Hello from our Star Valor Self Reliant guide! Choose your own destiny as you explore a procedurally generated open-world galaxy where anything is possible. Be it a miner, a trader, a bounty hunter, a pirate or maybe one of all trades. Start small and work your way to the top, but remember that every action has consequences. How to playing self reliant on this adventure is detailed below!
Star Valor Self Reliant Guide
Welcome to our Star Valor Self Reliant Guide. This guide will show you playing Self Found in Star Valor!
Getting Started
As this guide is written around the Self Reliant perk released in 2.0.6, chances are you may not have it unlocked yet. It’s actually very easy to unlock by design.
Don’t go into a run with a specific plan or expectation. Do have an overall goal, but be ready to adapt to what you find.
Start a new game and reach level 10 without buying any weapons, equipment or ships from stations. Also you must remain neutral or lower with every faction. This means your starting background must be outis, lone wolf or scoundrel.
You can hire crew, buy goods, pay for location information and take missions as normal.
When you reach level 10 the perk will be unlocked but not acquired in the current run. This is by design, to prevent accidentally bricking a run.
Once you unlock the Self Reliant perk make a new save and select Self Reliant as one of your starting perks. It’s fairly self explanatory.
You start the game knowing blueprints for most basic equipment including a simple mobile refinery.
While there are basic blueprints for larger ships such as corvettes, you won’t have blueprints for mining drones, collector beams or many other useful items.
Choosing your Play Style
You’ve chosen to play in a run where you can’t buy any weapons, equipment or ships. While that’s a huge restriction, there are other decisions to make before you create your new save.
Are you going to play solo in your own ship, building up your Space Pilot skill?
Are you going to build a fleet of derelict ships, either for mining or combat?
Are you going to keep a fleet around as portable cargo space and mining?
Are you going to play without purchase good from stations, or hiring crew?
Solo vs Fleet Play
- This is going to help determine your starting perks.
- Fleet play is going to want Me & the Boys, while solo might prefer perks like Dogfighter or Combat Genius.
Starting Galaxy Size
- Just about anything works here, although a larger galaxy size will give more resources to work with. More asteroid fields, ship graveyards, ravagers, tinker stations, rebel stations and places to hire crew. Many players prefer to play with an expanding galaxy, as there will be no limit to any of these.
Bounty Stacks
Bounty – You will often attract more powerful enemies
This is a powerful modifier which can stack up very quickly to create much more difficult encounters. It affects enemies which warp in, whether marauders or hostile factions when you are a sector they control (10 parsecs).
In normal mode each stack of bounty is worth 4 points, while in hardcore they are worth 5 points. Choosing hardcore mode also adds 1 stack of bounty.
Ships with bounty count as having two stacks, making them more dangerous to fly when unprepared.
If a ship with bounty is added to your fleet the bounty stacks will not apply.
This is what happens with just four stacks of bounty in hardcore.
And 11 stacks of bounty in hardcore.
Bounty can be gained from many perks, two ships, unique crew and by playing in hardcore mode.
There are also a couple of sources which reduce bounty stacks, notable by the text You will less often attract enemies.
Choosing Perks
Starting perks can have a significant impact on a Self Reliant play through. These determine the size of ship you can start with, how many bounty stacks you start with, and useful bonuses such as tech level, geology, space pilot, fleet commander, sensor range, warp range, and chance to mine minerals.
One of your starting perks must be Self Reliant. While you can unlock the perk during game play, you cannot acquire it in an active game. This means you will always have Self Reliant as one of your 5 karma perks.
If you want to play with a ship larger than a shuttle then you will need carefully balance your starting background and karma perks. While you can start with a dreadnought, you won’t be able to take any perks with a penalty to ship size.
Experience Perks
These are unlocked for everyone by default, and help customize a start. Some are most useful in the early game, while others help through the game.
Karma Perks
Most of these can be acquired during a play through, though some are more difficult than others. Also they can favor different play styles, such as small ships or big ships. You cant take up to 5, with one being Self Reliant.
There are 5 perks tied to Knowledge Skills, of which you can only acquire one per play through. At least three are very useful for a Self Reliant play through. One you want if you’re going to have a derelict fleet.
You can choose one or more of these when making a new game, then earn one during the run.
Choosing your Ship
With 94 ships available across 6 factions, 6 size classes and 9 roles there are quite a few to choose from.
If you take a shuttle then your ship will be determined by whatever you can find during your play through.
