Other Systems

This section will walk through all of the other systems in STO that are outside of the main gameplay of ships and characters, including duty officer chains, R&D, upgrading, Reputations, Specializations, Admiralty, and Endeavors.

Throughout this guide, look out for items marked ALERT in red text for special cautions and italicized picture captions for related images. 

6.1 Duty Officer Assignment Chains

Some duty officer missions are part of a quest chain, where multiple missions can be completed in succession to yield more powerful rewards. These are generally non-repeatable, unlike most duty officer missions, though some of them unlock repeatable missions. The wiki has a full list of duty officer assignment chains and many of them are well-worth doing. Others are basically ignorable unless you’re after titles/accolades, or require using lockbox items, which is not generally advisable. You can see your progress by clicking the assignment chains tab on the left side of the duty officer roster. 

Duty Officer Chain Screen

Colonization Chains are a 7-mission assignment chain associated with a colonization location (remember that we talked about these when showing the Sector space map in section 1.1) . These require going to a particular area of sector space marked by a glowing ribbon or nebula and looking for missions with a (x / 7) by them. Upon reaching a colonization locale, you can check them to see if these unique, non-repeatable missions are available. They will not always appear, and if one is assigned, there’s a 20 hour cooldown before one of them can be repeated. You have to complete each mission in order before the next one can be acquired. These frequently need commodity items, and if you don’t have any, open your inventory (I) and choose the replicator tab to produce them. 

Upon successful completion of all 7 missions ending in a “Renown,” you’ll be awarded a unique Rare (blue) Duty Officer. Once that is complete, it will unlock a repeatable “Support Colonization/Expansion Efforts” mission that awards a Refugee on success and a Very Rare Duty Officer on critical success. You can acquire multiple of the same doffs through this mission. 

Colony chain mission offered

Given that some duty officers are far more valuable/desirable than others, while it is worth it to acquire all or at least most of them eventually, here are some colonization chains to prioritize for each faction, since you otherwise might struggle to juggle all of them at once. 

Federation:

Klingon Defense Force:

Other Assignment Chains can appear in sector space, especially in the Alpha Quadrant, from the interior of your ship (see the next section), or in specific holiday venues. Again, feel free to explore these and pursue them as much as possible. Some of them are fairly difficult to locate and the wiki will be your best bet. 

Of note, the most crucial one is Caitian Diaspora (Federation) or Unforgiven of Ferasa (KDF), which are 10-part chains that awards a Very Rare Flight Deck Officer and unlocks a repeatable mission that can earn you more flight deck officers.

Otherwise, consular authority chains allow you to unlock repeatable missions to trade duty officers for duty officers on a diplomatic exchange mission. Beyond that, Ghost of the Jem’Hadar unlocks a unique Very Rare Advisor/Diplomat.

Gamma commodity chain

You can see a list of all the chains you’ve started or completed by going to the Assignment Chains on the side of the Duty Officer window.

You can expand any chain to see what step you’re on, as well as expand completed chains to see what the results were. 

6.2 Ship Interiors 

To access the interior of your ship, select the dropdown on the right side of the ship interior and select “Visit Starship Bridge.” Now, if you were hoping to have an immersive experience where you can fly your ship from the bridge, prepare to be disappointed. STO does not work that way. 

Access Ship Interior dropdown

On most ships, upon visiting the bridge, you’ll see your chosen bridge officers at their stations and yes, you can sit in the captain’s chair.

You can configure your bridge crew in the Department heads tab of the Duty Officers menu to determine who shows up where, but it will generally default to your active bridge stations. Most ships have a ready room where you can view your bank, library files from past story arcs, and contact duty officers. A few ships (mostly freighters and Ferengi ships) will have full trade hub access with an Exchange terminal and even dabo. Exploring other parts of the interior will allow you to navigate to various sections of the ship like Engineering and Sickbay. There are some unique duty officer chains that you can initiate from the ship interior and some unique cosmetics you can put on display in the lounge or ready room, but apart from that, there’s not much else to do inside your ship. Only a couple of missions require you to access your ship's interior, so unless you’re after specific doff chains or into role-playing with other players, don’t expect to spend much time with your character on the bridge.

ALERT: On one of these missions: Mine Enemy’s prompt tells you to access the library files in your ready room or conference room. The default Federation bridge “Miranda - Medium” has this console in the back of the bridge. 

Library File Terminal in default Federation bridge

Left: Ready room cosmetics; Right: Lounge cosmetics

Chef duty officer unique missions from ship interior

You can similarly visit your small craft bridge, but there are even fewer options available from there. To change a ship's interior use the Ship customization Vendor (more information in Section 8.9). STO also sells bridge interiors for Zen, especially ones that look like famous ships from the show. Ironically, this level of customization is likely why they can’t do more with ship interiors. The very limited Lukari bridge offers almost no space to stage a mission compared to the relatively expansive environment of the Galaxy ship interior, but they also can’t force you to use said bridge unless they put you in a different ship for the duration of the mission. 

6.3 Minigames

STO has a number of quick-time minigames that appear throughout various episodes and maps. While the early missions are fond of math or logic puzzles that are covered in the wiki's page for each individual episode, these are reflex/reaction based minigames similar to the waveform scan introduced early on in 2.2 Resource Nodes and which appear throughout the game. All of them take 50-60 seconds.

