Elite Dangerous is the definitive massively multiplayer space epic, bringing gaming's original open world adventure to the modern generation with a connected galaxy, evolving narrative, and the entirety of the Milky Way re-created at its full galactic proportions.
Starting with only a small starshi...
As someone who has played ED for a few hundred hours, if you've never played this, don't go in thinking it's going to be No Man's Sky or something. This is a game with lore and factions, but it's ultimately a game of the sort that is what you make of it. It's the Flight Sim of space, and Frontier has a legit astrophysicist on their payroll that has helped with things like planet generation.
When you feel like you've got the hang of things but don't know what else to do, find a community to join. Lots of communities have their own ongoing projects, like the Fuel Rats or the various hunts for Raxxla. Good luck out there, Commanders!
can't be overstated. when you run out of fuel for the first time (and you will), don't wait for death silently, call fuel rats. the operation they run is unparalleled to anything i have seen anywhere in gaming world.
Yeah completely right about is what you make of it. For me it was space euro truck simulator. Ofc I then ended up doing smuggling. I then ended up with a bounty on my head for attacking an npc that was collecting slaves from a ship wreck, basically my smuggling competition. Turns out an escape pod floating in space is automatically labelled as a slave by the game, and the npc was trying to rescue a stranded shipwreck survivor. I essentially attacked the Red Cross of space and ended up getting my ass handed to me by bounty hunters…
Fun times!
And I'm currently exploring, making my way to the far side of the galaxy. I once dropped out of hyperspace and went to go eat dinner, forgetting that you are still moving, though it's not always easy to tell. Came back to find my ship slowly drifting into the nearby star as individual systems fried, one by one.
Thankfully, I brought an autorepair. The life support went, and I had to fix the FSD just enough and reboot it while cooking in my space suit. I managed to escape the star's gravity and corona, and I managed to get everything fixed enough to make it to a planet, collect some resources, and make some more repair drones to fix the rest (except the autorepair, which will sit at 34% for the rest of the journey).
And it's stories like yours and mine that just make the game feel so unique. None of that fun and excitement was scripted, it just kind of happened by chance, and I think that's partly why the game has stuck around for 12 years.