Elite Dangerous indepth beginner guide for 3.0

This is a indepth beginners guide that will cover most, if not all areas of the game you might encounter early in the game. I will mention some Endgame activities but they will take time to be accessed.
You don't need any knowledge beforehand :3

Introduction

Welcome CMDR!

I play Elite since the release and i spent way to much time on it, without any end in sight.
In that timeframe i have collected my fair share of tips and tricks that i hope will help you to have a easier start than i had. The learning curve is pretty hard but once you are used to it, it becomes really enjoyable.

So, lets try to enjoy that as much as possible :3

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This serves as my Update to my previous Guide:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=562708435

It will also be a bit more indepth.

Controls

The first and probably most important step: setting up your controls. This might take a while and varies a lot on what you chose to play on.

The different options are:

Mouse and Keyboard
Gamepad
Joystick and Throttle
Dual Joystick

I will go over everything you will need to start out with the game. If you have confidence that you don't need any help with setting up your controls, feel free to skip that part.

The first thing you wanna do ist head from the main menu to Training. Here select Challenge Scenarios and then Docking Practice.
You will find yourself inside a Ship staring at a spinning station.

That offers you the possibility to test all the controls we will start filling in now directly ingame without risking of getting yourself hurt.

Open the Menu with ESC, head over to Options and then Controls.
As Preset i recommend using an Keyboard and Mouse one. Even if you plan to play on Joystick or Gamepad.

That means we can use the Map with Mouse and Keyboard. Which is often easier than with the joystick :3
I will only go over the stuff we actually need. And only add a detailed explanation on what it does if it is missing ingame or not sufficiently explained.

Keep in mind to make a Cheatsheet for important things you wanna keep in mind.

Mouse Controls
If you plan to play on Gamepad or Joystick make sure you set everything to off.
The only thing to mention in this category is probably the difference between relative and normal mouse Axis.

The relative option will just move your ship to the point you are pointing and then stop turning.
That means your Mousecourse will slowly go to the center and then the ship will stop moving.
On the normal version that does not happen and you ship keeps going into that one direction until you yourself return the cursor to the middle.

Flight Rotation
You will need Yaw, Roll and Pitch Axis here.
Yaw will simply point your nose more to the left or right.
Roll will roll your ship to the left or right.
Pitch will let you aim up and down.
Yaw into roll is pretty well explained in the game.

Flight Thrust

You will need Lateral Thrust Axis and Vertical Thrust Axis.
Lateral is your normal strafe to the left or right move just like in any Shooter.
Vertical is the same just up and down.

Keep in mind that if you don't use AXIs like a Joystick but key or buttons, you want to use the "Thrust up, Thrust down, Thrust left and Thrust right" commands.

Alternate Flight controls
You don't need anything in here.
You can bind a Key to Alternate Controls Toggle and then define new controls. And then switch freely between both setups. Purely optional but good to have in case you need it.

Flight Throttle
You will need Throttle Axis or Increase Throttle and Decrease Throttle. Depending on if you bind it on a Axis or a Button / Key.
This will let you Accelerate and Decelerate.
If you have enough buttons / keys, i highly recommend adding Set Speed to - 0%, 50% and 75%.

0% will be an "oh damn i didnt meant to boost here please Overlord Fluffy, let me not crash into the station" Button.
50% is important for Combat (more details later)
75% is important for Traveling (more details later)

Flight Landing Overrides
You don't need anything from here.
It allows you to set up a different way to control your ship. This will automatically activate when you deploy your landing gear.

Flight Miscellaneous
You will need Toggle Flight Assist (press on the small + and change it to toggle for now. If you feel Hold would be better later on just switch. More about that later), Engine Boost, Toggle Frame Shift Drive and Supercruise.

I recommend binding Toggle Frame Shift Drive and Supercruise out of conveniance. If your Target system is obstructed by a Planet, you would have to deselect your Target System just to be able to get into Supercruise. But if you have Supercruise bound on a different system you can just use that :3

Targeting
You will need Select Target Ahead, Cycle Next Target, Cycle Previous Ship, Cycle Next Hostile Target, Cycle Previous Hostile Target, Cycle Next Subsystem and Cycle Previous Subsystem.

One could argue you only need next or previous. I just prefer to have it. If you are short on keys or buttons you can shrink it down that way.

Cycle Next Target and Cycle Previous Ship will cycle through all ships around you. Friendly, Neutral and Hostile.
While cycle through Hostiles will only do that for Hostile Ships.

