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Odyssey Beginners guide
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Welcome to odyssey!

While this will not be a com­pre­hen­sive guide of all things Odyssey, it will endeav­or to get you on your feet, both fig­u­ra­tive­ly and literally.
 
This guide is orig­i­nal­ly from our Dis­cord serv­er, from where it has been repro­duced with slight adap­ta­tions.
All names with a # in front of them are ref­er­ences to chan­nels on the serv­er, like­wise all names with an @ in front of them are refer­ances to roles. You can find this guide in #🚶odyssey-begin­ners-guide. Click here to join our Dis­cord server.

The Basics

So you’ve purchased Odyssey
Con­grat­u­la­tions! You now have the abil­i­ty to down­load it via the launch­er. If you use minED, you may need to tem­porar­i­ly dis­able it so you can access the default launch­er. From here, every time you launch the game, you have a choice: You can launch either Odyssey or Hori­zons. The fin­er details on Odyssey vs. Hori­zons will be cov­ered lat­er, for now you can sim­ply stick to Odyssey and be fine.
 
Step 0: The In-Game Tutorial
When launch­ing Odyssey for the first time, it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly place you in a tuto­r­i­al instance, but leave your Live CMDR untouched. The tuto­ri­als in Elite Dan­ger­ous are noto­ri­ous for not being the great­est at real­ly teach­ing the impor­tant mechan­ics, but it’s still use­ful for famil­iar­iz­ing your­self with the basics of on-foot game­play. Don’t be afraid to run through the tuto­r­i­al more than once, if you feel like you did­n’t under­stand every­thing the first time through. It is rec­om­mend­ed you com­plete the tuto­r­i­al before you con­tin­ue reading.
 
Disembarking
While docked at a sta­tion, fleet car­ri­er, mega­ship, sur­face port, or set­tle­ment, you will now see a new but­ton in the list of avail­able options under­neath Sta­tion Ser­vices and (Auto) Launch: Dis­em­bark. Select­ing this will cause you to get up and leave your ship, allow­ing you to walk around. Free­dom at last! Well, almost. When docked at a sta­tion, sur­face port, or mega­ship, you’ll need to head to the ele­va­tor first before you can access…
 
The Station Concourse

The sta­tion con­course serves as the on-foot equiv­a­lent to “Sta­tion Ser­vices” for ships. There are mul­ti­ple kiosks avail­able each with a spe­cif­ic purpose.

  • Pioneer Supplies

    - The on-foot equip­ment shop. More on this sub­ject later.

  • Vista Genomics

    - This kiosk is for exo­bi­ol­o­gy the way Uni­ver­sal Car­to­graph­ics is for explo­ration data.

  • Concourse Bar

    - The bar­tender is your fren­e­my, being the place to trade and sell Odyssey-spe­cif­ic materials.

  • Apex Interstellar Transport

    - A taxi ser­vice that will fly you to a sta­tion or set­tle­ment of your choosing.

  • Frontline Solutions

    - A taxi ser­vice that specif­i­cal­ly takes you to Ground Con­flict Zones with­in your cur­rent system.

  • Inter Astra

    - A store­front for access­ing the sta­tion ship­yard ser­vices. (If present.)

And lastly, the station terminals.
Spread out around the con­course are sev­er­al ter­mi­nals with the sta­tion’s name print­ed on the screen. Inter­act­ing with one of these will open a vari­ant of the ship-based “Sta­tion Ser­vices” menu, from which you can hand in boun­ties, adjust your load­out, and take missions.

Important keybinds

While the In-Game Tuto­r­i­al men­tions a few key­binds, there are some that are left out that real­ly should­n’t be. This is not an exhaus­tive list, but it does cov­er the miss­ing essentials.
 
Use Medkit
Default (6), instant­ly uses a med­kit with­out need­ing to open the item wheel.
 
