Logbook entry

DISTANT WORLDS II 3305 PART 2/3 - WP #6-12 (Trip #6)

Another great day in the cockpit finding a lot of undiscovered systems. I've made it as a standard procedure when traveling to the next waypoints to neutron boost 270Ly's away from the main route to find my own "path". Doing this, I find that almost every system is new out here. Had to take a look at this nice and colorful gas giant that really caught my eye.


Stopped by a few POI's on the last leg towards WP6 and was stunned by the beauty and colors of the "Cloverfield Planetary Nebula". This is one of the best looking planetary nebulas I have seen so far.


I have also received some great news today from a few commanders that skipped WP6 and went straight to WP7 at SagA*. They have docked at our new Ocellus starport that has been given the well suited name "Explorer's Anchorage". Can't wait to see it!

Arrived at the "New Aloros Ravine" basecamp at WP6 on the evening before launch day to prepare and meet up for the organized massjump. There hasn't been much time to explore the nearby area, but it's been another great week of exploring and discovering new things along the way. Ran into an area filled with White Dwarfs and so dense that I actually had to recalculate my route to avoid hitting them in every jump. Also found this  waterworld with a gigantic "Superman" logo on the surface (this can't be "Krypton"!!??)  


We have now gone into "Stage 2" of the expedition and I'm just over 5000 LY's from SagA* and the "Explorer's Anchorage". But there's a few really interesting POI's on the way that I don't want to miss, so my route will be a few LY's longer.

Goodbye WP6! A fantastic location was chosen as the launchpoint for the massjump, close to a white dwarf and and pointing our noses straight towards the system's black hole.

It's been a few day since leaving WP6 and as always I'm taking the time to explore and visit some of the recommended poi's along the route. Went to the "Black in Green" tourist installation which was really nice and a little sign of civilization out here. No landing pads or anything, but a great view. Have found a lot of undiscovered water worlds on this route, and one system was a real gem with 4 ww's (3 of them terraformable) and 9 terraformable HMCW's as an extra bonus (!!) which will be reported to the Galactic Mapping project. Passed "Great Annie" along the route and had to pay her a visit as it was a few years since my last time here.


Just a few hundred LY's from SagA* and I decided to call it a day as it was getting late. Found a nice landing spot in a canyon with an awesome view to a close gas giant.

49 days ago we departed from Pallaeni and today I could finally dock at the "Explorer's Anchorage" just a few LY's from SagA*. The station is still in its early building stages, but we will stay here for a few weeks to complete it and to make it a full blown "safe haven" for every long-distance explorer out here. Many services are already in operation and I was able to do some repairs and fresh up the paint on my "Prometheus". And this place even has a blackmarket! After putting the service crew to work I went straight down to the cartographic office to sell my data collected since leaving Polo Harbour. With thousands of other cmdr's on the same route (more or less) I was a bit nervous to see if I still had the "first discovered" status on this Quad Water World system I found just a few hundred LY's north of the "Black in Green" POI, and to my great relief it was still mine! Beside beeing a very interesting discovery, this single system paid out almost 27 million credits worth of cartographic data, and so far beeing a personal "all time high". So to celebrate my new discovered places and the great milestone of arriving at SagA*, there will be a free bar tonight with all drinks on me! Cheers!

The expedition has traveled far since we completed CG1 in Omega with our record breaking mining goal. The "Explorer's Anchorage" has been operational for a few weeks now, but there are still some work to do. We have now reached stage two and CG2 where the goal is to complete the station will all services. I'm ready to do my part this time as well and have signed up to collect Bauxite, water and liquid oxygene. In addition to expanding the stations facilities it has also been officially announced that a new megaship and a brand new research installation will be built here as a part of the CG to further facilitate the study of SagA*. Hopefully we will deliver enough "goods" to fulfill the goal (...of course we will!!) as this will be an important and a great step forward for the whole Elite exploration community.

Since there are no shipyard here at the station (yet), I wasn't able to transfer my new miner ASPX from CG1 at "Omega Mining Operation", but fortunately the outfitting service is fully operational here with all the necessary mining equipment available. Made a list of all the parts needed and about 8 hours later my great maintenance crew had converted the "Prometheus" into a full blown "mining monster" ready for duty. I got a good tip of a nearby  Bauxite mining hotspot (planet 2) just a few LY's from "Explorer's Anchorage", so I went straight out for a test run. Some slight adjustments to the firegroups to get everything perfect and shortly after I had mined, refined and delivered my first 160 tons of Bauxite before calling it a day.


Another occasion well worth celebrating is that we (Fleetcomm) also won the second squadron exploration season and could proudly collect another golden holo bobblehead at the nearest station. Great job, cmdrs!!