Cycling Subsystems becomes more important the bigger the enemy Ship is you are trying to take down. More about that later.

Weapons
You will need Primary Fire, Secondary Fire, Cycle Next Firegroup, Cycle Previous Firegroup and Deploy Hardpoints.
Firing Deploys Hardpoints On / Off whatever you prefer.

Hardpoints are your weapons. Deploy Hardpoints will also retract them if they are already deployed.

Cooling
You will need Silent Running and Heatsinks. Silent Running is a very primitive form of Stealth. Only used for smuggling. Mor about that later.
Heatsinks are a utility item that absorbs and stores heat from your ship and then ejects it.

Miscellaneous
You will need Divert Power to Engines, Weapons, Systems and Balanced power Distribution, Cargo Scoop, Landing Gear, Use Shield Cell Bank and Use Chaff Launcher.

More about what divert power does exactly later.
Shield Cell Bank is a way of recharging your Shields in combat. More about that later.

Mode Switches
You will need Target Panel, Comms Panel, Role Panel, System Panel and Game Menu.

Interface Mode
You will need UI Panel Up, Down, Left, Right, Select, Back, Next Panel Tab and Previous Panel Tab.

Headlook Mode
You need nothing here.
Here you can setup your controls for Headlook. You find the Toggle Headlook bind in Mode Switches

Galaxy Map

You can try to set up your Joystick or Gamepad for it. I personally find both rather annoying to navigate with. So i mainly use Mouse and Keyboard for that.
I don't have a single Axis bound but all Keys.

Driving
You will need Steering, Roll, Pitch Axis, Vertical Thrusters, SRV Primary Fire and Secondary Fire, Handbreak, Headlights and Toggle SRV Turret.

Driving Targeting
You will need Select Target Ahead

Driving Turret Controls
You need Yaw and Pitch

Drive Throttle
You will need Accelerate and Decelerate. Buttons or Axis depending on what you bind it to.

Driving Miscellaneous
You need Divert Power to Engines, Weapons, Systems, Balance Distribution and Cargo Scoop.
You can use the same binds for Diver Power and Scoop that you used on your Ship.

Driving Mode Switches
Set them up the same way you have it done for your Ship.


Congratulations. You have done it.

Don't worry you will repeat that a lot of times. You will keep on working on your controls until you really feel like they fit now.
Feel free to fly around and get to know the controls a little bit. Make sure to check your Pitch, roll and all the other inputs. If you Yaw to the left side and it moves to the right. go back to options, controlls and search for the Yaw, then just click to on inverted or regular to change it.

Training Missions

Now that you setup your controls you should jump into the training missions.
There is really not too much to say about them.

Do at least:

Basic Flight Training
Docking and Travel Training (make sure you can dock at least somewhat decently)
Combat Training

These 3 should be enough to get you starting.

That's already it. Just follow the instructions :3

Docking

So you finished at least the 3 trainings missions and have a small understanding of docking and traveling.
Which is great :3
But there are some things to keep in mind while docking.

First of all you can only request a docking permission while in a range of 7500m to the station, outpost, planetary station or megaship your are trying to dock with.

Secondly there is right next your radar a small little circle with a dot inside.





Looks like that.
This will show you the exact location of where your landing pad is.

Feel free to try the docking tutorial one or two more extra times.
You will dock a lot in this game :3

Traveling

Traveling is what you will do the most probably.
You are constanly in supercruise. So overshooting your destination or having problems to get close to your destination can be really annoying.

So lets go over the most important things.

There are 2 way of traveling. Jumps and Supercruise.

Jumps allow you travel from one system to another. While supercruise allows you to travel inside a system to different locations.

Lets first talk about Jumps.
You need to know your jump range. How far you ship can jump.
This is calculated through a lot of things. We will go into more detail later. For now, just go to your right Ships panel and go to function.











You will now see your Ship, Jumprange, Name and ID. We only need the one that is not in brackets.
If you ever get a warning message in the right upper corner that looks like that:











That means your target is too far away and you need to plot a route to the target system instead of a single jump.

So how do you plot a route? How to even select a different system?
You do that via the Galaxy Map. Go to your left screen in the Ship and select Galaxy Map.
You should see something similiar to that:











Here you can select any system. On the left side you have different tabs you can select.
The second one lets you search for specific Systems.

















Here you can just type in the system you wanna go to. It also displays your current Location and your Selected Location. I recommend using Fastest Routes. Don't use Jet-Cone Boost and Don't use FSD Boost. These are both things for more experienced players.

























