Distant Worlds 2 – Been There. Seen It.

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After three months of gameplay participating in the Distant Worlds 2 expedition in Elite Dangerous, I managed to arrive at Beagle Point, one of the farthest systems in the galaxy.

INV Deep Space I in the Beagle Point System

This included several thousand jumps (each jump takes about one to two minutes), scooping fuel, repairing the ship and such things. There was a tough schedule by the organizers, including several waypoints on the expedition.

There is already a in-game sickness called Space Madness.

Space madness is a psychological condition that some pilots get while traveling in deep space for long periods. It’s a bit like vertigo, and is caused by being adrift without any reference points.

Once you get there you will have an incredible view of our galaxy.

As far as I know, the simulation behind the game creates systems when being visited the very first time. There seem to be some awesome algorithms. E.g. when Kepler 425reb was discovered, the simulation already had a similar system generated before and was updated accordingly with the real data.

I finally arrived there with a delay of two weeks behind the official schedule. All pilots arriving there, are rewarded with a certificate of completion, which I can proudly present.

Distant Worlds 2 Completion Certificate

There is also an in-game reward, an emblem to be shown on your ship. This, however, can be only equipped when being docked at a spaceport. This will take another few months to arrive at the nearest station.

A few thousand gamers went there and back. If you want to follow my trip back, you can have a look at my Twich channel where I stream my way back when being in the game.

Elite Dangerous DW2 Mass Jump on XBOX

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As you might know, I am very in the space simulation Elite Dangerous. It is a remake of the 1984 game Elite, which actually was one of my very first games on Amiga. Todays Elite Dangerous is quite some grinding game. While you can drive on planets with some kind of buggy, you can grind for ship, trade and explore the vast numbers of star systems in our galaxy. There is an interesting background simulation with different factions trying to influence the state of star systems, the economics theirs and so on. While there is no crossplay functionality, all players do work on the same background simulation, which again forms communities over all supported platforms (PC, XBOX and PS4) playing virtually together.

While players have only discovered less than 1 percent of avaislable star systems, at the current rate, it will take the community more than 50 years (yes, fifty) to visit all star systems in this game.

From time to time there are community events. Right now, there is an eight-month event called Distant Worlds 2 where more than 10.000 players travel together to the most remote system known in the galaxy which is called Beagle Point.

While I joined one of the coordinated jumps along the trip, I was able to record a video of the jump, which again I want to use to try out the sharing capabilities of videos on this blog. Said that, enjoy the video.