 This is Witch based news for Friday the 1st of July 2022, I'm CMDR Buur In Elite Dangerous News this week, this week's Frameshift livestream features a fascinating conversation with Elite's senior designer, Frontier officially recognizes and reacts to the anti-salvation witch hunt, there's a new community made Elite Experience Guide and a planet with twin thargoid surface sites is put under sudden and mysterious permit lock as the azimuth saga enters its final phase. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe and remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications and if you'd like to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. It was livestream week for Frontier on their now fortnightly schedule this week presented by community managers Arthur and Bruce. As well as the regular slots for supercruised news and the community created stellar screenshots this week's show featured the welcome return of a dev interview in the form of a live appearance on the stream from the senior designer for Elite Dangerous Deran Halil. Deran has been with Frontier for the last 6.5 years and whilst he's touched most aspects of Elite Dangerous during his tenure his main focus currently is on systems design in the game. The regular format of dev interviews for the live streams recently has settled on a pre-recorded slightly more formalized questions and answers based conversation but Deran's appearance live on the show meant that the audience was treated to a much less formal, longer and more conversational interview with the always engaging Deran who you may remember from his now many appearances on Frontier's live streams over the last couple of years. As well as talking about what his job involves in an average day and how it dovetails with the other designers and developers and project managers on the game Deran spoke at length about how any design decisions must encapsulate an account for the resources available to build the idea into the game and what other impacts on the existing gameplay and systems any implementation of the new design might have. And in a game as large freeform and complex as Elite Dangerous that can be no small task. Deran also gave some background into the nature of designing for Elite Dangerous when it comes to accounting for the more freeform nature of player engagement with the game. He mentioned in particular the way players will take the tools presented to them in Elite Dangerous and use them in a way that the designers of the game had never accounted for citing specifically as an example the whole tank shieldless anti-thargoid ship builds favoured by some in the community fighting something as daunting as a thargoid without a shield was just not something that was designed into Elite the community having designed the ship builds via the engineering system and now regularly using it. When questioned on the subject of Elite's progression over the coming months Deran unsurprisingly didn't want to spoil any specifics but he did say that having worked on Elite for some significant time he's more excited about what is being worked on right now than he's ever been about anything arriving into the game before and co-host Bruce then said quote that speaks volumes about what is just around the corner unquote more on that in a moment Deran's considered enthusiasm and thoughtful passion for his work on Elite Dangerous are very apparent when you speak to him and we're really looking forward to seeing what him and his team have been cooking up. Commander Sid711 has created an awesome poster style picture reference chart listing just some of the many experiences you can have in Elite Dangerous if you're looking for a new sight to see or a challenge to overcome. The image posted on reddit covers off 47 of the commander's personal most interesting places and experiences in Elite Dangerous with an appropriate image and details on where to go to experience that thing in Elite yourself. It's an incredible and inspiring piece of work that has something for everyone spanning the entire length and breadth of the galaxy. Do take a look and my thanks go to StuartGT this week for pointing us to the post. The regular viewer will know that we've reported recently on the player initiative known as the Witch Hunt formed initially by the streamers commander Selene Star Dragon and Commander Sykit. For the uninitiated the Witch Hunt was born when it became apparent that the in-game faction Taurus Mining Ventures rather than being in cahoots with Salvation and the then named Azimuth Biochemicals are in fact themselves the now rebranded murderous human experimenting Xenocidal Megacorporation Azimuth Biotech. The moment Taurus were outed as Azimuth all their in-game assets became Azimuth's in-game assets and with that players finally had a target on the range to shoot BGS shaped bullets at. The Witch Hunt named after Messiah in the Messing Salvation's true identity of Caleb Witcherly has tasked itself with pushing the Devil's Own version of Fisher Price out of all the systems where it holds any influence using the very tools the game provides to enact such things the all-encompassing background simulation. You'll find a video linked on screen where we talked about this project at its start. Whilst the effort has no illusions of defeating Salvation the significant community that has rapidly formed around the initiative have generated significant results worthy of note right out of the gate and those efforts were rewarded this week when a Galnet News article in the game itself recognized the Witch Hunt and its achievements even citing a quote from Professor Alba Tesro former head of research at Aegis expressing support for the operation that right there makes it part of the law that makes it canon it happened in the real world and then it was reflected in Elite Dangerous. Well done everyone involved in Operation Witch Hunt you are now part of the official history of the Elite Dangerous universe fan flipping tastic. The Adamastor Megaship arrived in the Chukchan system as part of the Halloween in-game event in 2020 well over 18 months ago now little did we know back