6.3.1 Radiation Scans

In our most recent playthrough, this first happens on New Romulus as an optional activity. A menu will appear with green and orange colored square waveform. You can click the arrow keys to line the orange waveform up with the green one. The green wave-form will shift positions every few seconds, forcing you to re-align the orange line. The game provides you a clickable set of 4 arrows to move the lines up and down, but a much faster method is to use the arrow keys to move the orange line. The more time you spend with the waveforms aligned, the higher your score.

Left: Approaching radiation minigame practice container; Right: tooltip

Left: Unaligned radiation waveforms; Right: aligned waveforms show only green; these will re-cycle every few seconds for 60 seconds.

This minigame can found in the following locations:

• New Romulus Adventure Zone

• Various missions, including Sunrise

• Fleet Colony holding

• Tau Dewa Radiation Scan (from available missions tab in the journal, after performing a radiation scan on New Romulus)

6.3.2 Dilithium Mining

Similar to the radiation scan, the mining minigame asks you to align three lasers to a central focal point. A menu appears showing the dilithium vein, at which point you’ll need to align the lasers as shown by the white triangle to the red target outline to earn points. Every few seconds, the target outline will shift, forcing you to re-align the lasers. You earn more points the more you can keep the lasers aligned. Each session lasts 60 seconds. As with radiation scan, you can use the mouse and click the arrow keys, but a more efficient method is to use the arrow keys on PC. Right will rotate the white triangle counter-clockwise, left arrow will rotate it clockwise, up will increase the altitudes of the triangle (the distance from the center to the edge), while down arrow will decrease the altitudes of the triangle. 

Mining mini-game screen

This minigame can found in the following locations:

• Vlugta Asteroid Field

• Nukara Adventure Zone

• Fleet Dilithium mine holding

• Various missions

• Fleet Colony holding

6.3.3 Particle Stabilization Scanning

This minigame requires you to align the scanner bars with the incoming particle streams to catch as many of them as you can in 50 seconds. You gain more score as you consistently capture more and more particles; a perfect score is 2700 for the maximum rewards. This minigame, unlike radiation scan and mining, is better performed with a mouse for maximum movement.

Left: Particle Stabilization; Right: Maximum reward from Stabilization

This minigame can found in the following locations:

• Omega Particle Stabilization limited-time event around anniversary

• Fleet Colony holding

6.3.4 Dabo 

Dabo is a chance-based game typically found on Drozana, Deep Space Nine, Risa, and inside Ferengi ship interiors. To play dabo, simply pick 3 numbers, bet a certain amount of energy credits or gold-pressed latinum (the latter being preferable due to having few other uses for endgame players), and select “place bet.” The wheel will spin and you’ll win…or not, based on how close you were to guessing the right number. This is chiefly used in the endgame Endeavor system (see Section 7). Any winnings are always in gold-pressed latinum. You are hoping that the wheel ends up on symbols that match the color, shape, and number of symbols corresponding to the numbers you bet on. The wiki has a deeper explanation on how the game works, but there’s no strategy here. Just bet as you see fit and watch the wheel turn; its main use is turning useless gold-pressed latinum into useful endeavor experience and endeavor rewards. 

Dabo screen

6.3.5 Isolinear Chip Alignment

For this game, you need to align the 6 scrambled blue, white, and green pillar components into aligned green, white, and blue pillars. Your options are to rotate column 1 down, rotate row 1 right, and rotate column 2 down. There are a variety of solutions to this puzzle, but there are a few general guidelines:

1. Put the green pillar bottom in place first. It’ll need to be in the first or second column. 

2. Put the blue pillar bottom in place 

3. Put the tops in place.

Left: Isolinear Chip Puzzle unsolved; Right: Solved puzzle

This minigame is found in the following locations:

• “Boldly They Rode” from the Lost Dominion story arc available at level 65

• The limited-time “Hearts and Minds” episode

• “Dragon’s Deceit” from the Delta Quadrant episode

• “Vorgon Conclusions” from the Yesterday’s War story arc

6.4 R&D and Crafting

The R&D system is unlocked shortly after duty officers at level 15. There are 8 main R&D schools in the game. As with many systems in the game, there are different ranks of each R&D school (up to 20), mainly earned by crafting things from that school or running a daily project to help boost your research experience. There are two additional schools that don’t have levels; Officer training for making bridge officer manuals, and Special Projects for advanced consoles and a special kind of tech upgrade called Omega Tech Upgrades (see section 5.7). Each school also has a capstone item that’s unlocked for crafting and a special personal trait, both unlocked at rank 15.

The wiki has an excellent overview table that we’ll borrow here:

6.4.1 Basics and R&D

To make an item or research R&D schools, open the duty officer menu and click the R&D tab. You only have limited slots for R&D crafting items.

R&D Menu

Select a school from the tabs on the left to start a project. Some items will require certain specialized duty officers and/or materials that cost refined dilithium. The most basic items only cost those R&D materials you’ve been picking up as you play through the game. Many other items require basic components in each school made from those components. 

R&D Project showing needed components

Find the item or project you want to slot. At first, this should mainly be the Research Project in each school at the very bottom of the list. It requires 20 hours but awards the most experience of all the projects, which is essential for ranking up schools in a timely fashion. The materials cost will also be shown when you select it. 

