Remnant Guide

This guide is a FAQ and light walk through for the Remnant missions as they exist in 0.9.9. Due to the nature of the update pattern, this should remain valid for 0.9.12. Please note that - due to significant changes in the early missions as well as content added in 0.9.9, this guide is NOT accurate for 0.9.8 or earlier.

This guide provides info on how to find the Remnant, and some pointers on how to complete or find some of the more obscure parts. It is not intended to be a step by step guide for every single mission.

Introduction

First off, this guide includes spoilers for a faction that exists outside of human space called the Remnant. If you want the thrill of discovering them entirely on your own, please stop reading. For the introduction and "how to find them" sections I will use spoiler tags to hide various sections, but beyond that is less likely.

A note regarding directions:
The galaxy is a circular object, therefor traditional N/S/E/W doesn't really make sense. In this guide I have used an alternate system for noting directions:

• Spin-ward: Counter-clockwise around the center of the galaxy.
  
• Anti-spin-ward: clockwise around the center of the galaaxy.
  
• Core-ward: Towards the center of the galaxy.
  
• Anti-core-ward: towards the edge of the galaxy.

I will be using those terms as well as the names of areas (such as "the Ember Waste") to describe locations.

Pre-requisites and Ship Outfitting

First off, there are no pre-requisites for starting the Remnant missions.

That being said, there is a short mission string farther along that has "First Contact: Quarg" as a pre-requisite, so for the sake of being completionist it is good to visit the Quarg first, but it isn't necessary.

It is also worth noting that one of the introductory missions requires you to have a Quantum Keystone on your ship for the mission to trigger, so it is worth finding that, since you won't be able to go far enough to make it worth your while without one anyway. Note, that is the Keystone you buy from the Hai. While for the purposes of using the wormholes a "Quantum Keystone" = "Quantum Key Stone", for the sake of triggering missions the two are *NOT* equivalent.

Along the same lines, one of the introductory missions requires you to be able to do Outfit Scanning. So, have an outfit scanner, surveillance pod, or some other way of doing outfit scanning on your ship to save yourself some travel back to human space to get it later on.

The answer to the "What to fly?" question is something that has changed significantly in 0.9.9. Previously, it was highly advisable to fly a heavy warship or bring along a fleet capable of taking on one or more heavy warships. This is no longer the case in 0.9.9. The intro mission set has been re-balanced to be achievable flying a human medium warship such as the Corvette, Splinter, or Osprey. Flying something bigger than those will make things easier, but isn't necessary. And just to be clear, it should be doable in a splinter without needing to save-scum or rely on luck.

In my experience, flying a splinter is a pretty challenging fight. Pick something a bit heavier unless you want a good challenge. When I want a decent fight but without too much risk of dying, I go with an Osprey. For those times I'm feeling like an easy fight, I fly a Falcon or something bigger like a Dreadnought, Cruiser, or Shield Beetle. From the comments made by on Discord and GitHub; it sounds like "doable but challenging for new players playing a corvette" is the difficulty that is being aimed at for the intro missions.

It is worth noting, however, that the fights don't appear to be calibrated to allow everyone to just fly in and slug it out. Some of the fights have big enough fleets that you are going to have to retreat and let your shields recharge a bit. This will likewise give the Remnant the chance to spawn additional reinforcements.

For those who have trouble, bring an escort. Basically, bring a second ship equivalent to whatever you're flying. The more the merrier. Fly a Shield Beetle with two other Shield Beetle escorts, and all the fights should be downright easy.

That being said, the above only applies to the intro missions. As you progress through the mission sets, you will eventually need a better warship. Conveniently, better warships will be available, so don't feel pressured into getting a heavy warship before you go.

