Initializing NVIR systemsGuides // Activities
Honk, scan, and map your way across the black — then land and sample alien life for the biggest solo payouts a commander can bank.
Exploration is the safest fortune in the galaxy. No one shoots at you, the only enemy is your own carelessness, and you can start with a hull that costs less than a rebuy (The insurance excess to get your ship back after it explodes — about 5% of hull and modules.). Exobiology is the same trip with your boots on the ground — land on the worlds you find and sample the life on them. It is slower, and it pays several times better.
They are one career, not two. Exobiology runs entirely on the exploration scan loop: you cannot find a plant worth 19 million credits without first honking (Discovery Scanner Honk: Holding the Discovery Scanner on arrival. Reveals how many bodies a system holds and where they sit.) the system, tuning the scanner, and mapping the body it grows on. Learn the scan loop first, then go planetside.
Kit the ship before you leave the Bubble (The Bubble: Inhabited space around Sol, roughly 400 ly across. Everything outside it is the black.). There is no repair yard 20,000 light-years out, and every module you skipped becomes a problem you carry for a month.
The "honk (Discovery Scanner Honk: Holding the Discovery Scanner on arrival. Reveals how many bodies a system holds and where they sit.)". Fitted to every hull by default and cannot be removed, so it is the one module you never have to think about.
The largest that fits. It turns a fuel tank into infinite range. A Class 7 scoop fills in seconds; a Class 4 makes you sit and wait at every star.
Fires probes to map a body. This is the module that pays, and the only way to reveal biological signals on a surface. Non-negotiable for exobiology.
Forgives a misjudged landing. You will hit the ground too fast at least once. A small shield turns that from a rebuy (The insurance excess to get your ship back after it explodes — about 5% of hull and modules.) into an apology.
Carries the Nomad SLV (Ship-Launched Vessel: A small craft launched from a medium or large hull — a combat fighter flown by you or by crew, or the Nomad, which lands where your ship cannot.). Needs a medium or large hull. This is the single biggest upgrade to an exobiology run — see Section 07.
Repairs modules in the field. Fit two — an AFMU (Auto Field-Maintenance Unit: Repairs modules in the field from its own ammunition pool. Cannot repair the hull or itself.) cannot repair itself, so the second one repairs the first. See Section 03.
Odyssey only. The one suit that carries the Genetic Sampler (The Artemis Suit tool that takes bio samples. Three per species, spread apart by the genus colony distance.), so it is the only way to collect bio data. Buy it from Pioneer Supplies (The concourse shop for suits, handheld weapons and consumables. Where the Artemis Suit comes from.) at any station concourse. Bring an Energy Cell too.
These are the ships worth flying for this career. Start cheap and only move up when the trip length justifies it — a Diamondback Explorer brings home exactly the same data a Caspian does, it just takes more jumps to get there.
| Ship | Class | Price | Description | Build |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diamondback Explorer | Small | 1.6M CR | A compact and affordable exploration ship with excellent jump range. One of the best ways to start exploring beyond the Bubble. | — |
| Mandalay | Medium | 16.5M CR | The current exploration benchmark. Exceptional jump range, SCO performance, heat management, and cockpit visibility make it one of the best all-round exploration ships available. | EDSY |
| Caspian Explorer | Large | 189.3M CR | The ultimate exobiology ship. Its can accommodate the Vessel Hangar for Nomad vehicle, letting you roam planet surfaces and scan biological signatures. | EDSY |
Three things kill explorers: running dry, cooking yourself on a star, and hitting the ground too hard. All three are avoidable, and all three end the same way — a rebuy (The insurance excess to get your ship back after it explodes — about 5% of hull and modules.) screen with weeks of unsold data on the wrong side of it.
Skim a scoopable star to refuel for free. The scoopable classes spell KGBFOAM — K, G, B, F, O, A, M. Drop out of the jump, pitch along the star's surface, and ease toward the exclusion zone until the scoop rate climbs. Watch the heat gauge, and never charge the FSD (Frame Shift Drive: The drive that does both jobs: hyperspace jumps between systems, and supercruise inside them.) while you are sitting hot and close.