Time has come to conclude our historic milestone here at SagA*, leaving Explorer's Anchorage behind and continue the journey towards Beagle Point. I am having some mixed feelings leaving this great place as it has been my home for almost three weeks now. But at the same time I'm eager to move on with the expedition and the maintenance crew have already started to strip my Prometheus from all the mining gear and get her back to be the great explorer ship she is. Our work is done here, and having completed the mining CG far beyond tier 10 the station is just about to be completed and fully operational along with a new science lab and megaship that will arrive soon. And it's with great pride and honor I can say that I have been a part of building this new station here at SagA* which will be visited by thousands of other deep space explorers in the future!



Continuing our journey ahead, crossing The Abyss, Explorer's Anchorage will be our last sign of civilization for a very, very long time and things are about to get serious from now on as the path ahead won't become any easier than it has been so far. But hopefully we're all gonna make it safely back home!



65 commanders winged in and lining up for a giant massjump from SagA* tonight.

It's been almost a week since we massjumped from SagA* and started our long way towards WP8 and "Goliath's Rest". It was a rather long stretch at almost 9600LY's, visiting a few poi's on the way and the last 2500LY's was almost straight up high above the galactic plane. I found some nice looking places on the way, discovering lots of WW's and Neutron stars.


Landed at the basecamp "Hades Edge" by the end of the day, happy to have made it without any sorts of problems. Reaching Goliath's Rest can be a challenge and requires a high jumprange as it is located 2850LY's above the galactic plane and requires a lot of jumponium or neutron boosting. But the awesome view of the galaxy from here definetely makes it worth the "risk". 

The distance between the waypoints are getting bigger and at the same time there is so many new things to see and discover out here, so the time spent on the waypoints and basecamps has been shorter for each time. After a long and almost vertical climb all the way from the last wp, I finally arrived at Goliath's Rest and have been here for two days. Landed at the basecamp to meet up with some DW2 friends.

We have now covered about half the distance to Beagle Point, and the bubble feels more like a fainted memory that is just getting farther and farther away from us. After leaving Explorer's Anchorage and SagA*, many commanders have given up and returned home. Unfortunately, others had a more tragic outcome, beeing killed crashing into the ground of a high-G planet or overheating to death by an unsuccessful neutron star approach. According to EDSM DW2 expedition statistics (today), 2471 commanders have died and 916 have self-destructed so far; a clear indication that DW2 definetely isn't just a walk in the park!! But all the things we see, all the new friends we meet and just beeing a part of the awesome Distant Worlds 2 adventure, I wouldn't be missing this for the world no matter the risk or distance! Still with 100% hull and no module damage, me and my "Prometheus" are more than ready to move on and complete the whole expedition as long as we're flyable!

Fleetcom's "Flying colors" appearing as we massjump towards our 9th waypoint. The journey continues!

After leaving Goliath's Rest (the upper one) I flew about 1000LY's to visit "Iris' Missive", when I suddenly realized I had forgot to stop at "Lower Goliath's rest" which is the official EDSM waypoint. And as I am logging the expedition and all my jumps in EDSM, there was no other way than to fly the 2400LY's back to get it on the waypoint list. Discovered some really nice looking systems on the way, and by doing a few 270LY's neutron jumps, it didn't take more than a few hours until I was back on track and on my way to WP9.

On my last leg towards WP9 I stopped by to visit the "Dances with Giants" POI, which had a fantastic view of these two close orbiting gas giants.




Arrived at the "Tranquility Rest" basecamp at WP9 later the same evening. It's nice to be here way ahead of time and have a few days to just relax, socialize and maybe explore some of the nearby systems before we leave on sunday.

Back at Cerulean Tranquility after a few days of exploring nearby systems. Besides a few water worlds I found this 203 earthmasses(!!) giant Ammonia world and just mapping this beast required a whole bunch of probes.

The "Behemoth of Phroi"


63 ships ready to leave WP9

It's time to open a new bottle of Lavyan brandy today, as I could mark 80 days onboard the Prometheus in the captain's log since we made our first jump of Distant Worlds 2. Beeing almost 40 000 lightyears from home now, it almost feel like an eternity since we departed from Pallaeni. But I'm having such a great time out here, exploring all these great places, both known and undiscovered. And meeting so many new friends along the way, winging up in these awesome massjumps and all the fun at the basecamps has surely been some of the best parts of the expedition so far. GO FLEETCOMM!!

It was a short leg from WP9 to the "Morphenniel Nebula" at WP10, so I've mostly done small "economic" jumps to explore as much as possible on the way and not arriving too early. Landed at the basecamp close to "Mors Pit" where it was nice and quiet at the moment, having the whole place to myself. But I guess that will change drastically in a few days when the rest of the fleet arrives. 

