The black is starting to get a lot less so as I make my way to Colonia and the galactic centre. The Milky Way has always been a noticeable part of the night sky (even when you look up at it for real here on good old planet Earth) but here in Elite Dangerous when you can travel thousands of light years closer it really starts to dominate the sky. Imagine being on the other side looking out… will have to consider that when I arrive!

Anyway, the approach to Sacaqawea Space Port in system Skaudai CH-B d14-34 went as planned and involved another stop in a nebula which from a visual standpoint really help to judge progress over the long trips. Stopping by on a planet gave me an opportunity to jump into a rover and make a lap of the space port. The sky here had a strong reddish tinge to it which was a sight I hadn’t seen before. Stupidly I fired the rover’s turret in the vicinity of the settlement and received a fine that locked me out of system services until I paid up. Unfortunately there weren’t any contacts or Interstellar Factors reps stationed there so I couldn’t fix the problem so it was best to move on again. Hopefully my next stop will let me remedy my dumb mistake.

My next stop was 114 jumps away in the Gandharvi system at Caravanserai Station. If I can’t pay my fines there I found another system nearby where the Penal Ship Omicron is located which may help me out. Reaching either will also be a sign I’m well and truly nearing the last leg of the Colonia trip as there’ll be less than 6,500 light years to go at that point. The trip so far had me both travel by and through nebula and I’m now seeing plenty more silhouetted against the sky. The trip was uneventful and I ended up stopping by briefly at the Penal Ship Omicron but it turned out to only offer the 3 R’s (repair, restock, refuel) so it was a short visit and jump to Gandharvi which turned out to be a very busy region of space with stars awash in the skies and plenty of wanted vessels hanging around the system’s navigation beacon to let me blow off a little steam and go bounty hunting for a brief amount of time.

Turned this was another good stopover as Caravanserai Station is well appointed with a full suite of services making it an ideal place to plan out my next destination. Each of these major stops I’ve been bookmarking on the Galactic Map as it will make the return trip a lot easier knowing I’ve already found suitable places to park my ship. I was also able to cash in the bounties here and pay my fines so access restrictions were gone. Selling my exploration data was a big win here too with 30 million more credits now in the bank. A very profitable run for me so far! That last chunk of data sold also bumped up my Explorer ranking to Pioneer which means I am one rank away from Elite but it’s still going to be a lot more exploring needed before I get there. Thankfully there’s plenty more stars in the sky to visit. 🙂

From here I now have 113 jumps to the Kashyapa system to visit the Vihar Gate station. After that I suppose it’ll feel like an easy cruise to Colonia with just over 2,000 light years to go after that but once I start approaching the new Colonia bubble it’ll also start getting busier and I’ll have to factor in the risk of running into more pirates wanting to make a few credits from the scraps of my ship so I’ll need to be prepared…

This week I’ve also been testing out Xbox console streaming on my mobile during this leg of the trip and a couple of display issues lead me to flying too close to a star and damaging my ship (again) so I might be a little more careful when using it when finesse is needed. Artifacting on a game’s HUD that relies on fine detail does not make for a fun experience. Important safety tip: don’t stream your games on a less than optimal connection! 😉