Fly into the blue cone streaming off a neutron star to supercharge the FSD (Frame Shift Drive: The drive that does both jobs: hyperspace jumps between systems, and supercruise inside them.) for one jump of roughly 300% range. It damages the drive a little each time, which is exactly what your AFMU (Auto Field-Maintenance Unit: Repairs modules in the field from its own ammunition pool. Cannot repair the hull or itself.) is for. Do not attempt it low on fuel — neutron stars are not scoopable.
Built from raw materials in the synthesis (Building ammunition, fuel injections, and repairs out of raw materials from the inventory menu.) menu. Basic, Standard, and Premium injections add roughly 25%, 50%, and 100% jump range for a single jump. Gather raw materials from planet surfaces as you go and keep at least one Premium in reserve for a gap the map says you cannot cross.
An SCO (Supercruise Overcharge: A Frame Shift Drive that can dump extra acceleration into supercruise. Fast, thirsty, and hot.) drive collapses the long in-system crawls that make exploration feel slow. On a body 100,000 Ls (Light-Second: Distance inside a system. A station 200,000 Ls out is a long supercruise, jump range be damned.) out it is the difference between a two-minute trip and a ten-minute one. Watch heat when you engage it.
This is the one that actually gets people, and it gets them at the end of a good trip rather than the start. Gravity does not warn you. A world at 3 G will pull your ship into the surface faster than the thrusters can recover, and the result is not damage — it is a crater. Exobiology makes it worse, because it lands you on far more worlds than a pure cartographic run ever would.
Read the gravity off the System Map before you commit. It sits in the same panel as the atmosphere and temperature. Most bio-bearing worlds are gentle, but a high-metal world can easily run past 2 G, and that is where explorers die.
Descend like an aircraft, not a lift. A shallow approach lets you bleed speed horizontally instead of fighting gravity straight down. Never point the nose at the ground and hold throttle.
On a high-G world, downward vertical thrust adds to gravity instead of fighting it. To lose altitude, tap FA (Flight Assist: The computer that kills drift and holds your attitude. Switching it off gives you raw Newtonian flight.) off in short bursts and let yourself drop, then re-engage. Longer taps drop you faster.
No rolls, no sideways tilt, no curves near the surface. The moment your thrust vector stops pointing away from the ground, gravity wins.
Watch the speed indicator on approach and keep it in the blue zone (The blue band on the throttle where your ship turns fastest. Not the same as the landing approach band.). If you are outside it close to the surface, you are already committed to an impact.
There is no station out here. Everything that breaks, you fix yourself, and everything you consume, you make. These four modules are what turn a one-way trip into a sustainable one — and most commanders carry at least one of them without knowing what it actually does.
The AFMU repairs modules. It is the single most important support module on an exploration build, because neutron boosting chips away at your Frame Shift Drive every single time you do it. Boost enough times without repairing and the drive fails — 20,000 light-years from anyone who can fix it.
Open the right-hand panel, go to the Modules tab, select the damaged module, and choose Repair. The AFMU (Auto Field-Maintenance Unit: Repairs modules in the field from its own ammunition pool. Cannot repair the hull or itself.) powers the module down automatically, repairs it from its own ammunition pool, and you repower it manually when it finishes.
After neutron boosting — check the FSD (Frame Shift Drive: The drive that does both jobs: hyperspace jumps between systems, and supercruise inside them.) every few jumps rather than waiting for a warning. Also after any hard landing, heat damage, or a scrape against terrain.
It cannot repair the hull, it cannot repair the Power Plant (it needs power to run), and it cannot repair itself. Everything else on the ship it can fix.
Because an AFMU (Auto Field-Maintenance Unit: Repairs modules in the field from its own ammunition pool. Cannot repair the hull or itself.) cannot repair itself, a second one repairs the first. They are weightless, so there is no jump-range cost to the redundancy. This is the standard explorer setup.
The repair pool is finite. Refill at any station from the munitions menu, or synthesise a refill in the field from raw materials via the inventory tab — which is exactly why the mining laser below earns its slot.
The exact complement to the AFMU: repair limpets (A single-use drone that collects, prospects, repairs, or researches. Weighs a tonne and rides in the hold.) fix the hull and cannot touch modules, while the AFMU fixes modules and cannot touch the hull. Between them they cover the whole ship.