Finding the Remnant

Depending on where you are in the game, there are multiple ways to reach the Remnant. I have sorted them here by how easy they are to accomplish and/or how early in the main story they can accomplished. Just to be clear, route #1 is what I consider to be the best route. Option A from list 2 is simply instructions on how to get into route 1. It is probably also the fastest, unless you qualify for route 3 or are really lucky with route 2B

1. No story missions done, but you have explored and landed on a strange astronomical phenomena:
Once you have travelled through the wormhole to visit the worlds beyond it, outfit your ship with a "Quantum Keystone," which is available in most of the outfitters over there. If you have a fleet, outfit each ship with another keystone.

Once that's done, head back to human space, and travel anti-core-ward, all the way out past Earth to Tania Australis. You'll probably want to land and refuel here. Having ramscoops on all ships that you care about (or lots of fuel tanks) is a really good idea. Once you are ready, head farther anti-core-ward to Terminus, and land on the astronomical anomaly that you'll find out there.

Welcome to the Ember Waste. From here, it is a matter of exploration and jumping through wormholes. One key thing to note is that wormholes don't have to go back and forth between two points. They can also loop between a series of different wormholes. Personally, I would encourage you to explore the Ember Waste on your own. So long as you have ramscooops, you'll make it eventually. If you just want to know the fastest route, the next spoiler block will give specific instructions.

You start in Cardea, where there is a second wormhole. Land on it, then land on it again. This will take you to Segesta. From there, jump to Stercutus, t hen to Peragenor, where you take another wormhole to Edusa. From Edusa, jump south to Arculus, and you will have arrived.

The wormhole from Cardea to Insitor is part of a "wormhole train." If you keep landing on it, you will rotate through Cardea, Insitor, Segesta, and Aescolanus before returning to Cardea. It is an infinite, constant, loop.

2. No story missions done, and no strange astronomical phenomena encountered:
You have two options, either encounter the astronomical phenomena and use #1 (this is instruction A), or face off against a tough enemy that'll probably necessitate you having a heavy warship to obtain a spoiler device, which is option B.

Option A:
If you explore anti-spin-ward from syndicate space, you will find a collection of uninhabited systems with plenty of pirates. Keep exploring through there, and you will eventually find a system with an astronomical anomaly. Land on it, and explore on from there. At that point, follow the instructions under option 1.

Option B:
Travel core-ward in Syndicate space until you reach Sheratan or Polaris. Hang out in one of these systems until a large warship of unknown origin appears and attacks you. Disable the ship and board it. Check through its outfits, and it should have an outfit called a Jump Drive. Take it, then install it on your flagship. Note: You will need to disable and loot another jump drive for each ship in your fleet that you want to be able to accompany you.

Once you have your ship(s) outfitted with a jump drive, it is time to go exploring. Head down to Tarazed and the Quarg systems, and travel spin-ward. You should see some disconnected unknown systems out in the middle of empty space. Jump to them (just like using a normal hyperdrive, except you don't need to follow the hyperlanes anymore). Keep going spinward and a little core-ward, then after you reach Caeculus (it is in the cluster with Segesta, Stercutus, and Peragenor) you will need to head anti-core-ward and spinward (aka towards the bottom right of your map). Once you've found Arculus or Cinxia, you have arrived.

3. If you have progressed a long ways through the Free Worlds story to the point where you have met (and possibly defeated) the pug, then this is an optional route for you:
By the time you have defeated the Pug you will have at least one and possibly several ships equipped with Jump Drives. At this point, it is time to go exploring. Head down to Tarazed and the Quarg systems, and travel spin-ward. You should see some disconnected unknown systems out in the middle of empty space. Jump to them (just like using a normal hyperdrive, except you don't need to follow the hyperlanes anymore). Keep going spinward and a little core-ward, then after you reach Caeculus (it is in the cluster with Segesta, Stercutus, and Peragenor) you will need to head anti-core-ward and spinward (aka towards the bottom right of your map). Once you've found Arculus or Cinxia, you have arrived.

For those that want to do the non-traditional route of 2B or 3, just be aware that you *must* have a quantum keystone that you acquire in route 1 in order to trigger one of the three introductory missions that must be completed in order to continue with the Remnant. This is another reason why I say that route 1 is the best route to go.

