Starbirth – getting your first Living Ship

This is a complete step by step guide.

Before you Start

If you are impatient – do not start a quest for a Living Ship.

NB! One base in Euclid (the starting galaxy) that you can teleport to is needed if you want to acquire a Living ship. Even if you have moved on to other galaxies you have to retain a foothold in Euclid as you will have to use a portal here during a later phase of the living ship quest. Portals only work for travel within a galaxy. Generally I aim at having at least one base in every galaxy I have visited as this let me go back if needed. Max number of bases in teleporter memory is still very far away for me in the savegame I have spent most hours on.

If you just started the game you should not think about living ships for a while. You need to finish the main storylines. One point being that you need to have all 16 glyphs for portals before you can do the “Starbirth mission” to acquire a Living Ship. You also need materials and technology that you get while finishing the storylines.

It is worth remembering that you can own a maximum of 6 starships, including Living Ships. It is generally a good idea to leave one slot open at all times. Not only with the Living ship quest in mind. From time to time you may stumble on a ship you just have to acquire. With one slot open you can just buy it without switching you current ship to another that you feel you can sacrifice - swapping for the new model.

The quest must start with a “Void Egg”, not “Active Void Egg” or any other variant that you might have received from another player. The egg can be bought from the Quicksilver shop in the space anomaly for 3200 Quicksilver. If you have not got any Quicksilver you will need to do nexus missions to get it first. I would recommend that you buy only one egg. Do not bring with you extra activated versions you might have received from friends. You cannot skip steps or save time this way and it seems that the game AI sometimes gets a bit confused which may result in a never ending loop preventing you from finishing the quest.

Navigating Planets from a set of coordinates
To understand the basic system think “Latitude” and “Longitude”.

If you are in your space ship travelling within a planet atmosphere you will find your current location on the left cockpit display. If you are on foot press F

Finding specific locations during the quest is not very difficult, but it can at times be time consuming unless you go in to space and pulse in approx correct direction. If you enter planet atmosphere at +35.16 –100.09 and the destination coordinates you are given is -55.?? + 84.?? it will take a very long time to get there if you only travel in the planets atmosphere. Head north the first coordinate increase while it decreases when you go south. If you go east the second coordinate increase while it decrease when you move west.

It is not so easy to fly exactly to the destination coordinates so when you get really close you should land and do the last stretch on foot.

Materials used during different phases of the quest
Chromatic Meta, Cobalt, Condensed Carbon, Gold, Hypnotic Eye, Korvax Casing, Ferrite, Mordite, Pugneum, Sodium Nitrate, Fragmented Qualia, Liquid Sun, Living Water, Hexite.

The last four will get available during quest. If you do not bring a Hypnotic Eye with you there will be a marker during the quest so that you can get it.

Initiate the Quest

Buy a Void Egg. Leave the Space Anomaly. Make sure “Starbirth” mission is active. Use your Pulse Drive to fly around the system you’re currently in. You will get a message through a space encounter. Exit pulse drive and pull it up in your Communicator. You will see a Living Ship flying in front of your ship and it will begin the quest.

Step 1 - The Convergence Bridge

Materials needed: 1 Korvax Casing, 60 Pugenum and 250 Hexite

Pull up your Galaxy Map and Warp to the marked system. Check your Void Egg in your inventory – it now says: “Active Void Egg” and it will tell you to find an Anomalous planet. If you fly to a wrong planet you will get a message that says the planet do not match the eggs requirements.
Fly into the Anomalous planet’s atmosphere, but don’t land yet. A note will appear at the bottom right corner of your screen that will give you estimated coordinates to find. Fly as close as possible to those estimated coordinates, then land your ship. The coordinates will update with a more specific location. Walk around until you get closer and the coordinates will eventually get exact.
You are looking for a Korvax Plaque - interact with it and you will be given a blueprint to build a Convergence Bridge. The quest will point the way so you can get the Hexite from a nearby location. Build the Convergence Bridge, return to the Plaque and interact with it again. You will then be given a Fragile Neural Stem.
Then you will have to wait >20h for it to mature before you can continue with step 2.