Use Energy Cell
Default (7), instant­ly uses an ener­gy cell with­out need­ing to open the item wheel.
 
Clear Authority Level
Default (-), instant­ly deletes your cloned secu­ri­ty pro­file with­out need­ing to open the item wheel. It is impor­tant to note that cloning an NPC’s secu­ri­ty pro­file is ille­gal, and so is hav­ing one. Guards will detect it in a scan, so if you aren’t in a posi­tion where you can sim­ply kill the guard, being able to delete your high­ly ille­gal pro­file quick­ly is important.
 
Open Insight Hub
Default (Q, held). The Insight Hub is where you can access a vari­ety of menus avail­able on your ship while on-foot, includ­ing (but not lim­it­ed to) car­ri­er man­age­ment, the galaxy & sys­tem maps, trans­ac­tions, comms, and your back­pack. This hub is also where you can sum­mon an Apex Shut­tle when not at a sta­tion concourse.
 
Open Emote Wheel
Default (B, held), oper­ates sim­i­lar to the item wheel, but with emote options instead of con­sum­ables. Press­ing the key instead of hold­ing while cause you to sim­ply point, an action that is impor­tant if using the “Odyssey Mate­ri­als Helper” third-par­ty tool. (Rec­om­mend­ed)
 
Holster Weapon
Default (U), puts your cur­rent weapon or tool away. It is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed you rebind this to (X) for quick­er access.

The three suits

In Hori­zons, you are offered a selec­tion of ships to fly, each with strengths and weak­ness­es. In Odyssey, you are offered a selec­tion of three suits, each with stats and a unique trait tai­lored to a spe­cif­ic sec­tion of on-foot game­play. Unlike Hori­zons, how­ev­er, it is strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed to have at least one of each suit.
 
The “Artemis” Suit
The suit for all things exo­bi­ol­o­gy! It’s also manda­to­ry, as its unique trait is it comes equipped with the Genet­ic Sam­pler, and as such is the only way to inter­act with exo­bi­ol­o­gy. For more infor­ma­tion, head over to ⁠🧬exo­bi­ol­o­gy-dis­cus­sion and check out the pins there.
 
The “Dominator” Suit
The com­bat-focused suit. This one has the best com­bat-relat­ed stats, but the small­est back­pack. Its unique trait is the abil­i­ty to car­ry an addi­tion­al weapon in your load­out. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed for Ground Con­flict Zones and pure­ly-com­bat missions.
 
The “Maverick” Suit
The bread and but­ter of gen­er­al on-foot game­play and the engi­neer­ing grind! Fea­tur­ing the largest back­pack for your loot­ing needs, and for its unique trait, it comes equipped with the Arc Cut­ter, allow­ing you to cut through cer­tain locks and pan­els. This is the suit of choice for activ­i­ties that take you to an Odyssey Set­tle­ment or sur­face Point of Interest.
 
The Secret Fourth Suit
When edit­ing your load­out, you may notice a fourth suit avail­able to you: The “Flight Suit”. This is essen­tial­ly the ‘default’ suit. It has gen­er­al­ly ter­ri­ble stats, no unique trait, can­not car­ry a pri­ma­ry weapon (sec­on­daries only), and worst of all, can­not be upgrad­ed. Suf­fice to say, this suit can be ignored.
 
Where to Find
Grade 1 ver­sions of each suit can be pur­chased from any Pio­neer Sup­plies kiosk. Occa­sion­al­ly, it is pos­si­ble to find ‘pre-upgrad­ed’ ver­sions for sale, but these will always be lim­it­ed sup­ply items. Once any CMDR pur­chas­es them, they’re gone for every­one else.

Weaponry

Like any Space Cow­boy, you’re going to need a gun. Prob­a­bly more than one. On-foot weapons can be cat­e­go­rized in two ways: By dam­age type, and by archetype.
 