For those who don't mind spoilers: A map of the Ember Waste showing the wormholes! (it is hidden behind the spoiler marks. You can click on it to pull it up in an easier to read size)


The names in purple are the names of the inhabited planets in those systems.

The Introductory Missions

This is full on spoiler territory. Not much is going to be hidden beyond this point.

When you first land on a Remnant world, they will greet you in their own usual way. As you might expect, co-operating with them will turn out better for you than resisting. Choose wisely. If you choose poorly: You will get a second chance (new in 0.9.9) to come back and take the blood test, but if you take the opportunity to go back, then reject it again, they will actually kill you on the spot.

You now have the freedom to travel between their worlds, gaze at their outfitter and shipyard, and that's about it. You will also have a new log entry, which gives a little more information. Fortunately for you, several people have things for you to do to demonstrate your trustworthiness. The introductory missions are split into three strings, referred to as "Remnant: Defense," Remnant: Key Stones," and Remnant: Void Sprites."

Note: All these missions require you to have successfully completed the blood test mission. If you haven't done the blood test, you're not doing any of these; and the Remnant are probably trying to kill you, not hire you.

Remnant: Key Stones
Source: Aventine
Pre-requisite: Have a "Quantum Keystone" on your ship.
Quite simply, accept the mission, go visit the place where you got your Key Stone, buy 50 of them, and bring them back to Aventine.

Tip: If you want to be sneaky and meta-gamy, buy an extra 50 Key Stones back when you originally get one. Save yourself a trip across the galaxy.

And that's it for the Key Stones mission "set".


Remnant: Defense 1
source: Caelian
Pre-requisite: nothing extra
This mission starts out looking like the normal "The planet is getting attacked, do you help?" Of course, you should help, but if you really can't, don't. It'll repeat once every 20 days until you do it. But you're here to work with the Remnant, right? The sooner you help out with their defense, the better.

The next mission will have you hunting down one of the raiders that were attacking the planet. It'll jump around a lot, but it won't leave the cluster of systems immediately adjacent to Caelian, so it should be easy to find.

Completing this mission gives you access to Remnant Bounty missions that let you hunt down raiders whenever you'd like. Remember that you can board and loot them. In fact, the Remnant would consider it a waste if you don't. (you'll have access to this bounty job from the job board in perpetuity after this point.)

Before you can continue on to the third mission in this set, you need to do at least 3 of the bounties from the job board. You can do more, but doesn't affect anything except for giving you more chances to loot stuff. Protip: Looting the Korath ships are a great way to make money. The loot off the ships pays better than the job itself, if you have the space to do so.

For the third mission in the set, you'll need to travel to Parca, defeat the hostile ships there, then return.


Once you get back from that, you'll have completed the Defense set.

Remnant: Void Sprites
source: Aventine
requirements: 8 tons of cargo space available
This mission is pretty simple: Travel to Nenia, admire what you find there, return.

The second mission in the set requires you to have an outfit scanner and you'll need to scan *every* ship in Nenia. Once you've done that, head back to Aventine.

Here's where it gets fun: Your next mission is to land on the two planets, which requires you to have a special ship, the puffin (this used to be named the gascraft):


Park your ship on Viminal so it stays safe, and switch to flying the puffin. You'll probably want to park any other ships you have along too. They won't be able to help where you're going this time. On a same note, don't bother trying to reconfigure the puffin. There's not a lot you can change, and you won't be able to fit anything on there that significantly alters the dynamic of the mission.

And by that, I mean that no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to fit the cloaking device onto the puffin. At least, not with existing human or easily accessible alien tech. I've heard it is possible with some *really hard to get* alien tech.

Basically, when you arrive in Nenia, start dodging. The puffin is a highly agile ship with really good acceleration. It is literally built to dodge stuff.