R&D Research Project with cost in materials shown

Select “Begin,” and assign a duty officer to the project. The duty officer will be unavailable for other assignments or active slots during the crafting time. There are two slots for Catalysts. When making expensive items, it’s worth it to slot any catalysts you have, but since those mostly come from either periodic R&D events or opening lockboxes (and purchased from other players the exchange), they should not be commonly sought or applied. Catalysts increase the chance of a critical success, which is important for those capstone items. 

Project ready to start

Once everything looks ready, select “Start Task” to begin the R&D project. Some items take much longer than others and each active project occupies one of your R&D slots. You can rush a job with refined dilithium but this is not advised, especially when you are first starting. 

R&D Project in progress

You’ll need Research Lab Scientist duty officers to quickly progress R&D; acquiring a few Uncommon quality ones from the Exchange is a good early investment. 

6.4.2 R&D Traits

At higher levels of the schools, the personal traits unlocked at level 15 of each school are often quite good, depending on how you want to focus your ship’s build in the endgame. Even if you’re not into crafting, it’s worth leveling R&D schools to 15 to unlock the traits.

• Kinetic: Focus on Projectiles for the Kinetic Precision trait and Kinetic Amplifier batteries

• Energy: Focus on Beams for the Beam Barrage trait if using Beams. If you're using cannons, still focus on Beams to unlock Energy Amplifiers

• Exotic: Science R&D above all else for the Particle Manipulator trait that increases your exotic crits massively as well as Exotic Particle Flood batteries.

• All builds: Engineering unlocks Give Your All, which is one of the better defensive traits if you're using low-cooldown Engineering abilities and most builds will be. Kits and Modules unlocks Technophile, which is a very solid ground trait. Ground Weapons is a secondary school, providing some craftable options for weapons as the Penetrating Rounds ground trait. 

6.4.3 Crafting

To make an item, select it from the list under the appropriate school. You need the appropriate duty officer and the right rank of the school to make the item. The lower your school rank and lower quality doff, the worse your chances are, as shown in the image below. 

This character only has cannons rank 3, so his odds of making a good Phaser Dual Heavy Cannon are low:

The same character with Beams Rank 20 and the same duty officer has basically guaranteed crafting a Very Rare dual beam bank without using any catalysts. 

You should not do any serious crafting until you can rank up your schools. The items you can make are generally not greater and require more investment than what you can buy or salvage, given your skill levels will be low for a while, and you probably won’t have high enough rarity duty officers. The wiki has a full table of what career duty officers are needed to craft each type of item. Getting R&D schools to 10 for the batteries, (discussed below) and then 15 for the traits per above are the priority. You will also need Fabrication Engineer duty officers of good rarity to make components that you’ll need for other projects. 

Each R&D type grants a special type of consumable battery usable in a space device slot at level 10. All batteries have a shared cooldown, so only two can be used effectively on a build, unless a special (and expensive) Quartermaster duty officer is slotted in an active space slot. Pick from the list below:

• Beams: Battery - Energy Amplifier

• Cannons: Battery - Targeting Lock

• Engineering: Battery - Hull Patch

• Projectiles: Battery - Kinetic Amplifier

• Science: Battery - Exotic Particle Flood

• Shields: Battery - Shield Resilience Boost 

There are also two ground ones, which we only recommend one; Large Kit Overbooster from Kits and Modules.

When making batteries or components, there is a slider at the top where you can increase the quantity of items being made at the cost of increased crafting time.

6.4.4 Capstone Crafting

The capstone items in each crafting school do have some value, but you can usually acquire them more cheaply on the Exchange. To make one, you need a special duty officer with the R&D trait of the appropriate school, which is most readily accessible from the Fleet K-13 holding. You will also need special components that require refined Dilithium to make, which is not a good investment when so much of what you’ll need as a newer player also requires this resource. Of course, if you luck into them for free, you might as well make them work for you. This is also the best place to use catalysts if you have them. 

Left: Crafting TR-116B Sniper Rifle without Catalyst; Right: Crafting it with Catalysts

A word of warning on crafting capstone consoles: mods on Conductive RCS Accelerators and Exotic Particle Field Exciters are only granted when they are Ultra Rare, which means upon creation, or after extensive investment in the upgrade system to increase them in rarity, probably over 50,000 refined dilithium. Unlike many items, you can’t change the modifier through re-engineering (See 6.5 Upgrading), so you are you looking at about a 50% chance to even generate an Ultra Rare console on creation and then there are 25 or so mods per chance, meaning you have about 1-in-50 odds to roll a specific modifier on that console. This is why Exotic Particle Field Exciter [EPG] and to a lesser extent Conductive RCS Accelerator [Turn] consoles are so expensive. They require 14,000 refined dilithium worth of very rare components and probably catalysts to have a 1-in-50 shot at a desired outcome. 

5.4.5 Advanced Consoles

Crafting also provides opportunities to make Advanced Science and Engineering Consoles, starting with components from the special projects section. Advanced Tactical Consoles are purchased from the Fleet Spire. In order to make these consoles, you’ll need materials from Elite Task Force Operations (see sections 8.2 and 8.10 for more details), so this is not a new player system unless you have friends helping carry you in this difficulty. 

