Elite Dangerous Guide 2025-26

Your first hours: what I wish someone had told me

Everyone starts in a Sidewinder. It’s small and lightly armoured, but it’s free to replace, so treat it as your learning ship. Crash it, scrape it, get it wrong. That’s what it’s for.

The one rule that never changes: never fly without your rebuy. Always keep enough credits in the bank to replace the ship you’re sitting in. Ships bought pre-built with ARX have a zero-cost rebuy, but once you start engineering them a percentage of that engineering cost gets added back on.

Where to start earning

• Data delivery and courier missions. Quick, low risk, and you don’t need cargo space.
• Basic cargo runs. Modest pay, but they build your reputation with the local factions, and that unlocks the better-paying work later.
• Trading. Buy low, sell high. Agricultural systems export food, industrial systems want raw materials, and high-tech worlds sell equipment that low-tech colonies pay more for. Use the galaxy map’s trade tools.
• Exploration. Scan every star and planet you jump through with the discovery scanner and detailed surface scanner. It all adds up, and it pushes your exploration rank.

What to avoid early on

• Combat contracts in a stock Sidewinder. Start in low-threat combat zones or at nav beacons, and only shoot wanted ships unless you fancy the clink.
• Smuggling. It pays, but it’s unforgiving if you’re caught.
• Mining without the proper gear. Slow and unrewarding.
• Trying every career at once. Pick one or two and learn them properly.

Upgrading your modules often matters more than buying a new ship. Better thrusters make you faster and more manoeuvrable, a better power plant gives you more power for your modules, and engineered weapons beat stock ones. A good first goal is your first proper career ship, typically a Cobra Mk III or Cobra Mk V. If you’ve got your eye on the Corvette or the Cutter, start working on your Federation or Imperial rank early, because those ships are locked behind it.

If you’re on PC, get Odyssey. Being able to get out and walk around, take on-foot contracts and pick a suit adds a whole second game on top.

More on this: Must-Know Tips for New Players, The Brutal Reason Elite Dangerous Doesn't Click Early, Elite Dangerous Myths: What's True and What's Holding You Back

Fix your FSD route settings

This one catches me every time I reinstall the game on a new PC. The route plotter defaults to economical routes, which can have you doing 26 or 28 jumps for a trip that should take four. Switch your route setting to fastest in the galaxy map and plot again. You can also use FSD boost or jet cone boost if that’s your bag.

Making money: four methods most commanders overlook

1. Settlement missions (Odyssey only)

Go to the concourse and talk to the NPCs directly instead of using the mission board. These contacts pay better, and if your standing with the faction is high enough you can negotiate the payout up for more credits, better materials, or both. Plenty of them can be done stealthily, which means less damage and quicker turnarounds. Park yourself in a system with several settlements and build your reputation with a few factions.

2. Fleet carrier trading

It’s boring, but it scales. In the video I used agronomic treatment as an example: bought for around 3,000 credits a ton and sold for around 30,000 in the right place. Prices change all the time, so check the markets with a tool like Inara before you commit. You don’t even need to own a carrier to profit from it. If you do own one, you can advertise it as a trade hub, let other players load cargo onto it, and take a cut.

3. In-bubble exobiology

You don’t need to fly thousands of light years out. Take a ship that can land on rough ground, like a Cobra or a Mandalay, and scan biologicals on high-metal-content and ammonia worlds near the bubble. You won’t get first-discovery bonuses because these spots are already catalogued, but that’s the point: you’re harvesting what’s already there. Spansh can build you a long list of target systems so you never run out.

4. Powerplay 2.0

Pledge to a power and climb their loyalty ranks. The bonuses stack on top of whatever you already do, whether that’s bounty hunting, salvage or exploration data, and each power’s weekly assignments add a bit more. You also get access to modules that casual players who skip Powerplay won’t have.

Laser mining step by step

You can mine in almost any ship, but cargo space is what limits you. A Sidewinder won’t get you far. If you’d rather skip the grind, the ARX store sells pre-built mining ships such as the Krait Mk II laser mining jumpstart. Otherwise, fit out your own.

The build I used

• Four mining lasers (I swapped the stock weapons out)
• Utilities: shield boosters, a heat sink launcher and a point defence turret to deal with missiles
• Around 128 tons of cargo
• Two limpet controllers, a prospector limpet controller and a refinery
• A detailed surface scanner for finding ring hotspots
• About 100 limpets, bought from advanced maintenance

Check your rebuy after swapping modules. Mine went up once the mining lasers were in.

How to do it

1. Scan the planet’s ring with the surface scanner and look for hotspots. Overlapping ones are best.
2. Drop in near the centre of the hotspot, in good light, and don’t go in too fast.
3. Set up your fire groups so the lasers, prospector limpets and collector limpets are easy to switch between.
4. Fire a prospector limpet at a rock to see what’s in it. The rock I picked in the video was 23% platinum.
5. Deploy your cargo scoop, launch your collector limpets and start lasering. The collectors bring the fragments back for you.
6. Use the refinery panel to add materials you don’t want to the ignore list, so the limpets leave them alone.