A good method of dodging is this: Head one direction, and as soon as you see the next shot fired, turn around, and accelerate in the opposite direction. Or even just slow down a little. The shots fired have incredible range, but they travel in a straight line and are fairly slow. You can't outrun them, but you can make sure you aren't where they are going to be quite easily.

An even better method is to head one direction and immediately turn around but do not accelerate. Wait for the shot to be fire, then accelerate. The Archon aims where your motion is taking you; it doesn't take the direction your ship is pointed into account.

The end result will be zigzagging back and forth across the system until you reach the planet. Taking off is harder. Don't be discouraged if you get insta-killed - it happens. That being said, based on the stuff that is up on GitHub, it looks like they are trying to fix that, but nothing's changed as of 0.9.12.

It will take some practice, but it is quite doable.

And that's it for the introduction
Once you've done those three mission sets are done, you will need to wait until 20 days has passed since you completed the Void Sprite mission. That's how long it will take for the research to be published. After that you should have a mission pop up that gives you the Remnant license. So go check out the outfitter and shipyard to see what sort of things you can pick up.

Most notably, there is the Starling and the Gull. One's a light warship, and the other a light freighter. Both have built-in cloaking, as well as shield regen, hull regen, a decent sensor suite, and reasonable ramscoops. They are quite nimble ships, and quite a bit stronger than anything of comparable size in human space.

On the outfit side, they've got the emergency ramscoop that is better than the normal ramscoop (although not as good as the catalytic ramscoop). Of particular note is the salvage scanner: This is a combo-scanner that provides tactical and outfit scanning at massively better range than the ones you've probably used in human space.

So I have the license, what to do now?

At this point, there are four mission sets available to you. As things stand, they are fairly straight forward once you are in them, it is simply the starting conditions that can be problematic.

• Remnant: Learning Sign
  
• Remnant: Tech Retrieval
  
• Remnant: Return the Samples
  
• Remnant: Broken Jump Drive
  
• Remnant: Expanded Horizons Quarg
  
• Remnant: Salvage

Remnant: Learning Sign is pretty straight forward. It is just a random chance to get it, then easy to finish. The hard part is waiting around for the timer to expire at the end. After the last mission, there's a timer that will trigger another conversation a month later. That extra completion is required for certain things down the road.

Remnant: Expanded Horizons Quarg is one of those things. This one will trigger just after the first mission in the Salvage set of of missions, but you also have to have met the Quarg before hand. It's a fairly simple fly & visit sort of mission with a team of Remnant Researchers. Having enough fuel tanks to make it to Tarazad and/or extra ramscooops will be key in keeping this mission moving along quickly.

Remnant: Tech Retrieval is tricky: To do it, you need to bring back examples of high tech outfits from human space. The conversation told you a bit about what they are looking for. Outfit things on your ship, come back to Viminal, and see if a message pops up in the spaceport. If it does, pick the option to go see Taely and carry on from there.

If you are confident that you know what outfit will satisfy their curiosity, buy two of them, since the mission is going to ask you to deliver two of them to a research lab somewhere.

If you really want to know exactly what to buy:

• Heavy Laser
  
• Catalytic Ramscoop
  
• Plasma Cannon
  
• Electron beam
  
• D94-YV Shield Generator
  
• S-970 Regenerator

Note: You only need to deliver two of any ONE of those items to the Remnant to succeed the Tech Retrieval mission. That being said, you can do *all* of those items if you want. It doesn't have any immediate benefit (other than paying decently), but based on conversation on Discord, there are plans for future missions to be based off these. That stuff will be in 0.9.13 or later, if ever.

And I'll reiterate, since people keep getting confused. To succeed this mission, if you bring a Heavy Laser to show them, they will then need you to bring TWO Heavy lasers to a research lab somewhere. Once you do that, you've completed the task, and can move on without ever needing to do any of the other outfits. The same applies if you brought them any of the other outfits.