Step 2 - The Pulsating Core

Materials needed: 50 Magnetized Ferrite, 50 Cobalt, 100 Gold, 80 Mordite, and 250 Liquid Sun

With the egg and the mature Neural Stem in your inventory, leave the planet you’re on and start pulsing around your current system for another message/encounter. Pull up your Galaxy Map and warp to the marked system. Check your Active Void Egg in your inventory – it now says: “Stirring Void Egg” and will tell you which type of planet to look for. Scan to find a Dusty/Stormy planet (look for activated copper, emeril, cadmium or indium in the planet’s description) and fly into the planet’s atmosphere. Find the Korvax Plaque just like in Phase 1.
You will get 2 blueprints: the first is for a Solar Ray for your Multi-Tool and the 2nd is for a Pulsating Core.
Build the Solar Ray into a free slot in your Multi Tool. To get Liquid Sun, you’ll need to look around for metal deposits. Use your newly built Solar Ray to mine the metal and you’ will see that the metal becomes Liquid Sun. When you have everything, build the Pulsating Core and go back to the Korvax Plaque. Interact with it and get the Fragile Heart. Then you again will have to wait >20h for it to mature before you can continue with step 3.

Step 3 - The Impossible Membrane

Materials needed: 100 Chromatic Metal, 1 Hypnotic Eye, and 150 Living Water

The Fragile Heart matures into the Mature Heart Node. Leave the planet you are on and start pulsing around your current system for another message/encounter. Pull up your Galaxy Map again and warp to the next marked system. Check your Stirring Void Egg in your inventory – it now says: “Awakened Void Egg” and will tell you to find a Water planet with lush and verdant plant life. Fly into the planet’s atmosphere. Find the Korvax Plaque just like you did before with the given planet coordinates. You’ll be given the blueprint for an Impossible Membrane.
Follow the instructions to get the missing materials. Craft the Impossible Membrane and go back to the Korvax Plaque and interact with it. You’ll be given a Fragile Shell which will eventually turn into a Hardened Shell. Then you will have to wait approx 24h for it to mature before you can continue with step 4.

Step 4 - The Growing Singularity

Materials needed: 100 Condensed Carbon, 50 Sodium Nitrate, 100 Magnetized Ferrite and 100 Fragmented Qualia

With the Hardened Shell in your inventory, fly into space and pulse around to trigger yet another encounter. Pull up your Galaxy Map again and warp to the marked system. Check your Awakened Void Egg in your inventory – it now says: “Cracking Void Egg” and will tell you to find another Anomalous planet. Fly into the Anomalous planet’s atmosphere and use the coordinates to find a giant wheel. It will give you 2 blueprints: Animus Beam & Seeds of Glass.
Craft the Animus Beam in your Multitool. You do not need the Solar Ray anymore so this can be dismantled. You have to fire at living fauna to get the Fragmented Qualia you need, so you might have to leave this planet and find one with richer animal life.
Craft the Seeds of Glass and head back to the spinning wheel to get a Growing Singularity.
Then you will have to wait > 24h for it to mature before you can continue with step 5.

Step 5 - The Portal and the Soul Chamber

With the mature Singularity Core in your inventory, fly into space and pulse around to trigger yet another encounter. Your encounter this time will be different. After the encounter you pull up your inventory and hover over your Cracking Void Egg. The description will now give you clues that describe glyph coordinates to be used at a portal. 12 clues will be hints for which glyphs you will be entering into the portal.

Note that the portal you travel from must be in the Euclid galaxy.

NB! Before you walk through the portal you should make sure that you have the opportunity to do a manual save on return through the portal after filling the Soul Chamber – prior to entering the starship again. Save beacon is fine, but a small base with teleporter and a save module is better.

About finding Portals
If you have not marked a portal in Euclid earlier one question will arise. How the hell do you find a portal when you need it?
As far as I know there are a limited number of portals in each star system. Scouting the planets is not a viable method. The easiest method is to use an Alien Monolith to locate it:
Visit the Cartographer in the space station. Exchange maps “Alien Cartography Data” for Navigation Data. A small handful should be enough (3 – 4)
Bring with you a bribe to the gods. Korvax Casing, Gek Relic or Vykeen Dagger depending on who is the dominant life form in the star system you are in.
Go to space and use the maps to locate alien structures. What you are looking for is an alien Monolith. This is the larger alien structures with 3 knowledge stones and a main platform where you are presented with a riddle to solve.
Solve the riddle. Activate again and you will have the option to ask for location of a portal.
Travel to the portal and mark it with a save beacon or build a small base with teleporter close by so that you can go back later.

What does the portal glyphs represent?
There is no pop up explanation when you are standing before the portal so a table is useful. This one is copied from the NMS Wiki:


Activate the portal, enter the address glyphs given by the egg and take a step in to the unknown.
Once again you are to find a specific location using coordinates. It's an abandoned building with a terminal inside. The terminal will give you a Soul Chamber and you'll need to find three graves of fallen Travellers. You will be given coordinates for each, so track them down as before. Once you have filled the Soul Chamber you will be given an Archived Soul. With the Archived Soul in your possession you fly back to the portal and return through it.

NB! Now you should do a manual save before you enter your starship.