If you join the Rebels or Venghi you will have the option to craft their dreadnoughts late into the game. You will still be unable to purchase any of their other ships.
If you hunt down the Hephaestus it can be a very strong ship in the mid to late game. You will have to contend with the double Bounty stacks it gives. Chances are good you won’t have enough blueprints or equipment to have it fully operational at first.
With 2.08 there is a new quest line added for players starting with the outis background. This quest chain guarantees one of two ships depending on whether you take the lone wolf or scoundrel backgrounds.
If you want to play a specific ship such as the Achilles then you’re going to have to start with it. While it is possible you might find a derelict, counting on a specific ship to be floating in space is not good planning.
2.08 also added quests to the the technomancers which reward ship blueprints. This also requires finding their stations, building up their reputation then actually constructing the ships. It does mean that finding a specific ship is much more possible, though faction specific ships are far less common.
Choosing Crew
Unique crew can be strong depending on your choice of perks and starting ship.
If you start with a big ship such as a frigate or larger, having one of the unique crew with hull regeneration will save a lot of money in repairs not needed. While money will be unimportant later, early on it can be quite costly to keep a big ship repaired. Especially if you do a lot of fighting before being well equipped.
If you take a ship which focuses on mining then Mynor Minor or Gottchar are good choices.
If you want to do a drone focused play through Bancheis would be a great choice.
Note that Ziggy can be found in every game if you know how to do the Exiled quest.
Skills
Engineering
The left side is good for energy management.
- Nano Boosters is only useful when crafting custom weapons, and only takes effect after free boosters are used up.
- The right side is potentially one of the more useful investments for a self reliant play through.
- Scaventing can double the amount of scrap metal gained from scavenging.
- Expert Scavenging gives a chance of finding refined metal and special items from scavenging.
- Master Scavenging gives any equipment (not crew) scavenged +1 rarity level. This can give orange equipment!
- Harder Components is a staple for larger ships, giving an extra 10 to 18 equipment space to work with. On a yacht or corvette it’s only 2 to 5 for the extra 6 points. They tend to just spend 10 on Engineering and take Advanced Cooling for the equivalent of a purple pirate heatsink.
Combat
- Weaponry is a fairly basic skill giving +1 damage per second per point invested. While this can be abused by stacking a bunch of smaller weapons such as pd lasers, it doesn’t scale very well with larger weapons.
- Gunner is just about mandatory for a combat focused play through. When combined with Battleship Raid and Swashbuckler perks it’s a +35% bonus chance for criticals.
- Precision is a no brainer if you invested in Precision. The +40% critical damage bonus stacks with the +30% bonus from Battleship Raid, and the +50% bonus on interceptors with active flux.
- Hardness is quite solid with a 25% bonus to hull points. This bonus does not apply to flat hp bonuses from perks or equipment, such as the +50 hp from the Combat Genius perk.
- Deflectors gives +20% bonus to shields with 5 points invested. It does not increase shield regeneration rate.
- Improved Plating gives flat and % based armor bonuses to your ship. This does not apply to fleet ships.
- Nano Components is practically mandatory on every solo ship which will see combat. This means most games will see 16 points in the tree, often 18 due to how beneficial both Precision and Improved Plating are.
Exploration
- Navigation gives up to 7.5 maximum speed and acceleration. This is especially strong on larger ships such as frigates, cruisers and dreadnoughts.
- Warp Core Management gives a reduced cost to warping. This reduces both the energy cost and number of energy cells required.
- Master Explorer Increases the warp distance a ship can jump, but also reduces the energy cost of speed boosters by 20%.
- Scanners make it easier to find points of interest such as stations, asteroid fields, marauder nests and such.
- Fine Tuning increases scanner range in nebula and doubles scanner range for detecting loot.
- Optics gives +1 max zoom level, even for dreadnoughts. For most ships this increases the zoom to be approximately the same as a ship one size larger.
- Ultra Light Components is a bit of a sleeper. The bonus is a +1 to speed and agility, as well as -10% to ship’s mass (improves acceleration, turn & strafe speed) and makes stacking speed boosters much more effective.
Business
- Accurate Mining gives a chance to gain two crystals from an asteroid instead of one.
- Surveying gives up to a +10% chance to mine rare metals in larger asteroids. Quite nice to have on a mining run, especially when mining for lithrium, silicon and iridum.
- Refinery Master gives refineries +10% refinery rate and +10 geology range. Can be useful to push an advanced refinery above 38 to produce silicon, or a turbo flux refinery over 48 to produce iridium.
