew. You want 225 marines.

Once the two ships are built and full of marines, have one follow the other. Now they are a fleet of two.

Again, stay out of Windfall. You need to park your character in Argon Prime. Or go do something else. Whatever else. It doesn’t matter. Just stay out of Windfall.

Anyway, while you are off chilling in Argon Prime or sipping wine in Bright Promise, your two Shuyakus will go to Windfall and look for the station that has the Erlking. Once the Erlking is located tell the commander of the fleet of two to board the Erlking.

With you not there the station will not turn hostile. The Erlking will not turn hostile. They will just let your two completely unarmed ships board the Erlking.

In order to pull this off, when you give the board command to the ships, set phase one to Very Strong and also set phase two to Very Strong. The Erlking will not attack the marines in their pods so the marines can fly over and attach with no problems. Now it is just a matter of waiting. You can watch it unfold but there is no need. Eventually the Erlking will be yours. Not a shot was fired.

Ok, some marines did die. Maybe about 150 of the 300 plus that you sent over. But the ship is not damaged. You can promote one of the surviving marines to captain or you can just send over a new captain. Either way, you can now order the Erlking to leave that station and come to Argon Prime so you can inspect it.

And it is really that easy. Really, really.

Ok, so what do do if all of your marines die? Do you try again? Well, it is likely that even with all novice marines you will be able to take the ship just because you are sending over so many at one time. If by some weird chance all 300 of your marines die then you can try again. Send your Shuyakus to the nearby VIG Shipyard. Stock up on more marines.

You’ll notice that the Erlking has not recovered any of the crew that were lost in the previous attempt. What I mean by that is that if the Erlking started with 200 crew and you managed to kill 120 of them, then on you second attempt the Erlking will only have 80 crew left. So you can send a second way of 300 plus marines to fight just 80 crew. You’ll get the ship on the second attempt you will not need a third attempt. And honestly, you’ll likely get the ship on the first attempt.

Anyway, wrapping up. Once the Erlking is out of Windfall, the first time you come aboard some strange radio messages will play as if you just found it in Windfall. You can just listen. They don’t mean anything. Think of it as if you are listening to a recording of what happened during the boarding that you weren’t present for. The VIG will not be hostile to you and you will not lose rep.

Now, the Erlking is a great ship to use to board other ships since it has so many crew and it is now full of marines. If you want to improve the turrets on it, you have to have a Capital ship license from one of the factions.

However, the Erlking can be improved and turned into a ship only surpassed by the Asgard. In order to improve the Erlking you need patience, some advanced satellites, a spacesuit repair tool (seriously man get your spacesuit gear before someone has to tell you to do so) and an XL maintenance or fabrication blueprint. You have to build the XL ship dock on a station that you own. Another faction can not do it for you. If you have blueprints for Erlking equipment but no station that can do the maintenance, then you’ve wasted your time.

Once you do have your own maintenance station, now you can worry about getting the blueprints. They are randomly scattered in Windfall and Avarice. What worked for me in finding them was this:

Fly to a spot. Drop the advance satellite. Look for the Data Vault. If it is not there. Then set guidance to a new spot on the map outside of the satellites range. Deactivate the satellite and pick it up. Fly to the new spot. Drop the satellite and look.

This will take some time but it is cheaper than dropping hundreds of satellites in Windfall or Avarice. Plus in Avarice your satellites will eventually get destroyed.

Eventually you’ll find a data vault. Get out into your spacesuit. Use your repair laser on the repair targets. This will open hatch doors. Inside one of the hatches will be two boxes. One box is the blueprint and the other is an item. These are all pretty easy. The difficult part is finding them.

After a blueprint is found you can put it on the Erlking. Once all five are found then you are finished. Have patience, this will take a long time.

Budgeted Game Start: Possession

If you have successfully boarded the Erlking before you can just give yourself the ship with the budgeted game start Possession option. That can be interesting but should you do that?

If you pick this option for a new game then you don’t have to board the Erlking. You just start out with the ship not upgraded at all. That can look attractive if you’ve only been able to get the ship during a big battle at that station. You might not want to do that again.

However, with the very lazy and peaceful way to board the ship, you can think of the Erlking as free training to get some veteran marines. Yes some of them will die. Yes, you have to save up to buy two Shuyakus. But it is sort of worth it. And now you’ll have that feeling like you earned it. True, the best way to earn it is to attack the station but that’s really just giving yourself punishment.

So, use Possession to just get the ship and a captain or use default, save up for two Shuyakus, have some marines die, and get the ship anyway. It is really up to you.

Budgeted Game Start: Riding Through The Night And Wind

This game start is locked behind Boso being at your HQ.

This game start is only available after you have found all five data vaults, and fully upgraded the Erlking with all Erlking equipment at a station you own that can do repairs to an XL size ship.

When you choose this game start you get the Erlking fully upgraded at game start.

However, you do not get the blueprints for the Erlking equipment. I consider this a bug but apparently this is the way the Devs intend for this mission to go.

Since you already have a fully upgraded Erlking, you don’t need to go looking for the blueprints. However, if your Erlking ever gets destroyed you’ll have a problem. You’ll need to search for the power core, rebuild the ship at your own XL Fabrication shipyard, go searching for the Data Vaults, find all five of them, and then finally fully upgrade the Erlking again.

So, with this game start option, if your Erlking is safe, then you are fine. If it is not safe, then you have some work to do to get it back.

Research: Erlking Power Core

You have the option to set the research for the Erlking power core in the research option in budgeted game start. This means that you know how to build the ship and do not need to board the original. Selecting this should also make the original go away so it will not be there to be boarded.