After you clip terrain, misjudge a landing, or take a beating from heat. Hull damage is permanent otherwise — nothing else in the field repairs it, and you carry it all the way home.
Carry limpets (A single-use drone that collects, prospects, repairs, or researches. Weighs a tonne and rides in the hold.) as cargo, target nothing, and fire the controller. The limpet attaches to your own hull and patches it. It can also repair another commander's ship if you are travelling together.
Limpets weigh a tonne each and need a cargo rack, so the controller plus the rack plus the limpets cost you real jump range. That is why many explorers skip it and simply fly carefully.
Not for money — for raw materials. FSD Injections and AFMU refills are both synthesised from raw materials, and raw materials come from exactly three places: planet surfaces, signal sources, and asteroid mining. A mining laser means you can restock from any ring in the galaxy without finding a landable body and driving an SRV (Surface Recon Vehicle: The wheeled buggy you drive on planet surfaces. Needs a Planetary Vehicle Hangar.) around it.
When you are deep in the black (Deep space beyond inhabited systems. No stations, no repairs, no market.) and running low on the materials that make FSD (Frame Shift Drive: The drive that does both jobs: hyperspace jumps between systems, and supercruise inside them.) Injections or AFMU refills. Also any time you happen to be in a system with a ring and nothing better to do — materials weigh nothing, so there is no reason not to top up.
Drop into a planetary ring, fly up to any asteroid, and hold the trigger. Fragments break off; scoop them with the cargo scoop or a collector limpet. Materials go straight to the material inventory, which costs no cargo space and no mass.
Lead and Rhenium cannot be obtained from surface prospecting at all — asteroid mining is the only source. If a blueprint wants either one, this is the module that gets it.
A refinery and cargo racks are only for selling ore as a commodity. If you are only after materials for synthesis (Building ammunition, fuel injections, and repairs out of raw materials from the inventory menu.), skip both and keep the jump range.
The specialist. Research limpets extract tissue samples from living things you cannot land on — the alien organics that drift in space at Notable Stellar Phenomena, such as the Lagrange Clouds where anomalies and molluscs gather, plus Thargoid Interceptors and Scouts.
When you drop into a Notable Stellar Phenomenon and find organic life floating in open space. This is a separate collection track from ground exobiology — the Genetic Sampler (The Artemis Suit tool that takes bio samples. Three per species, spread apart by the genus colony distance.) cannot reach these, and they fill codex entries nothing else will.
Target the organism, launch the limpet, then hold station within 2,000 m until the extraction finishes. Drift outside that range and the attempt fails and the limpet is wasted.
Thargoid Barnacles. They are structures built by microorganisms rather than a single living thing, so the limpet refuses them — meta-alloys are collected from barnacles by other means.
Flying in a straight line and hoping is how most commanders bounce off exploration. Let a tool build the route instead, then fly it down like a checklist.
Give it a start system, your jump range, and a minimum payout, and it chains together high-value, under-scanned bodies. Tick "Use Mapping Value" to rank by mapped reward rather than scan reward — it means more time per system and considerably more credits. It deliberately avoids populated systems, so widen the radius if you are starting inside the Bubble (The Bubble: Inhabited space around Sol, roughly 400 ly across. Everything outside it is the black.).
For covering distance rather than earning on the way. Routes you neutron star to neutron star at roughly 300% jump range. Use it to cross the gap to a fresh region, then switch to a scanning route once you are there.
The precise one. Feed it your actual ship — jump range, fuel capacity, scoop rate — and it accounts for refuelling and neutron boosts. Worth it for long crossings where a wrong turn strands you.
When you want one specific species, search by the parameters it needs (planet class, atmosphere, gravity, star class) and fly to a confirmed hit rather than hunting blind.
Switch the map to User Data mode and filter to unvisited stars to see where nobody has been. Then narrow by star class — see the table below for which classes actually pay. For pure exploration income, plot "fastest routes" so it only routes you through scoopable stars.
Which classes you filter to depends on what you are hunting. The odds below come from community surveys rather than published figures, so treat them as strong rules of thumb.