then that the deserted ghost ships arrival was the herald of what has become known as the Azimuth Saga an in-game storyline that has seen the uncovering of a brooding background threat that has expanded upon and subsequently been interwoven with the existing game story. For my money the Azimuth Saga has overseen the injection of more high quality galaxy defining law into Elite Dangerous than all the previous years of Galnet stories combined. Its arrival alongside the launch of the revitalized Galnet in-game has been one of the most welcome additions to the game's texture and colour since the beta. Frontier had already stated that this year would see the culmination and crescendo of that storyline that details mankind's first encounter with the Thargoids and continues through the deployment of the mycoid virus and the attempted zenoside of the Thargoid species followed up by Caleb Wichely's forced human experimentation when attempting to adapt Thargoid technology for his own use to name but a few atrocities with the now revealed signature of salvation all over them. In-game when Galnet News started recapping the events of the Azimuth Saga in instalments last week we did suspect that the end of this particular story was indeed on the immediate horizon and with the events in-game this week coupled with noises coming out of Frontier's community team it does appear that we're in the endgame now. Salvation's Azimuth biotech owned mega ships had telegraphed their expected repositioning movements this week and, true to their logs, with the server tick on Thursday morning those ships did indeed reposition. It's what else came with the repositioning however that started to ring the first alarms signalling that perhaps the coming week was not going to be quite so standard issue as many had suspected. With the landing of the tick came the addition of a planetary level permit lock and the removal of a system wide permit lock. The permit lock system HIP 22460 formally a staging post for the black flight ships and at least one site formally used by Azimuth's project Seraph contained on planet 10B two large Thargoid surface installations. The permit lock for that system which was easy to obtain had been removed by the morning tick, planet 10B however had a permit lock placed on it and with that permit lock there also arrived warships from the alliance, federation and empire as well as Azimuth's own expected mega ships all now in close proximity of planet 10B. The removal of a system wide permit lock is not an entirely unusual occurrence and it often occurs right before a community goal centred on that system. The installation of a permit lock on an individual planet however is an entirely more unusual occurrence. There are permit locked planets in the game the installation of a new one I don't remember happening for quite some significant time. Later in the day as was by this point anticipated a new community goal arrived one of the more covert type that has become a signature of salvation and his background maneuverings. The CG demands that basic and advanced medicines are delivered to the Azimuth mega ship Heart of Taurus in HIP 22460 in return for pilots efforts they will receive some exclusive ship paint jobs alongside the regular cash incentives but it's the reason for the community goal and resultant planetary lockdown that is most interesting. Salvation has promised a decisive blow in the battle against the Thargoids that would remove the threat to humanity and it seems the efforts in HIP 22460 are in direct support of that promised action. The CG states that what is now being called the Proteus Wave is now being prepared in the system this is Salvation's AX Superweapon. The device is designed to first attract and then wipe out the bulk of the Thargoid fleet, indeed the community goal warns that AX forces are being prepared in the system in anticipation of the arrival of the enraged Interstellar Lurgy Lilies. Whilst it was at first miraculously effective all evidence since it was first deployed would seem to suggest that Salvation's Proteus Wave devices have become less and less effective every time they've been used. At best now deployment of the weapon seems to temporarily shoo away the Thargoids like so many wasps drawn inexorably towards a family picnic on a hot summer's day. If old Salad Nation is declaring that his intent on luring the vast majority of all the Thargoids to one place and then taking a singular not very effective swipe at them then I don't hold much stock in his chances of not getting significantly stung in the process and just like that one idiot at a family picnic intent on killing all the strawberry jam obsessed wasps around them everyone else at the picnic is just as likely to get stung as well. When the news broke the community speculation on the forums and social media as well as in-game intensified frontiers lead community manager Arthur told me even tweeting in response an Avengers themed gif stating we are in the endgame now. It's a fair assumption at this point that something is clearly about to happen in HIP 22460 and Planet 10B and it's twin Thargoid surface sites are almost certainly the focus of that something. What that something is is of course a matter of wild speculation in the community at large with Frontier unsurprisingly giving nothing away. Opinions range from nothing at all all the way through to Thargoids on foot, Thargoid Megaships and even the complete emulation of Earth or even the bubble itself. The CG is due to end next Thursday it seems to us likely that the Thargoids will arrive in system before that at the invitation of the Proteus wave device. Either way we suspect we really don't have long to wait. Are your morals up for sale in exchange for a nice unique salvation paint job? Are you battling as part of the witch hunt? And just what do you think will arrive when the Azimuth saga reaches its crescendo? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now. Thanks very much for watching. We'll be back later this week with more videos. Until then, O7 Commanders, follow the Greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.