How To map planets to find Exo-Biology in Elite Dangerous

[@auburnfire]

A couple of points... You can use your ship's composition scanner as you fly above the surface (bind it to a fire group then switch to that group, you will get its reticule), if something is biological (or geological) it will highlight and beep when the center of the scanner passes over it. This can be very useful if you're searching for, say, bacteria that is the same color as the soil, looks just like the local rock outcrops or the planet is so dark you're struggling to see. (It's not really particularly useful most of the time though.) You can also run the composition scanner on biologicals and get a small codex bounty. Most of the time it will id the biological for you and you can decide if it's worth your time to land and properly scan it. You can run with night vision on, even in the daylight, and it will sometimes highlight groups of plants noticeably (you get to recognize the unusual clusters of dots from beyond visual range, may be dependent on graphics card?) Useful for, say, tussocks, not so much for bacteria. Very, very occasionally I've been able to use reflected sunlight to highlight a bacteria I find that flying over about 45m/s lags out biologicals and most of them wont display until I slow down and give them time to render. Similarly small plants require you to be closer to the ground (20m?) to spot them whereas larger plants like tubus towers may be visible over 100m On low gravity worlds you can fly upside down which gives a larger field of view (at least in an asp). On heavy gravity worlds your side/top thrusters may be too weak to maintain altitude so use caution to avoid crashing. Each plant type generally has its own biome. For example fungi like mountains, spiralis like rocky outcrops on flatland and bacteria like flatland. I've found the inside of craters to sometimes be biological hotspots. Also each plant has a custom distance that you have to go for the next reading. Sometime this is quite short and I've had tussocks (for example) where I've got three readings on foot from the same patch whereas stuff like fungoida stabitis I just return to the ship and thrust for at least 1000m before looking for the next group. Oh, and different species of plants may be limited by the atmosphere type of the planet so bacterium informen in nitrogen atmosphere are worth a lot more (426k) than bacterium acies in neon (50k). On low gravity worlds you can jetpack pretty high to get a better view of the surroundings. Much above 0.15 and it doesn't help too much.

[@1000-THR]

Pretty useful on my home planet which lacks natural light at the moment It actually has a very elliptical orbit and sometimes is very bright or completely dark Right now it is 5000 ls away from main star

[@pikuhana]

Instead of looking from the inside of your ships cockpit, I reccommend going into freecam and attaching your camera to the bottom of your ship at an angle where you can just see the nose of your ship. Just switch over to ship controls and it will allow you to keep an extremely low altitude without colliding with the surface which can be super useful for finding your exo quicker

[@insecteater1]

@@pikuhana Thank you very very much for that comment.

[@ianoag]

This is probably the best "How to . . . " guide for Odyssey I've seen so far. Thanks for posting ! o7

[@265nb]

To save you looking through the CODEX for the specific distances required to attain genetic diversity, here it is: 150m Aleoids 500m Bacterium 300m Cactoida 150m Clypeus 150m Concha 1,000m Electricae 500m Fonticulua 300m Fungoids 500m Stratum 150m Shrubs (Frutexa) 200m Tussock 800m Osseus 800m Tubus Towers 150m Recepta 100m Fumarola I find that the SRV is better for hunting down the next sample, except for Bacterium, Fungoids and Osseus which are generally easier in your ship.

[@mahatmaghabdu7592]

u are the messiah

[@CAPHOTO1961]

I found if you use exterior camera and go up above your SRV and look down while you drive, you can easily spot the bacterium, etc. Thank you for your distance info!

[@EMPJetTrooper]

@@CAPHOTO1961 Eeeey, good idea that!

[@TwstedTV]

Are you only allowed to do this once ? Or is this farm-able ? Like once every 24-hours or 48-hours. ?

[@IIYvesChiefII]

@@TwstedTV Once you've scanned a planet it's done. You can sell the data once. So no need to go back to a planet.

[@LMERS2N]

You've put a nice, positive spin on a slightly negative activity. I truly appreciate your efforts. Finding geological materials (for your ship) still seems easier through Horizons. I just bought an Artemis Suit today and will give this a more than fair attempt, though. Thanks again for tackling this newly difficult subject.

[@zeehero7280]

activity isn't negative but trying to do it without a guide is frustrating and that's negative.

[@ecso828]

Thank you for the video. Learned something I didn’t know. I like how life is more dispersed around the planets now. Thicker in some areas, harder to find in others. Much more realistic than a few high density spots and nothing anywhere else. It’s also easy to come across dense geological or biological areas to farm various raw materials. Odyssey added so much to the game and created a framework to add so much more.