If you have 5 of the individual components: Exotic Particle-Wave Pieces, Subspace Comm Power Pieces, and Isomagnetic Plasma Pieces, you can make the larger component: Exotic Particle-Wave Hyperspinners, Hangar Craft Power Transmission, and Isomagnetic Plasma Distribution Manifold that is used to actually make the console. Enchained Current Pieces and Displacers are not worth crafting.

Special Projects showing advanced console components

Once you have the advanced console component, go to either Engineering or Science and select the Advanced Console option, then Begin. 

You will want to craft these at Mk II so as to maximize your chance of increasing rarity when upgrading (see section 6.5). You will also need an appropriate duty officer, preferably one of higher rarity. Select the appropriate console type from the dropdown and ensure it’s set to Mk II for the Mark. 

If you have Catalysts, this is a good place to use them to help increase the chances of higher rarity. Once you’re satisfied with where you’re at, select Start Task and your item will start. Wait 5 minutes and see what you get. 

Note that crafting an Advanced Console is just the start. After that, you will likely have to re-engineer it and upgrade it before it can be useful/sellable. See sections 6.5.4 and 6.5.1 for discussion of those systems. Okay, but why go through all of that trouble? Are these consoles any good? Some of them certainly are!

• Isomagnetic Power Distribution Manifolds with the appropriate modifier matching your energy flavor (example: [Phaser]) are very strong for energy builds and are frequently used on our builds, only displaced on the most expensive types of builds. 

• Hangar Craft Power Transmissions with the appropriate modifier matching your energy flavor (example: [Phaser]) are very strong for carrier builds, because while the energy modifier [Phaser] doesn’t benefit your pets, the rest of the console does. 

• Exotic Particle Amplifier [EPG] are a strong stat-boosting console for exotic builds, but only with that specific modifier.

I was lucky on this one; any Isomag console with one of the six energy flavors (AP, Disruptor, Polaron, Plasma, Phaser, Tetryon, or even Beams or Cannons) has decent value without re-engineering. Even if you aren’t using this flavor, you can sell these. 

6.5 Upgrading

6.5.1 How to Upgrade

Remember our search for higher mark gear? Eventually, your level (and enemy level) outpaces the loot that is dropped, which is capped at Mk XII or the occasional Mk XIII. The gear upgrade system goes all the way up to Mk XV, so eventually an endgame build will want to invest some dilithium into upgrades to get Mk XV, once you know what you’re going to use. You don’t want to invest into upgrading gear you know you’re going to replace, since it can be quite costly, so this is mostly for players past level 50. 

To upgrade an item, right-click it from inventory and select “upgrade item,” or select the Upgrade/Salvage button at the bottom of the screen, which will open the Upgrade/Salvage Window. If you did the latter method, make sure the upgrade tab is selected at the left and drag-and-drop the item you want to upgrade into the appropriate slot. You cannot upgrade equipped items on your starship; they must be dragged into inventory first.

Left: Upgrade option in contextual menu; Right: Upgrade window

Next, you need a tech upgrade. Drag-and-drop one into place, or click the Tech Upgrade slot to see your options. The next section will explain the most efficient ways on how to upgrade items, but for most things, especially if starting at higher marks, it’ll be Phoenix Tech Upgrades. These have no dilithium cost since you already paid dilithium to acquire the Phoenix boxes. If you need a refresher on Phoenix Boxes, check out section 4.6. There are other upgrades that might come into play: Ultimate Tech Upgrades are usually earned from events (see Section 8.3) and instantly set an item’s mark and rarity to the maximum possible. Omega Tech Upgrades with a [Quality] modifier are limited-time items only available via harvesting particles during the Anniversary Event (see Section 8.3 for events and 6.3.3 for Particle Stabilization minigame). The collected traces have to be turned into slivers, which have to be turned into shards, which have to be turned into fragments. Two fragments and 5,500 refined dilithium gets you an Omega [Quality] upgrade, which costs no dilithium to apply and has minimal tech point increase, but a very strong chance of increasing rarity, which we’ll talk about more in the next section. All of this tech upgrade creation is done via the Special Projects section of your R&D menu; there is no time limit on making Omega upgrades, just collecting the particles needed to make them. 

Left: Omega Crafting Screen; Right: Omega shards/fragments in progress

Okay, back to our item. Apply the upgrade(s) until the top bar is filled and the item’s mark will increase. If you want to increase its rarity, you’ll need to keep adding tech upgrades and refilling the bar to roll the item’s rarity increase chance, as denoted by the bottom bar. The higher the odds, the more likely you’ll be to roll to the next rarity, whether that’s Very Rare to Ultra Rare, or Ultra Rare to Epic. The tech point cost increases with higher rarities, and while you might get lucky with some items rolling a rarity increase below 10% chance of improvement, I generally find it’s between 10-20% for most items, and the occasional 30+% using Phoenix Upgrades. 

This took me 4 times filling the bar up after getting it to Mk XV, on an upgrade weekend, and was around 18 Tech Upgrades, or 40-50,000 refined dilithium worth of Phoenix tokens, for a single weapon, and I was somewhat lucky. Getting a ship build to Mk XV can take around 100 upgrades, and 2-3x that for Epic Rarity, all on an upgrade weekend. 

