Ram Tah Mission : Decoding the Ancient Ruins

27th December 2017

Note: This mission is currently (as of 3.0) bugged. Obelisks now show the items required for a scan – see the Decrypting the Guardian Logs mission for a set of obelisk glyphs – but they don’t always show the correct items. The combinations on the Canonn maps should work.

This guide describes how to complete a mission that the engineer Ram Tah offers in the Meene system. The mission is an introduction into the Guardian Lore, and a good reason to visit a variety of Guardian Ruins. This is the first mission from Ram Tah – the second mission is found in other locations in the Meene system – see Decrypting the Guardian Logs.

Starting the mission

You need Horizons (you’re going to need to land on planets).
Go to the Meene system, land at Felice Dock.
Check your Mission view – you should have received a mission from Ram Tah (He is an engineer, you don’t need to unlock him). If you haven’t received the mission you can try either re-docking, or exit the system and re-enter – both have been used to get the mission.
I handed in the mission – can I get it again?
Yes, just exit and re-dock, you should get the mission again (it just appears in the missions tab, you don’t have get find it on the mission board on the station). You can collect the reward multiple times. The timer resets when you restart, so you can have more time, and you can claim rewards multiple times. You must claim the reward at the station where you picked it up.
The mission timer is 4 weeks – you can hand in a partial completion in that time for the rewards currently listed on the Transactions Tab, though you will not get the completion bonus

Ship specifications for the mission

The longest jump range you can get – the locations of the ruins are quite spread out you will be flying over 1000 LY
You want 11t of cargo space free for items needed during the mission
An Advanced Discovery Scanner (to find the planets)
A planetary landing suite and an SRV (two if you have room, it is easy to lose an SRV when navigating the sites).
Materials for SRV fuel (definitely useful)
Materials SRV repair (optional as your ship can repair the SRV, but useful)

Getting to the first site

There are three layouts of ruin, the layouts are called alpha, beta, gamma. Each ruin has sets of obelisks, and only a subset are active (lit up) at each site. You will need to visit many to complete the mission by scanning obelisks for lore. The goal is to retrieve 101 messages.

When visiting the sites it is worthwhile to always park your ship in the same location in a particular layout – this way you can use your ship to help you orient yourself inside the sites as they can be confusing. A location at the edge of the site is often easiest for orientation.

There is a route optimiser to help work out which sites you need to visit. Choose how far you want to travel and hit optimize, then ‘detailed’ if you want an exact route to follow. You can also use the route on this site if you do not want the latest route.

To get to the ruin fly to the stated system, then to the planet. Once you get within 1000ls you will see Ancient Ruins appear in the system panel, and you can use these to get to the sites. You probably won’t see the sites until you are with 5km. Note that many planets have several ruins, so check you are at the right one (matching lat/long on HUD).

Collect items you will need for the mission

You will need some items on board. There are five different ancient artefacts spread around the site, and an ancient relic. Ideally you want two of each (there are multiple of each lying around), except the relic where you only need one. You can use the same items at all sites. Items spawn at different locations on different sites – there is no definitive list. It’s usually easiest to find objects at a ‘Beta’ type site (as it is the smallest and flattest). Don’t forget to check just outside the perimeter as several usually are found there. Items appear on the scanner when you are within range, as do active obelisks.

Collect artefacts and relics in solo (people will have probably moved/taken them in open).

Use the cargo scoop to pick up artefacts (you can shoot the rocks around them to make this easier, or try boosting over the rocks). Relics are initially underground, when you get close they will raise up on pillars and you can shoot them down (scan one first). Take artefacts back to the ship as you find them as you only can hold two in the SRV.

You should collect:

2 Urns (Ur)
2 Totems (To)
2 Caskets (Ca)
2 Orbs (Or)
2 Tablets (Ta)
1 Relic (Re) note that you only need one Relic

Completing the mission

The goal is to collect decoded messages from Ram Tah – they are numbered and in five sets themed around Biology, Language, Culture, History and Technology. You need to collect them all to gain the completion bonus.

The route optimizer will list which obelisks you need to scan on a site, and with which items in your SRV hold. Use the Canonn ruin map for the site to work out where the obelisk is – it will glow blue as you approach. Obelisks are in groups – groups have letters and obelisks within a group have numbers, so H12 is obelisks 12 in group H. Somewhat confusingly lore is also identified in the route optimiser by a letter and number, so H12 is also the lore from History 12. Pay attention when reading the route optimiser output, or you can easily take the wrong items to the wrong location.

For example: ‘C1(To+Ur:C4)’ means ‘Go to Obelisk group C, obelisk number 1. Scan it with a To(tem) and Ur(n) in the SRV. Expect to get C(ulture)4 lore.

Targeting and scanning the obelisk (with SRV Data Link Scanner) with the correct item(s) in your SRV hold will give you a lore message from Ram Tah. Note that these messages can be delayed and are unreliable – look at the mission reward if you want to know that you got a valid combination, it will go up per combination found (you can also re-scan after 30 seconds, which usually gets you the delayed message). If you get a message from Ram saying that the combination is wrong them check you have the correct items in the SRV. If you get no message then check you have the correct items. and try relogging, or scanning a different obelisk as the messages sometimes get ‘stuck’ (the mission payout will still increment in these cases if the scan was successful).

Keep a record of which scans you have found: it is frustrating if you only need one scan and don’t know which one. You can go back through the messages you received and narrow down which could be missing – the route optimiser allows you to select a subset of items to look for – click the items on the top row. The Canonn ruin map also allows you to filter down to specific items.

Completion of the mission

You can hand in the mission (to whichever base you got it from in Meene – needs to be the same one) whenever you like and get the amount given in the Transactions tab. You can even get the mission again from the same location – just go and re-land.

If you get the mission again the delete the messages you got from scanning the obelisks, or you won’t get them again (this makes it harder to keep track of what you have done).