[@ScanpieNightmoon]

7:03 if you can't disembark, you can still use your SRV or ship composition scanner to "ping" your discovery.

[@Flyersftw]

Your tutorials have been immensely helpful for me, thank you for taking the time to make them!

[@TLPagut]

Wow no one talks about this. Was so confused when the Geological Signals stopped appearing in the left panel after upgrading to Odyssey.

[@TheLukemcdaniel]

I took a bit of a haiatus and wasn't able to play for about a year. and came back to discover this. I fucking HATE this change.

[@happyspaceinvader508]

@@TheLukemcdanielWell, it certainly makes finding biological stuff orders of magnitude harder than it used to be. The heat map is essentially meaningless, as it doesn’t correspond to the presence of the biological material you select in the scanner view. I’m not really sure how to interpret it at all and, as usual, Frontier haven’t bothered to put anything in the help section.

[@thelionsam]

A very nice starter guide 👏🏻 Standing on the roof of your ship with a weapon with a modded scope is a great way to look 360 deg. from a point too. Using NV in the ship or on foot helps highlight 'some' bio/geo features too.

[@kevpeters2537]

Hi. Very helpful, thanks. Been running a new commander for a week or so grinding away on ground combat to get some money built up but man it's a grind. Now I know how to do this I'm gonna go out and make some money. Cheers for that.

[@GrahamAstles]

Thanks for this - very informative. I've been this for a while, and still learned some new things. On the issue of scanning multiple organisms; there is some engineering that you can do that allows for three species to be scanned concurrently. The engineer (or the only one I have discovered) is in Colonia though, so a bit of a trek of you are in the primary bubble.

[@jimstarke2339]

Which engineer is that? Thanks in advance!

[@owlangel7234]

Also i find using the external camera drone ships provide very useful as when looking for features I fix the drone about 100m below the ship towards the back and fly the ship while viewing the from the drone. Takes a bit of practice and make sure all pips are to shields just in case.

[@DavidUtau]

Nah. Objects spawn from the ship position, not the camera position. So, if you use this method, you just got an awkward, inneficient way of doing things. Better to get a semi-agaile ship to do the deed, with a good canopy (for the love of god, don't use the anaconda for this...)

[@owlangel7234]

@@DavidUtau Strange, it works really well for me. Maybe it's to do with your Model Draw distance although I assumed that didn't apply to organics.

[@Master_K14]

Wait how do you do this mate?

[@owlangel7234]

CTL, alt, space bar takes you to the external ship view and you can use the camera controls to fix the camera view just below the ships nose

[@Master_K14]

@@owlangel7234 Thanks so much man Just tried it , now I can finally take those stunning screenshots of a pulsar, or a sunrise on a planet i happen to be within the atmoshpere of

[@TorbenAsp]

Davs....Vil bare sige at dine videoer har hjulpet mig rigtigt meget, så jeg er kommet godt igang med Odyssey..Tak! ;o)

[@TaSwavo]

Brilliant - too many people are not showing Odyssey stuff (all of it) as it since launch. They did the alpha videos and though that was enough. WRONG. Those providers need to realise (a) not everyone did the alpha with them, (b) lots of people decided to ignore alpha videos because they were alpha, (c) lots of people will come the the game since Odyssey released. I hope this is the first of a series from Astro - he does it well.

[@ubermeg]

It's still only in beta ;-)

[@DavidUtau]

"providers" lmao It was NOT an alpha. It was festure complete at the time. That's what we call a beta. So people paid to be beta testers.

[@sabertooth1679]

That locating Geo sites will make finding mats even more of a chore. It's the 31st century the comps can't show at least a rough marker location for Geo mats? I may end up stopping any engineering once they bring this to horizons and it definitely is not making me want to buy odyssey when they get it optimized. It was a good vid though D2E.

[@SteveSiegelin]

If you're doing a detailed scan and you're using a controller you can hold the left bump to see the back of the map. If you hold the blue circle so that the edge is just above the top line marker and you can hit dead center in the back. It took me a while but I had dead center all the time now. Use the little lines as markers. If you're fully engineered then you will always need one less than it calls for. Bigger ships have bigger scanners. What I wanted to see was an easier way to locate the biology. I wanted to see if there was anything I was missing. I've spent hours roaming services but I don't give up until I find all the biology or geology on the planet. Manly I'm after the biology though.

[@crimsonmug9106]

It's a shame they don't have an upgrade for the tool that allows scanning multiple type of plants at a time. Not that I'd really use it. This exploration stuff is too slow for me. I guess that's mostly a travel time thing though.