- Bargain gives 10% cheaper prices when buying. Not particularly useful when playing self reliant as you can only buy goods and you should have plenty of money.
- Trading gives 5% better prices when selling.
- Cargo Optimization makes all metals take up half as much space. This is especially useful for a mining play through as it also works on crystals and ore.
- Hidden Compartments is +10% extra cargo space, which is a white large/syndicate cargo expansion with no mass penalty. Most of the bonuses from Business are nice for a miner or trader, but not exceptional.
Social
- Renown makes you look more threatening so other ships will attack you less. This includes marauders which warp in to attack you.
- Presence increases the chance for intimidation to work and more importantly reduces the cost to hire mercenaries by up to 50%.
- Leadership gives+10 to fleet commander and fleet ships gain 90 armor and +1 agility. Pretty much mandatory for fleet builds. This also affects mercenaries.
- Prestige reduces cost and purchase requirements for hiring crew at stations. Will also reduces crew expenses when that mechanic is implemented.
- Born Leader gives up to +5% crew efficiency and +3 aim bonus to gunners.
- Prodigy gives a nice boost to all bonuses on the copilot or first officer.
- Master & Commander is crazy good when building fleets and equipping anything that’s a frigate or larger. Fleet builds are going to have at least 11 points in the social tree already, and grabbing 4 points of Born Leader is a nice boost to the player’s ship. Prodigy is less important on larger ships, as first officer doesn’t grant bonuses from gunnery like a co pilot.
Hybrid (bottom row)
- Advanced Cooling gives +30% weapon cooling. This is applied after every other modifier from equipment, ship bonus and enhancements. Very powerful for small ships using larger weapons.
- Research Support Crafted items get +1 rarity level when crafted in a friendly station, up to purple quality. This is incredibly useful when crafting from blueprints, as it allows you to craft a blue item then get a purple item. It can save a ton of rare materials when crafting things which require special components.
- Beam Efficiency makes your beam weapons use 20% less energy. Potentially useful, but requires investment into the business tree.
- Squad Leader gives +5% crew efficiency to yourself and any fleet ships. It’s the same as having 5 points in Born Leader, but with more efficient gunner bonus (+5 total vs +3). It can be useful for solo or fleet play.
- Debris Scanning reveals debris fields in a sector.
- Logistics reveals civilian or friendly stations in a system.
- Probing reveals hostile stations and bases in a sector.
- Deep Space Scanning reveals asteroid fields in a system.
Mercenaries
One of the most common uses for mercenaries is target practice. Easy experience, credits, and a way to boost early space pilot or fleet commander levels.
They can also be useful as an early game fleet. Two or three fighters to distract enemies, or as budget mining ships. If you start with a carrier they benefit from the +100 hull points to fleet ships. For a bigger ship they can keep you safe long enough to run, warp away or even to do some damage.
For mid to late game higher level mercenaries can be surprisingly effective. They are especially useful in the early to mid game when you haven’t been able to fully equip fleet ships yet. They also benefit from bonuses to fleet ships, such as those from Me and the Boys perk and the Leadership skill.
The Presence skill reduces the cost of mercenaries, making it easier to have two or three at one time. As they only take money from kills you can still make money by selling or doing missions at full value.
Swapping your mercenaries for stronger ones as you go to higher level areas is also a useful tactic.
Mercenaries tend to fly shuttles, yachts or corvettes. Rarely you’ll come across a mercenary in a frigate, but they don’t tend to show up before level 20.
Mercenaries only use independent ships.
Silver star mercenaries are rare yet have much better stats and equipment than normal. If you’re especially lucky you may find a silver star mercenary in a frigate such as the Raven or Shark.
If you are building a fleet you are going to be waiting to find derelicts. This might happen in the first system, or it might not happen until level 30. When you go back to a sector right next to the start and find three because your sensor range is much higher.
Derelict Fleets
Before 2.08 the only way to acquire ships for a fleet was by finding derelicts. With this patch it is now possible to acquire ship blueprints from technomancer stations. These quests renew and only require turning in junk as a reward. They do require reaching friendly reputation with the technomancers, or honored for the silver star missions which give a choice of 3 ship blueprintss.
There is an indicator on the fleet tab to show how close fleet ships should remain to the player. It increases in increments of 20 with a range between 20 and 120. It has been nicknamed the leash range, as it is used to keep fleet ships withing a certain distance of the player.
