How To Find A Barnacle

[damon8r351]

Barnacles are strange organic structures found on the surface of certain planets in and around the Pleiades, and they may or may not be connected to the Thargoids, who are the resident boogeymen of the Elite series. To find a barnacle, you're going to need the following:

• Recommended: A ship with a decent jump range and fuel supply. Cobra Mk III's, Diamondback Explorers, Asp Explorers, and Anacondas are among the best at this.
• Recommended: A decent fuel scoop. The Pleiades are somewhat of a backwater and stations are few and far between, but the main ones in the area are Blackmount Orbital and Blackmount Habitation in HIP 17692, The Indra and Ceres Tarn in HR 1158, Obsidian Orbital in the Maia system, and Alcazar's Hope in the Merope system. You're going to be traveling through some sparsely populated areas to even get to the Pleiades though.
• Mandatory: A Planetary Approach Suite, a Vehicle Bay, and an SRV loaded onto your ship, you're going to be landing on planet surfaces.
• Optional: A Cargo Bay, a Discovery Scanner, and a Detailed Surface Scanner if you plan to make some money off of this endeavor.

 

Next thing you need to know is how to get your bearings before you land on a planet. When you enter atmospheric flight, a standard aircraft-style HUD will appear on your windscreen. At the very top center is your compass heading. This uses standard compass directions in degrees, so 0 is north, 180 is south, 90 is east, 270 is west. On the bottom right corner are three numbers: the top is your latitude, the middle is your longitude, and the bottom is the gravity on the surface. For latitude, head north to make that number bigger, south to make it smaller. For longitude, head east to make that number bigger, west to make it smaller. Gravity is irrelevant for this, although you'll need to be more careful while landing when the gravity is higher.

 

Now that you know that, here are some locations to find barnacles:

• System: Pleiades Sector OI-T C3-7; Planet: A 6 (the sixth planet orbiting the topmost star on the System Map); Coordinates: -42.77 latitude, -21.70 longitude
• System: Pleiades Sector IX-S B4-4; Planet: B 1 ( the first planet orbiting the middle star on the System Map); Coordinates: -40.46 latitude, 25.81 longitude
• System: Pleiades Sector JC-U B3-2; Planet: First planet; Coordinates: 21.91 latitude, 96.97 longitude; Warning: This one is guarded by turrets and skimmers
• System: Pleiades Sector JC-U B3-2; Planet: First planet; Coordinates: 22.79 latitude, 94.08 longitude
• System: Pleiades Sector JC-U B3-2; Planet: First planet; Coordinates: -8.80 latitude, -13.36 longitude
• System: Merope; Planet: 5 C (this is the third moon of the fifth planet); Coordinates: -26.35 latitude, -156.40 longitude

 

To get the trophy for scanning a barnacle, you'll need to land on the surface, get into your SRV, target the central structure, and scan it with the vehicle's Data Link Scanner. You'll know you've scanned the right thing when a dialogue mentions that the data was compromised. If you scan one of the structures nearby and receive a dialogue indicating the presence of Meta-Alloys, you've scanned the wrong thing. About Meta-Alloys though, you'll want to shoot at the various organic structures around and collect the pods they drop. Meta-Alloys in particular sell for quite a bit of credits. They're also used in some of the Engineer related tasks, for Felicity Farseer in particular.

 

Warning, you may encounter Thargoid ships out in the Pleiades. As of right now, all they do is one of two things:

• If you're in your ship while hyperspacing between systems, they have a small chance of interdicting you straight out of it, completely disabling your ship except for life support, scanning your cargo hold, and then leaving you untouched as your ship powers back up.
• If you're near a barnacle while in your SRV, they have a small chance of completely disabling your vehicle, hovering over the barnacle while firing some sort of beam at it, then flying away while your SRV powers back up.

Edited July 16, 2017 by damon8r351

[damon8r351]

Additional information: Scanning a barnacle will get you a data packet worth ~33,000 credits. You can hand these in at any station or planetary base, under the Contacts menu at Station Services. Handing in 3 or 4 of these barnacle data packets is a quick way of earning the 100,000 credits needed for the Data Broker trophy.

[fadingtrails]

Thanks, Damon. I finally went for this trophy after Chapter 4.

You can now install a Detailed Surface Scanner and map the planet, making the barnacle location targetable.

You have to be using the Combat (not Analysis) Module for the Data Link Scan to count towards the trophy.

If you want to casually go for this trophy, you can explore systems in and near the Pleiades. While using the FSS to scan planets, look for locations that say "Thargoid" in the upper right corner of the FSS.