Cave Missions

Cave missions are one of a number of FPS orientated gameplay missions. They combine FPS with exploration and I find the caves really atmospheric. Even if you are not a big fan of FPS I recommend completing a couple of these types of missions just for the experience. The other advantage of the cave missions is that they pay pretty well. The mission itself can net you approx 15,000 UEC and as an additional bonus each NPC typically has a bunch of Dolivine on their person which when collected can net you an additional 60,000 - 75,000 UEC! In a previous patch NPC’s carried Hadanite making these missions one of the most valuable available - however sadly this is no longer the case.

There are generally a couple of different flavours of these missions

Eliminate a specific NPC
Eliminate a number of NPC’s

There isn’t a huge difference between these variants in practice since you end up having to kill all available NPC’s in either case.

The format of a cave mission is:

Accept an entrenched target or evict illegal occupants (that mention cave in description) bounty hunting mission on your mobi-glass
Fly to the planet/moon and locate the cave
Enter the cave and clear out the NPC’s. Collect their Dolivine
For Bonus UEC - Find your way back to your ship, and fly back to station. Locate the Admin office and sell your Dolivine

Mission setup⌗

You need to put on your war-face for these missions. Your packing list should look something like this

Medium or heavy torso armour
Medium or heavy backpack (requires medium or heavy torso armour as appropriate) to collect bonus Dolivine from NPCs
Leg and arm armour if you wish (I often head into the cave without these and collect them from one of the fallen foes)
Helmet
Assault rifle or SMG with appropriately sized optic and Emod stabilizer attachment. Lots of weapons work well e.g. P4/P8 AR, C54 SMG, P8-SC SMG
Spare ammo for your weapon of choice
Med gun x 2, Always have 2 med guns. One on your person and one in your rucksack should the one on your person glitch out
Pyro multi-tool with a tractor beam attachment. Useful if you want to carry an NPC or rucksack out for stripping and looting in your ship (throw the NPC out afterwards). You can also pack a mining attachment should you wish to mine in the caves too.

If you don’t have this equipment you need to purchase it from a combination of gun shops and armour shops. Med pens can be purchased from a pharmacy. In the example of New Babbage on Microtech you would use:

CenterMass (The Commons - Plaza) for armour, weapons, weapon attachments, ammo
Shubin Interstellar (The Commons - Plaza) for the Pyro multi-tool and tractor beam attachment
Brentworth Care Center (Aspire Grand) for the med guns

A lot of people will collect these items as they go along within the Verse. As well as purchasing these items you can loot them from NPCs or locate them in loot boxes that you can find scattered around. I’ll cover this in another article.

Once you have your gear sorted you should hop into your ship and set out to find the cave. Any ship will do, but I would prefer to use a ship that has a inventory which can be used to store extra gear you don’t want to carry on your person. This is a preference and not essential. My favorite ship for these missions is the Cutless Black

Locate and clear the cave⌗

Finding the caves can be a little tricky the first time you come to do it. When you accept the mission you get a mission marker which helps you locate the cave, however the mission marker can disappear as you get close so it’s important to know what to look out for. The number 1 tip I’ve picked up is that entrance to a cave will generally be made up from higher resolution assets vs the planet, so one telltale sign you have found the cave entrance is that you will see this. In the image below the cave entrance is right off the nose of the Drake Corsair

You know for sure that you’ve found a cave when you explore on foot and see some boxes or containers scattered around. Note this applies to caves you reach on foot - some caves are suitable for vehicles and you can fly straight into those!

Once you’ve found the cave you need to navigate into its depths eliminating the NPC’s as you go. If visiting a cave on planet/moon with a extreme temperatures such as Aberdeen you might be concerned about your flight suit over or underheating. Luckily with caves this is not the case, the inside of all caves are perfectly temperate.

After you’ve eliminated each NPC you are free to loot them for gear, weapons, etc. However the most valuable thing they carry is the Dolivine so don’t fill up your rucksack with much else to leave room. Each NPC will either hold the Dolivine in their core armour or backpack should they have one. The easiest way to loot them is:

Select loot from the menu
Right click on the NPC’s core armour or rucksack and click open
Drag the items into your rucksack

You will have to navigate pretty deep down into the caves to eliminate the targets. At some points your route may also involve climbing up some of the rocks. In Star Citizen rocks that you can climb are identified by yellow paint so if you find one of these keep attempting to jump at them until successful. It can be a little buggy so don’t despair if you can’t climb the rocks after a couple of attempts.

Should you wish you can also equip the mining attachment to the Pyro multi-tool and perform some mining when you are down in the caves. The cave systems can have valuable mineral deposits. Personally I’ve not found this to be a very profitable endeavour but you can certainly still do this for fun.

Once you complete the mission which typically involves eliminating a specific NPC or clearing the cave you just need to find your way out and back to your ship.

Selling your minerals⌗

This is bonus task. The mission is completed once you clear out the enemy NPCs.

Once you’ve eliminated the NPC’s and made it out the cave in one place you can return to your ship. Now its time to sell the minerals and generate some cash. To do this you should fly over to a station, locate the Admin office and sell your minerals. You cna head to a mining post, lagrange station or planet to do this. I’d personally avoid planets since it takes longer to get there.

When you arrive land your ship, locate the ship terminal and store your ship. Then locate the Admin office and sell the minerals from your backpack.