Star class is a routing preference, not a species filter. It shifts the mix of worlds you are likely to meet, but whether a body grows Stratum Tectonicas is settled by that body — its class, its atmosphere, its surface temperature. Route by star, decide by planet.
| Star class | For exploration credits | For exobiology |
|---|---|---|
| F | Best Earth-like rate per star — roughly 1 in 60. The classic ELW (Earth-like World: The rarest and most valuable body class to scan and map.) hunter's filter. | Strong all-round. Good source of valuable exploration worlds and suitable High Metal Content bodies. |
| A | Around a 30% chance of at least one terraformable body. The best value-per-system filter. | Good all-round, and the only class that grows Amphora Plant. |
| G | Just behind F for Earth-likes. Sol is a G. | Strong all-round. Good source of valuable exploration worlds and suitable High Metal Content bodies. |
| K | Lower odds per star, but far more of them — the least flying between candidates. | Very good exobiology target. Extremely common, keeping candidate systems close together. |
| O / B | Rare, and rarely worth routing to on their own. | Fine ground for bio when you pass one, and the place to find Anemone — just too rare a class to route around for Stratum. |
| M | The most common star in the galaxy, and mostly icy filler. Skip when hunting value. | Poor for exploration credits, but do not skip it for bio — M systems carry plenty of Stratum candidates. |
Two things follow from that table. First, the value filter and the fuel filter overlap neatly — A, F, G and K are all scoopable, so filtering for high-value systems never strands you. Second, terraformable water worlds outnumber Earth-likes roughly five to one, so your actual income comes from terraformables; the Earth-like is the bonus, not the plan.
Aim for around 50 ly of jump range before committing to a long exobiology tour. Below that you spend more of the session in hyperspace than on the ground. If you own a Fleet Carrier, park it near the survey area — it solves fuel, range and repairs at a stroke. See Section 08 for what its services do to the trip home.
Everything starts in Analysis Mode — the HUD turns blue and your scanners come online. If your HUD is orange you are in Combat Mode and nothing below will work.
Every system then runs the same three-step rhythm. Learn it once and it becomes muscle memory.
Drop out of hyperspace, hold the Discovery Scanner (Discovery Scanner: Fitted to every hull and cannot be removed. One honk on arrival counts the bodies in a system and draws their orbits — the FSS identifies them, the DSS maps them.) for five seconds, and let it fire. The honk (Discovery Scanner Honk: Holding the Discovery Scanner on arrival. Reveals how many bodies a system holds and where they sit.) reveals the total body count and the orbital lines of the system, and it immediately resolves every star. It does not tell you what the planets are — it tells you how many there are and where to look. That alone is enough to decide whether the system is worth stopping for.
Throttle to zero and enter the Full Spectrum System Scanner (Full Spectrum System Scanner: The frequency dial you tune from the cockpit to resolve every unidentified body in a system.). Slide across the frequency band; each unresolved body sits at a specific point on the spectrum and shows a waveform that tells you its class before you even zoom in. Line up the reticle, zoom, and hold to resolve it. This is where you resolve the body and learn what it is — including whether it is worth stopping for.
Fly to a body worth having, deploy the Detailed Surface Scanner (Detailed Surface Scanner: Fires probes at a body to map it. Raises the cartographic payout and reveals surface signals.), and fire probes. The far side counts — aim just past the horizon to sling a probe around. Watch the Efficiency Target: come in at or under that probe count and you earn an efficiency bonus on top. Mapping substantially increases the cartographic payout, and it is what reveals biological signals.
Four ticks wide and the best-paying resolve in the scanner. Nudge the dial rather than sweep it — overshoot and you are into ammonia worlds before the waveform settles.
What earns a stop, in order. The landable bodies are the ones people tune straight past when they are only counting cartographic credits, and they are where the expensive plants live.
Stop and map. These sit at the top of the cartographic table, and being first to one pays on its own.
Stop and map. Terraformables outnumber Earth-likes roughly five to one, so this is where the exploration income actually comes from.
The highest-priority body on a combined run — worth mapping for the cartographic value and worth landing on for Stratum Tectonicas when its atmosphere qualifies. A terraformable one is both at once.
An exobiology candidate. Check its atmosphere, gravity and temperature against Section 06 before you spend the probes.
Resolve it for the scan credits and move on, unless you are hunting one specific species that lives there.
