Similar to mining, Salvage is also one of the jobs in Star Citizen that requires its dedicated ships and tools. While Misc Prospector and Argo Mole are the icons of mining, Drake Vulture and Aegis Reclaimer are the icons of salvaging in the verse.
In this guide we will fully breakdown salvaging with Multi-Tool and Vulture. Because if you learn salvage with Vulture, you can figure out Reclaimer on your own. This is a zero-to-hero guide for everyone looking to learn about salvage, from the new citizens of the verse to the veteran salvagers who might be missing one or two tricks.
Salvaging With Vulture
You can purchase a Drake Vulture from the New Deal dealership at Lorville, Hurston for 2.65 million aUEC. Once you have the ship, you can begin your salvage adventure in different ways.
As a friendly advice, always make sure you have a multi-tool with a tractor-beam module equipped when heading for salvage. Later in this article we will tell you why.
Vulture Salvage Controls
Vulture is a single-seat salvage ship, which means you can do everything from the pilot seat on your own. In order to enter the salvage mode, you will first need to switch to SCM mode by holding B, then you should activate salvage mode by pressing M.
This will make your salvage arms to come out. If you press LMB and point towards a salvageable surface, the process will begin. A Vulture comes with two Cinch scraping modules. This is the most efficient but also the slowest module available for salvage.
If you press RMB, you will switch your arms to their secondary modules. On the standard Vulture, the left arm’s alternative module is a tractor beam, which helps you to control and maintain the position of the salvageable material in space. The right arm’s alternative, however, is an Abrade scraping module, which has a wider range of scraping but a lower efficiency compared to Cinch.
Now, if you only want to switch one of the arm’s to its alternative, it’s possible. If you press Left Alt + A, you will only choose the left arm to be operational, and all the changes will only apply to this arm. You can do the same for the right arm by pressing Left Alt + D. Once you made the adjustments, you can press Left Alt + S to make both arms operational again.
Now, all of this we explained so far were about hull scraping and collecting RMC, which is the most valuable salvage material. But, there is also a secondary material called CM, which is collected by fracturing ships.
In order to switch to the Fracture mode, press Left Alt + W. This will retract your arms, but that inner side of the arms will begin to create a magnetic field. Point at the target ship and press LMB to fracture it. This will cause the ship to tear into multiple parts. Now, press RMB to switch to the Disintegration mode. Get closer to any of the fractured parts of the ship and press LMB to activate Disintegration on it. This will cause the ship part to fully turn into metal dust and be stored in your Vulture’s buffer station.
Based on Alpha 3.23.1 rates, 1 SCU of RMC is worth 14.4K aUEC, while 1 SCU of CM is worth 1.5K aUEC.
What To Salvage With Vulture
In general, you can salvage ships and metal panels with Vulture or Reclaimer. If you choose to salvage ships, you have a variety of options: You can either go for contracts or visit populated areas to salvage leftovers ships.
There are three types of contracts available for salvage. The legal contracts will charge you a fee, based on how big the ship is, and sell you the location of the ship. You will have infinite time to salvage the target ship. The fees usually span from 1,000 aUEC for smaller ships to 50,000 aUEC for the bigger ships like M2 Hercules.
The illegal contracts for salvage, however, feature two types. One type comes in the same way as legal ones, as you pay a fee to buy the details of the ship’s location, but you will have only 30 minutes to salvage it. When time is over, if you still stay around the target, the UEE security ships will come to hunt you.
The second type, known as Cover Up contracts, works a bit differently. In this version, you don’t pay a fee, and you don’t have a timer to salvage the ship either, however, your location around the derelict ship will be marked as a valid target for PvP bounty hunters in the verse. These contracts will also pay you a reward after fully salvaging the ship. The reward is around 30K aUEC.
Now, if you want to salvage metal panels, which is the meta for salvaging in Alpha 3.23, you will need to head to any of the Lagrange Points in the verse. Lagrange Points are marked with an “L” in their names, like Hur-L1. I have completely covered this topic on the video above, make sure to take a look!
Ejecting And Selling Salvage Material
The Salvage UI on your screen gives you some important information about your modules, the target, and your storage. Based on the image below, we have listed what each UI indicator is trying to tell you here:
- The total amount of hull remaining to salvage on the target part
- The mass of the target part
- The shield status of the target part/ship
- The amount of hull remaining to salvage on the area your crosshair pointing at
- The amount of RMC gain per second from the left/right arm
- Your arms’ distance from the target part
- Active module
- Alternative module
- Active module’s statistics
- Buffer Station’s available space
- Your ship’s current speed
- Current mode:
- HD L: Left Arm (Salvage – RMC)
- HD R: Right Arm (Salvage – RMC)
- FRA: Fracture Mode (CM)
- DIS: Disintegration Mode (CM)
When your Buffer Station is full, you should stop salvaging, as it will overflow the storage and waste the resources. Now, get out of the pilot seat and head to the cargo bay.
