I finally got my Sol Permit in Elite Dangerous after grinding for about the past week or so to my Federation rank up to Petty Officer.
It was a long, hard slog but it was worth it, I got to visit Sol, our solar system and see Earth in all it’s majesty. It was glorious.
It took me just over a week of grinding Federation rank to get to Petty Officer, the grind was made a bit easier thanks to the Niu Hsing system, there was a boom there and they giving out data delivery missions like there was no tomorrow.
Then upon delivering the data to the various star systems nearby, I was lucky enough to pick up even more data missions, usually a lot going back to the same system and same station so I could stack 4, 5 or 6 at a time and complete them all in one go.
During the course of these missions I noticed my Federation rank climbing, slowly but surely. It was after my first couple of Federal Navy missions that I knew that the grind to Petty Officer was not going to take an exorbitant amount of time.
The federal navy missions are the missions that seem to pop up once your current Federation rank is it 100% and you have a sufficient reputation with the minor faction handing them out.
Upon successfully completing a Federal Navy mission you rank with the Federation then increases. The Federal Navy missions are similar to other types of trade missions, I believe you can get combat missions but thankfully I got trade ones. I think two of them where covert transport missions where I had to transport some illicit goods to a system without being spotted. I usually turned on silent running mode when flying in to dock a t a station, it makes the ol ship overheat a bit though.
When my fourth Federal Navy mission appeared, I knew it was not long until I had my Sol Permit. I managed to successfully complete the mission without much hassle and the message appeared in my comms panel that I had been promoted to Petty Officer.
I quickly launched the galaxy map to plot my route to Sol, route plotting was unavailable though, it said I still needed a permit. I panicked, for about a second and realised that if I just exit to the menu then log back in it will be fixed.
I logged back in to the game and again plotted my route to Sol, hurrah! it was available and I was only 5 jumps away.
When I made the final jump to Sol and arrived in the system I heard the glorious little chime of the PlayStation trophy sound, I had unlocked the “Home, Sweet Home” trophy. And how sweet it was, to be back where it all started.
My first stop in Sol was to a station for a quick refuelling, the it was off visit Earth, the cradle of humanity, that blue globe we call home. It was awe-inspiring when I arrived and settled around orbit, I spotted Australia and then Africa. I flew in orbit for a few minutes just taking in the view and then I saw it, Britain and more importantly Scotland.
I hope someday Frontier might add the ability to land on earth, that would be really cool.
I noticed a few of the tourist beacon things when I was flying around, these are pretty cool. I think they give some information about the history of the Elite Dangerous universe and the first human ventures into space.
After scanning a few of the beacons I was off to Mercury, Mercury is landable so I landed at an outpost there. Next stop was Mars, the red planet except it didn’t look very red anymore, it looked like it had been terraformed in fact, it looked a lot like Earth.
As it was getting late I decided to just make a couple of more stops, so I headed to Venus then to Jupiter, Jupiter looked really awesome. I then headed to IO, one of Jupiter’s moons. IO looked like a giant golden ball out in the middle of space, it also was pretty cool.
And that was that for my first visit to Sol in Elite Dangerous. The grind to Federation rank of Petty Officer was arduous but well worth it. If you haven’t gotten your Sol permit yet, I highly recommend working towards it and taking a visit to our solar system.
Check out some of the photos I took of my visit to Sol below.
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