The third bar simply is a collection of all the things you have bookmarked.

Number 4 is a filter System. You can filter for all sorts of things. Specific services, Commodities, Starclasses. And you can even apply that to your route planing.
For instance could you only select Scoopable Stars (Stars where you can scoop fuel from) and apply that to your route. Which would mean you will get way less non scoopable starr on your journey.

The 5th only is a option on what is displayed on the map. Stuff like, Show Engineers or Show Damaged Starports.

Now you can simply select a Target System you wanna go to and Jump there. Sometimes it may happen that your target is obstructed.











That means you need to go first in Supercruise and fly around the planet.

A target system that is not obstructed has clear lines.












That should cover jumping to other Systems.
So lets talk about Supercruise.

Supercruise is the travel inside a System. From station to station or from a planetary base to a ressource extraction site.

A lot of people run into trouble with overshooting when they begin. So lets first take a look at that Picture:




A displays the target you are heading towards. You can also use the small circle with a dot to get the target into sight that we learned about in the docking section.
You see a Distance and the remaining time till arrival.

Once the remaining time till arrival, also known as ETA (estimated time of arrival) hits 9 seconds, throttle down to 75%. (Remember the keybind i mentioned in controls, that can help you here)

But even if you don't have a specific keybind for that, you can see on B the Blue line where your speed is displayed. Try to set your speed in the middle of that blue line.

C Displays also your distance, speed and alighment. If all 3 of them are in the Blue you can safely disengage. You will also get a message in the middle of the screen that tells you that you can now safely disengage.

This might take a moment to get used to. But don't be disencourage if you overshoot a lot in the beginning. That happened to everyone :3

Weapons

This will only be a short overview over the normal weapons. Experimental weapons will not be covered. Since they are rather lategameish anyway. Nothing a beginner needs to worry about.

So lets keep that as simple as possible. There are 3 different forms of damage.
Thermal, Kinetic and Explosive.
Each of these has a resistence you can improve through engineering on Shield and Armor.

There is a forth one called Absolute. But, as the name implies it is absolute damage.

So lets start with Thermal Weapons

There 3 Major weapons in that Class.

Beam laser, Burst laser and Pulse laser.

Beam laser deal the most amount of damage but also produce the most heat and cost the most energy.

Burst laser are the middleground.

Pulse laser are really heat and energy friendly but the dmg is a lot less compared to beams.

For Kinetics there are 2 weapons to highlight.

Cannons and Multicannons.

There is not much to say about these. The best way is simply to test the weapons out once you think about building a combat oriented ship.

The information about the weapons are pretty good ingame, but i will provide later a site that can help you planing out ships.

Modules

Modules are your ship internals.
So lets go over them one by one and i will tell you a bit about them and what exactly they do.

As a beginner you sure wonder what is the most important part to upgrade. After reading through that secion, i hope, you can make that decision for yourself.

There are 2 values you need to know about.
Size, displayed by a number.
and
Rating, displayed by a letter.

Normaly you always try to buy the right size. You only downgrade Modules for specific builds. Exploration Builds often use lower sized internals to save Mass to gain a better Jumprange for instance.

The Rating is more like a Quality indicator. A is the best quality you can get and E is the worste.

D Rated mods are the lightest mods. (That will become important once you try to build a Exploration Builde) But D mods also provide lesser output. So a D rated power plant will be lighter than an A rated the same size. But it will provide you with less power.


Lets start with

Core Internals:

Armor:
Lightweight Alloy is the Armor every ship comes equipped with when you buy it. There are different variants you can buy. They are really pricey compared to other things on the ship. Armor increases your Integrity. Your Armor Lifepoints if you so wish. It can also increase your resistances depending on what armor your pick. This shouldn't be too important for a beginner tho.

Power Plant:
You Powerplant does not only provide the needed power to get everything running on your ship. It also determines how heat efficient you ship will be. How good it handles heat produced from other systems.

Thrusters:
Thruster provide speed and how your ship handles. You also need to keep in mind how heavy you ship is. That normaly is not a problem on Multirole or Combat Ships since you aim mostly for A Rated Max Sized Thrusters on them. And they provide normaly more than enough Maximum Mass to never run into problems.

Frame Shift Drive:
Probably one of the most important internals for EVERY ship. You want that always in Maximum Size and A Rated. This in combination with your total ship weight, defines how far you can jump in one jump. So these can really improve your Travel experience by quite a bit.