Be careful! Not all Tech Upgrades have a chance to improve rarity. In particular, the ones from Red Alerts/Featured events and Romulan Admiralty Tour of Duty have no such chance. 

Furthermore, upgrading items is a very resource-intensive process that should not be done lightly. The game periodically offers Upgrade Weekends, a period of time in which tech points applied are doubled. Any significant upgrading should be done in such periods. See section 8.3. for more details.

6.5.2 Upgrade Priority

Ground gear is the easiest to upgrade, and has the least amount of direct gear you can upgrade. Kit modules cannot be upgraded so all you have left is:

• Kit modules

• Weapon

• Armor

• Shield

• EV suit.

These can be upgraded in any order you see fit, but often the best order is Weapon, Kit, Armor, shields, EV suit.

Space gear is a far more complex beast to tackle. Assuming you have the entire set of gear you are after, in general, upgrading mark has far more impact than upgrading rarity. Make sure to spend upgrading resources on the gear you want on your build, not gear that you will replace. Generic Mk XII weapons and consoles are sufficient to gain materials to get your goal gear, and then focus on upgrading.

• Craftable items are most efficient to craft at Mk II if possible. 

• Lockbox weapons are best opened on low-level characters in order to earn at Mk II

• Items that come at Mk XII Rare (blue) are often good candidates for Ultimate Tech Upgrades. These are often older lobi items

To stretch your resources the furthest, upgrade in this priority:

Upgrade to Mark XV

• Deteriorating Secondary Deflector

• Consoles

• Weapons, including Experimental Weapons

• Engines

• If the Deflector has stats you need, Deflector. Realize some stats don’t scale with upgrades

• Shields

At this point, everything but Warp Core should be Mk XV. Rarity Upgrades are much lower impact. Increase rarities in this priority

• Consoles (this scale linearly with both mark and rarity, an increase in mark is the same as an increase in rarity, and cost significantly less to upgrade than most every other piece of space gear)

• Weapons, including Experimental Weapons (rarity adds a modifier only)

• Deteriorating Secondary Deflector

• Engines

• Deflector

• Shields

• Warp/Singularity Core can be upgraded to Mk XV Epic, but often has no or low impact stats from upgrading, both Mark and Rarity. In the odd case some cores gain nothing by going from ultra rare to epic!

• Hangar Pets cannot be upgraded, but purchasing Elite versions of your target pets should fit into your budget plan

• In general, only re-engineer items at Epic. Resources are better spent upgrading mark than re-engineering. It is more cost efficient to re-engineer all mods at one time, thus once an item is at Epic.

If you are on a science ship focusing on exotic damage, the Deteriorating Secondary Deflector is one of your highest damage dealing items. It is very cheap to both acquire and upgrade, making it the highest impact upgrade. If you get a crafted one, you can even have it as an account bound item to send to new characters to help in levelling up their build.

Consoles that can be upgraded with passive stats, such as Advanced Consoles, are often very inexpensive to upgrade, at somewhere around ⅓  the cost of a weapon. While each mark may be a low impact, well chosen consoles will apply to many pieces of your build at once, making the overall impact that much more effective. 

Weapons are also high-impact when upgraded, especially as they scale better above Mk XII. The reason they are not higher is that they are significantly more expensive to upgrade per item, and only affect that item (whereas consoles apply more generally). 

Engines directly affect maneuverability. The difference between a Mk XII engine and Mk XV engine is noticeable when flying with others. 

Some Deflectors are chosen for their set pieces or passives that aren’t affected by upgrades, such as the Colony Deflector for its CrtH and CrtD. On exotic builds, the EPG on a deflector is much higher impact and scales with mark, so the deflector is a higher priority there. 

Shields impact survivability, but not as much as other gear or abilities in a pinch. It’s still valuable to upgrade shields due to increased capacity. You can also get a Shield Ultimate Tech Upgrade from Gamma Recruitment, and this is a solid use case for it. 

Once everything is Mk XV, upgrading rarity has a different impact and may cost as much as it did to get to Mk XV in the first place, unless you started from Mk II (see how to upgrade above). 

Consoles are still the cheapest, and tend to roll to Epic pretty quickly. Weapons gain valuable extra mods, but are pretty expensive to get the last rarity upgrades on. The rest of your gear won’t get a significant bump in performance from a rarity upgrade due to only gaining an additional mod - no more stats to the existing mod. On some gear, this extra mod or two is no-impact until re-engineered, further adding to the cost. 

The Warp/Singularity Core cannot be re-engineered (with a few exceptions), and very little of its stats scales with Mark or Rarity. Getting this to Mk XV Epic is pretty much just showing off. 

6.5.3 Upgrading Process

Starting from Mk II Very Rare 

1. Start with an Omega [Quality], then one Basic Tech Upgrade

2. Next, apply one more Omega [Quality]. The gear should be Ultra Rare with 100% chance of Epic on upgrade. 

3. Now you can apply Phoenix upgrades or any other universal upgrades, especially No Quality upgrades.

Starting from Mk II Ultra Rare

1. Start with an Omega [Quality], then the gear should be Ultra Rare with 100% chance of Epic on upgrade. 

2. Now you can apply Phoenix upgrades or any other universal upgrades, especially No Quality upgrades.

Starting from Mk XI+ Rare

These lobi items and mission rewards are very hard to get to epic, and cost quite a bit to get to XV. They are the best candidates for limited Ultimate Tech Upgrades 

Everything Else 

Phoenix Upgrades are the most cost effective. While Omega upgrades are tempting, the limited availability of particles makes them most efficient to use with Mark II gear. While Omega upgrades can save Dilithium, they are too rare to squander on inefficient upgrades. 