For our purposes, damage comes in four types:
 

Kinetic

The clas­sic bul­let. Like their ship­board coun­ter­parts, kinet­ic weapons have (high) pro­jec­tile veloc­i­ty, are strong against health, and weak against shields. Kinet­ic weapons are man­u­fac­tured exclu­sive­ly by Kine­mat­ic Arma­ments, and all have ‘Kar­ma’ at the start of their name.
 

Thermal

Laser beams! The the­mat­ic oppo­site of Kinet­ic: Hitscan, weak against health, strong against shields. Ther­mal weapons are man­u­fac­tured exclu­sive­ly by Taka­da, and all have ‘TK’ at the start of their name.
 

Plasma

While these pro­jec­tiles look and trav­el like their ship­board cousin (the Plas­ma Accel­er­a­tor), they have a major dis­tinc­tion: On-foot plas­ma dam­age acts as a “bal­anced” dam­age type, nei­ther weak nor strong, for both shields and health. Plas­ma weapons are man­u­fac­tured exclu­sive­ly by Man­ti­core, and all have ‘Man­ti­core’ at the start of their name.
 

Explosive

Explo­sive ranges from neu­tral to resist­ed for health dam­age, but it’s not clear how explo­sive dam­age fares against shields. Due to Odyssey’s rather poor pop­u­lar­i­ty and a lack of real inter­est in many of its mechan­ics, there is crip­pling­ly lit­tle doc­u­men­ta­tion on this sub­ject. That being said, sources of explo­sive dam­age gen­er­al­ly do enough that attempt­ing to tank the dam­age is ill advised.

 

Weapons can be organized into 4 archetypes, as well
 

Assault Rifles

Auto­mat­ic rifles that favor dam­age and effec­tive range over fire rate and mag­a­zine size. These include the Kar­ma AR-50 and TK Aphe­lion, and are Pri­ma­ry weapons.
 

Carbines/SMGs

The coun­ter­part of Assault Rifles, trad­ing dam­age and effec­tive range for bet­ter fire rate and mag­a­zine size. These include the Kar­ma C‑44 and TK Eclipse, and are Pri­ma­ry weapons.
 

Pistols

The clas­sic sin­gle-fire sidearm, and the only Sec­ondary weapons avail­able. These include the Kar­ma P‑15, TK Zenith, and Man­ti­core Tor­men­tor.
 

Uniques

There are a few weapons that are one-of-a-kind in their mechan­ics, and get placed in the “unique” arche­type for sim­pler categorization:

  • Manticore Intimidator

    - Plas­ma Shot­gun, very high dam­age, for very low range and mag­a­zine size.

  • Manticore Executioner

    - Plas­ma Sniper, very high dam­age, but with plas­ma’s low pro­jec­tile velocity.

  • Karma L‑6

    - Rock­et Launch­er, and the only weapon to deal explo­sive damage.

 
The One to Avoid
Last and unfor­tu­nate­ly least, there is the Man­ti­core Oppres­sor. Osten­si­bly an Assault Rifle, but more accu­rate­ly described as a Paint­ball Mark­er in space. This weapon has a crip­pling­ly low dam­age out­put, and is the Ugly Duck­ling of the Man­ti­core fam­i­ly as a result. This weapon is best avoided.
 
Where to Find
Like suits, Grade 1 weapons can be pur­chased from any Pio­neer Sup­plies kiosk. Like suits, some­times lim­it­ed sup­ply, ‘pre-upgrad­ed’ options are avail­able. Unlike suits, not all weapons are avail­able at every sta­tion. Some trav­el may be required.

consumables

Like any oth­er shoot­er, there are a selec­tion of ‘con­sum­able’ items you can car­ry with you, that must be replen­ished either by loot­ing or by purchasing.
 
Energy Cell
Your suit bat­tery is only bare­ly touched upon in the tuto­r­i­al, but think of it as the on-foot equiv­a­lent to your ship’s fuel. A sin­gle ener­gy cell will refill your bat­tery to full, so use them wise­ly. If you aren’t under pres­sure, it’s bet­ter to look for a recharge port.
 