Mapping is the slow half of the loop, so ration it. Probe the worlds that pay on their own — Earth-like, water, ammonia, anything terraformable — and every thin-atmosphere landable you might walk on. Biological signals only appear once a body is mapped, so on the exobiology side the probes go out first and the decision comes after.
The Efficiency Target is a budget, not a score to beat. Coverage still has to reach 100%, and a half-mapped body costs more than the bonus pays. Spend the whole allowance and spread it evenly over the sphere.
Being first is not the same as being credited for it. Three of these four tags only register when you sell the data, so a commander who scanned after you but sold before you takes the tag; only First Footfall is settled the moment you step out.
You were the first commander to FSS-resolve the body and sell the data. Adds a 50% bonus and puts your name on the System Map. Awarded on sale, not on scan — so the data is worthless until you dock.
You were the first to map it with the DSS (Detailed Surface Scanner: Fires probes at a body to map it. Raises the cartographic payout and reveals surface signals.). A second tag with its own bonus, stacking on top of the mapping multiplier. Also awarded on sale.
You were the first commander to physically step onto the body. It pays nothing by itself — it just records your name. What it does is guarantee that you are the first commander to sample life there.
You were the first commander in the galaxy to sell a given species to Vista Genomics. This is the one that pays: five times the base value (base plus a 400% bonus). A 19M plant becomes 95M.
This is the part most guides skip, and it is the part that decides whether a session earns 20 million or 400 million. The species that grows on a world is determined by that world's class, atmosphere, temperature, and gravity. Learn to read those four numbers off the System Map and you stop landing on worthless rocks.
The broad rules: bio lives on landable bodies with thin atmospheres (and a few airless ones). Low gravity is common — many genera cap out around 0.27 G.
Temperature is the other major filter, and it is not one number. Stratum Tectonicas wants a High Metal Content world above 165 K; Aleoida Gravis wants 190–195 K; every genus has its own band. It is also why the poles and the dark side of a tidally locked world can come up empty on a planet that otherwise qualifies.
Once you know a body is landable, atmosphere is one of the strongest predictors of which valuable species it can support. This is the table worth memorising — find one of these atmospheres on a landable world and it is worth the detour.
| Conditions | Top species there | Base value |
|---|---|---|
| HMC, >165 K, qualifying thin atmosphere | Stratum Tectonicas | 19.0M |
| Neon / Neon-Rich | Fonticulua Segmentatus | 19.0M |
| Sulphur Dioxide | Tussock Stigmasis | 19.0M |
| Nitrogen | Concha Biconcavis | 16.8M |
| Oxygen | Fonticulua Fluctus | 16.8M |
| Water / Water-Rich | Cactoida Vermis | 16.2M |
| Carbon Dioxide (190–195 K) | Aleoida Gravis | 12.9M |
| Ammonia | Frutexa Flammasis | 10.3M |
| Helium | Bacterium Nebulus | 9.1M |
| Argon / Methane | Tussock Capillum | 7.0M |
Which makes the question you ask at each body a planet question, not a star question. Run it in this order — every step is something you can read off the System Map before you commit to the trip.
This one filter does most of the work. Tectonicas is the only Stratum species that grows on High Metal Content — every other one in the genus wants a Rocky body.
Same panel, a line further down. Below that the body is dead for the high payers however good the class looked, and on a tidally locked world the dark side can miss the line while the rest of the planet clears it.
Tectonicas can grow on HMC worlds with ammonia, oxygen, water, water-rich, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide-rich, or sulphur dioxide atmospheres.
Biological signals only appear after the DSS (Detailed Surface Scanner: Fires probes at a body to map it. Raises the cartographic payout and reveals surface signals.) pass. Probe the body, then open Planetary Information and check the Features tab.
Section 07 picks up the sampling loop from here.