Life Support:
Life Support provides oxygen in case your Canopy (the window infront of you, and no, not the Monitor, the one inside your ship which keeps you alive) breaks. The higher rated the module the longer it will provide oxygen. E Rated = 5 Minutes while A rated = 25 Minutes.

Power Distributor:
This is really important for Combat. The Power Distributor defines how fast you Ship recharges its boost. And your Weapon Capacity (more to that later)

Sensors:
Sensors Pick up the heat ships give off through emission. The higher the grade the longer the distance you can pickup ships on your sensor and the further you can scan these ships.

Optional Internals:

There are just a lot of optional internals.
They vary from Cargo rags to Shield Generators, Shield Cell banks and a lot more.

Most of them are easy to understand.
One of them is really important. It is called the Fuel Scoop. This fancy little internal module lets you scoop from certain Stars fuel. Which means you don't need to dock on stations all the time. And you can travel unlimited distances without ever having to stop for a station to refuel.

Hardpoints:

This are the slots you have open for Weapons. They change greatly from ship to ship.

Utility Mounts

Utility Mounts offer you a way to bolster your defense with Shieldbooster and add certain abilities to your ship. These range from different scanners to defence abilities like Chaff Launcher.

Combat (Bounties and War)

Combat is the first Profession i wanna talk about.
Combat is in a weird position. It is the one profession that needs you to invest heavily in the game the further you wanna take it.

Currently this is split into 3 Major parts.

Bountyhunting:

This allows you to make money by hunting down Wanted targets. There are multiple ways to go about this. The safest one, and the one you should try first, is at Nav Beacons.
Every Star in a populated system has a nav beacon. You will find it on your left Panel under Navigation. You need to be fairly close to the Star for it to pop up sometimes.


There you can see it while i am in supercruise.
If you select it as a target and drop in there once you are close enough you will see different kinds of Ships.
Select one over your Contact list and then point your nose towards it to scan it.




You can see in the left corner the selected target.






Here you can clearly see the target is clean and not wanted in this system. He might be wanted in a different system. But you would need a Kill Warrant Scanner to find that out. Only worry about that later once you have a decently equipped ship.






So, lets see how a wanted target would look like:


There we can see the target is wanted.
And if you want to see how much exactly, all you have to do is switch over to your Contact list while he is selected as target and you will see this:


There you can see how much you would get if you would defeat him.

Don't worry to much in the beginning. Even if you die, you will get the same free sidewinder again :3 So you can just test it out. This only counts if you are still in a sidewinder tho.

The second way to find some bounty targets are Ressource Extraction Sites.
These are always found around Planets with Rings.

There are 4 different intensities.

Low Intensity Ressource Extraction Site
Ressource Extraction Site
High Intensity Ressource Extraction Site
Hazardours Ressource Extraction Site

In Low, Normal and High you will find Police supporting your fights. So a decent Method for early Money in a combat approch is to support them as careful as possible. Wait till the target is low and then go in and help the Police with the kill.
This Methode works pretty will, while being risky. If you die you will lose all currently stored Bountie Profits. You need to get safely to a station in the same system you were hunting, to cash them in.

In Hazardous Ressource Extraction Site there is no Police support. You are on your own, or with your wing.

Lastly you could also interdict single targets. Since that is the least efficient methode we will skip over that for now.

War / Combat Zones:

Combat Zones are what appear in System that are in a Warstate. You can find such systems via the Galaxymap with the use of Filters or you can use an outside homepage found in the Third Party Tools section of this guide.

You will get a lot less for a kill compared to Bountyhunting. But you also will have a lot more Targets. Be careful in Combatzones. Compared to Pirates that use only what they have at hand for theire ships. Ships in Combatzones are trimmed for combat. Highshields, lots of firepower and a lot of armor is not uncommon.

Xenohunt:

Engaging Thargoids is currently the most difficult combat in the game. You need not only specific weapons but also really good equiped and engineered ships.
This counts as a lategame activity.
If you are more interested about Xenos and how to combat them, there is a really nice and helpful Discord Community that you can find under:

https://discord.gg/gZbAWCF

How to get started with combat:

Like i wrote in the beginning the best would be to just take your free sidewinder to a navebeacon or a low intensity ressource extraction site. Even if you get killed you don't lose anything except the bounties you haven't handed in yet.

This way you can learn about the different ships you can come across. And what you should be vary of. What can kill you quickly and so on.

