Ship, pods and upgrades

Every upgrade and its cost, building pods, and Fuel Cells.

Your ship carries your fuel, cargo, specimen samples and pods. Upgrades make it go farther, faster and safer. How long expeditions take and how often pods are lost is covered on the Expeditions page.

Your starting ship

You start with a full tank, 2 mining pods, 2 exploration pods, and 10 each of Helium-3, Copper Ore and Iron Ore.

Upgrades

Each upgrade has levels that you unlock in order. Each level adds its bonus on top of the ones before it. The last level of every upgrade needs Singularity Fragments, which are only found around black holes.

What the upgrades do

• Fuel Tank raises the most fuel you can hold.
• Fuel Efficiency cuts travel fuel. A jump costs its distance divided by your efficiency.
• Star Drive speeds up both expeditions and travel between systems. Times are divided by your speed.
• Blast Shielding lowers the chance of losing a mining pod, and Environmental Shielding does the same for exploration pods. Pod loss never drops below 2 %.
• Specimen Vault holds your samples. When it's full, exploration still adds new species to your catalog but brings back no sample. You can discard a sample to make room, as long as it isn't listed in a trade.
• Discovery Array shortens system discovery scans, and lets the star panel's long-range scan read what orbits stars you haven't visited: rough words at tier 1, ranges at tier 2, exact counts at tier 3. See Discovery and flora.

Installing

• Docked at a station: the upgrade installs instantly.
• Out in space: installation takes 15 minutes, and you can only run one at a time.

You pay when the installation starts.

Pods and pod bays

Each pod type has its own bay. Pods out on expeditions still take up their slot. A lost pod frees its slot, so you can build a replacement.

Building pods

Open the Pod Bay to repair (replace) a lost pod. At a station it's cheaper and instant. Out in space your ship's fabricator builds it, which costs more and takes time.

You can't build a pod if that bay is full. The fabricator builds one pod at a time, and you pay when it starts.

Emergency pod

If your ship has no pods left at all (none of either type, including any out on expeditions), you can trade 20 fuel for one new pod of your choice. You don't need to be docked.

Fuel Cells

Fuel Cells are the only thing sold in the Store. Each one refines into 50 fuel, anywhere, whenever your tank isn't full. They're kept in their own compartment with no limit, and they can't be traded.

Refine only what fits. Fuel beyond your tank's capacity is lost, and every cell you refine is used up.

In the app store:

In Decentraland (paid in MANA on Polygon from your linked wallet):

You can also refine fuel from mining: Helium-3 gives 20 fuel and Plasma Crystals give 50.

Example: a faster, thriftier ship

You've taken Star Drive and Fuel Efficiency to level 3. Your speed is 1.0 + 3 × 0.15 = 1.45× and your efficiency is 1.0 + 3 × 0.25 = 1.75×.

• A 4-hour (240-minute) expedition now takes 240 ÷ 1.45 ≈ 166 minutes.
• A 100-unit jump now costs 100 ÷ 1.75 ≈ 57 fuel instead of 100, and takes about 69 minutes instead of 100.

Getting Star Drive from level 0 to 3 costs 10 Titanium, 5 Plasma Crystals, 10 Quantum Alloy, 5 Dark Matter Shard, 5 Void Essence and 3 Singularity Fragments in total.