Once you’ve got something in the hold, expect company. Some will be system authority, and some will be pirates after your cargo.

Odyssey suits: Artemis, Maverick or Dominator?

Each suit can be upgraded from grade 1 to grade 5 and then engineered. Pioneer Supplies sometimes stocks higher-grade suits, and occasionally they come with engineering already on them.

• Artemis: exploration and exobiology. It comes with the genetic sampler and has excellent energy efficiency, so you can stay out longer. Its shields are lower and it isn’t built for fighting. Good mods: improved battery capacity, increased sprint duration, night vision and increased air reserves.
• Maverick: the all-rounder. It’s built around the plasma cutter, so it’s the one for restore and reactivate missions, salvage, data theft and heists. Lots of backpack space. Good mods: extra backpack capacity, improved battery capacity, increased sprint duration and quieter footsteps.
• Dominator: going loud. Two primary weapon slots and the best staying power in a fight, at the cost of higher power draw. Good mods: faster shield regen, damage resistance, improved battery capacity and increased sprint duration.

If you’re new, my advice is the Maverick as your first main suit. It teaches you most of the systems, and you can specialise into Artemis or Dominator from there.

My graphics settings

These are the settings I run on an RTX 3080 at 4K for a steady 60fps. Every PC is different, so treat them as a starting point, not gospel.

• Resolution 3840×2160, borderless, vertical sync on, frame rate limited to 60
• Texture quality high, directional shadows medium
• Anti-aliasing off (the in-game AA isn’t great), supersampling 1.25, upscaling normal
• Ambient occlusion high, FX high, depth of field high
• Environment, particle effects, material, terrain, jet cone and volumetric effects all ultra
• Galaxy map high

Close whatever else is running in the background. Shutting down my browser and other apps got me about 14 extra frames per second. And don’t obsess over the fps counter. Get it looking good and running smoothly, and leave it there.

Getting to Colonia in about two hours

I took the Caspian Explorer from HIP 8109 to Jaques Station in Colonia using the neutron highway, and it took roughly two hours without a fleet carrier.

The build

• No weapons and no utilities
• Lightweight alloys, power plant dropped to a 6A and overcharged
• Mk II gravity-optimised thrusters with dirty drives
• Mk II supercharge-optimised FSD, engineered as far as I could take it
• Fuel scoop, FSD booster and an AFMU for when you get too close to a star

The route

I used the Spansh neutron router with my jump range entered (69 light years for me). Fly into the neutron star’s cone to supercharge, and my range went up to over 400 light years per jump. With that much range you can sometimes skip a waypoint and do two of the plotted jumps in one. Scan each system as you go and you’ll have a nice pile of exploration data to sell when you arrive.

If you’d rather not fly it yourself, there are fleet carrier taxis running back and forth to Colonia.

Unlocking Petra Olmanova in Colonia

Petra is the weapons engineer in Colonia, working on plasma accelerators, fragment cannons and multi-cannons. If you’re living out there, you really do need her, because otherwise you’re flying back to the bubble to get your weapons engineered.

1. Get the referral from Todd “The Blaster” McQuinn. She shows up once you reach roughly grade 3 or 4 with him.
2. Reach Expert combat rank. This one’s non-negotiable. You can be rich and Elite in trade, but without Expert in combat she won’t take you on.
3. Deliver 200 Progenitor Cells. This used to be a real slog. Now you can find them close by with a tool like Inara.
4. Bring engineering materials with you. Your access improves as you engineer more modules, so turning up with just the cells gets you nowhere fast.

Her workshop is Sanctuary in the Asura system.

Type-11 Prospector as a Rhino carrier

I put this build together just before the Rhino dropped, on the assumption that the Type-11’s vessel bay would be how you carry it. That would mean it doesn’t take up one of your normal optional internals, so the space can go to cargo, shields and refinery kit. For how the Rhino actually works now it’s live, see the Rhino videos further down.

The idea isn’t the absolute best credits per hour. It’s a ship that can do everything: asteroids, surface mining, core mining and engineering materials in one trip.

• Lightweight alloys, armoured 6A power plant
• Thrusters with dirty drives, because it has to land on rough ground and move around sites
• Engineered FSD with increased range, plus mass manager if you’ve unlocked Felicity
• 7A charge-enhanced power distributor. Don’t cheap out here, it’s working all the time.
• Mining volley repeater, subsurface displacement missiles and a seismic charge launcher
• Class 6 and class 5 cargo racks, multi limpet controller, prospector limpet controller, refinery, surface scanner
• Utilities: pulse wave analyser, point defence, heat sink launcher, shield booster

What I wouldn’t do: max out the cargo, run paper shields, turn it into a pure laser miner, or waste space on auto docking.