Once you have more confident and accumilated some wealth you could buy a new ship and upgrade its internals and hardpoints.

Good beginner ships for combat would be:

Eagle
Imperial Eagle
Viper Mk III
Cobra Mk III
Vulture

I recommend using the beginning of the game to play around with all sorts of weapons. See how you enjoy the different weapon types and so on.

How to get better at Combat:

If you find yourself dying a lot, you might want to think about improving your approach on Combat. There are a lot of things to keep in mind.

First of all how to actually approach the target and stay in a dominant position?

Vindicator Jones has a brilliant Video Tutorial series on how to approach combat and i highly Recommend watching them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hElXzArVdmM&list=PLST2VzDxDCrwvkU6wYfo-z4UhGbObjl_M

The second thing you should improve is PiP Managment.
Mercenary Thorn offers a really great video about that subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaUxgTC3W2U

The last part that can improve your experience is subsystem targeting.
The bigger the enemy the more important it becomes.

After you scanned your target you can either switch through all subsystems with the target subsystem keybinds. Or you can go to your left system panel:


Here you see all the subsystems you can target. The Powerplant is the most important one. If you destroy it and keep firing a couple more shots on it, it will explode and take the whole ship with it.

Lastly don't forgett to add your weapons to Firegroups.


This is a setup for mining but on that screen, right system panel, you will find all your installed weapons. Assign them simply to Primary 1 or Secondary 2 Fire. You can create here also additional Firegroups to switch between.

That should prepare you enough if you want to start out as a combat Pilot. So, good luck o7

Exploration

Exploration offers one of the most efficient ways to make money early on.
You need a specific ship with a specific loadout for it, but it can make you quite a bit of money.
First lets go over what exploration exactly means in Elite.

You leave Civilization behind and go into the deep dark black.
Equipped with Scanners you will be able to collect informations about Planets, Moons, Stars, Blackholes and a few more.

Exploration can be beautiful. If you take the time to appreciate it.
You can compare it with driving on a road with an amazing landscape to the site. If you are on a Vacation you can make a break, sit back and enjoy the view.
If you are on the way to work and you are already late, you will just rush through.

Exploration can be like that. It can become a simple loop of a few things to do which you just keep in repeating.
But if you take your time to check out some of the planets and awesome views it can be mindblowing.

Road to Riches:
So, lets first talk about the nice way to make money early on with a really little requirements.
It is called Road to Riches. What it essentially does is giving you a specific route you will folow and scan all the planets that are listed. All the Scantargets are high value and will bring in a lot of cash.

So, you sure wonder what kind of ship you need, here we go:

Dead Link removed. If i can find some time i might readd a new ship build.

It will cost you around 2.4 million to buy everything. So aim for 3 million just to be safe.

The Fuelscoop will allow you to refuel on stars without the need to dock on stations.

The Advanced Discovery Scanner reveals every body in the system you use it in. So just pop it once after you enter a system.
Just make sure you have it added to a firebutton. Right system panel, firegroups.

The Detailed Surface Scanner does not need to be added. To scan a planet simply target it and approach it. You need to be in a certain range, so just keep flying towards it until you start scanning it.

You can also add a Heatsink in case you get to close to a star. Just as a safety messurement if you want. On longer journeys into the black there are a few more modules you might want to consider.

Auto Field-Maintenance Units allow you to repair damaged modules, except the powerplant and Canopy. These can only be repaired on a station.

Repair limpets, repair your hull integrity, your hitpoints.

A Planetary Vehicle Hangar will allow you to deploy an SRV and drive around a planet if you found a espacialy interesting one.

Anyway, back to road to riches.
Once you obtained the Ship with all its needed modules you want to go to:

http://edtools.ddns.net/expl.php

Just type by Start System your current location and it will give you a route. I recommend doing it in plain text. This way you can save it and do it over several days if you so desire.

Keep in mind you can always stop. No need to finish all 300 Systems. Just do it as long as you want or until you reached your Credit Goal.

Long Range Exploration:

To travel to Colonia, Sagittarius A or even Beagle Point can be a worthwhile experience. I personally loved every journey i went on.
Just keep in mind that it can take quite a while to reach your destination.
The Galaxy is massive after all :3

As mentioned before you want a more specialized ship for long range exploration.

The first one that works really well would be the Diamondback Explorer or the ASP Explorer. I personally like the ASP a lot more but it also costs quite a bit more.

