It was time to start taking on some risk in Astrox Imperium and get a lot bigger paydays for doing so. Up till this point, I had been playing it quite safely. I have also started to explore a few but nothing close to all the systems in the game. Some of those systems even require rather expensive gate keys that you have to buy. It was time to step things up a notch and hope to get some decent high-valued loot drops as well.

It was a bit tricky trying to work out what missions that have combat was worth taking on. Along with what fights were worth trying to engage in. I’ll admit there were some setbacks from getting blown up to having to drop missions I could not complete. It was, however, a far more rewarding and engaging experience.

I started moving onto a mission that required me to go out and collect debts. I honestly was expecting to get into a combat situation over people not wanting to pay. Turns out it is more of a talking and waiting game. If there was combat it would be from people trying to get out the person I was trying to collect from. Unless they were hiring pirates hoping to resolve their debt issues. Which I would not put past many of these people.

It’s always interesting that the first time you take on a new type of mission. You are not quite sure what to expect. I always end up expecting a lot more combat than I tend to find myself getting into. At least that itch was getting scratched as well.

Most times I just had to fly up to the guy who owed a debt. He would come up with “reasons” after talking with him why I had to wait to pay. At first, I thought they were ploys to get away from me. I however decided to give one of the first people who was mining an “opportunity” to go dock and sell. I was rather thrilled when they came back, and I could get them to pay without having to escalate things.

While it always seemed like I had an option to just take out the NPC that owed money. In the end, I never had to. Most of the time, however, pirates could come into the system, and we have to fight them off. They were always trying to kill the person I wanted to collect from. Since I can’t collect from a dead guy, I ended up helping them survive by killing the pirates.

Sometimes the pirates themselves would drop something somewhat decent. If that happened it ended up being a better reward credits-wise, than just turning in the mission all on its own would have been.

There were a few times I had to bug out of the system. I did not have a chance to take on the type of pirates or the amount of them. I’d come back in, and they would be gone. They never seemed to manage to take out the NPC I needed to collect from either. Which was great for me when I was feeling lazy, I'd just go dodge the combat and come back later.

There came a point where I needed to step things up a notch. I decided to start taking on missions that were kill missions. The first few I got were not an issue. I started to learn over time there were many clues I had to look for in the mission briefing before deciding to take anything on or not.

At much higher levels I started to realize that not all missions were for taking out pirates or “the bad guys”, at least how I would see them. Many had me eliminating someone from a non-pirate faction. That would mean taking reputation damage with that faction for doing so. From my experiences in Eve Online, I decided to avoid or even take a hit and drop those missions If I mistakenly took them on. The last thing I want is to be a target in other non-pirate factions.

The first few I did I did not have much trouble at all. Most times it was just a single target. I’ll admit I stayed in the starting ship and some lower-level ships for far too long. They were quick to get around and I preferred getting through systems quicker than a more heavily armored tank ship. That would soon become apparent to no longer work out for me.

I also started to put skill points into mission contracts. I wanted to be able to pick up more than a single mission when I was getting further out from the starting area. Lots of new places with many kill missions.

Like before with escort missions. After a while, my more local stopping points ran out of killing missions. I would be back yet again exploring every station in every system that I passed looking for my next kill mission.

Some of these missions would start to lead to other issues I was not even thinking about. On one I had to kill 7 raiders which I was not so sure I could take on. While on the way there I ended up hitting a gate that required a key. The key itself costs 275k credits. That kind of sucked if I wanted to go the way I was. At least after buying the key to that particular gate, I did not have to again.

Many of these gates were a way for the game to create a barrier keeping the player from going into much harder systems. Over time I'd start buying all the different keys you needed so I could venture into some quite deadly space that at the time I had no chance of surviving once the waves of pirates started rolling in.

That, however, would have to wait for the time being. I was still rather broke and saving up for a better ship. I needed something that could output a lot more damage and take a hit or a few in combat. It was kind of hard trying to find a ship with the bonus I was looking to get for combat.

I also noticed as you gain faction the shipyards you are buying from the start grant a faction bonus. So not only did I need to hope for the ships I wanted in a station I've checked so far. I also now needed them to be somewhere that would grant bonuses that I wanted as well.

That ended up not being the case most times. I ended up just settling for this ship as I had the credits for it. I rather liked the idea of getting a third gunpoint. Along with having two more module slots. That would end up helping out a lot.

Not to mention quite the increase in shields, cargo, energy, and life support. Life support was something I was starting to struggle with a little more since missions kept taking me down into quite deadly parts of space. I would also need to be in them for a bit taking a group of pirates.

Final thoughts

It was about time I got quite a better ship. I also had some fun when I was not taking on targets that were well above me which totally killed me a couple of times. Thankfully the game reloads to the last save if you don’t want to take the loss of a ship.

Other Content

• Astrox Imperium | Grinding Low Level Missions

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Astrox Imperium.