There is a small terminal in front of the Buffer Station in the cargo bay. If you press Eject, it will produce a 1 SCU box of your stored material, be it RMC or CM. Here is when the multi-tool with tractor-beam module comes into play. These boxes are too heavy to carry with empty hands. So, you have to use a tractor beam.
Equip your multi-tool, pick up the box, and place it in any of the cargo grids. Repeat this for the remaining 11 boxes. The cargo grid on Vulture can take up to 12 SCU, but the size of Buffer Station is 13 SCU. This means the last produced box will remain in front of the Buffer Station.
Now, you can go back to the pilot seat again and fill up your Buffer Station once more. This will allow you to store up to 26 SCU of material every time you head for salvaging.
After all your 26 SCU of available space is full, it’s time to sell the cargo. There are multiple places to sell it. The best places are TDD centers at major cities, including Area 18, Lorville, New Babbage, and Orison. So, land on a hangar at any of these cities, store your ship, and head to the TDD centers. Interact with one of the terminals at the TDD center, choose your Vulture from the dropdown menu, and sell your cargo.
Sometimes, there are too many salvagers in the verse, and when you visit a TDD center, you can’t actually sell the cargo because there is no more demand for RMC or CM. Usually, Area 18 is the best place to sell RMC as it has the highest capacity for it, but even that will be filled at some point.
So, if there is no TDD center to buy your cargo, you can sell it at low-key places like Brio’s Brakeryard on Daymar, or Samson and Sons’ at Wala. These locations will buy the cargo at a lower price compared to TDD centers, and there might be some pirates near them to blow up your ship and steal your cargo. So, be careful when heading to these shady locations.
If you have a CrimeStat of 3 or above, you can’t visit TDD centers at major cities, but you can still sell cargo at GrimHex or the shady locations mentioned earlier.
Craft Tools With Salvage Materials
Aside from extracting salvage materials as cargo and selling them to earn profit, you can also spend a minimal amount of your collected materials to craft multi-tool or its modules. Keep in mind that crafting multi-tool and most of its modules will require CM rather than RMC.
Once you collected 1 or 2 SCU of CM, head down to the cargo bay and interact with the Buffer Station terminal. Switch to the Craft tab, and you will see a list of available tools and modules to craft, including multi-tool, mining modules, tractor beam modules, and more. Choosing each one will deliver the tool from the port at the right side of the Buffer Station.
Best Salvage Modules For Vulture
Based on a long and detailed test that I ran on all salvage modules, using a double Abrade configuration seems to be the best choice based on the Alpha 3.23.1 build. This will offer both salvage speed and efficiency at an acceptable rate. You can check out the full process of this test via the video above.
You can purchase all Salvage Modules from the Platinum Bay store at Port Tressler in MicroTech.
Salvaging With Multi-Tool
This method of salvage is not for making profit, but rather repairing the damaged parts of your ship’s hull. There are two different tools for salvage and repairing in Star Citizen at the moment (Alpha 3.23.1): The first is the beloved Pyro Multi-Tool, which can be purchased from all Cargo Centers at any of the major space stations as well as Refineries and even some of the clothing shops like Tammy And Sons.
A Pyro Multi-Tool, however, cannot salvage or repair on its own, as it needs two extra modules: Cambio-Lite SRT Attachment and Cambio-Lite SRT Canister. The attachments can be purchased from Platinum Bay (Port Tressler), Tammy and Sons (Lorville), or Dumper’s Depot (Area 18 or GrimHex). Once you attach both these modules to your equipped Multi-Tool, it’s ready to salvage.
In order to repair a ship, you will first need to collect some RMC by salvaging another ship or metal panel. Once your canister has enough RMC, press “B” to change the operational mode to Repair, and then start using the collected RMC to repair the hull damage of your ship. Keep in mind that to salvage or repair a ship, you must turn its shields off.
The second tool for FPS salvage is Cambio SRT. This one, however, doesn’t need extra modules, though you can purchase a few extra Cambio SRT Canisters to have more space for RMC.
Keep in mind that this will not fully repair your ship like the landing pads or hangars do, but it is rather a minimal improvement to help you safely reach a repair station.
Note: The Alpha 3.23.1 build of Star Citizen features a bug that does not allow you to attach a Cambio-Lite SRT Canister to a Multi-Tool. As such, repairing or salvaging with Multi-Tool is not possible. But you can still do it with Cambio SRT.