ASP:

Dead Link removed. If i can find some time i might readd a new ship build.

DBX:

Dead Link removed. If i can find some time i might readd a new ship build.

ASP Fully Engineered for Exploration:

Dead Link removed. If i can find some time i might readd a new ship build.

These Ships are only example builds. If you prefer to do your own builds, by all means :3 Its half the fun :D

Trading

Trading:

is rather simple in this game.
Buy cheap, sell high.

There are a couple of ingame tools that allow you to find a decent traderoute. I still recommend Third Party tools, which you can find in the Third Party Tools section in this guide.

There sadly is really not much more to say about this form of Trading. It really is rather simple and not complexe at all.

Smuggling:

Smuggling can be enjoyable. It pays okay but nothing to crazy.
The Idea is of buying illegal wares that you sell on the blackmarket in stations that have a blackmarket.

You can find out what a stations offers for Services by selectiong the station on the System Map.
Then look in the Detailed informations on the left side.

If you get scanned while transporting Illegal goods, you will get fined. This can becom rather expensive so make sure your docking skills are good enough for that.

Cargo Transport Missions:

These Missions come as Solo and Wing missions. They can pay really decently, espacially the wing versions.

Wing Missions have small blue symbol next to them. They also require you to transport a lot more goods.

You just dock at a station and check the mission board if they offer something you'd enjoy. You can switch between Gamemodes Solo, Private and Open to find different missions.

Mining

Mining is one of these odd jobs. It's just different than any other thing you can do.
In theory you can use any ship to mine. It starts to become more enjoyful with better ships tho. So i don't recommend doing that with beginner ships.

The first really decent Ship to do mining in is the Python. I know others can do it decently too which are not as expensive. But the from the Python upwards the ships just really work well with mining without having to wait forever.

You need a couple of things to get mining going.

First of all, you need a place to mine.





As you can see here in the left upper corner under the planet description you can see "pristine reserves"

Pristine, the best reserve you can get. (You should only mine here)

Major, second best. (Not recommended)

Common

Low

Depleted

This is the order in what Reserves are displayed.
It also depends on what kind of ring you are mining on.

As you can see i have selected the Planet 7 in the Delkar system. The Ring A (closer to the planet) is Metallic, which is the best it can be.

So whenever you want to do some mining (except Icy rings) you want to go for Pristine Metallic or Pristine Icy Rings.

Now that you know where to Mine you will need a fitting Ship for it. Like i said, the Python would be the minimum recommendation for it to not become a rather annoying experience.
Somthing like this would be nice:

Dead Link removed. If i can find some time i might readd a new ship build.

You need to bind Mining Laser, Prospector Limpets and Collector Limpets on firebuttons. So you need at least 2 Firegroups.

Approach the planet with the rings. You will see Ressource Extraction Sites. DON'T go there. Just drop into a random spot on the rings where no extraction site is around. This will keep NPC's away from you and you can Mine in freedom without being attacked all the time.
Just approach the ring slowly. Make sure not the speed into it. That might damage your hull a little bit. Which wouldn't be the end of the world but try to avoid it.

Don't forget to stack up on Limpets. You can buy these on any station with maintenance service.

Once you are in the Asteroid Field you just use your Prospector Limpets and shoot them at an Asteroid. This will show you what the asteroid is made of. If it is a material you desire, mine it with the lasers. Before you start mining deploy all your collector Limpets. (It would be 9 limpets with the build i linked) and deploy your cargo hatch.

The Limpets will collect the fragments and the refinery will turn them into ore.
To know which materials are worth mining a site can help you.

https://eddb.io/commodity

Here you will see a list of all the commodities in the game. Scroll down to Metals and Minerals.

What you normaly aim for is:
Platinum
Osmium
Palladium
Gold
Painite

These are at least the things i mine every time.
Once you collected enough fly back to your station and find a good buyer. If you want maximum profit you can try to use

Dead Link removed.

to find a decent buyer. Or you can just sell it on the station you are on. Make a little bit less but you can head out again.

Mining is not a particulary good way to make money. It's okay, but far from special.

Third Party Tools

Most of the time if you ask someone else

"Where do i get?"
"Where do i find?"
"What is a good trade route?"

And so on, they will send you to a 3rd party app or homepage.
The Community is just AWESOME in Elite.

So here you will find a list with the most useful Programs and Hompages for Elite.