These few days at WP10 has been surrealistic (in a VERY positive way) and it all started by leaving the basecamp for a few days doing some nearby exploring. After a while I suddenly bumped into a system with an undiscovered Helium Rich Gas Giant. Oh yes!! My first HRGG discovery...EVER!! But this was only the beginning of finding the "Holy grail" of Helium giants and there was so much more to come. I continued exploring the closest systems to my first discovery, hoping for a few more surprises and discovered one system after another containing a whole cluster of HRGG systems. After two days of systematically searching the area I had to get back to base in time for the upcoming massjump, but had so far scanned and mapped 13 systems with a total of 50(!!) shiny new Helium Rich Gas Giants!! Who knows how many more there are, so I might return at a later time to search for more. Here's the list of the HRGG cluster:

Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-15      (9 HRGG + 1WW)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-57      (3)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-164    (2)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-272    (5)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-281    (5)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-282    (1)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-288    (7)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-337    (2 + Water Giant)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-365   (2)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-382   (4)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-448   (3) Largest one found at 2896 earthmasses
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-502   (5)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-542   (1)
Phraa Byoe ZM-A d14-675   (1)



One big ringed Helium gas giants discovery


After almost three months out in the black we have now reached stage 3 of the expedition which will be mapping the Aphelion and concentrating on the Boreas, Styx and The Bleak Lands regions. The stretch from wp10 to wp11 will be the longest one so far, at almost 15 000LY's (directly) and the estimated arrival will be in a few weeks. But after my last discoveries I am so exited to see what else is out there to find.

Fleetcomm commanders leaving WP10 in another spectacular massjump

Still going strong after three months into the expedition, and soon starting on the last leg to Beagle Point, our main destination. As we have entered into the "real black" now I can sense that the fleet has become more quiet, which is probably due to concentrating on flying safely and cautious beeing 21000LYs from SagA* and Explorer's Anchorage. It's been a quiet week since we left WP10 and I have mostly been exploring alone without seeing anyone else on my route, except for few commanders when I landed at "Aristo"; our first resting point. For the Aphelion mapping project, I headed to explore the Styx region. Found a lot of awesome and pretty places, but not any submitting candidates so far, except for an interesting ELW system with a close orbiting moon that I might consider reporting.


After flying across most of the Styx region, I continued north and landed on our second resting point, "Kalipheron" to relax after a long exploring day. The distance to WP11 isn't very far from here and as we still have a week left before the meetup at "Luna's Shadow" I'm considering taking a detour using the next days to explore some of the "Bleak Lands" region.

After almost two weeks and a massive detour to explore the "Styx" and "Bleak Lands" regions I finally arrived and have landed safely at WP11 at "Luna's Shadow".

Found another cluster of 7 neighbouring Helium Rich Gas Giant systems on my way:

Swueneia SK-C d14-1    (1 HRGG)
Swueneia SK-C d14-2    (1 + WW)
Swueneia SK-C d14-6    (1) Largest one at 2758 earthmasses
Swueneia SK-C d14-44  (1)
Swueneia SK-C d14-92  (1)
Swueneia SK-C d14-111  (3)
Swueneia SK-C d14-123  (1)



We have two days left here at Luna's Shadow before the massjump towards Beagle Point. Until then I will just sit back, relax in my pilot seat and enjoy the view. The moon crater here at the basecamp are huge and looks interesting to explore, so I might take one of my "six-wheelers" out for a spin and have a closer look. 

After two relaxing days here at the WP11 basecamp it was time to leave and prepare for our last official massjump. Just over fifty ships had winged up into CMDR Rebecca Lansing's group and was lining up about two hours before the jump. The chat was busy and the mood was cheerful as always on these massjump events. We were wishing each other "safe journey and fly safe" before the final countdown. As I was recording the event as usual, I was one of the last ones to leave and after capturing the colorful trails from the jumping ships, I charged my FSD and prepared for my own jump. "Four, three, two, one…..ENGAGE!".

I dropped out of hyperspace after a few seconds entering the closest system as usual and everything looked normal. Many of the other ships were still in the system and as I was checking the galmap to plan a new route all hell suddenly broke loose when I saw the "Interdiction" warning appear. WTF....I'm in Fleetcomm private group and beeing interdicted?? Not good!! At 51 000LY's from the bubble this surely was no PVE interdiction so I prepared for the worst as it probably was a "sleeping ganker" in the group (we all had been warned about this). My gut feeling told me that this piece of sh*t probably would try to kill me and make me his personal "DW2 trophy". I'm used to evading interdictions in smaller and more manouverable ships, but I knew that trying to escape an interdiction from a probably skilled commander in my giant Anaconda would be a totally different ballgame. Starting to get really sweaty knowing that I suddenly could be in a very critical situation here, I desperaterly tried to evade him for a minute just to see if I could shake him off. But as expected this guy wasn't a noob and as I was watching the red interdiction bar getting higher and higher, terrified of losing everything, he threw me out of supercruise like a brick of stone. He instantly started to attack me with some serious hardpoints that instantly drained my shields and started to damage the hull. "THINK FAST, CMDR....REALLY FAST!!" I quickly realized that I wouldn't stand a chance getting out of this situation alive with no shields and just a single pulse laser, so the only option left to have any chance of surviving the attack was a relog.
But this horrifying "space drama" sure as hell wasn't over yet! As you all probably know there is a 15 seconds countdown delay before the log off activates when being in a threat situation, but it was the only thing to do at the moment. "3-2-1 - Exit to main menu!!". FINALLY!!!

