Jack's tips #7: Acquiring and managing Nova
Nova in, Nova out
In Act 1 (Kirite), you'll typically get 1 Nova -- from delivering the extractor core to the observatory -- and you'll immediately use it on the Equinox upgrade to restore flight engines. There's really not much management needed there.
During Act 2 (Haven and Sonatus), you'll probably be looking at the Equinox upgrades and wondering how you're going to get the Nova to buy them. If you follow the storyline strictly, without going off exploring on your own, you'll collect 2 Nova on Haven and 8 Nova on Sonatus (provided you sell the extactor cores). There's another one on Haven if you follow the automatically triggered Equinox mission to investigate a second Warden Spire. So if you simply charge through the main campaign script, you'll end Act 2 with 10 or 11 Nova. Be thrifty with those, because you're going to need most of them.
In the first part of Act 3, you'll need 7 Nova for building outposts. If you've spent too much of the Nova you got on Haven and Sonatus, you might come up short.
In the second part of Act 3, you get to take down some large Nova-powered Legion machinery, and Nova will start to flow in. Before you get out of Act 3, you'll collect a minimum of 10 Nova, and more likely 20-30 Nova, from Legion.
Act 4 opens with the mid-game "grind," repeatedly taking down large Nova-powered Legion machinery. You'll also be encouraged to explore and "make friends," and along the way you might collect some Nova. The Nova is pouring in at this point, and there's a strong temptation to just spend it whenever you feel like it. But then the sources start to dry up as you deplete the non-renewable sources and wipe out the Legion sources. You can't get out of Act 4 until you spend 30 Nova on building some special structures, although you might be able to get a 50% discount. Alas, it's not difficult to have run your usual Nova sources dry by that point.
After that, you can use your Nova however you want. There aren't any more mandatory expenditures.
Where to find Nova
Renewable sources. As you wipe out the Legion, most of these sources disappear.
- Take down an extractor and sell its core -- 1 Nova
- Take down a prime and sell its core -- 5 Nova
- Destroy a dreadnought -- 10 Nova
- Hack the core dropped by a destroyed probe -- 1 Nova
- Pay 200 cogs and 50,000 Electrum at the Tier 3 Outlaw Shop on the Crimson Moon -- 1 Nova
Non-renewable sources, planetary. These rewards are shown on the starmap. There are somewhere around 20 Nova on each planet.
- Hack a sensor array -- 2 Nova (first time only -- rehacking the same array doesn't count)
- Hack a prison -- 1 Nova
- Hack a crashed Drake -- 1 Nova
- Decode a Warden Spire -- 1 Nova
Non-renewable sources, space. When you locate an outlaw hideout, interstellar freighter, or special space location, the starmap entry will show the reward. Those mapped locations have a total of maybe 75 Nova, while the unmapped locations have a total of maybe 125 Nova.
- Open Salvage container in an Outlaw Hideout -- 3 Nova
- Open Salvage container in an Interstellar Freighter -- 3 Nova
- Open Electrum Rush Cache at a special space location -- 3 Nova
- Open elemental Cache at Space Debris (not on starmap) -- 1 Nova
- Open Salvage container in Abandoned Cargo (not on starmap) -- 1 Nova
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