Fleet ships can be assigned one of three attitudes: combat, repair or mining.
Combat ships will attack any hostile ships within their leash range.
Repair ships will only use repair beams and repair drones. They will use these on fleet ships and damaged ships from any faction you are friendly with. As long as you aren’t specifically attacking a friendly faction ship.
Mining ships use the leash range indicator as the range within which they will look for asteroids to mine. As long as there are asteroids within their detection range. If there are no asteroids nearby they will return to the player, but will be sidetracked by any asteroids they come across.
Fleet ships are limited to default equipment and weapon space. Bonus equipment space from Nano Components, Hardened Components and Space Pilot do not work for fleet ships. If a ships equipment or weapon space used goes above the default the number will be shown in yellow (ie 20/20), the bottom equipment or weapons will be removed when a ship is added to the fleet.
Ships with the carrier role do not function as carriers when added as fleet ships. They will only dock with the players ship if there is enough hanger space and the players ship can dock a fleet ship. Such as shuttles docking in a corvette, yachts in a cruiser and up to corvettes can dock in a dreadnought.
Missions
One of the best sources for equipment and weapons during your entire play through. This will be your only way to acquire faction specific equipment from friendly factions. Silver star missions guarantee a blue tier reward, while gold star missions guarantee a purple tier reward with a chance for an orange.
Local deliveries are an easy source of experience, as well as an easy way to find another station in the system. If there is only one faction or civilian station in the system you may still see a local delivery mission. These are very useful on a Self Reliant play through.
Regional Delivery missions have very good rewards, especially the gold star missions. They come in a long version with delivery times over ten minutes, or the more rewarding version that usually a bit more than two minutes. The gold star versions can give orange rewards, and you are shown the rewards up front. In very early game the destinations will be so far away you won’t be able to reach them in time without drastic measures. Some you’ll be able to do, if barely, and they can be worth the effort.
Hunt and Kill missions can be a good source of early equipment and blueprints if you’re able to handle the combat. Silver and gold star enemies for the missions are often higher level and much stronger than normal enemies.
Delivery missions are often an easy source of low to mid level items and blueprints. If you’re mining for materials chances are good you’ll acquire the resources for many of these missions as you play. Others require goods such as synthetic meat or explosives. Sometimes you can purchase the required goods at another station in the same system.
Factions
While faction equipment cannot be bought during a self reliant play through, it can be acquired as rewards from missions or dropped by destroying faction ships.
Equipment has an item level which is the required level of mission or ship to be able to drop it. This means a pirate speed booster can be acquired starting at level 12 stations or red skull ships.
Proxima Mining Corp (Miners) Equipment
- PMC Collection Beam 8
- Miners Reactor 21
- Heavy Tractor Beam 22
- Miners Laser 26
- PMC Mobile Refinery 29
- Large Miners Reactor 32
- Heavy Mining Drone Bay 40
Syndicate (Traders) Equipment
- Syndicate Scanner 17
- Syndicate Expansion 31
- Impulse Drive Mk.V 33
- Thorium Warp Drive 38
- Large Ion Reactor 40
- Heavy Impulse Drive Mk.V 48
- Capital Impulse Drive Mk.V 50
Red Skulls Equipment
- Pirate Speed Booster 12
- Pirate Heat Sink 15
- Pirate Impulse Drive 15
- Pirate Protector 23
- Pirate Heavy Booster 28
- Pirate Heavy Impulse Drive 29
- Pirate Capital Impulse Drive 34
Children of Terra (Rebels) Equipment
- Terran Mantle 43
- Terran Armor 50
Venghi Equipment
- Venghi Light Blaster 11
- Venghi Shield Generator 20
- Venghi Heavy Blaster 26
- Venghi Missile Launcher 27
- Venghi Reactor 29
- Venghi Heavy Shield Generator 30
- Venghi Light Armor 34
- Venghi Charger 35
- Venghi Large Reactor 47
- Venghi Heavy Armor 50
- Venghi Death Ray 80 drop only
Drop Only Equipment
- Nodolo’s Warp Mod 20 drop only
- X-27 Flak Cannon 23 drop only
- Nodolo’s Combat Mod 25 drop only
- Capital Pulse Laser 43 drop only
- Optronic Computer 44 drop only
- Optronic Warp Drive 50 drop only
- Capital Laser Beam 61 drop only
- Peacemaker 65 drop only
- Doom Cannon 69 drop only
- Capital Laser Beam Mk. II 83 drop only