The longest 15 seconds I have ever waited!!
A few minutes later still shocked by the whole thing and not knowing if the "Prometheus" had survived this gruesome attack or not I was almost to nervous to log back in to check the damages. But after a few minutes getting my heartbeats back to normal I logged into solo mode, and to my greatest relief - THERE SHE WAS!! Really beaten up but still alive during these last 15 seconds and with the hull down to 46% with heavy damage on all the modules she had survived the attack!

I have been to Beagle Point and half around the galaxy already and during my previous trips I have learned how to set up my ships for long journeys into the black. I had set up my hull armor with some heavy duty engineering so this is what probably saved me from total destruction. As I also brought my own repair limpets and two solid AFMU's, I didn't even need any assistance repairing myself and was shortly back at 100% on both hull and modules. Luckily my powerplant was almost undamaged and are at 95%, so we're as good as new and ready to move on with the expedition (still a bit shaky though..!)

Someone in the Fleetcom chat confirmed later that a few other commanders in our group also were attacked during the massjump by this same IDIOT!! Unfortunelately some of them weren't as lucky as me and got killed, but Frontier kindly restored their ships with all the explorer data and the ganker was instantly kicked from our group! But in Elite DANGEROUS, there are no guarantees that things like this won't happen again, so we need to be cautious at all times, especially during the massjumps, arriving at basecamps, waypoints, POI's etc until we are safely back home!



I have just started to cross "The Abyss" region now and I'm estimating to arrive at Beagle Point in a few days. As this is waypoint 12 and our last one on the expedition, this will (sadly) mark the end of the Distant Worlds 2. Many ships has arrived already and have started on their long journey back, some are staying, while others are continuing to explore "the edge" of the galaxy before returning home. I'm not sure about my own return plans yet, but will make a decision when I get there.

A few days ago we could also mark our 100th day of the expedition since we had our first jump from Pallaeni, which of course deserved a little celebration! 

111 days after starting the expedition from Pallaeni I could finally extract my gear and touch the grounds at Beagle Point basecamp tonight - and even on the "Star Wars day" ("May the fourth be with you!")

Immediately after landing I deployed my SRV for a few "victory rounds" to celebrate my arrival. Proud and happy I had to announce my arrival in the local chat and was instantly greeted by some of the local commanders at the site, releasing flares and firing some colorful mining lasers all around me. I couldn't have expected a better reception to mark my completion of Distant Worlds 2, so thank you guys!!



And what a great journey it has been in every way! Starting to look back after traveling almost four months and over 100kylies, it's hard to recollect all we have been through together on our way, but one of my best experiences was to be a part of building the "Explorer's Anchorage" station at SagA* and one of the first ships to have docked there. I've visited countless systems and great places on the way, and even got my name on a few rare ones that I will report to the Galactic Mapping Project to maybe become an interesting place for other commanders to visit in the future.

But even if DW2 has come to an end, I have to remind myself that I'm still only half the way in finishing the expedition and there are still tons of new systems out there to be discovered and maybe a few challenges too before I'm safely docked at Jameson Memorial back home. But I'm really going to miss all the fun we've had on our way, all the meetups at the basecamps, these awesome massjumps and last but not least, the great fellowship in our group (except for some griefers that messed up the day for some and almost put an end to me as well)! All in all Distant Worlds 2 has without a doubt been the greatest experience so far in my Elite career, and I really hope there will be a DW3!

I will be staying here at Beagle Point for a few days just to relax, reflect and plan my return route. Allthough I'm still not sure whether to go east or west, but either way I'm in no rush to get back to the bubble as both me and my crew on the "Prometheus" still are eager for some more deep space exploring. Before I set the course back, I will of course make a revisit to Semotus Beacon, the most distant known system from Sol at 65,647.34 LY's to enjoy the awesome view once more from the surface of Salome's Reach; the most distant reachable object from Sol.

As this great expedition now has come to an end, so has this logbook! Thank you for reading it!  Distance from Pallaeni (DW2 departure) to Beagle Point: 65153LYs

Fly safe "Distant World'ers" and have a great journey back home, whatever path you decide! o7

XhaleR