[@mwbgaming28]

I just log back into horizons, this change has made farming raw materials pretty much impossible

[@PhoenixDfire]

Just one additional point. Each biological type has a different distance that you need to travel before you'll be able to scan for the next one. E.G. some tussock grasses have a range of 150m so you don't have to get back in the ship and fly off. You can find out how far you need to go by looking up the biological's entry in the codex and at the top of the Biological type it will tell you how many metres you need to go to find the next one. Love the new Biological scanning, love the new ways to finds Planetary points of interest but it feels a step backwards for finding Geologicals and other old horizon content.

[@TheDockratt]

good info, thanks!

[@grafcarabas6643]

Someone explained me the meaning of the different colours - finaly. 🙂 A well earned like.

[@lellamas2778]

Love your tutorials sir.

[@cmdrc-dweller3103]

Catching up after a year Astro. Very helpful as always; very much appreciated... and still subscribed of course. 😉😁🙏🖖O7

[@martinjh999]

Also if you can unlock the +100% Probe Radius DSS from the human tech broker it makes things a hell of a lot easier when scanning too. Just did a small expedition out to the Bubble Nebula and back and I never missed a efficiency bonus with one... :)

[@Master_K14]

How do you unlock it?

[@daminguez]

Thx for the video! Awesome! :)

[@alexandrevlaemynck9432]

hey, on top as usual ;)

[@andrewparkin4036]

Thanks it was really informative

[@skarmex3439]

I will have to do this; I did this at the starting point for a credit boost of 14.7m credits when I first started as a direction from a friend. (You can go to HIP 97950 ABC 1 G in the starting system and there are 4 biological scans there, I got 3 of them and sold them for 14.7m)

[@psvialli]

Many thanks Awesome really helped me out !!

[@monotimous5522]

Really useful nowadays with the increased payouts. Thanks!

[@ironfbody]

It is quicker to map a planet if you fire the "back" probes first, then the edge ones then the front.

[@HalfFireFortress]

D2EA if you didn't know they changed how unsafe temperatures worked from the alpha. Your disembark button wasn't greyed out which means you can still disembark, you will just take constant heat damage.

[@CmdrJT]

Awesome! Great explanations

[@StasAbrosimov]

8:50 All distances for each type of biological find are described in the code.

[@owlangel7234]

Biomes are just the biological areas. Geomes are the geological ones. Also I'm not sure the changes in blue are actually intended to show a different geome. I believe they DO correlate to finding stuff because the change in blue texture is due to factoring of the blue overlay with the geology on the surface. I think the blue if flat with changes in colour bleeding through. I reckon its accidental. You can get a feel for this by flipping between the different signal sources and seeing the bue changing. The same patterns sometines exist for different types of geo or bio features. Basically for a given type the blue shows the probable areas for finding them but I've noticed that like you say in the vid some things like mountains say, and even if blue for them is in the plains you are still better looking in the mountains

[@NetherViking]

Thank you for this video. I am doing exobiology for a long time. But how did you make the scanner work (8:30)? Because I can't use that feature for some wierd reason. Could someone point me to the right direction? Or how can I find it in the key bindings? Thank you in advance.

[@jocknielsen1101]

Excellent guide! A lot of things in there that are far from obvious. I can hardly wait to go exploring. Just a litle definition-thing: if you don't have enything living in a place I don't think you can call it a biome.

[@Kludar]

Liked and subbed, with appreciation, CMDR o7

[@CAPHOTO1961]

What do you think about the new planetary POI system? Im finding it a bit unrealistic as I was out 1900ly from Maia scanning first discovery planets which were all littered with "small wreck", "distress beacons" I filled up my cargo hold with 32 occupied escape pods from 4 planets. LOL I think the blue circle system was better, and it was a mystery as to what you would come across, now its the same list of POIs over and over. However, I do like the biome map system. I just wonder if color blind people will have trouble with this?

[@garthofavalon]

You explain things really well,so I have subscribed, thank you. I am very new to Elite (playing for about 3 weeks). Ok I worked out how to scan the solar system with the FSS but I have no ides how you fire off probes when you come up and close to the planet. Can you explain how this is done please?

[@DNH17]

Can you move 1 km away with SRV? Get off the SRV and do the analysis then come back from the triangular road trip to the ship? Thanks for the video! Yooo!

[@mitjapuntar]

im one of the last third. You got me with that. :D

[@ubermeg]

It would be great if plants could also have some effects. Like poisonous snd some healing for example. I do think the science element is lacking somewhat too.

