 The Thargoids are an ever present somewhat belligerent but almost completely background presence in the galaxy of Elite Dangerous but it hasn't always been that way in the game. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe remember to click the bell icon and select all notifications and to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. If you've joined the universe of Elite Dangerous since early 2020 you could be forgiven for thinking that our aggressive galactic neighbours the Thargoids are a distant and somewhat background irritation that poses no real threat to life in the bubble and for the most part currently at least you'd be correct in that assumption but that wasn't always the case and if you're not careful even now wandering around the bubble you can still bump into them. In December 2016 the Elite Dangerous universe was a somewhat known quantity it was a dangerous galaxy but there was a comfort in the familiarity of that danger the game had been out for two years at this point and the games regular activities of piracy diplomacy trade combat and exploration were all well seated with the player base you knew pretty much what you'd be dealing with on any given outing. A month later that all suddenly changed. On January the 5th 2017 a lone Xbox player commander D. P. Sayer was out in the deep black jumping between systems when they became the first recorded victim of a Thargoid hyperdiction that not only kicked them out of the familiar witch space conduit they were travelling through but also forced them into another in game world first an encounter with what we now know to have been a Thargoid Cyclops. The surprise event has become a benchmark moment in the history of Elite Dangerous and it kicked off not only more and more reported Thargoid encounters as players streamed into the area looking for an encounter of their own but also a series of events that led the alien horror stories right into the heart of the bubble. In April of that year commanders began reporting the discovery of wrecked Federation capital ships and convoys the hulks of the Federation's behemoth vessels surrounded by a green gaseous cloud and covered in green residue. Commanders even reporting seeing Thargoid vessels jumping away as they arrived. Later interaction between Thargoid ships and their planetary surface barnacle structures was witnessed and as events continued to progress throughout the year new more dangerous Thargoid variant vessels were discovered as well as huge Thargoid surface installations that contained working Thargoid technology. All of these events culminated in another benchmark in Elite Dangerous history the first ever attacks on human star ports by the Thargoids. In December 2017 the star ports of Titan's daughter the oracle and Lehman legacy in the Pleiades region were attacked, set on fire and taken offline by Thargoids. The event heralded what became a regular weekly cycle the Thargoid menace would swarm an area human pilots would engage with them where the defence was unsuccessful the attacked star ports would burn and go offline commander piloted rescue vessels would swarm the area and begin evacuation efforts the fires would recede commanders would begin shipping materials to the afflicted stations to repair them whilst attacks sprung up at other stations and the cycle repeated for a while the problem remained in the Pleiades which presents problems uniquely all of its own fleet carriers didn't exist in Elite Dangerous at this point and moving combat vessels from the bubble let alone shipping large quantities of materials would pose a huge logistical exercise in and of itself but things were about to get much worse if you were complaining at the time that the travel time between the bubble and the Thargoid problem was a nuisance then the Thargoid had an answer for that their attacks began to move closer toward the bubble as the weekly cycle continued over the course of two years the Thargoid menace moved closer and closer to Sol as a trinity of commander led relief and defence efforts spearheaded by Operation Ida the post-disaster evacuation service and the forces of the AXI struggled to keep up with what was being asked of them the bubble was beginning to burn at the peak of the war there were well over 100 stations offline with new ones being added to the list of repair targets every week and Sol was surrounded by Thargoid activity it seemed only a matter of time before an assault on earth the cradle of humanity itself was launched and then in July of 2019 just as a new enclave of humanity was established in the witchhead sector the assaults in the bubble suddenly and miraculously stopped after over two years of relentless attacks ages began reporting that the Thargoids had withdrawn overnight from the bubble and just like that the invasion if not the war was suddenly over whilst Thargoid attacks and skirmishes have occurred in the areas surrounding the bubble they have never yet returned in any significant numbers to threaten the bubble with the arrival of player-owned fleet carriers the massive task of repairing all the damaged starports gained a boost and in July of 2020 Operation Ida confirmed that the last damaged starport from the second Thargoid war had been repaired and was back online they're not completely gone from the bubble however if you fancy seeing a Thargoid vessel up close you don't need to visit the Pleiades there's distress signals for example in Desiat the system where Felicity Farsia resides that contain mega ships under attack by Thargoids there's also a few other systems which we've listed in the description below this video that will likewise contain Thargoid encounters of one type or another there are missions available from the damaged mega ships as well if you outfit a ship with hatchbreaker repair and collector limpets you'll soon find something to do will the galaxy see a renewed Thargoid advance and a progressing years-long player-engaged conflict like the second Thargoid war ever again it would be nice to think so that kind of ongoing mysterious happening with genuine surprises being dropped into the player experience over the course of many years is one of the things that made Elite Dangerous so unique and so compelling for many people during the games early years if that kind of thing is to happen again then it would require an extended period of development and input from frontier exactly the sort of thing that you'd expect to see following a major expansion to the game in fact and with the ongoing story in the game involving salvation and the azimuth biochemicals corporation being so heavily entwined with the Thargoids who knows there's been chatter in the wider elitosphere since long before Elite Dangerous Odyssey released about the possibility of going toe-to-toe with Thargoids on foot if they even have toes and the chatter hasn't debated to this day it is with an expansion like Odyssey an obvious place for frontier to take the game I've linked below to a much more detailed history of the Thargoid war if this is all news to you be sure to check it out there's a lot more detail to the events than I've included in this brief summation if you've never been face-to-face with the Thargoid ship before and you now plan on visiting one do let us know how you get on in the comments below that's it for now thanks very much for watching if you enjoyed this video consider subscribing to the channel and maybe take a look at one of our other videos linked on screen right now