Almost six months after Elite: Dangerous players made first contact with the Thargoids, the community is seeing a second type of encounter with the ominous aliens, and it’s every bit as spooky as the first.

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Thargoids were first discovered back in January, yanking players out of hyperdrive and scanning them in space. The new encounter is planetbound, and occurs near alien structures, better known to the community as ‘barnacles’. Your planetary rover is disabled, and a Thargoid ship hovers over the barnacle, possibly refuelling.

If you want to trigger the encounter, Reddit has some advice for you. One suggestion is simply to “hang about a barnacle and wait”, while another reckonsscanning the barnacle will help.

The new encounter affords a lot more opportunity to look around the Thargoid ship, so here’s a lovely Imgur gallerycourtesy of ChristopherSweeney, and here’s a video courtesy of Mass_Locked_Mafia on YouTube. Obviously, if you don’t want the encounter spoiled, don’t watch:

It seems everyone who flies into the area has their ship disabled, but the player in the video is able to drive his rover into his ship and try to attack the Thargoid. Even after spending almost all his ammo, he doesn’t even dent its shields.

Gonna be fun when they start fighting back, then.