You shouldn't need much help with this page. It is very similar to your ship loadout only for your person. You will have buttons for the following slots.
These are easy to understand. To start you only need the items listed in the Wiki. A space suit, med packs, and some oxygen bottles. As you progress you will start collecting high tech loot to make tools, side arms, ammo, and armour.
If you read the Wiki guide then you already know you need a docking collar and a derelict system scanner. If you didn't read it go ahead and do that now.
The scanning process for derelicts is nothing like what you have been doing when scanning for ships in combat. Instead you start the scan then have to wait a couple few seconds for the scan to process and for the results to show up on the page.
During the scan if you jump to the first button on the page then read up you will see things like.
After the scan completes you will have a button above the scan button on the page. If you jump to this button then read up you will see the information for the ship you found on your scan. Each scan will show a ship. You can choose to enter into it via the Suit Up and Explore this Derelict button. If you want to rescan you can always press what is now the second button on the page to rescan for a new ship.
Below the scan button you will find a block of text which gives you some useful information.
Space Exploration - A few basic rules
There are a few basic rules to consider when exploring derelict ships and stations. Should your Health, Stamina or Oxygen become depleted at any time the AI will automatically send in a drone recovery unit and pull you out. All items discovered successfully during your exploration will be taken back to the ship for you by the AI. To move larger items craft or purchase a Grav Sled for the AI to use for you.
Once in the Derelict the AI will monitor your progress. You can engage in various activities whilst inside by using the icons on the bottom. Some will require you to have prerequisite tools or items. The last icon is a 'Bug Out' option and will engage an emergency exit from the derelict. This will involve explosive charges and will likely destroy the derelict.
Under this text is the third button on the page which will return to your in orbit navigation.
The Main Derelict Exploration Page
This page is the most complicated of all the pages. I will cover the layout only here. If you want to jump down to how to explore quick with some navigation tips jump by heading level three until you get to the section for "Actually Exploring a Derelict".
At the top of the exploration page you are going to have some graphics. These are like the personal version of your ship graphics you normally see at the top of every page. They will be.
- Health: Your personal health, if it gets too low you won't be able to continue. You increase it by healing with meds.
- Suit Armour: Protection before your health gets damaged, like a personal shield.
- Stamina: How much energy you have, it goes down every time you perform an action exploring. get to 0 and you can't move. This increases on a ticker like your ship fuel.
- Ammo: How much ammo you have for your weapon you use in CQC.
- Oxygen: How much oxygen is remaining in your tanks. Moving around and doing stuff uses up one oxygen.
- Med Kits: How many med kits you have remaining in the pack you equipped via your personal loadout.
- Credits: How many credits are on your ship.
Under these graphics you will have a line of text with the name of the ship you are exploring. Under that will be a total loot so far line. I honestly don't know how this is calculated and I've never used but yeah it's there.
After this you are going to get into some text about the ship you are exploring. The first line will be the name of the room you are currently in. Then will be some paragraphs laying out the setting for where you are located. An example is below.
Airlock
Sent out by the core many years ago these sturdy scout ships had a fatal flaw.
Their on board AI were notorious for spotting small asteroids too late to take avoiding action and in this case it is apparent that several small pieces of rock had smashed through the Bridge of the scout while the crew were in their quarters.
Since that fateful day the derelict has been peacefully floating through space.... until now
From here you can move East, or West to Exit the derelict.
Under the setting text you will have some lifetime exploring stats shown followed by the current game time(GT). Finally after this you are going to get into the graphical links for the different stuff you can do. You clearly don't need to read every line of the page every time you do something, but it is important to know where everything is located.
The graphical links are:
- Search Room: This searching your current location for items. This could be resources, credits, or ship store misc items.
- Use Controls: If there are controls in the room you can attempt to hack them to get XP and credits.
- Use Tools: If you have tools you can use them to try and unlock more special ship store misc loot.
- Attack: If you have a gun and ammo you can check the room for enemies to kill.
- Repair: This is where you go to use meds or stamina boosters.
- Bug Out: This will exit the derelict and there is no going back in after this.
Finally under these graphical links you will have some buttons. These are how you actually move in the derelict. Keep track of where you go and don't double back. The worst thing to do in a derelict is to travel where you already have been. If you hit a dead end just bug out and re scan for a new derelict. This is a better option than retracing your steps and wasting stamina, oxygen, and maybe health.