A note on Boosts

Research Boosts and Technology Boosts can be effective at fixing math to save an upgrade or two, but are moderately expensive, rare, and in general, not needed.

6.5.4 Re-engineering

In that same window, you’ll find the Re-engineering system. If you’re new to the game, this is NOT something you should interact with aside from one very specific kit frame from the Summer event (Risian Kit Frame). Re-engineering lets you change the modifiers, or mods, on an item. Re-engineering does not make much difference in your gear’s performance overall so this is the last thing we do to improve a build given the cost/benefit ratio is low. However, if you have the refined dilithium to spend on endgame gear, here’s how it works. Slot an item into place and all of its re-rollable mods will be shown. Not all items can be re-engineered and some items have locked mods. 

Re-engineering window

Click to unlock the mods you want to reroll, because re-engineering is a gamble system. You’ll spend refined dilithium and a resource called Salvage on each roll to hopefully end up with the mods you want. This can be especially rough on Advanced Consoles and Epic weapon mods, which have a much larger pool of possible options. Hovering the cursor over one of the columns of possible mods will show the available options for that mod slot. When you’ve unlocked the mods you want to roll, click “Randomize.” Unlocking and rolling more mods costs more dilithium and salvage. Hopefully, mods you like will come up for you. 

Luck is when you roll 3 mods to CrtD and Dmg in one roll. 

How do you know which mods are the right ones? It’ll vary heavily based on which gear and your individual setup, so our recommendation is check out an example build that is close to your setup to see which mods. For space weapons, the difference between [CrtD] and [Dmg], as well as [Pen] on crafted weapons, is generally within 1-2%, so either of those is fine. 

6.5.5 Salvage

How do you acquire all the salvage you’re going to need to re-engineer? Again, this is not a system we encourage new players to invest into, as the returns are very limited. However, we will still explain it with the note that this is NOT a new player system. 

The third tab on the Upgrade/Salvage window is the salvage tab. From here, you can select items to break down into salvage. Double-click an item and confirm the choice to salvage it, earning some salvage and R&D materials. Higher mark and rarity items earn more salvage. Doing so means you can’t sell it to a vendor or otherwise obtain energy credits from it, and it is gone forever, which is why we encourage new players to simply sell their unwanted loot rather than salvaging it to help accrue some energy credits. You can also use the Salvage All Unprotected items button, which will clear the field of available items.

Salvage Screen

6.6 Reputations

Reputations are a system that unlocks at level 50, though you might gain access to some of the resources used in reputations before then. Reputations are mini sub-factions that unlock access to powerful gear and traits in exchange for playing content around a specific adversary and completing projects similar to R&D to level up the sub-faction using resources earned from that content called Reputation Marks. This could be Task Force Operations, Open Worlds, or Patrols. Not many TFOs award a choice of any reputation marks, so choose accordingly to what you’re focusing on. Leveling up Reputations and Fleet unlocks is basically the midgame of STO, as more and more endgame systems are unlocked and emphasis on progression in gameplay shifts away from missions and more into Task Force Operations (see 8.2).

Through playing Events (see 8.3), it’s possible to unlock reputations even as early as level 8. 

Reputations are accessed by pressing “U” and navigating to the Reputation tab at the top right. 

At early levels, only the retired “Events” reputation is available until level 50. 

The most efficient way to progress a reputation is to slot a daily project, awarding 2,500 experience per 20 hours. Reputations max out at 250,000 experience, so for your first time, you’ll need 70 days to complete the Reputation to Tier VI just using dailies since the amount increases after Tier V. If you want to go faster, you can slot hourly projects which award 200 additional reputation experience, but you’ll have to do this frequently and burn a lot more marks to appreciably accelerate the grind. At each level-up breakpoint, you’ll need to slot and complete a 5 second project to rank up the Reputation in the “Upgrades Available” before you can slot more dailies, and new traits/items will become available at each tier. 

Left: Reputation Menu unlocked at level 50; Right: Reputation upgrade screen

Each Reputation has unique awards and offers both a re-spec token to retrain your skills as well as a Fleet Ship Module used to buy Fleet Ships and access to a unique vanity shield (see section 6.9), so it is worth getting them all to max . . . eventually. Once you get to Tier V on a character, your reputations are sponsored for all characters on that account, doubling the amount of reputation expertise from daily projects, which is why completing the reputation to Tier VI takes 70 days the first time instead of 100. Unless you’re a veteran player, are playing with friends to accelerate the grind, or really know what you’re doing, keeping all 13 going is quite the investment in time. 

Tier VI Reputation Screen

To slot a Reputation project, open the reputation window and select the reputation you want to progress. You’ll need the matching marks, a small energy credit sum, and expertise to start the project. Be aware that depleting ALL of your expertise to fill reputations will make it difficult to train bridge officers in new abilities. You can gain more by playing missions and TFOs. Once you fill in resources, the project will start and award you a box with a gear item related to that reputation as well as a small pile of dilithium ore. You can hold the “Ctrl” key and click the “Fill All” button to skip any prompts and get it started faster. When you’re first starting out, this Mk XII Rare or Very Rare gear might be a good placeholder as you work towards endgame items. Alternatively, you can sell the item to a vendor and usually recoup the energy credit cost of the project. 