Step 6 - Finding Your Living Ship

When you enter your starship you will receive a transmission that will point you to where you can find a fallen host. Go there and if you like what you see you install the different needed “body parts” that you bring with you and claim the ship.

If you do not like what you see (wrong color or something else) you can reload the manual save and you will get a new transmission pointing you to another location and a different fallen host.
If you have a small base close to the portal you can also teleport to another star system and try your luck there instead. You can keep on reloading the manual save until you find the perfect fallen host for you.

Basic ship info

Neural Assembly = Launch Thrusters
Pulsing Heart = Pulse Engine
Singularity Cortex = Hyperdrive
Scream Suppressor = Shield
Spewing Vents = Photon Cannon
Grafted Eyes = Phase Beam

To get additional living ships, you can either use a “regular” Void Egg or buy a Void Egg with another 3200 Quicksilver. Then, you must PULSE around your current system and wait for an encounter with a living ship. It will take the egg and send you to a crash site that’s marked in a nearby system. You don't have to repeat the quest, but the new ship costs 10,000 Nanites.

How to Get Upgrades
While in your Living Ship, fly into space, PULSE around until you get a random encounter (not every encounter will be to upgrade your new ship), or look for things like Dyson’s Eyes and Void Anomalies. Upgrades are installed the same way as on non-biological ships.

Credits

In this description I have copied some sections from other descriptions on the web. Unfortunatly I deleted the originals some time ago and cannot give credit where credit is due.
JAG

[Shotgun]

I'm so done with this one, .... takes a literal week or two of TIME besides all the cryptic stuff.....now my cords are .... THINK OF PINK AND BLUE...... OK well....thats more than HALF THE F ing Galaxy. and NONE in the solar system im in....now what? HOW can i ditch this quest please .... NOT WORTH IT.

[Sethioz]

part about glyphs is nonsense aswell. how can i enter 1 glyph 3 times?
it says hunter > reflection > hunter > spiral of reality > hunter ...etc .. you don't even explain how to enter same glyph more than once, it doesn't work.

this guide is not a guide at all. you'd be better off just saying "follow the mission instructions" cuz this guide doesn't tell me anything that the mission doesn't.
totally useless.... you don't explain where to get the void egg, you don't explain where to get the mission and you don't explain how to enter glyphs more than once.

i don't think you've even done this yourself, you just copy pasted it

[Sethioz]

nice "tutorial" ... first thing, i had to waste 30 minutes googling and trying to figure out WHERE DO YOU BUY VOID EGG .. and then you say "make sure starbirth mission is active" .. I DONT HAVE SUCH MISSION!!! not primary, not secondary.

now i have void eggs in inventory, but no mission ... start with from A B C D .. you don't start with D Q Z ... useless tutorial since i can't get past the "2nd" step.
will write my own once i have figure it out, since you clearly don't know how to write a tutorial.

even after i figured out where to buy the egg, it took me another 15 mins figuring out that it's not for sale, it's under the crafting in quicksilver merchant thingy.

[Gamer0001]

SOME ONE HELP I COMPLETIT THE QUEST BUT I DINT GET THE SHIP BE CUSS I HIT DECLINE ON AXADINT WHEN I WAS COMPRYING SO IT SWICHT WITH A LAME REGULER SHIP AND IM SO MAND AND SAD

[Xuild]

another way to get things if you are stuck, ask for 1 of whatever resource you need in the anomaly, learn how to dupe and dupe it until its at a sufficient amount if you are stuck

[Taiga]

for those of you stuck, theres a chance its in the system you jumped to, just have to look around, I had the same issue but that was years ago

[100pts]

I got the same problem as Fenric. I have been travelling from system to system trying to find its signal and it's neverending. I wonder if I am missing anything?

[siuloong]

...and what do I do in my spare time?

[Fenric]

Im stuck in this quest in the step of the Convergence Bridge . I never received the way point to get hexite in the planet. Instead, get a way point to other stelar system, and whem i get ther, it extends to another system.
I spend many hours flying fron system to system trying to reach this in a ship whit a very good jump capacity and tons of fule. Seens there is no end, every time the quest reajust the way point to another system several stars away.
Also, i tried to get hexite killing elementals in sharded planets, dozens where whithout get any. That is frustrating.
I will try to get some hexite doing the guild quests now.

[Ron]

Hello, so I started the void egg quest and got like 5 parts for it, i was really far into the quest but then I stopped playing and now im playing NMS again but i have lost the world where the quest took place, my void egg is agitated at this point, but i have been warping like a mad man to the current quest which is the void egg mission...it takes long it seems, is there still hope for me to complete the void egg quest? if so, what can i do to resume the quest