The final Elite Dangerous Horizons expansion, The Return, is out this week, reigniting humanity’s war with the Thargoids after three decades of dormancy. And the Elite Dangerous community is diving into the revived conflict headfirst… with mostly disastrous consequences.
We’ve known for months the Thargoids would come back in Elite Dangerous. Frontier has been teasing the aliens’ return for the better part of two years now and CEO David Braben said as much when we spoke with him back in June. But we’re not sure anyone was prepared for just how truly outclassed humanity would be when the Thargoids decided to stop interdicting random pilots and actually turn their weapons on human ships.
Solo efforts to fight the Thargoids have ended in complete disaster. Group encounters haven’t ended much better. One pilot even posted a memorial photo, on the ED subreddit, of 21 commanders who failed to take down a Thargoid together. But there have been a few small victories.
Cmdr. LowOrbit successfully took a small tissue sample from a Thargoid vessel. LowOrbit followed a Thargoid signal near Asterope to find one of the mammoth ships that human players have failed to defeat. Using a Research Limpet Drone, the commander managed to secure a “Thargoid Cyclops Tissue Sample” from the unidentified vessel. The tissue appears to be corrosive, because it instantly began damaging the various modules on LowOrbit’s ship, and no one has figured out what to do with said tissue sample yet. Another pilot, Cmdr. ChemicalGoo, says they retrieved a small amount of data and materials during their own encounter with a Thargoid.
Some pilots have also temporarily disabled Thargoid vessels with Guardian relics, giving the community a chance to document three unique symbols that appear on the enemy ships. One player group also reported engaging Thargoids in combat for almost two hours, without sustaining any player casualties, but even Prismatic Imperium failed to take down a Thargoid vessel.
We may not have much hard data yet, but the community is already putting together some interesting theories. One commander wonders if Thargoid vessels encountered in recent months are actually the Thargoids themselves; a species so large and unlike our own that we perceive them to be ships.
For a sneak peek at the Thargoid adversaries Elite Dangerous players will be battling for the next few months (maybe longer), take a few minutes to revisit the “Commander Chronicles: Retaliation” trailer released earlier this month. Then head down to the comments and let us know if you plan to join humanity’s war against the Thargoids now that The Return is available on PC and consoles.
Elite Dangerous is currently available for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
Be sure to check back with Player.One and follow Scott on Twitter for more Elite Dangerous news in 2017 and however long Frontier Developments supports Elite Dangerous in the years ahead.