Example Reputation Reward boxes 

Left: Daily project shown; Middle: Hourly Project; Right: If the Reputation grind is not your thing, you can spend Zen to buyout the reputation to tier V, prorated based on your progress in the Reputation. 

Most Reputations, except for New Romulus and Nukara, both have regular Reputation Marks, and Elite Marks, which are specific currencies earned from playing content themed to that opponent at the Advanced or Elite difficulty levels (see 8.10). However, when you’re at level 50, those can be rather difficult to acquire. If you’re after gear from a specific Reputation, it can be helpful to find the “Upgrades Available” tab of the Reputation and slot a daily project called “Elite ______ Compensation” and turn in 100 regular marks to gain 1 of the Elite Mark. You will almost certainly have to do this every time for the Competitive Reputation due to the unpopularity of those Task Force Operations and you can only do one per day. 

Elite Compensation Project shown

All Reputation Elite Marks, in order. 

Reputation Elite Marks:

• Discovery Legends: P. Stellaviatori Spore Canisters

• Omega: Borg Neural Processors

• Dyson: Voth Cybernetic Implants

• 8472: Isomorphic Injections

• Delta Alliance: Ancient Power Cells

• Iconian Resistance: Iconian Probe Datacores

• Terran Task Force: Terran Gravimetric Inducer

• Temporal Defense: Chroniton Buffers

• Lukari Restoration Initiative: Protomatter Microcontainers

• Competitive Wargames: Assessed Strategems

• Gamma Task Force: Germanium Carapace Fragments 

Reputation Traits are unlocked at each tier, and you can slot those in the appropriate slots on your Traits tab for both space and ground. At Tier V, activatable Reputation traits become available for both space and ground. All Reputation traits become 25% more effective at Tier VI.

Example Endgame Reputation Trait slots 

To acquire Reputation gear, select the Reputation and you’ll need an open slot. Select “Select Active Project,” and scroll through the list to find the one you want. It’ll list the requirements, so make sure you have the resources, then fill them all to start it. Reputation Items take 2 minutes to make. 

Left: Selecting Reputation Project; Right: Reputation Project in progress

ALERT: any resources invested into any reputation item or project are NON-REFUNDABLE. Cancelling the project does NOT return any of your marks, dilithium, elite marks, etc. 

With all that said, how do you know which Reputation gear you’ll want? Well, that’s why we wrote the Basics guides and made Starter builds, so once you know what kind of ship or build you want to pursue, you can check those resources for the right Reputations and gear/traits to pursue. Here’s a quick primer:

• All builds should prioritize the Discovery Legends reputation for a variety of reasons, including engine/core/shield combinations, weapons, ground armor, EV suits, and reputation traits. This is the most important one.

• All builds should try to acquire Romulan, Iconian, and Dyson reputations as well for their crit-boosting / healing reputation traits.

• Energy builds will vary depending on flavor of energy weapon (e.g. Phaser versus Disruptor), but should all prioritize Iconian, Romulan, Omega, Gamma, and Dyson reputations for reputation traits or consoles. Temporal or Nukara also have situationally useful reputation traits. Additionally...

  • Phaser: Terran, Gamma

  • Disruptor: Terran, Romulan

  • Antiproton: Temporal

  • Polaron: Lukari, Gamma

  • Plasma: Romulan, Lukari

  • Tetryon: Nukara, but only for beams

• Exotic builds should furthermore pursue the Dyson, Iconian, Omega, and Temporal reputations

• Projectile builds should prioritize Omega, 8472 Counter-Command, Delta, and Terran Task Force reputations. 

• The Competitive Reputation is notable for having very powerful engines, especially for sluggish ships like big cruisers. This is the hardest reputation to level up due to the unpopularity of the content that awards its marks. If you're doing an event that offers a choice of marks or get a choice of marks from boxes, this is a good idea. 

• As you can see, the least valuable reputations are probably Nukara and either Delta for non-projectile builds or Temporal for non-exotic or non-Antiproton builds. If you're not focusing on Polaron or Plasma, Lukari isn't a priority either. So if you're not building into those spaces, then you're probably okay to delay those and focus on other ones. Again, pace yourself for how much you want to play the game or else the grind can seem staggering. 

• The best places to earn reputation currency (marks) are as follows:

  • Borg: the Borg space TFOs are popular and easy. Infected Space and Cure Found are both easy to do and reward decently. Hive Onslaught can be a challenge for a fresh-to-50 build so I'd wait on that one. 

  • Nukara: The Azure Nebula Rescue space TFO or else ground missions on Nukara, including ones in the Nukara Battle Zone as well as the Transdimensional Tactics ground TFO on Nukara. You will need an environment suit for anything on Nukara.

  • Romulan: The Defend Rh'Ihho Station ground TFO is excellent for these and pays well, especially on Advanced. Alternately, the Azure Nebula space TFO is a good source of these. There are several repeatable patrols around New Romulus that also award these in planets like Japori and Carraya.