[@lellamas2778]

Or like in nature -how some ants defend their aphid "farms" - ie hostile alien beasts defending their fungi.. and you get attacked while fiddling with their farm

[@Striker9]

Wish I had known about needing to go way lower first few times I did planetary exploration lol. Wasted a few days searching and completely missing I'm sure quite a few things

[@stefanwert3795]

You can skip the FSS if the planets have already been discovered, just go straight to the system map. Big time saver in systems with lots of bodies.

[@s1ler]

I subbed because you asked lol

[@FrankBernaldo]

How do you do thermal view? I haven't seen that before.

[@usversusthem_band]

why not use an srv for the hot planets or just in general?

[@MotoNationUSA]

I am out in the black scanning planets that have never been discovered and then mapping some of the interesting ones. If I land on one of these planets does the generation system have a chance of placing alien artifacts or guardian ruins or anything of a constructed nature?

[@DarkMage1972]

At 7:42 you seem to be hitting a button to switch from the bluish hue of a mapped planet to a planet's regular view, what is function called?

[@TripLives]

He's hitting the cockpit mode button, switching between combat and analysis modes.

[@OWG1969]

Where do you get that scanner? I do t have one and can’t find where to buy it.

[@batchie0950]

When i fire my probes i see them hit and The blue circle expands to show scanned area but then goes dark again so i cant see which bits are done. Am i missing something out?

[@Putti509]

Just curious, is it possible to revisit and gather samples of a planet you visited before after an X amout of time and get the same value of money?

[@ThaVezz]

6:39 Ooops! 😂

[@thebagfather4633]

cheers great vid o7

[@vaulimere]

the color map is pretty useless since it's only available in supercruise or glide, plus the color differences appear to be more height map differing than actual indicators of biological life availability. FDev really dorked things up going this route, imo.

[@mertar3608]

Video request, if I might be so cheeky?... Any chance of a video about stuff we may see in the galaxy backdrop? Some stuff is obvious like nebulas, stars and some the distant galaxy's like andromeda but now and then I spot stuff like a random coloured dot (Red, Yellow and Blue dots so far) and it really drives me mad trying to find them and reach them not evening knowing if they are reachable.

[@frankshailes3205]

Type "Lemon Slice" in the Galaxy map and search... used to be unreachable before carriers

[@ryanmaris1917]

The codex apparently will tell you how far to go to get genetic diversity.

[@BrightonGemstones]

We need a scout ship option for us explorers.

[@SAFeCRACKeR09]

I've not done any exploration in Odyssey but are you saying geological and biological sites don't show up in the ship's navigation panel after scanning a planet with your DSS probes, like in Horizons?

[@Esseker639]

Yup, they don't, sadly.

[@SAFeCRACKeR09]

@@Esseker639 thanks for the confirmation.

[@mdaniels6311]

I tried for hours to find something and foud nothing. I give up!

[@danielsantos6437]

I'm going to be honest, I love exploration and even to me all that was boring af. We are in 2021, at least give us a marker. I mean all that flying around and scanning system then planet and then some more chores to get barely any materials or reward. Another utterly pointless grind to give players a poor excuse to waste time. It would be fine if either the activity was fun to do or the reward was proportional to time invested but alas.

[@jadonx]

I agree the development think we have hours of free time!

[@selfactualizer2099]

Imagine how fked we would be in real life if we had to do all that lol

[@SteveSiegelin]

I loved exploration when it first came out, I had the pre-release of Odyssey and I made a bunch of discoveries. I also found new systems that no one had found yet at the time. When they released Odyssey to the public that took all of our achievements as well as purchases away. I got pissed off and quit playing, what I didn't realize is they gave me a bad ass paint scheme that you cannot buy in the store for my asp explorer and I finally started it flying it this year. It's a green chameleon paint. Add fades to Blue when you're looking at the front and green in the back. I'm still mad that they took my plan it's and my biology away but I'm quite happy with the new paint scheme. It is literally the best paint scheme I have ever seen for the asp explorer. There's a few things that I've learned throughout the years. If you're looking for bacteria look in the light soil. The whiter the soil the more bacteria you'll find. Fungi like giant mushrooms will grow anywhere. So will grasses. There are a few planets I have been to that you can only find bacteria on hilltops. It's easier to search for biology on foot but if there's biology and geology bring your SRV so you can scan the geological structures. Being as it is 2024, be careful where you're exploring if it's over by a thargiod controlled system. Bacon randomly appear in the system. . . Even on planets! Yeah, that was fun. If you are new I would say stay away from any alien contested star systems because the minute you die you lose all of your research! That was a painful day after 12 planets with two biology on most of them, it took me seven and a half hours to scan all of those planets and then I was pulled out of frameshift going in between Stars. I wasn't in supercruise, I was in jump. They will screw your day up if your ship is not built for it.