Webapp:

https://inara.cz/
This is your allaround help page. It offers everything. Overview over engineering, blueprints, a huge community. Make an Account here. It helps a ton.

https://eddb.io/
This is your "I need to find xyz" Homepage. You can search for nearly everything. Certain stations that sell a certain ship or module. Planets with certain ressources. Trade Routes, System with specific states like War, Outbreak or Famine. Save that page.

https://coriolis.io/
Ship Builder with indepth statistics.

https://www.edsm.net/
This is perfect any aspiring explorer. It offers everything you need for planing exploration trips. There are also programs that upload your progression automatically to EDSM and INARA (will cover them further down)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yo1iHP9KUXpoBaIzJsRsDxfAcQa7cBq0YUIFy3m2NII/edit#gid=585994681
Spreadsheet for all the Materials and how to get them.

http://edtools.ddns.net/expl.php
Road to Riches Route Planer (See exploration section for more details)

http://edtools.ddns.net/
Miner Tool to find Pristine Metallic system.

http://www.elitegalaxyonline.com/
Records for your Discoveries.

Programs:

EDEngineer
Easy Program to create lists for engineering. It also autoupdates your materials so you have an easy overview what you are missing.

EDDiscovery
Can autoupload your logs to EDSM. Perfect tool for explorer but also useful for everyone else.

EDMC
Tool that sends information to hompages like EDDB. Can also autoupdate EDSM and Inara. Help not only yourself but also the community!

EDDI
Text to speech program that provides various informations.

Voice Attack
Immersion Program that lets you talk to your ship. In combination with HCS Voicepacks this can make quite the enjoyful addition.
It can also help if you have limited buttons since you can make your own Macros with it that can be activated via voice.
This Program needs to be bought. So keep that in mind. Also HCS Voicepacks need to be bought as well. This program is by no means necessary but, oh boy do i love it.

Furhtermore i want to introduce 2 really great Elite Dangerous Communites that are not only friendly and helpful, but also cool and fluffy.

First of is Mobius.
Mobius is a Private Group you get accept by applying to it. Links to that will be provided further down. This is a pure PvE Player Group. Read the Rules and Stay friendly.

https://elitepve.com/
General overview and Forum

https://elitepve.com/page/join
How to Join.

I hope i see you guys around and in the Mobius Discord.


The second Group i want to introduce consists of brave Warriors of the Dark that try to protect Human space as good as possible from the Xeno threat.

Discord: https://discord.gg/gZbAWCF

https://antixenoinitiative.com/

These people help with Shipbuilds to combat the Thargoids and provide assistance if you run into problems. Great Community.

That should cover it :D I know it is a lot. There would be even more that could be added, but i didn't wanna go overboard. With these pages you should be able to tackle any problem you encounter, and if you still feel stuck, visit the communities i posted.

Engineers

Engineers, these people allow you to modify and improve your modules on your ship.


You can see the little icon with the red circle? There you will find a brief overview. i still would recommend using inara to plan your engineers.

https://inara.cz/galaxy-engineers/

Here you will also find a overview of the engineers, but every engineer.


A small yellow arrow that goes from one to another engineer indicates, if you use that engineer and level him up you will hear about the one the arrow shows to.
The way you unlock engineers is simple. The first 5 you just know about.

Lets say you want to start with Elvira. Just click on here and you will see this page:


As you can see on the left side, there are different things listed you right under her picture that you need to fulfill.

Attain a maximum distance from your career start location of at least 300 light years. Is the requirement that once fulfilled allows you to meet here and dock at her place.
You can check that requirement on your right system panel under Status -> Statistics.
Once you have achieved the 300 ly she wants you to orovide 3 units of Soontill Relics.
The easiest thing to approach something like that is to either google it, or, if you know what it is, look it up in Inara. Soontill Relics are a rare commoditie. So in inara click on commodities and then rare commodities and look them up.

Soontill Relics Cheranovsky City | NGURII 1266 Ls 195.2 Ly 17,000 Cr 16,978+ Cr

That is the information you will find. You get them in NGURII in Cheranovsky City.

Once you delivered these Relics to her you will have her unlocked and you can use her for engineering.


On the right site of that page, you can see different Blueprints. I highly recommend to always use increased FSD range for the FSD upgrade.So lets click on FSD increase Range.



Here you will see the 5 Grades she has to offer. You have to go through each grade to unlock the next one. You only need to fill every circle to 75% to unlock the next Grade.
You can also see the Materials needed.

For grade 1 you will need 1 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes. In my third party tools is a link to a spreadsheet for all the materials and data. So you can just look it up there how to get it.

