Expedition 7: The Grind for Space Whales

[The Golden Knight]

I posted these thoughts in the official news thread, but I thought it should have its own discussion so that it can have a slightly easier time getting eyes on it.

Now that I have gone through all the main tasks, the only one left for the space whale is to finish the community goal, and unless it's cheating (depending on how the devs react), save edit could be a way to turbo-charge that process.

Why?
Because you cram your whole inventory with "Liquid Sun", drop that off at the Anomaly, save by jumping in and out of your ship to tell the server that it's done, then inject that same edited save file back in and hot-load another full delivery of "Liquid Sun".

Be advised, though, even WITH such a shortcut, that won't stop the process from being a huge, tedious grind. So, do that for as long as your patience and attention span will allow. Good news, we have well over a whole real month to make it happen. (Would be easier and comfier if there were a way to unload the whole 18 wheeler worth of goods with a single button press or 2, instead of tediously pressing E and 1 for each increment of 250.)

(Though there IS a bug when people keep crowding Polo. Inviting to a group while you're in the process of offloading your cargo leads to a soft-lock of the whole game. Best workaround is to disable multiplayer, unless that messes up the server recognizing your bulk hauls of "Liquid Sun".)

With all that said and done, my question is, how much difference can a single player make? Because even going at it enthusiastically for an hour, I've seen the Tier 1 progress raise by about...2 percent. And maybe 1 percent for the entire event (from 5% to 6%). So either this approach is not being registered, or even full turbo mode is still a drop in the bucket.
(Reminds me of my time with the Community Goals of Elite Dangerous. Made it to their Top 10 in 5 different events. So, I'll be showing that off here, I guess.)

[Mr. Bufferlow]

And while you are doing all that....someone else has figured out how to harvest and give themselves the rewards without even doing the expedition.

Since the Expedition is time limited, I have every confidence we will get what we joined up for without doing tricks. You be you though.

Turn off MP and any soft lock disappears. Isn't technology amazing.

[Metal_Bard]

I have a feeling it will accelerate with time. People need to get used to the inventory space and the prospect of having their progress vaporized if they screw up. This is just the first part of the expedition. Everyone has to bulk up and prepare. Field work is going to be rather oppressive right now.

I don't know why anyone would go so far as to cheat like that, and maybe the devs will soft counter it. I hope they do.

[The Golden Knight]

Originally posted by Metal_Bard:

I have a feeling it will accelerate with time. People need to get used to the inventory space and the prospect of having their progress vaporized if they screw up. This is just the first part of the expedition. Everyone has to bulk up and prepare. Field work is going to be rather oppressive right now.

I don't know why anyone would go so far as to cheat like that, and maybe the devs will soft counter it. I hope they do.

I wouldn't blame them if they do. (Though for that to happen, I anticipate it'd take more than a lone renegade to convince them that it really needs action. Just an idea for them, make it stop counting after a certain point, as if to say "You've grinded enough, now go do something else and spare your sanity.")

Grind is almost always a pain, no matter how it's sliced.

Meaning, the best "soft counter" is to simply NOT have this kind of grind in the game to begin with. Elite Dangerous could learn a lesson about that as well. >;)

(About 1-2 hours later, and 2 loads, I tapped out because it's that painful.)

[Foxglovez]

ESO has had any number of community participation events along this line. It's all baked ahead of time and fed out as the time passes. It would be really bad press to have something like that not succeed. Nope, no special frigate for you, the customer base went on strike. We used to chuckle about it. As it is, 4 or 5 wks is a long time for the first thru the door 'chievers to wait for their shiny new critter.

[der_wahre_Nils]

The optional milestones will make the expedition easier, but they aren't required.

Switch to experimental or wait for the patch to be able to collect the space whale.

[Jaggid Edje]

I thought we weren't getting the space whales because they all escaped their pens and we just needed to wait for Hello Games' wranglers to get out there and capture them again.

I have seen quite a few in the wild now as I progress through the expedition. Just had one go overhead while on the Anchor point 4 planet. They are pretty sexy.

[Metal_Bard]

Originally posted by The Golden Knight:

Originally posted by Metal_Bard:

I have a feeling it will accelerate with time. People need to get used to the inventory space and the prospect of having their progress vaporized if they screw up. This is just the first part of the expedition. Everyone has to bulk up and prepare. Field work is going to be rather oppressive right now.