Medkit
A near uni­ver­sal sta­ple of shoot­ers, the med­kit refills your health to full. You car­ry very few of these at a time, so use them wisely.
 
E‑Breach
Now you, too can be Hack­er­man. This con­sum­able is used on com­put­er sys­tems, inter­ac­tive pan­els, and autho­riza­tion scan­ners to grant you access. Cau­tion: This con­sum­able is ille­gal, and can be detect­ed by a guard’s scan. As a result, it’s not placed in your back­pack by default, and must be man­u­al­ly trans­ferred after dis­em­bark­ing via the “Man­age Inven­to­ry” screen, which is accessed by inter­act­ing with your ship.
 
Frag Grenade
Sim­ple explo­sive hap­py fun ball. Mind the throw­ing arc in low grav­i­ty environments.
 
Shield Disruptor
Essen­tial­ly an ‘EMP Grenade’, tar­gets caught in the blast radius will take a huge hit to their shields, usu­al­ly tak­ing them out entire­ly. Does no health dam­age. Again, mind the throw­ing arc in low grav­i­ty environments.
 
Shield Projector
A defen­sive “grenade”, this one gen­er­ates a small dome around itself for you to stand in. Incom­ing fire is blocked, while out­go­ing fire pass­es through. The dome dis­ap­pears after a short amount of time. The throw­ing arc is less of an issue with this one, as it’s sticky and you’ll want to throw it at the ground in front of you.
 
(Re)stocking
Your ship can car­ry a sup­ply of 100 of each con­sum­able. When dis­em­bark­ing, a few of each type are placed into your back­pack, accord­ing to your suit­’s car­ry­ing capac­i­ty. Whether stock­ing up for the first time, or restock­ing after using a large quan­ti­ty, you can find all con­sum­ables except for E‑Breach at any Pio­neer Sup­plies kiosk. E‑Breach can also be found there, but only when the sta­tion has an Anar­chy or Com­mu­nism con­trol­ling faction.

Missions

Mis­sions are a cor­ner­stone of Odyssey’s con­tent, and a major source of its engi­neer­ing mate­ri­als. Mis­sions that are cen­tered around on-foot game­play are acquired one of two ways:
 
Station Concourse / Settlement Terminals
As briefly men­tioned ear­li­er, a mis­sion board that con­tains exclu­sive­ly on-foot mis­sions can be found at any of the ter­mi­nals dot­ted around sta­tion con­cours­es. Sim­i­lar ter­mi­nals can also be found at set­tle­ments, which offer mis­sions exclu­sive­ly for the con­trol­ling faction.
 
NPCs
Stand­ing around sta­tion con­cours­es, and some­times set­tle­ments, are NPCs with mis­sion icons over their heads. These NPCs can be inter­act­ed with, and will offer a sin­gle mis­sion. Unlike the mis­sion board, it is pos­si­ble to nego­ti­ate with NPCs over the offered pay. Cau­tion is advised, how­ev­er, since this has a chance to not only fail, but cause the NPC to revoke the mis­sion offer entirely.

beware!

Much like Hori­zons, Odyssey is noto­ri­ous for it lack of hand-hold­ing and let­ting you very eas­i­ly bite off more than you can chew. For instance, mis­sions tagged as “non­vi­o­lent” can be extreme­ly dif­fi­cult, even for an expe­ri­enced CMDR. This is due to “non­vi­o­lent” trans­lat­ing to “you are not allowed to harm any­one, and if you do, mis­sion fail.” It is there­fore high­ly rec­om­mend­ed that you start small, such as sim­ple deliv­ery mis­sions, until you have more than just the basic flight suit and pistol.
 