Materials come in different grades as well. Materials, just as blueprints go from grade 1 to 5.
I never really recommend to farm Grade 1 or 2 materials. Farm 3 4 and 5. And then use the material trader to trade the G5 materials on the same raw with lower materials. You can find material traders and all sorts of things with Inara easily.

https://inara.cz/galaxy-nearest/

In this list you can simply select what service you are looking for.
Once you leveld Elvira up to level 3 and a bit more, you will hear about Zacariah Nemo. With him you just repeat the same things. You fulfill what he wants, you level him up by engineering things to unlock the next one.

After Nemo you see a little + symbol instead of an arrow. This means if you unlock Zacariah you will ALSO unlock Marco Qwent. This means you could skip Nemo and go straight for Palin. Unless you really want to unlock Nemo.
So Plan out which engineers you do first, what route you take to unlocking them.

Go for one of the FSD Range increase engineers first. From here on it depends on what you wanna do.

Combat: Buff your survivability. Upgrade your Shields and Shield booster, your Power distributor and your Thruster. After that weapons might be a good choice. But then again this is only a recommendation. Play and unlock how you feel it works for you :3

The same goes for Explorers, Traders and Allrounders. Once you get a bit of money going so that you can afford at least a somewhat decent ASP Explorerer, start the engineers. They will pull you out of your comfort zone and give you task for every aspect of the game. Some super annoying and some really enjoyful tasks.

Engineering improves your ship so much. If you want to do combat, it is a must have.

Some modules also allow you to add experimental effects.


All you need are the right materials and you can add it. You can even add it if the Module is not completly done.
You will not lose it if you keep on improving the Grade afterwards.

Community Goals

Community Goals are Missions that pop up weekly. They range from Collecting certain commodities, to killing pirates or participating in wars.

You can accept community Goals in every station. After that, just follow to where it leads you and participate.

There is really not much to say here. It is rather straight foward and you will find information about CG's in inara as well.

Naval Ranking

Naval ranking means leveling up a certain faction Federation or Empire.


On the right site you can see "Rank" next to the Reputation of each superpower.
This rankings unlock new systems and Ships.
The Cutter and the Corvette are behind these Rankings and can take quite a while to unlock.

The idea is, you do missions for a Minor Faction that is aligned with one of the superpowers. That will increase your rank. Sometimes you get missions with Rep++++++ rewards. This will give a good junk of reputation, which will increase your ranking by a lot.

There are certain system and routes people use to unlock and level up their ranking. These systems change from time to time so there is not much point in putting them in here.
The best would be ask in the Mobius Discord where you can currently grind for ranking efficiently.

Powerplay

This whole section is completly outdated with the last update and i currently do not have the time to update it. I will try in the future to make some time.

Final Words

So i hope you feel a bit more confident now in the galaxy of Elite Dangerous.
If you still have questions, feel free to add me or leave the question in the comments. I'll try to jump by from time to time. :3

I am also in Mobius. So if you plan to join in there, i am always on that Discord.

[Fluffy Bunny of Despair]

Thanks for that information.
I went over all the available links and removed the once in question. Hope i didn't miss one.

Will see if i can update that guide at a later date :3

[lllib]

If you are still around, you may want to remove dead links - not only are they dead, they redirect to some bad sites.

[Burger]

eddb is dead now ):

[Fluffy Bunny of Despair]

The Exploration portion of the guide is kinda outdated.
And i have to see if i find the time to rewrite it with the new mechanics.
And hence new builds. If you are not opposed to video guides, i can recommend:
2021 Elite Dangerous Exploration Money Making Guide for New Players -The Road to Riches by Hawkes Gaming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf9KkffIw8s

He also has a great beginner starting ship in his Video.

[Ormics]

thanks for the guide! But the exploration build URL is broken :( Can I have a new one pls?

[George.cpp]

Here, have a "Poetry" award. This guide is amazing. Thanks!

[Kurokage]

Thanks for the guide, I hadn't played in a while and needed a refresher as I'm about to try elite!

[Fluffy Bunny of Despair]

I am Currently waiting for Odyssey to come out then i gonna try to Update the whole guide.
Shall try to update the Shipbuilds before hand if i find a moment of time for that :3

[Krakon]

Hey, can you reaupload the ship builds but on a site that still exists? edshipyard says migrate to edsy.org but is stuck in a loop of some kind.

[EnderC]

Your image link under Exploration is dead.