The pilots of Elite: Dangerous [official site] have been looking for direct evidence of alien spaceships for a while now, knowing that Frontier are planning to bring them to the game at some point. But today they finally found a crashed alien vessel that has been rumoured to exist for months.

Cmdr Noctrach posted the discovery on Reddit, after clues from Gamescom led players to a moon in the Pleiades Sector. The moon was scoured for signs of the ship and eventually, it was found. Other pilots have since visited the co-ordinates and are coming up with even more theories about what exactly it is.



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The most obvious answer is that it is a Thargoid ship, the hostile aliens from previous games in the series. One pilot speculates that, based on the way the crashed ship seems to have been built, the previously discovered barnacles are actually buried alien vessels themselves.

The rumoured existence of a crashed alien craft has been floating around for a few months, ever since a community ambassador told others it was in the game, yet wouldn’t disclose the exact location. There have since been other clues, such as a map hidden in the audio of an alien probe. Eventually, clues given to the community by Frontier during their Gamescom presentations led commanders to the right moon.

Now that the ship is found, pilots are trying to decide if it is the end of this particular storyline – ie. if this is all the alien content that has been patched into the game so far. Perhaps there are other crashed vessels. But if not, then all that is left to do is wait until Frontier finally wake up those dormant Thargoids. While many are happy with the find, others will doubtlessly be annoyed if this is the end of things until the next big expansion pack. What do you think? Was it all a fun in-game investigation or just an unbearably long-winded tease?