Salvage is one of the latest jobs inStar Citizenthat became available in Alpha 3.18, and received its dedicated missions and contracts in Alpha 3.19. Currently, Salvage is a fully functional job in Persistence Universe, but if you wonder how you can begin earning money off Salvage contracts, we have a full guide here.
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Similar to mining, Salvage is also a job that requires you to extract a bunch of materials, collect them inside your ship’s storage space, and then sell them in the open market. However, there are some meaningful differences between the tasks you do and the amount of money you earn from Salvage compared to mining.
How To Salvage
Thanks to Salvage contracts, you no longer need to look for crashed ships around the verse. Now, you’re able to open your MobiGlass and head to the Contracts tab, where you can find multiple legal and illegal Salvage missions.
Unlike mining, which requires you to look for mineable ores or Gemstones around the verse and comes at no cost, acquiring Salvage contracts needs you to pay a fee. The fee varies from 1,000 aUEC to 150,000 aUEC depending on the ship you are going to work on.
When you acquire a legal contract, you actually claim the rights to salvage a ship, which gives you unlimited time to work on the ship and collect as much material as you can. On the other hand, illegal contracts just sell you the location of a crashed ship and give you a timeframe, during which you need to salvage the ship before UEE forces arrive and attack you. While the timeframe is usually generous enough to complete the hull scraping process, but mostly you don’t get to fully salvage the ship.
Before accepting a contract, it will tell you the location of the ship, the model of the ship, and the time you will have for extracting material if it is an illegal mission. For your first Salvage experience, we suggest you go ahead with a low-cost legal contract. You are highly advised to have a Multi-tool with a Tractor Beam attachment if you are going to do salvage using a Drake Vulture.
Once you acquire a contract, you will be given the exact details about the location of the abandoned ship. Most ships are left floating in space, next to asteroid fields like Hur L1, CRU L2, and others. As soon as you are within 150 meters of the ship, you can start hull scraping.
If you have a Drake Vulture, just press “M” to activate hull-scraping arms, which will boot up a new UI with some information about the ship parts you are salvaging. On the other hand, if you are doing salvage with an Aegis Reclaimer, you need to get out of the pilot seat, move back to the room behind the cockpit, and sit down at one of the Salvage Operator seats. Now, you can power on the hull-scraping arm and then enter the Remote Turret to start the process.
In order to start salvage, all you need to do is to point your crosshair at the surface of the abandoned ship and press the “Left Mouse Button” to activate the arms. Now, you can see that your salvage arms are removing the surface metal of the ship. You simply need to continue this process until you remove the entire surface of the ship, but there are some details you should be aware of.
First, the circle(s) at the bottom of the screen shows the salvageable materials and their availability. The percentage that the circle shows, tells you about the amount of material left to be extracted in the 1.5m diameters of your crosshair. As you start salvaging the area, that percentage will gradually decrease to zero. However, there is also a tag beneath those circles, telling you if you can actually extract the material or not. If it says “Valid”, it means the surface is removable, otherwise, you can’t remove it due to multiple reasons. One reason could be the fact that the surface is accessible through the other side of the ship, which means you need to rotate your ship.
The optimal distance for salvage is between 100m to 20m, but you may get even closer if you need to remove a small part. In Drake Vulture, if you hold “Alt” and scroll your mouse wheel, you will be able to change the direction of hull-scraping arms. In default mode, they are both focused on a single spot, which makes the process faster, but if you are salvaging a bigger ship, you can change their focus.
The long bar appearing on the right side of the screen at the top shows the remaining extractable material from the certain part of the ship you are salvaging. On the opposite side, there is another bar that shows the capacity of the salvage container, which is 1 SCU. Once the container is filled, it will automatically eject a cargo box and will start to fill in another container.
In Drake Vulture, when the second container is filled, your ship will not be able to eject it, as your previous container has blocked the path. So, you need to leave the pilot seat and get down to the cargo hold. Now, you will use the Tractor Beam attachment of your Multi-tool to pick up the first container and place it elsewhere. Now, you will see the other container coming out automatically.
This is one of the annoying issues with Vulture, which requires you to get down to the cargo hold regularly to unblock the container’s path. On the container creator device, there is a small intractable screen. ensure that the checkbox on the screen for “Auto Eject” is ticked. But if the new container still doesn’t come out, just press the Eject button to produce it manually.
This screen also features a Create tab, which allows you to build Multi-tool and all of its attachment variants from salvaged material. So, in case you don’t have a Multi-tool, you’re able to build one right away.
When you are doing an illegal contract, you need to leave the area as soon as the timer hits zero. If you don’t leave, the UEE forces will surround you and start shooting at your ship, which will also add aCrime Statto your criminal record.
Where To Sell Salvaged Material
Now that you have enough salvaged material in your cargo hold, you can head to a Trade Development Division (TDD) in any major city to sell the containers. Lorville, Area 18, Orison, and New Babbage all have a TDD building. Once you land in a city, you can Store your ship via a Fleet Manager terminal and then head to the TDD building. Interact with a TDD terminal, select your ship that contains the cargo, and sell the material.
Salvaging is a quite profitable job in Star Citizen despite the fact that it requires an initial payment. If you may find crashed or abandoned ships without claiming a contract, you will gain even more profit. Sometimes, players just start to salvage their own ships, as you can salvage any ship with its shields turned off. However, this kind of salvage doesn’t give you much material compared to the ones you acquire through contracts.
Is Salvage Better Than Mining?
Salvage needs fewer requirements and allows you to get your profit much faster than mining ores. When you mine ores, you first need to explore the universe to find materials that actually pay better, but Salvage features fewer material types. When you mine ores, you need to take them to Refinery, pay a certain amount of money to refine them, and then wait for a certain amount of time depending on your refining method to get your ores back. Also, mining does require a secondary ship with considerable cargo space to carry out the refined ores to sell them elsewhere. But, Salvage can be done with a single ship and doesn’t have any refinery process.
Salvage is equal to mining Gemstones. It is not necessarily more profitable than any kind of mining, but it is quite faster than mining ores. So, if you need to get your money quickly, salvaging is much better than mining ores. But if you are a patient player, then mining ores such as Quantanium will get you rich faster.
