Well I have been interested in Elite Dangerous for awhile and I finally got around to buying it during the winter steam sale to play on my fresh new gaming PC. The first new game Ive played on it(new to me anyway).

I'm gonna go over my personal experience with the game thus far in this post.

Well I was pretty intimidated at first. Hearing talk mostly from Drew and Jeff. Well Drew inspired me to play while Jeff made it sound intimidating. I jumped in after hearing about hours of tutorials and difficulties to face. I did like three tutorials and watched a few videos to go with them which took 45 min at most and I loaded up the game proper. I did not know what to do next as the game seems to start you off incredibly slow as no one will trust you since you are new. I took a couple shitty take a thing from here to here missions then got a multipart mission that had a payout of over 100k. And found missions like that from time to time jumping at them. I then was able to afford a better ship, a cobra 3 I think. started doing missions in that, upgrading it as I went.

Then I read a post here saying to go to a resource extraction point and shoot down wanted folk and I started doing that making more money than I had thus far in short time.

I bought a second ship an eagle I think, small fighter craft. I want to build into a lil bounty hunter ship. But taking it out today I keep getting fucked up! I went to a REP and got near 200k of bounties and then I guess I accidentally shot a fed and they turned on me and killed me. and I lost all of the bounties!

Now I don't really know what to do next. Just keep doing the REP thing or try something new. do I give up on the lil eagle and go back to my cobra? Seems like I have hit a grind. I think I have 400k cash and my cobra is worth like 800k as a trade in.

Hey, glad to hear you're getting into elite, at times its a really amazing game.

In my experience the main thing you want to avoid is getting bogged down in any kind of grind, its the quickest way to make the game boring. As for what you want to do next, that depends on what you're interested in.

If you like combat, you could also try finding a system that is currently at war. They should have conflict zones you can supercruise into and then join one side or the other and start earning combat bonds. Then you can turn these in at a local starport for cash. Conflict zones are fun because its like a more intense version of the RES, where everyone is fighting like crazy. I think Galnet will occasionally list some systems that are currently at war.

Another thing I enjoyed doing was taking part in Community Goals, these are larger goals that multiple people can contribute to. You can find a list of the active CGs in this thread (there might not be any going on at the moment). You'll get a bigger payout the more you contribute to the goal.

As for what ship to stick to, that depends on what you want. The eagle is probably the better combat ship, its more maneuverable and has better weapon placement, but the Cobra is the better all rounder, its has bigger internals and a longer jump distance. The short jump distance on the eagle always kind of annoyed me, but some people really like that ship.

Coriolis.io is a really good place for messing around with different ship builds and seeing what you can afford. Keep in mind that different stations stock different stuff, so you might need to shop around to find the components you're looking for.

Anyway, I would say just try different stuff. Don't worry too much about maximizing efficiency, just try a bunch of different stuff and see what you like.

Elite has sucked me back in since Horizons launched, although I'm not touching much of the Horizons content.

I wiped my save and started fresh (been playing the game off and on since the Beta) and was amazed at how less grindy it was to make money and afford better ships. I think I was in a Cobra in under an hour...

I'm Rare trading at the moment, pulling in 500,000 creds a run in a Cobra and daring pirates to come at me.

I always went to high intensity extraction sites. I didn't make much money doing "quests" and some of them don't really work very well. Also purchased one of those attachments that allow me to scan a target for bounties. Use my lasers to take their shields down and then my gatling guns to chew through hull.

Haven't touched it in several months but I want to get back to it.

I also bought it during the winter sale and I've played a few hours. It's stressful! But in a really good way. I'm still trying to get a handle on the controls and what I may enjoy doing most. Thanks for the tips, I am looking forward to trying out all sorts of stuff!

I need to actually get into this game. Playing it on and off since launch and not really doing anything aside from flying around looking at stuff hasn't made me much money (in a week you have got more than I ever have had). But then again I love how the Eagle flies so I'm not really bothered by it. Stripped out the weapons and put in a basic scanner and just flyin, with that huge glass canopy.

Though I do wanna pimp out an adder for exploration some time. Just need the time.

I put something like 400 hours into Elite: Dangerous and probably did less than five quests that entire time. They are just the most boring, poorly designed things imaginable.

Question about combat zones. How do I know who to shoot? I liked that in the RES areas I had enough rep with the feds to have them show green on my radar. So I would just scan anyone who wasn't green until I saw wanted guys or just look around until I saw any gunfire and fly at that. But with combat zones I don't even know who is fighting who and I don't want to piss off the wrong group. Should I not be worried about that?

Ive been looking at other ships I might want to work toward but everything above what I have(that I will be able to afford soon) seems like clunky cargo ships and I guess thats not what I'm looking for.

In Combat Zones you need to go to your computer on the right hand side and look at Functions, figure out who is aligned with the side you want rep for, and then sign up with them. Once you do that, all of the ships on the opposing side will turn red on your radar and become enemies that you can target.

@devil240z: I like to set routes to random systems that are reasonably far from me just to explore and take pictures (screenshots). Once I'm done with my space road trip I roll back into a populated system and turn in my exploration data for money.

It's relaxing. You grab a coffee, throw on some John Coltrane, and enjoy the vast beauty outside of your heavily reinforced windshield.

@mike: I think that's what I've been doing wrong. The game has just felt super grind-y, but I've been doing missions one after another the entire time. The 10,000 credit at a time thing really makes it take forever to get an upgraded ship. I played for two days straight and ended up with a nicely kitted Hauler. Don't know how that other dude ended up with a Cobra in an hour.