A note on the buttons: They will read as directional buttons. The types you can see are North, East, South, West, Down, and Up. Depending on your screen reader and your browser it will only read buttons you can press, or it will read both with pressable buttons having directional labels and the others being blank. For example with Jaws and Internet Explorer it reads only the available buttons, but with NVDA and Chrome it reads them all with only the available ones being labeled.
This is the end of the page, again if you want examples of how it all works and how to actually explore jump down to the section below called "Actually Exploring a Derelict".
Using Controls To Attempt a Hack
This is a simple but still addictive little part of the derelict exploration. Clicking on use controls will bring you to the hack page. At the top of this page you will see the normal health, stamina, oxygen and so on graphics. Below that is some information about your hacking attempts. The first line will be "Attempting to use Local Interfaces & Devices". This will be followed by your hack attempts, "Hacks: 0 (10)". Yoou only get 10, this will make more sense with context.
The point of hacking is to line up three graphics so they all match. You have graphics 1 through 15, or maybe 14. If you get 3 10s for example you can attempt the hack and get a reward. Anything but 3 identical graphics and you don't get anything, just lost stamina. The buttons are in a table and they are labeled as either the graphical numbers, or as just "hack first, second, or third code button". Clicking on one of these buttons gives you another random number. If the buttons don't read as the graphics just read own one table cell and the number below the button will read as something like "sec5", or "sec10", or maybe "sec9". Get all these to match and you will be able to perform the hack to get the reward.
If at any point you do manage to match all three then you can click on the button to attempt hack. This button is only clickable if you have a triple match. Having a successful match and hack will bring you to the hacking success page where your reward is given.
Each number you match has a different reward. The important thing is to match all three. You could get a couple few thousand credits and XP for a good hack.
Using Meds & Stims On The Repair Page
If you click on the Repair Graphical link you will be brought to the page where you can choose to heal and use stamina boosters if you have any. The best way to explain this page is by using the game text right above the last button on the page.
Health and Stamina
Displayed above this section there are two listings. The first shows any Medical Packs you may have bought with you in your Personal Loadout. If you forgot to load up before venturing out remember this can only be done before and in-between explorations.
The second section will list any CE Store Purchased Stim packs you may have. These are made available to you at any time whilst exploring and do not form part of your Medical Kits. They can be used independently and do not need pre-loading on your personal loadout.
Warning: Stims and Medical Packs used when you are at your max stats is simply a waste of good meds and stims.
The two different sections are sorted by table, so it is easy to navigate through your med and stim packs. The headers for both tables are below.
- Item Name: Clearly what the name of the specific pack is.
- Health Restore: How much health it will repair you for.
- Stamina Restore: If it restores stamina this is the amount it will restore.
- Amount: How many of them you have.
- Type: What it is, for example if it is a Sven Store or CE Store item.
- Use Med: A button to use the specific med or stim pack.
This is all there is to the repair page. There are multiple buttons to exit back to the main exploration page which you would clearly click after repairing.
The Close Quarter Combat Page(CQC)
To be able to do CQC you first need a side arm equipped on your personal loadout along with some ammo. If you have this then you can click on the attack link on the main derelict exploration page. If you find a target then you will have something to attack, if you don't find anything then you will be brought to a page telling you there was nothing to attack.
A note on screen readers and browsers: Some browsers read everything just fine while others don't seem to do as good of a job with the buttons. Jaws in all browsers will read the enemy name as the button as well as the health all in the button. NVDA in all browsers won't do this. It will read the button as "attack target button" with the health of the target below that in the table. The name of the enemy will be as a labeled graphic. Just keep this in mind when doing CQC.
When you hit attack and if you find a target on the page to fight you will notice the CQC page is nothing like the normal ship combat page. AT the top you have all the stat graphics like health, stamina, oxygen and so on. Under those you will have some lifetime CQC stats. An example of my stats are below.
Agi: 2.66% | Spd: 2.71% | Aim: 2.75% | Prof: 2.77% | CQC: 1,089 Accu: 80.04% | Attacks: 7,460
Every time you have a successful combat these stats will go up by a little tiny amount.