I don't know why anyone would go so far as to cheat like that, and maybe the devs will soft counter it. I hope they do.

I wouldn't blame them if they do. (Though for that to happen, I anticipate it'd take more than a lone renegade to convince them that it really needs action. Just an idea for them, make it stop counting after a certain point, as if to say "You've grinded enough, now go do something else and spare your sanity.")

Grind is almost always a pain, no matter how it's sliced.

Meaning, the best "soft counter" is to simply NOT have this kind of grind in the game to begin with. Elite Dangerous could learn a lesson about that as well. >;)

(About 1-2 hours later, and 2 loads, I tapped out because it's that painful.)

I do have a problem with grind. But I also expect that since it is a community "pile" it will remedy itself when people get their permadeath-legs. And I understand where you are coming from. Maybe they didn't gauge how many would be dipping their toes into the permadeath pond. I will do me and go with the flow. But after 6 full expeditions of trivial repetition, there is finally something that stands out.

I am mostly disapointed with all the griping. Also, I retract my previous statement, I do know why they would. But the grinding doesn't really give you anything except a net bonus in class upgrades for fragments. For things like nanites and QS, until they tweaked those, I could understand why they would for that. But for this? It would help those that are having a little more trouble. Very marginally though.

Here are some tips:

Look for aid buildings. More are bound to pop up. Get your hazmat gloves. Plants will help all with things like early funding and perhaps starting a quick farm of their own. Don't play with MP enabled.

Beeline to personal upgrades. The prices are horrible. I know. But shattered glass can give you sentinel upgrades which can make your pretty beefy. Units are a must. Find a new multitool, One with more slots.

Reject the rocket boots. That is a trap.

Move with caution and have an exit plan.

For those that get up there, perhaps start seeding areas with Aid bases. Be the UN and show some "deep concern" for your fellow traveler.

Direct newbies to videos by youtubers such as Xainesworld, beeblebum, survival bob, and jason plays. Also, Captain Steve. Captain Steve covers a wide swath, but is not nearly as in-depth as Xaine. Visit Xaineworld's website for in-depth guides. He usually goes code diving to better explain things. The links to his website are usually in the description on his videos.

You will eventually get the entire glyph set, pocket as much units as you can. Look up youtube and the NMS coord exchange. Get yourself a better Multitool. Your starting ship is garbage and so is your multitool. Try and find a crashed vessel that is not garbage. I refuse to use my rewards this time around so I am doing the same thing. If you got them, then you got good money in salvage coming in if you want to go that route.

As a side note, I decided to stick with my "gravity niitac iiv" for this run. I hate those ships but I named mine starbug. The ugliest green imaginable, and they always start me with a pink multitool. I wish you can change that.

If anyone finds a good ship nearby, let everyone know, here and/or on the exchange.

Same goes for multitools. I can't emphasize this enough. Also, Don't play with MP enabled.

[The Golden Knight]

Originally posted by Foxglovez:

ESO has had any number of community participation events along this line. It's all baked ahead of time and fed out as the time passes. It would be really bad press to have something like that not succeed. Nope, no special frigate for you, the customer base went on strike. We used to chuckle about it. As it is, 4 or 5 wks is a long time for the first thru the door 'chievers to wait for their shiny new critter.

That would be disappointing, but understandable. With any multiplayer experience like this, doubly for cooperative ones, I always ask the question, "How much of a difference can a single player make?" Normally, the answer is "None at all." More rather, while players go through the motions and NPCs are forced to laud them, it's less like going on a true adventure of real heroism, and more like trying out the rides at an amusement park. (I'm talking about online games universally; each game is ITS own theme park.)

Elite Dangerous was an oddity in that back during ITS first couple years, certain cliques did get canonized with their posters in the space stations, yet in recent experience that selling point had been proven to be a lie. If this event is similarly not scripted to unlock at the literal last day, the answer to my above question could be "More than you think, if you're willing to bore yourself half to death."

If I were to keep at my turbo pace unfettered, assuming it matters and progress is not scripted or pre-determined, it'd still take quite a few weeks to complete the needed Tier 5 for the space whale Leviathan to be playable. (Plus, previously, that goal was barely reached in the final days of Expedition 6.) Having a larger team go through that as well, and suddenly it seems more doable. Community Goals like this are usually intended to be played by thousands (or tens of thousands) of different people, and when pooled their manpower hours would equate into the millions. (Like, if one person spends 5 hours, multiply that by 10,000 people. Which would make it staggering for even the cheesiest maverick.)