Coming Prepared
Some mis­sions will have the Mav­er­ick suit or E‑Breaches as hard require­ments for com­plet­ing them, due to locked con­tain­ers, doors, or pan­els. Be sure to have both of these avail­able to you before embark­ing on any­thing beyond sim­ple deliv­ery missions.
 
Crime and Anarchy

A sur­pris­ing amount of activ­i­ties in Odyssey involve com­mit­ting crimes, fre­quent­ly of a vio­lent nature. It is there­fore high­ly rec­om­mend­ed to lim­it ille­gal activ­i­ties to places under the con­trol of an Anar­chy fac­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s not as sim­ple as find­ing an Anar­chy sys­tem, as set­tle­ments inher­it the prop­er­ties of their con­trol­ling fac­tion, rather than the sys­tem. This means any set­tle­ment you want to do crime in must be con­trolled by an Anar­chy Fac­tion. There are a few pop­u­lar places to find so called ‘Anar­chy Set­tle­ments’, including:

  • Usdia

  • Eurybia

  • Iah Bulu

More sys­tems can be found via Inara. It is rec­om­mend­ed to have a list of sys­tems that you can rely on, as one can some­times become unavail­able due to sys­tem states (such as Civ­il War).

 
MIND YOUR SHIP
On-foot vs. ship bal­ance is… ques­tion­able, to put it polite­ly. On-foot weapons do a sur­pris­ing amount of dam­age to ships and SRVs alike, and if you aren’t pay­ing atten­tion, hos­tile NPCs can and will destroy your ship on you, leav­ing you in a pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion, and cer­tain death if, for what­ev­er rea­son, you’re unable to book an Apex shuttle.
 
Best Practices
  • If you are at a Point of Inter­est that has or is expect­ing com­pa­ny, park a short dis­tance away and approach in an SRV.
  • If the set­tle­ment alarms go off, dis­miss your ship imme­di­ate­ly. When you’re ready to leave, rel­og first to reset the instance, allow­ing you to safe­ly sum­mon your ship with­out the set­tle­ment tur­rets & skim­mers melt­ing it.
  • If you MUST have access to your ship after the alarms have been set off, make sure no hos­tile NPCs remain, dis­able the set­tle­men­t’s anti-ship tur­rets (there’s a con­sole for this some­where with­in the set­tle­ment) and destroy any skim­mers first.

fleet carriers

Fleet Car­ri­ers have their own inte­ri­ors that you can walk around in, much like sta­tions. It is notice­ably small­er, and some sec­tions may be closed off depend­ing on what ser­vices the car­ri­er own­er has installed.
 
The Room with a View
If you are a car­ri­er own­er, or are hitch­ing a ride on one that is about to jump, con­grat­u­la­tions! You can expe­ri­ence what is regard­ed by some, as the best rea­son to own Odyssey at all: You can now look out the front win­dow dur­ing a car­ri­er jump. To do this, you must be on-foot in the car­ri­er’s con­course, and then sim­ply take a seat in the “com­mand deck” area.
 
Services

On-foot ser­vices aboard fleet car­ri­ers, if installed can include:

  • Vista Genomics

    - for your exo­bi­ol­o­gy needs when out in the black.

  • Pioneer Supplies

     ‑which will stock all suits, weapons, and con­sum­ables, but can nev­er have ‘pre-upgrad­ed’ gear. E‑Breaches can be pur­chased if the car­ri­er own­er allows it in their car­ri­er’s settings.

  • Concourse Bar

     – where Odyssey-spe­cif­ic mate­ri­als can be bought and sold (by the car­ri­er own­er) to/from oth­er players.

  • Inter Astra

    - allow­ing on-foot access to a car­ri­er’s ship­yard ser­vice. (Installed/uninstalled along­side the ship­yard ser­vice automatically.)

