Table of Contents
Bounty
Looking for information about paying off a fine or bounty you have received? Try the Crime, Fines & Bounty page instead.
Elite Dangerous retains the bounty concept from previous games in the Elite series - if you attack and kill a human or AI player who is “wanted” you will be paid a bounty, but now in Elite Dangerous this payment is not instant as in earlier games, instead you are given a “voucher” for your bounty, which can be redeemed at a station within the voucher issuer's jurisdiction. For example, if you attacked and killed a player with a bounty issued by the Federation, you would need to travel to a Federation station to cash-in the voucher by contacting the local station services.
If your ship is destroyed before you have a chance to cash-in your vouchers, they are destroyed with your ship!
Kill-Warrant Scanner
Usually when you target another ship you will be told if the ship is “Wanted” by the faction that controls the current area space you are both in. If that ship has bounties from other factions then you wont know about it.
The Kill Warrant Scanner will let you scan the other ship for bounties held on that ship by any other faction - not just the local controlling faction. For example, a ship may be “Clean” in Empire space, but “Wanted” in Federation space. The Kill Warrant scanner will reveal this information and let you collect the bounty.
Be careful though - although you may see that another ship has a bounty in another area of space, it does not automatically make it Ok to attack. The local faction may perceive it as piracy and put a bounty on you as they pay no attention to bounties from other regions of space. Using the Empire & Federation example above, if a ship is “Clean” and you Empire space, but the Kill Warrant scanner reveals that the ship is “Wanted” in Federation space and you attack, the Empire will put a bounty on your head as the Empire ignores the Federation's bounties and you have just attacked someone who is in their view innocent.
How to do it
Before I start, I wasn't really sure where to put this So Ill just throw it in here. This method was found by myself with trials and errors. I know there are many similar ones on youtube, but I believe mine is safer and easier. So what we are going to do is Bounty Hunting.
You may have all seen the ships saying 'wanted' around.
We are basically making money by killing them.
Below is how much I made by doing so.
About 20 million Credits made in 5 days.
So first things first, you gotta find system with planets similar to Saturn. Once You've located them, go into the system, pop up the number 1 console(On your left), go to the Navigation and find High Intensity Resource Extraction Site. If there isn't any, go find another system. The reason for this, is that Low RES has less pirates and bounties, thus will not be time efficient. On the other hand, Hazardous RES has high Individual bounty, but there is no Internal Security Guards.
So it will be risky hunting them by yourself.
Although sometimes Wanted pirates do fight each other, but it's still too slow process.
In my case, I'm living in Guuguyni System in Alising Duval Empire.
I highly recommend this system, because this not only is High Tech system, but also has High Intensity RES.
Meaning, you can make loads of money and upgrade your ship within the same system.
Now once you've located your High RES, you got some preparations to make. Go to any starport with Outfitting. I have a Vulture and Following Equipments. All of them will cost about 1200~1300K for me. If you can't afford such, I highly recommend you to purchase Viper(a.k.a Viper MK III) Viper costs only about 140K, I made 700K with this ship prior to purchasing Vulture.
Internals, you must purchase Kill Warrant Scanner.(It searches for any additional bounty)
Also, I recommend you get good Shield Generator, scanner and Power Plant. For hardpoints, good shield booster will do. Power output can go about 1MW over as long as you adjust your modules in number 4 console(on your right)
Any modules not necessary for combat(Fuel scoop, Cargo Hatch etc..). Most important, Weapons, you must purchase Gimbelled Beam Laser
Reason is that, Any projectile weapons like Multi Cannons have ammo limitation. So youll have to return to starport or ammo replenishment. Also, when in the middle of hunting, if the ammo runs out its kinda annoying.
Ok so preparation done, lets go to High RES. You can easily find it in Navigation. RES cannot be located inside the starport.
Get out of the starport and then try finding it.
Well lucky I am, I have to Wanted Suspects already.Useful tip here. All Fer-De-Lance are 100% Pirates.All ships with Imperial, Federal are most often Pirates.All ships with Type- are NOT Pirates.All other Python,Anaconda,Cobra MK II, Viper, Vulture, Sidewinder, Eagle could be pirate or not.
YOU MUST SCAN THEM FIRST WHETHER OR NOT THEY ARE WANTED. If you attack any Non-wanted ships, you will become wanted yourself, making impossible for bounty hunting. Moreover, Once you die, all the bounties accumulated will be erased. Try not to die I had enough firepower to kill this pirate by myself.It's been less than a minute and I already made almost 100K already.But these are not even close to what We are going to make from now on.
If you fly around, you will see Green Colored ships(Default UI Color is Green) They are the heavenly angels that will help us make money.
These Internal Security Guards(ISG) will attack nearby Pirates.
ONCE AGAIN, IF YOU ATTACK ONE OF THEM, YOU CANT FARM ANYMORE. BE AWARE
To be honest, if you just stay still, pirates will come to you and scan you. If you are confident with your ship's firepower and shield capacity, you can hit them first.
ISG will join any fights within their range, it doesn't matter any fight as long as one of them is pirate.
Simply put, if you are fighting a pirate, ISG will join your fight and aid you as long as they are not in the middle of other fight. Of course you gotta calculate the distance and time of their arrival.
If you are NOT confident with your ship, first find ISG. They will either be alone, or in groups of 3 or 4. Keep following them until they begin fighting pirates.
Above picture clearly will show you how deadly ISG are. Anaconda(The most expensive ship in Elite Dangerous) are down to 25% HP.Be adviced that I didn't do anything to him. For those newbies out there, these low hp ships will be your main targets.
Let me put this very simply. For example, there are several ISG and some pirates and yourself. When ISG is not in conflict with pirates, if you attack pirates first, the ISG will begin aiding you, but the pirates will ignore ISG and you become their main target. That will mean you have higher risk of getting killed.
As you can see, killing a single pirate ship can give you up to 330K.
\ This is taken after about 15 mins I began hunting. I already made 2 million!
In 15 Minutes!
2 million isn't a great deal, but for newbies you can fully upgrade your Viper and still have leftovers. Ok so for the sake of this thread's purpose, let head back to starport and claim our bounty.
Within 30 minutes, I made 2.5 Million!
Keep repeating the same process, and everytime you claim bounty, upgrade your ship.
I suck at finishing articles, so ill just end here.
Thanks for reading.