As for the devs' end, yeah I've briefly seen a couple discussion threads here on Steam complaining about being compelled to participate in the more challenging variant of gameplay settings. (Not just that doozy of an inverse difficulty curve; Expeditions have been better at giving players the tools to start out without instantly succumbing to environmental hazards, so my complaint there only applies to the vanilla experience.) Either way, there's a good fraction of the community who I'd imagine would get turned off banging their heads against a wall, so perhaps from that we'll be seeing lower turnout than the other Expeditions. (I can't say for sure; only the devs have that set of data.)

Short of it is, yeah, I think the one guy was right: "You do you" and all that. Put in as much time and effort as you want to, until it stops being fun.



...P.S. I disagree on one point. I like the rocket boots for faster horizontal propulsion. When it works, it's a lot faster than sprinting. That said, it's a bit...quirky. There's always an altitude "dip" that more times than not makes my feet touch the ground, stopping all movement for a second before hopping forward to do it again. Not the most efficient way to get around, but when it works, it's awesome. (Inversely, when landing and wanting to stop, sometimes it does one extra hop I didn't mean to do, so yeah, rocket boots are super finicky, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it "a trap".)

[Pounce]

I really do not see the point in the grind.
I did the whole journey in 10 hours with the mods you get (c class) and did not even use the minotaur, I mean they really dump lots of them onto you.

Without the grind the expedition is really an fun little adventure, would be even more fun as soon we can claim our space whale.
Next I hope we get some freighter love....

[Teratus]

The optional milestones have no impact on the Whale reward.

Reason we can't get the Whale atm is because of a bug, it'll be fixed soon I expect.

[Bold]

i have no idea how to make this advance, it hasn't moved for 2 days for me. it was a fun expedition but now its just silly, because no where doe it say turning in items increases the level.

[Blind0ne]

Originally posted by Teratus:

The optional milestones have no impact on the Whale reward.

Reason we can't get the Whale atm is because of a bug, it'll be fixed soon I expect.

Is this true, where did you get this info?

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Jamie:

Is this true, where did you get this info?

In the sticky post at the top of these forums is the patch notes for the experimental branch. The bug and that it is fixed is in those patch notes.

Also confirmed, with screenshots, by players who are playing the experimental branch.

[Pounce]

Originally posted by Jamie:

Is this true, where did you get this info?

It is an offside remark in an post about the test build for nms that they fixed it there or they hope they did.
So it is kinda indirect.
I wish they would just have an message in the loadscreen with like.. the impoirtant things to know...and not deep digging in forums with lousy message managment

[The Golden Knight]

Originally posted by Pounce:

I really do not see the point in the grind.
I did the whole journey in 10 hours with the mods you get (c class) and did not even use the minotaur, I mean they really dump lots of them onto you.

Without the grind the expedition is really an fun little adventure, would be even more fun as soon we can claim our space whale.
Next I hope we get some freighter love....

That also highlights the problem: the grind and space whales (at least at face value) are 110% intertwined. Giving the impression you can't have one without the other.

From the looks of it, something similar happened with Normandy in Expedition 2, and time-travel won't let you complete Expedition 2 because (like the grind of Expedition 7) it's a Community Goal tied server-side, so can't really be done in a single-player capacity (even with turbo mode as I attempted, it'd be effectively nonstop to single-handedly complete all 5 tiers). Save Editor does let you force in the Normandy, so I only hope the same will come of Leviathan when the time matures.

I otherwise agree with you, minus such a grind and it's truly a cute little adventure that's guided by a large checklist for a to-do list.

Originally posted by Bold:

i have no idea how to make this advance, it hasn't moved for 2 days for me. it was a fun expedition but now its just silly, because no where doe it say turning in items increases the level.

That's because handing in "Liquid Sun" needs literal tons to hand in before the progress moves by a single percent, the smallest observable amount of progress. Turbo pace makes that happen in about an hour or 2 of nonstop pressing E and 1 in front of Polo aboard the Anomaly.
Yeah. I said it's painful, and I wasn't joking.


I don't think I can share screenshots in this discussion thread, or else I'd show that I have completed all 5 "iterations" and "phases" of the Expedition, minus the Community Goal being the "optional" task which makes all the difference for the final collectible at the absolute end.