A handful of genera ignore atmosphere entirely and key off the parent star or something else in the system. These are the only cases where the star class is the thing you filter on — and note where they land on the value scale. The money is still in the planet.
| Species | What the system needs | Base value |
|---|---|---|
| Amphora Plant | Class A star, airless metal-rich body, plus an Earth-like, ammonia world, water giant, or life-bearing gas giant in system | 1.6M |
| Crystalline Shard | A, F, G, K, M or S star, airless body over 12,000 Ls (Light-Second: Distance inside a system. A station 200,000 Ls out is a long supercruise, jump range be damned.) out, plus a life-bearing world in system | 1.6M |
| Electricae Pluma | Icy body with helium, neon or argon; Class A star at luminosity V or brighter, or a neutron star | 6.3M |
| Electricae Radialem | Icy body, inside or near a nebula | 6.3M |
| Bark Mound | Airless body within 150 ly of the centre of a nebula | 1.5M |
| Brain Tree | System must also contain an Earth-like or a gas giant with water-based life | 1.6M |
| Anemone | Class O, B or A star — the exact species depends on class and luminosity | 1.5M |
You have found a promising world. This is the loop that turns it into credits.
A blue halo on the planet icon means it has an atmosphere; a quarter-arc in the corner means it is landable. Open Planetary Information and check the Features tab — biological signals are listed there with a count in parentheses. Read the atmosphere, gravity and temperature off the same panel and check them against Section 06 before you spend the trip.
Approach so you map the lit hemisphere — you will be landing there later, and hunting small plants in the dark is miserable. If the body sits more than about 4,000 Ls (Light-Second: Distance inside a system. A station 200,000 Ls out is a long supercruise, jump range be damned.) from its star the light gets thin regardless, which makes spotting harder.
If the body has several biological signals, select the species you actually want to collect. Use its blue overlay to find a suitable landing area, then return for the other species if the terrain makes them worthwhile.
After mapping, in Analysis Mode, the surface paints blue where the selected species can occur. It is a binary indicator, not a heat map — darker patches mean hilly terrain catching more light, not more plants. The overlay also hides the relief, so toggle to Combat Mode to read the actual terrain, then back to Analysis to pick a landing spot inside the blue.
Set down inside the zone. Fly low and slow to spot flora — deploying landing gear and the cargo scoop bleeds speed quickly. Night vision helps enormously for the small ones (Bacterium, Fungoida, Osseus). Some species are only visible from altitude, so a low pass beats walking.
Disembark, approach a plant, and fire the Genetic Sampler (The Artemis Suit tool that takes bio samples. Three per species, spread apart by the genus colony distance.) (default key 5). Each species needs three samples from three sufficiently separated individuals — the lights on the canister count them up. Move past the colony distance for that genus, sample again, then a third time. Wait for the canister replacement animation to finish before starting the next species.
The colony distance is the whole trick to working fast, and it is set by the genus — 100 m for the small ones, 500 m for Bacterium and Stratum, a full 1,000 m for Electricae. Sample too close and you get an insufficient-diversity error and waste the walk. Only one species per genus exists on any given body, so once you have three of a genus, that genus is done there.
The Nomad, a Ship-Launched Vessel (Ship-Launched Vessel: A small craft launched from a medium or large hull — a combat fighter flown by you or by crew, or the Nomad, which lands where your ship cannot.) changed this loop more than any module before it. It is a small flyable craft with skids that can set down on summits, cliffs and broken ground where your ship simply cannot. Leave the mothership in orbit and hunt from the cockpit: the Nomad's own scanner picks up biological signals directly, so you can fly straight to the plant instead of guessing. Then step out and sample.
Cartographic data sells at Universal Cartographics (The Starport Services desk that buys exploration data. Every station has one, and a fleet carrier can install one.) in Starport Services, at any station. Biological data sells at Vista Genomics (The concourse desk that buys biological samples. Odyssey stations only, and installable on a fleet carrier.), on the concourse of Odyssey stations only — plan the trip home around a station that has one. Selling in a system controlled by a minor faction also bumps your reputation there.
Both careers rank on total profit handed in, and the two ladders are wildly different in length. Explorer is one of the fastest routes to Elite. Exobiologist is one of the slowest — but it pays far more per hour along the way, so most commanders hit Explorer Elite long before they are halfway up the exobiology ladder.
| Ladder | Elite threshold | Reality check |
|---|---|---|
| Explorer | 320M | Very achievable. One good Road to Riches tour makes a serious dent. |
| Exobiologist | 8.43bn | A long campaign. Roughly 26x the Explorer requirement — chase First Logged (First commander in the galaxy to sell a species to Vista Genomics. Five times the base value.) bonuses or it takes forever. |