Remnant: Return the Samples
This is pretty straight forward, and requires you to use the gascraft once again. Leave your escorts parked somewhere, or risk having them destroyed.

Remnant: Broken Jump Drives
This mission will trigger when you loot a 'jump drive (broken)' from one of the crippled Korath ships you encounter in the bounty missions or the defense missions. Very straight forward to complete, but requires you to have looted a broken item off a crippled ship in order to get it started.

There's five missions in this series, ending off with giving you a repeating job board mission for it. Each one starts off the same way, with you bringing in a broken drive.

note: this one can actually get started before you have the Remnant license, if you were curious and looted the drive off one of those early crippled ships.

If I need more help?

Who do I contact if I still have problems?

The best way to get help with anything to do with the Remnant is to talk to the one who wrote the majority of the Remnant content. Apparently said person doesn't spend much time on Steam, so the best way to get in touch with them is to use the Endless Sky discord:

The Endless Sky discord at https://discord.gg/ZeuASSx

Just ask for help regarding the Remnant, and they'll be able to guide you. Specifically, the "Ember Waste" channel under "Spoiler-Zone" is probably the best place.

Likewise, report bugs there! That way they can improve the game for everyone!

[Zityrchasla]

Looks like I need to expand this a bit. Thanks for asking, I will see what I can do.

[DanekJovax]

Where's the info on Remnant: Salvage missions? I may be stuck on those missions in my game. Thanks in advance!

[ShuRugal]

Spin-ward: Counter-clockwise around the center of the galaxy.
Anti-spin-ward: clockwise around the center of the galaaxy.


There are actually words for these, though they are a bit anachronistic:
Deasil - following the sun's apparent motion - https://www.dictionary.com/browse/deasil
Widdershins - against the motion of the sun - https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803122357523

Core-ward: Towards the center of the galaxy.
Anti-core-ward: towards the edge of the galaxy.

I like core-ward (or if we want to make a Discworld reference, I like Hubward even better), but i would propose Rimward instead of anti-core-ward

[Zityrchasla]

Yes, that's the case. In most cases one has to visit the spaceport to continue/trigger the next part of a mission.

As a more general note, there's quite a bit more Remnant story on continuous. I guess they've been busy adding new stuff; but I haven't been able to add it on here yet. Definitely worth checking out the GitHub-direct version of the game.

[CrackedEmerald]

oh, i had to click on the spaceport, and i was on a ship with them installed

[CrackedEmerald]

am i supposed to have the pieces of advanced technology in cargo? sell them? i have ten of them in cargo and four of them equiped in an escort ship who i made my capital ship and the mission still wasn't complete. Do they have to be different pieces of tech or can they be multiples of the same one? because it doesn't feel like they can be multiples of the same one.

[dillon101001]

The puffin mission killed my no deaths run.

[Zityrchasla]

Note: When you are reading through the lists of missions in your pilot file, don't worry if you see other missions listed as "Declined." That is normal, and expected. Some missions use "accepted" and "declined" as ways of branching stories. Only delete them if you *know* that you declined a mission, like in this situation here.

[Zityrchasla]

Basically, you are going to need to rewind a bit.

If you haven't done anything since then (as in, little or no time has past), then you can just reload one of the autosaves, which are respectively 1,2, and 3 days into the past. That's the easy option.

The more complex route is editing your save.
0. Exit Endless Sky, and make a backup copy of your save file.
1. Open your pilot file in a text editor (such as notepad or NP++. Has to be a pure text editor, NOT a word processor)
2. Use the "find" command to look for "Remnant: Defense 2: declined" The line above or below it should be ""Remnant: Defense 2: offered"
3. Delete both the declined and offered lines.
4. Save the changes.
5. Restart Endless Sky, and go land on Caelian, and the mission should trigger again.

[unidonkey351]

I participated in the first planetary defense mission but declined to search for the enemy cruiser, because of that I think i hit a wall in the remnant progression, what should i do