Under this you will have your close quarters combat report. This is going to give you some info about your fight as well as your enemy. The first line will be telling you how many shots you have fired and how many you have left to fire. At the start it is at 10, but the more kills you get the more shots you get per fight. After that will be some info on the enemy you are fighting. Following this is some generic info about CQC. An example of this all is below.
Close Quarters Combat Report
Attacks: 3 (13)
That's a very old R2 Style droid I suspect its been either left here or was guarding it's master when the derelict met its fate. either way be careful captain!
If you wish to engage this target you can do so, but I urge you to check your Armour, Hit Points and Ammo before doing so.
Once engaged you have 13 turns to bring the target down. Should you become incapacitated during the battle I will come get you.
Don't forget 13, after that the target is more than likely going to get away from us.
Note: In this example I have 13 shots, but you will have 10 to start.
Under this you are going to have a button to attack the target. Depending on your screen reader it will say simply "attack target button" or something like "guard drone 83 button" where 83 is his current health. This is the button you click to attack the enemy...yeah I know insightful. You will miss a lot at the start, but just keep at it and your stats will build up eventually. If at any point you realize it is impossible to win you can click the "retreat button" and exit the combat. This can save you from finishing a losing fight and wasting ammo and health.
After the enemy is dead the button you were clicking to attack will either show up as "no target button" or completely disappear. This depends on what screen reader you are using. NVDA reads the button as no target, jaws does a good job and just disappears the button. Once the target is dead you will then have a button labeled "search the dead". Clicking on this will bring you to your loot page to collect the items you got for the kill.
This loot collection page is very simple. There is no rescanning or anything like that. For every combat you will find one stack of resources and one ship store misc loot item. You can only collect the resource pile if you have a Grav sled to bring it back to your ship. The Grav sled is one of the tools you equip on your personal loadout. An example of a loot collection page is below.
Congratulations Captain, Good to see you survived the last combat session. In fact I'm pleased to tell you that you managed to gain an increase to your Speed in this last fight.
Don't forget as your combat skills grow so will your offensive and defensive abilities. Over time you will also increase your Attack abilities, thus allowing you to take on more than one enemy.
I took the liberty or checking over the area for any extra resources that may have been stashed and guess what it looks like you have discovered 9 Units of Egeesium.
If we have room I suggest we load up any of the resources you have located.
My scanners have also detected a Locked Crate (Type 17). I'll have that added to our stockpile back here on the ship for you. Not a bad haul after all captain. Something for you to brag about to your pals when we next get into dock.
Continue button
Load Sled button
That is all there is to the loot collection. You can click on load sled if you have one and everything will be collected. Clicking on the continue button will only collect the ship store misc loot which in this case is a locked crate 17. No matter what on you click on you'll be brought back to the main derelict exploration page.
Various Conformation & Event Pages
There are a lot of these so they will just be listed below with a short description for each one.
- The Movement Page: Every time you moe in a direction you will get a random event. This may involve an increase or loss in XP and credits. You can also find items or blueprints from these events.
- The Search Room Page: You will get an event page every time you click on the graphical link to search a room. This will consist of some text followed by a button to continue. Some search room events will Also give you a Load Grav sled page.
- Sled Loaded Conformation: Every time you load items on to your Grav sled whether from combat or from a search room event you will have a conformation page telling you it is being moved to your ship store. clicking continue brings you back to the main derelict exploration page.
- Low Oxygen, Stamina, or health: If your oxygen, stamina, or health get to 0 then you will be brought to a page telling you that you don't look so good. The only options after pressing continue on this page are to bug out, heal, wait for stamina, or repair.
- The Bug Out Conformation: If you bug out you will be brought to a page letting you know the drone is blowing out the wall and coming to save you. Clicking on the continue button at the bottom of this page will return you to the main in orbit page.
- Successful Hack Conformation: If you manage to perform a successful hack on the controls page then you will be brought to a page letting you know what you received.
- Failed Hack Page: If you fail to hack something then you are brought to a page telling you that you failed. Clicking continue brings you back to the main derelict exploration page.
Actually Exploring a Derelict
In this section of the guide I will be covering some tips for getting around quicker and covering the process for actually exploring.
The text and audio guides for this part will be coming soon.