Grinding that engineer unlock data

There's a lot of stuff that comes out of HAB (habitat) building data ports, and a lot of it is what you need to unlock engineers and which can't be gotten from mission rewards or other paths that don't involve on-foot sneaking and murdering. Fortunately, sites exist to make this grind bearable if repetitive.

In particular, you can get the following data from HAB ports:

• Opinion Polls (unlock Kit Fowler)

• Smear Campaign Plans (unlock Yarden Bond)

• Classic Entertainment, Multimedia Entertainment, and Cat Media (unlock Wellington Beck)

• Financial Projections (referral from Terra Velasquez to Oden Geiger)

• Culinary Recipes and Cocktail Recipes (unlock Rosa Dayette)

• Faction Associates (referral from Baltanos to Yi Shen)

• Digital Designs (referral from Eleanor Bresa to Yi Shen)

Within HAB buildings, you can also find goods useful for engineer unlocks:

• Push (referral from Domino Green to Kit Fowler)

• Insight Entertainment Suite (referral from Wellington Beck to Uma Laszlo)

Plus a good mix of assets, including Graphene (used for all suit upgrades and fantastic cross-trade into any other chemicals) and a few other data and goods for engineering modifications. But the big draw are the data types that only come from ports, not mission rewards.

Target: Anarchy

The Odyssey grind thrives on Anarchy settlements, because murder there doesn't give you fines, bounties, or notoriety. Plus, as soon as you fly away, they forget that you've been murdering them, so you can come back again and again without issue.

That pairs with a particular agricultural settlement layout that has a B-site away from the main building with 3 small HABs, each of which has a data port, and only 4 associated personnel. As of this writing, Hakimi Nutrition Biome in Iah Bulu meets the criteria.

For gear, you want a Maverick suit and an Executioner sniper rifle (preferably Audio Masked) and/or a kinetic weapon (definitely Audio Masked). In a pinch, a Tormentor pistol will also do the job (range is the limiting factor). If you have Quiet Footsteps on a suit, you can manage the range issues better. The goal is to take out the four enemies in single shots so that they can't react themselves, and Audio Masking helps prevent the other personnel from taking notice.

Fly down to Hakimi and you'll see the main building (off to the right in the above image) and a circular side facility with three buildings and a few dozen domed tents, surrounded by a low ring ridge. Land just outside in the orientation shown, nearly opposite the small landing pad. We'll be using the rightmost building as a sniper nest.

Our plan is to move to an inner tent, scan two personnel from that vantage point, and then jump to the elevated roof portion of the rightmost building to finish scanning NPCs and begin sniping. The elevated roof is key, as the lower part of the roof flags as part of the interior restricted area and the nearest NPC tends to notice a landing thump on that surface.

There is a skimmer flying around. Ignore it. So long as the NPCs can't set off alarms, it won't care about you.

I approach jumping along the top of the marked tents, as NPCs seem to me to pay less attention to things not on their vertical level. Reaching the innermost tent lets you passively scan the first two NPCs to tag them on your minimap. Don't use the scanner tool at this time.

Then use Jump Assist to fly to the marked Sniper Post. Land near the back and the NPCs won't care about the thud; you can move forward to passively scan the other two from there. As you scan, take note of who has Level 1 authority; you'll want it to simplify entering buildings later.

Now we wait.

Near the back of the sniper post, you can keep all four NPCs in view so that you see the minimap arrows indicating their line of visibility. Wait for 30 seconds or so for their action pathing to kick in. Their usual routes are marked above, but things vary. The key is to wait to take a shot until no one is looking at your target, and to not get greedy until NPC #3 won't see you and your gun. At this point, my most typical kill sequence is 1-2-4-3, but note that #4 is the only soldier type, has the only rifle, and is the most likely to quickly call an alarm. Making #4 your first kill is a reasonable option (you'll just have to wait to get separation between him and #3).

Watch the motion for a bit. See if anyone goes into a building. See where #2 goes, as he'll likely move out of minimap range. Reload before your clip runs out. Be patient.

Once all the external NPCs are down, go clone the profile of a Level 1 NPC if available so that you can walk into the buildings and finish the job. If there are none (or they're all inside) — well, that's what the arc cutter is for. The non-soldier techs inside the building won't care about the sound.

Loot and Reset

Finally, with all four NPCs down, visit each HAB in turn. The data port is to the left, some assets may be in the open, and lockers are to the right in the side door. Data download alarms are solely within the current room and have no effect elsewhere. No one comes from the main facility for that, and the skimmer doesn't notice. Once you've cleaned out all three buildings, you can also scan the downed NPCs for bounties if you like (the money isn't really worth it) before you return to your ship.

To reset the site, you can't just log out — logging in at a settlement gives you no loot at all. Instead, you have to exit supercruise (but you don't have to log out). Take off, go straight up, and engage supercruise at as low an altitude as possible. On entry, immediately pitch back toward the surface and disengage as quickly as possible. With luck, it'll drop you out 10 km up; sometimes lag kicks it to 20 km instead. Either way, complete the pitchover, fly down, land in the same spot, and repeat as needed. The medpacks and energy cells will be missing, but all the valuable loot will be present.