Escape Pods
Avail­able in all fleet car­ri­ers, escape pods will tele­port your CMDR to the last sta­tion you docked at, while leav­ing your ship behind on the car­ri­er. While this has some oth­er (niche) uses that are beyond the scope of this guide, the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of escape pods is allow you to escape a car­ri­er that has “kid­napped” you and tak­en you far from where you were, such as out­side The Bubble.

on and up

As you get used to on-foot con­tent, you can start to think about engi­neer­ing and tak­ing on high­er risk mis­sions. You may also ben­e­fit from exter­nal tools and dis­cord-based resources here in PTN.
 
Engineering
Like ships, on-foot equip­ment can be engi­neered, but it takes a dif­fer­ent form. All suits and weapons have a ‘Grade’, rang­ing from 1 (worst) to 5 (best). The ‘pre-upgrad­ed’ gear found at some Pio­neer Sup­plies kiosks will nev­er spawn above Grade 3. Improv­ing this grade is an impor­tant and nec­es­sary step if you want the best gear, but many play­ers opt to stick to what­ev­er Grade 3 ‘pre-upgrad­ed’ gear they find and not take it fur­ther. For a more in-depth look at Odyssey engi­neer­ing, check out ⁠#⁠👷odyssey-engi­neer­ing-guide on our discord! 
 
Discord

There are a few chan­nels on our dis­cord that will help you on your… odyssey.

  • ⁠#👩🚀odyssey-gen­er­al – As the name implies, this is the gen­er­al chat for Odyssey-spe­cif­ic activity.

  • ⁠#👔suits-and-guns - A place where play­ers can share any ‘pre-upgrad­ed’ gear they’ve found but don’t need. Be sure to read the pins for more info.

  • ⁠#🧰mate­r­i­al-trade – ACOs and CCOs may post offers for Odyssey mate­ri­als here. Again, be sure to read the pins for more info.

  • ⁠#🧬exo­bi­ol­o­gy-dis­cus­sion – For all things Exobiology.
 
Third-Party Tools

Much like the rest of the game, third-par­ty tools can prove invalu­able to your Odyssey experience.

  • EDOMH – Elite Dan­ger­ous Odyssey Mate­ri­als Helper, a vital tool for the mate­r­i­al grind.

  • EDMC – Elite Dan­ger­ous Mar­ket Con­nec­tor, while this does­n’t nor­mal­ly give any tan­gi­ble ben­e­fit to you, set­tle­ments have mar­kets and sys­tem states of their own. Updat­ing these on sites like Inara can be help­ful for oth­er play­ers. This tool will han­dle all of that in the background.

  • OMG – Odyssey Map Guide, pro­vides a bird’s eye view of every known set­tle­ment lay­out, com­plete with door, ter­mi­nal, and alarm pan­el loca­tions. Use­ful for set­tle­ment raiding.

  • For Exo­bio-spe­cif­ic tools, refer to the exo­bi­ol­o­gy chan­nel list­ed above.
 
Odyssey vs. Horizons (4.0)
Both ver­sions of the game share a sin­gle ‘galaxy’. They use the same CMDR, and the same Back­ground Sim­u­la­tion (BGS). Any­thing you do in one will be reflect­ed in the oth­er. They are, for all intents and pur­pos­es, the same game. You can login to either ver­sion inter­change­ably, with the caveat that Odyssey-spe­cif­ic con­tent requires run­ning Odyssey, and log­ging into Hori­zons while in an Odyssey-only area will kick you out of that area. (And if you’re on-foot, you’ll be returned to your ship.)
 
Play­ers can only wing up if they are run­ning the same ver­sion. Not every­one has Odyssey, so some­times join­ing up with anoth­er play­er will mean you will have to switch to Hori­zons. PTN com­mu­ni­ty events are run in Hori­zons when pos­si­ble because of this.
 
 
In Closing…
There is still much about Odyssey that has­n’t been cov­ered here, this guide being meant to get you start­ed. If, after read­ing every­thing, you still have ques­tions: Please don’t hes­i­tate to reach out and ask! o7, CMDR!
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