[@jonsmith2202]

We must remember that Elite Dangerous is a simulator. It’s not a game you can pick up and expect it to reward you handsomely for scanning the ground or picking up a rock.

[@SteveSiegelin]

@@jonsmith2202 no but as someone in the agriculture industry and who went to school for aerospace it has given me some ideas

[@Quarrel47]

Is this still viable today? same idea and methods to find this kind of data? and how well do they pay out?

[@TexanEton]

Yes, there are so many in the game. Just fly up a bit and then fly out. you'll get a system little if any has been too

[@technoviking2415]

So is it true you cant even find the shards in odessey

[@ZorroComputers]

Today we can see cars number plates from space. And this is 31 century. Ridiculous.

[@orii-raepoole5446]

i dont get how the biome/color map corresponds to where you can find stuff? Is there a particular colour which you need to land at or what? I can't find anything. Why have all the different colours? This is so confusing/annoying, I can't find a full guide on how all this is meant to work

[@nenaddodos984]

Tnx bro

[@happyspaceinvader508]

I still don’t understand the purpose of the “heat map” if it’s not an actual heat map. I’m at a planet right now that claims to have 3 biological types, but the areas highlighted in blue contain nothing at all.

[@CruelViper88]

Aha...so thats how I should read the planet and know where to land.

[@TheKermit2110]

Frontier need to sort out the multi-biome sampling mechanic so you can mix it up - perhaps with different canister-types?

[@KevinLovesAmanda1229]

Console players are smelling the fresh baked cookies while pc players are enjoying them

[@theguylevi]

Its getting difficult to avoid Odyssey videos...😔

[@siejcastielle]

7:11 - 7:22 Eewww...What Bull dropped that on the barn floor ?🤮

[@m1lkm8n78]

Hahah. I thought that stupid blue covering was a bug

[@ghillan]

ok .. not sure why you looked for geological with the ship. Just land, use an srv with its geo scanner ??? ( same as the old the horizons way ). The lava thing you found had a piceous cobble, so srv scanner should have spotted it from far.

[@whendarknessfalls6969]

Good refresher. Time to get rich😎

[@Crusina]

Nah this is stupid. Removing pos sights is dumb.

[@ΓιώργοςΚ-ε8τ]

Thanks bro. But it's such a bummer to play odyssey any more...

[@williamvorkosigan5151]

Excellent video. That looks like zero fun. I have Odyssey. I fly in Odyssey and I do zero of the added Odyssey content. The auto landing on planets with a docking computer fitted is a good feature.

[@j.d.4697]

Do the Odyssey planets still look this terrible now in 2023?

[@sausageslaps]

not a fan of this bio method but i have gotten it figured out, i wish they would re establish the poi's and the shard sites.

[@gamertank1987]

confusing

[@mantabloke8141]

Nice vid crap implementation by fdev

[@mrdub5214]

Wtf man all the vids for farming raws material they need to change it back so you can select geological sites this is game breaking man so so so long just to get raw materials now that's even worse then using the coordinates we had to use before so so sad now 😢 😞 😔

[@ZoeSummers1701A]

ED is so shit. All that travelling scanning and flying to get nothing. Utterly pointless.

[@lillen141]

This is so stupid. Good vid tho.

[@derivious2012]

I miss playing elite, I wish it still existed or ever did exist

[@figwe777]

We should get a player based petition going and send it to frontier with regards to ship interiors. After all Elite Dangerous is a kickstarter game. And in that case the user is always right.

[@Pitchlock8251]

This is a horrible way to do search for anything. Slow clap Fdev, Slow clap.

[@majorbogart3476]

It's sad to think that I may just move on from Elite... The fun has died a slow and painful death, and the management has gone completely tone deaf to their fans, and the current market... VR hardware sales and user base at an all time high? Perfect time to drop VR development. We mentioned walking around in ships and fans haven't shut up about it since, but we aren't going to do it anymore because we think it isn't FUN ENOUGH compared to the rest of our grind. The fans were overwhelmingly unhappy about Odyssey and the direction it took, but we will tell the shareholders that "connection issues" were really the overshadowing problem. A part of me still kind of hopes that Elite can pull a No Man's Sky and suddenly turn things around, but people forget that the only reason that happened is because NMS made a shit ton of money that allowed that to happen.

[@unisonique]

You have no idea how much you have helped me. I wanted to give up and uninstall! THANKS