Everspace 2 has been in Early Access for just over two years, and finally hit version 1.0 on April 6th 2023. Here are the ten best tips and tricks aspiring pilots need to know from grizzled veterans.
The Best Tips And Tricks For Everspace 2
#1: The longer you linger in a zone, the more likely you are to be ambushed by multiple waves of ships, including Drones, Fighters, Interceptors, Corvettes, and Frigates, finally culminating in mostly indestructible Colonial Warships jumping in; at this point you should definitely tap out and jump out. Points of interest are also a trigger for Outlaw and Okkar faction ambushes.
#2: Don’t be tempted to hoard your secondary weapons and consumables–they’re easy to craft, and resources are plentiful. Focus instead on eliminating your opposition as quickly and efficiently as possible. While total annihilation isn’t necessary, you could lose out on potential profits from failing to dismantle everything you encounter, so balance your risk/reward assessment.
#3: And make effective use of the ability to pause time in the equipment menus to craft those secondaries and consumables, even in the midst of battle. The only exception is one very specific sector (1-6) in Hardcore mode, where menu pausing is one of two selectable handicaps. Another use of pause time would be to strategize and determine your targeting priority for large groups of enemies: Drones first, since they deal high damage, but are relatively weak. The individual turrets on Colonial Warships can be targeted and destroyed, but these final wave ships themselves cannot, so lower their priority. Be wary of quick reinforcements jumping in immediately after destroying the Okkar faction’s Corvettes and Frigates.
#4: One thing you definitely should hoard early in the game though, are Access Keys for derelict Colonial Stations, and one of sixteen (seventeen if you Kickstarted Everspace 2) Subroutine enhancements located within. Elites are the primary source for these keys, and the Subroutine ship upgrades gained can greatly enhance your ship’s capabilities, with armor bonuses and weapon damage boosts.
#5: Use Everspace 2’s photo mode, dubbed ‘Action Freeze,’ as a reconnaissance tool. This is especially useful in scanning for mines your ship could trigger while weaving through the tight spaces around space derelicts and debris fields. The default key binding for Action Freeze on PC is ‘Z’.
#6: Balance the concurrent use of boost-dodging and weapon-firing, as doing so is a strain on energy reserves. Instead of boosting at all, fall back on the familiar circle-strafing of traditional shooter combat, and combine that with the verticality of space to hover up and down, in order to evade incoming fire.
#7: Don’t simply rush from point A to point B in a straight hard burn. Ship energy reserves recharge twice as fast when passive and immobile, but only after a very brief cooldown. Use that downtime to pan the camera around in freelook, get your bearings, and chart an exploratory detour or two.
#8: As starting perks for novice pilots go, you can’t ignore resource and loot centric perks, especially Credit Loot Bonus, which will greatly speed up your progression. Rare Loot Chance, on the other hand, only maxes out at 10% after four total upgrades, and doesn’t seem to be worth the boost. Energy Core and Engine perks are also a no-brainer. Don’t let spec-regret hold you back either–you can respec perks anytime when docked at a station.
#9: Invest in a Cargo unit for your ship early on, wasting no time at all in buying one outright from a trading outpost–hoping to stumble upon one as a fairly uncommon drop is futile. The four cargo slots will greatly augment your otherwise paltry default inventory space. After hard-fought combat, not having to leave gear, goods, and research tech behind is a definite plus.
#10: Dismantling (hold ‘X’ on PC) modules and weapons accumulated in the Cargo unit doesn’t just spit out their component parts, but also generates crafting XP which is used to unlock blueprints for further crafting. However the XP is only contributed to blueprints of the corresponding rarity–dismantling purple (Superior) items only goes towards purple blueprints. Crafting and dismantling items over and over, until satisfied with the resulting product is a viable strategy, due to the minimal loss incurred in crafting parts.
That’s it for our top ten tips and tricks for Everspace 2! Happy spacefaring!
