With this patch came a handful of new areas to explore. Some redone systems and a couple of brand new ones. This post will effectively be going through my experiences covering the Copernicus and Omicron Pi Systems. I will try my best to not spoil anything major here to give others a chance to experience the deeper hidden items for themselves.
COPERNICUS
Right out the gate, I do love the design of Copernicus. Three clouds on the outskirts, open section in the middle, shortcuts placed in certain spots to get you around. In terms of my experience exploring this system, it was enjoyable in the sense that I knew where I wanted to look. Simply put, you see a nebulae, cloud, debris field and you wanna go in and see what it's about. A lot of Copernicus is looking through the things that you can immediately pick out. Same can be said for a lot of the other objects in the game - they are hidden within such fields. Being that the system can only be reached by snubs, I guess for chose people wanting a quick way into the Sigmas or Northern Independent Worlds, this system will do just that. Despite the rather big size, once you learn the shortcuts, you can skip over large sections of it.
This is where I'll switch gears a little bit to what you can find. A certain ship gets mentioned once or twice in an infocard. You can find that specific ship. An unmarked objects are also hidden around the place and the northern cloud isn't 100% full of gas pockets. Still a pain to fly through. Once you discover a small thing you can effectively start this system's own little treasure hunt. It's the easiest one between here and O-Pi, though still fun to get the grasp of how the team is putting these little quests together.
All in all about Copernicus, I enjoyed the system and all the little bits I found. The big takeaway here is that you can find the hidden items because of areas that can be seen. I do like this approach with exploration as you have an area marked that you can search within to find something nice.
OMICRON PI
I just finished this system's story or quest about an hour or two ago, alongside doing a full sweep of the standard stuff you'd find if you flew around normally. The experiences here are very different to Copernicus, in my case they were somewhat frustrating, but only due to the approach the system creator had took, or what I assume the approach was.
As I stated in Copernicus, the explorables (I'll keep calling them this) were effectively marked by the fields you can see against the skybox. Within Omicron Pi, a lot of the hidden goodies are not marked at all. There is a lot of active searching you will have to do in order to find even one of the wrecks. I count two items that are hidden within invisible nebula. You gotta be within the nebula to know that you're inside. Otherwise it'll just look like empty space.
The minefield is it's own little hazard to work your way through. I do intend on recording the exact path to take to get to the explorable on the other end. As far as I can see, you have to take the same way back.
The story in the system is quite neat, "Find the Lost One". Like I mentioned before, I am quite used to being aided by things I can see, so with this system, when I initially entered it, all I could really see was the skybox and nothing more. The more you fly around, the more you realize this isn't the case.
WRAP UP
All in all, I did enjoy Copernicus and Omicron Pi. Was a blast to explore again. As a quick aside, I have posted a "cartography report" on Copernicus, but I will refrain from doing anything on Omicron Pi as that system properly rewards persistence. I'd like to thank @Antonio for creating these systems, it's been fun finding all the clues and getting to the end within Pi. Thanks for making it doable with Light Fighters, was convinced that whatever it was, wasn't gonna be LF friendly, but it was, so no hatred here.
I'd honestly like to see more dead-end or in-between systems with the whole seen and unseen exploration approach. Or a mix. For those players who mine Xeno Relics, I'd very much at least encourage you to really explore Pi and see what you can find.
Hope this serves as good enough feedback, and a strong request to have more systems added.
