It’s been a long time since I was this engaged with Elite: Dangerous. In fact, it’s been about 5 years since I’ve posted about it which is probably the last time I was playing.I made a few attempts to play in VR earlier last year and, while it looked amazing, re-learing all of the controls with the headset strapped to my face left me uncomfortable and frustrated. But on a whim a few weeks before the holidays I fired it up and I’ve been playing every day since.

Earlier last year, in my infinite wisdom, I deleted my old profile to start fresh. I thought it would be easier to learn the game from scratch after being away so long. I didn’t play very long so I came back to a profile with a Sidewinder (starting ship) and a handful of credits. In retrospect, I should have just kept my old profile. After a few hours it was all coming back to me and I missed my stable of ships. I also missed being called by my call sign. When you enter some stations, the control tower operators will address you by the first three letters of your name. I got so used to hearing “Juliet Echo X-ray” when docking at stations that it didn’t feel right being called anything else. So I restarted my profile again, and recreated my old commander, Jexi Tomlin.

I started my career as a glorified space mailman. Taking on data courier missions to nearby systems delivering everything from poll data to secret missives. They didn’t pay much but they got me back in to the swing of things and gave me much needed docking practice.

Every once and a while I would find a mission to deliver commodities from one station to another. These tended to pay more but the Sidewinder’s cargo capacity is pretty small. There were fewer missions with small hauls but I took them when I saw them.

After a few hours of space trucking I made enough credits to upgrade to a Cobra MK III aka the bigger Sidewinder. Even with stock modules it’s quite an upgrade and is a great all around ship for activities in the Bubble. Most importantly for me was the option to add a whole lot more cargo space to take on higher paying delivery missions. I also started taking on sourcing missions where the goal is to find a certain commodity and return it.

I tried my hand at mining, which is something I used to enjoy once I could afford the proper modules. While mining was still fun and brought in decent profit I had a nagging desire to get back in to exploration. I ended up buying a Diamondback Explorer, a ship I had never flown before, and outfitted it for a journey and set off in to the black.