So if you start a game and you selected this research item to be finished and you look and the Erlking is there in Windfall then you have a chance to do something funny. Keep in mind, it should not be this way. The game had a hiccup. Knowing that research should make it so that the Erlking in Windfall does not exit. So if it does then you can quickly build an XL fabrication dock. Use the 800 million credits guide. Then build your own Erlking. Once it is built, go board the one in Windfall that should not exist.

I wrote the guide above from memory. My memory is obviously not perfect. Here are some corrections to mistakes I made. I discovered these mistakes while playing through this again on the 7.1 beta so maybe some of this is just updates from the beta.

I forgot to mention above that to prepare for the final battle, bring a ship that can collect cargo. Whichever side you choose, the ship that blows up drops cargo you can collect.

The trader ship that you board during the boarding tutorial is called the Iron Vulture not the Iron Pelican. Also, it starts as a Teladi company ship and then becomes the civilian faction. After the plot is over it likes to just hang in Windfall Union on patrol forever. I likes to hug the Vigor stations so I'm waiting quite a while for a good opportunity to take it again. Eventually I was able to board it again when I saw that it happened to meander to a far off corner.

The Raven does look a lot like a magpie but the Raven has 4 engines instead of the two on the magpie. Also, the support struts on the two ships are a different pattern.

In 7.0 you can board the Erlking out of sector just fine but in the Beta the ship will shoot at your boarding pods. I still managed to do it but on the second try after reloading a save. The first time all the marines died in flight. The second time only five of them died and the rest of the 300 Plus marines were able to board but only 10 of them survived when the ship was finally mine. At least the Erlking didn't fire on the two Shuyakus.

As for getting the Raven and the Falcon, the Devs really must not want you to be able to do that. Here are the different ways I tried and the outcomes.

Attempt 1: Had a hired pilot fly the Raven out of sector without touching the Rolling Rock (MIN ship). The quest did not progress. The Raven is required to touch down.

Attempt 2: Had Raven touch down on the Rolling Rock. I got the Falcon and they took the Raven from me. After the story was over, I boarded the Rolling Rock and took it. You have to wait until the Arcadian Endeavor blows up for boarding to become an option. After the ship was mine the Raven was not in the ships inventory. It was gone.

Attempt 3: I hired a pilot and told the pilot to dock at the Rolling Rock and then dock on the Iron Vulture. Once it was safely on the Iron Vulture I went to the Rolling Rock to hear the woman speak and give me the Falcon. I teleported to my trusty Eclipse Vanguard with burst rays and took out the Arcadian engines. The quest was done. I went to Windfall and saw the Raven there with pilot. I boarded the Iron Vulture. Once the Iron Vulture became mine the Raven vanished. It didn't fly away, it just vanished. It popped out of existence.

Attempt 4: This is the same as above but I reassigned the pilot before getting the Falcon. Now the Raven is on the Iron Vulture with no pilot. I boarded the Iron Vulture. Once I captured it the Raven again popped out of existence.

Attempts 5 & 6: I did this again and had the Raven dock at a station. I attacked the station. The Raven was either destroyed or popped out of existence when the dock module was destroyed. I tried with and without a pilot.

Attempt 7: I had the Raven fly to an empty spot in space. I took away the pilot. Now it is just a dead ship in space. MIN took ownership. They did not put a pilot in the ship. It was just floating there. I used an EMP on the ship and created a signal leak. I scanned it. The ship did not become mine. It still just sat there.

Attempt 8: The Raven flew to an empty bit of space. I left the pilot in the ship. The ship became MIN property. I attacked the ship. The pilot had zero skill and zero morale. I continued to attack the ship for over two hours. The ship had no shields and only 3 % hull for over two hours. Every time a bit of shields came back, I hit the ship again. It was no use. The pilot refused to bail.

Attempt 9: The same as above but this time I surrounded the Raven with capital ships. (Odysseus, H, Phoenix E, Asgard) I got on the biggest and baddest one. In an Asgard, I commed the Raven and told them to Surrender. The pilot with no skills in an S size ship laughed at me. (Admittedly, I have never used this surrender option before and I don't know how to get it to work.)

Finally: I decided what I would do about the Raven. I piloted it myself. I landed on the Rolling Rock and then immediately undocked. I flew to the MIN Wharf nearby. I sold all the equipment on the ship. I went to the ship dealership and took off the Mirage Mod, netting me the component I needed to put the Mod on another ship. While I was doing this, with venomous frustration dripping into my enunciation, I said out loud "If you want this ship you have to pay me for it. And you can't keep the mod."

After stripping the Raven I sold it to the MIN Wharf. I had come to appreciate this ship's different design and I really wished I could get blueprints to make an S deliver ship with that many engines, forget about the mod. But, thinking about it another way, both the Currier Van and Sent are faster than the Raven. Still, I do like to build ships, all the ships. ALL THE SHIPS!!!!

So as of this writting, I have created an alert that will tell me whenever I run across a Raven. It has been about 20 hours of game time since I finished the plot and that alert has not sounded once. It this game at least the Raven is a unique ship and the only way to get it is to side with the Curs.

UPDATE!!!

I happened to see a Raven but it was not a MIN ship. It was a split ship but it was in 18B. I followed it and scanned it. It turned out that it really was a MIN ship. It had a trade loop of getting nostrip oil from 18B and sellling it in Grand Exchange at the trading station. I attacked it and the pilot bailed straight away. So now I have my Raven.

BUT man does it make me mad that I couldn't keep that original one. I renamed the Raven that i was able to capture as "Raven: Production Quality". That wasy I can see it as an upgrade. I still wish I could get the blueprints to build these. If I see any more I will try to capture them. If these are unique I want to be the only one with them, the same as with the Prometheus.