  • Dyson: The Dyson ground Adventure Zone awards these and is pretty easy, but you won't earn many at a time. Alternately, the space TFO Borg Disconnected is okay and offers a choice of many kinds of marks, but doesn't pay that well and is timegated. 

  • 8472 Counter Command: You can acquire these easily in the Undine Space Battle Zone, but not very many at a time. Learning how to play the Undine Assault space TFO will yield far greater rewards. Alternately, the space TFO Borg Disconnected is okay and offers a choice of many kinds of marks, but doesn't pay that well and is timegated. 

  • Delta Alliance: You can acquire these easily in the Kobali Adventure Zone, but not very many at a time. Usually if I'm farming Delta Marks, the Bug Hunt ground TFO is the path of least resistance. The space TFO Borg Disconnected is okay and offers a choice of many kinds of marks, but doesn't pay that well and is timegated. 

  • Iconian Resistance: The best way to acquire these is via the Brotherhood of the Sword or Bug Hunt ground TFOs. The space TFO Gateway to Gre'thor is also an option. Some Iconian marks are available in the later stages of the Kobali Adventure Zone.

  • Terran Task Force: A trickle of these is available through the Badlands Battlezone, and you can earn the Elite marks from completing the final stages of that zone. Alternately, the Counterpoint space TFO is relatively easy and pays well. 

  • Temporal Defense Initiative: A trickle of these is available through the Badlands Battlezone, and you can earn the Elite marks from completing the final stages of that zone. The Miner Instabilities ground TFO is difficult but pays well. 

  • Lukari Restoration Initiative: Your best bet is to learn how to play the Tzenkethi Front space TFO well. You can do the Dranuur Gauntlet (space TFO) as well, but this pays poorly. The Gon'cra Battlezone can provide a trickle of these, but it rarely completes so don't count on it for Protomatter Microcontainers. 

  • Competitive Wargames: There aren't many ways to easily get these. Taking these from choice-of-marks boxes or event TFO rewards is a far better bet. If you're lucky and can form a group, Twin Tribulations and Binary Circuit don't involve any direct PVP. You're just racing another team. Recommend you do them on Elite to maximize rewards. 

  • Gamma Task Force: the Swarm space TFO or the Gamma Battlezone are the only real sources of these marks. You have to unlock the final stage of the Battlezone to earn Germanium Carapaces. 

  • Discovery: Defense of Starbase One is the easiest mission rewarding Discovery Marks, though Operation Riposte and Pahvo Dissension are also solid if not on the longer side. Peril over Pahvo should be avoided at all costs due to bugs and low payout for time. There is no battlezone for these marks. 

Once you’re Tier V in a Reputation, you can trade in 50 Marks for 500 Dilithium Ore, or 3 Elite Marks for 1000 Dilithium Ore. If you’re playing lots of TFOs and are no longer buying things from that Reputation, or have enough to finish leveling it to Tier VI, this can be a quick way to get some dilithium ore. Running the hourly project is more efficient at this point but requires more clicking (15 Marks for 340 Dilithium Ore once the Reputation is maxed).

Left: Reputation Mark Hourly Project for Dilithium; Right: Mark/Elite Mark trade-in screen

6.7 Specializations

Once you reach level 50, you will no longer earn skill points. Instead, upon reaching level 51 and for every subsequent level, you’ll earn a specialization point. Even after you’ve reached maximum level (65), you’ll continue earning specialization points. These can be applied to one of seven specializations, viewable in the skills menu on this specialization subtab. Each specialization has a number of perk bonuses, as well as an additional passive bonus when active. This table shows how the specializations break down:

Specialization Tutorial Tooltips

The specialization menu contains dropdowns showing the seven specializations. Select one to view your progress, add points, or make it one of your active specializations. 

Left: Progress Bar highlighted; Right: Selectable Nodes shown

Each of the perks can be highlighted/clicked on to show information about it, or you can double-click it to purchase the perk, assuming you have specialization points available.

Selectable perk purchase button highlighted

You do not have to go in order, unless a perk point has a predecessor in the tree above it. You also cannot pick higher-tier perks until a certain number of perks in the previous tier have been filled out; currently non-purchasable skills show a lock in the icon. Once chosen, any perk remains active as long as the specialization is active. You can have 2 active specializations at one time: a primary and a secondary. Primary specializations allow you to benefit from all 30 specialization perks, while secondary specializations only provide perks from the first two tiers. Since Strategist, Constable, and Commando only have two tiers of perks, this means these can only be selected as secondary specializations. Regardless of whether a specialization is set to primary or secondary, you will benefit from all of its passive bonuses. For example, that means even if Temporal Operative is set to your secondary specialization, you’ll still benefit from all 50 Exotic Particle Generators/Kit Performance assuming you have maxed out the specialization. 

Advancing in ranks of specializations will unlock the options to train bridge officers in various specialization abilities, as well as unlock certain kit modules in the Dilithium Store. Specializations that are not active do not grant any bonuses aside from these unlocks (i.e. neither the specialization perks nor passive bonuses apply).

ALERT: There is no way to refund or reset specialization progress. 

Left: Active specializations highlighted; Right: Unlocks highlighted. 

Left: Specialization tutorial tooltips for unlockable perks; Right: Tooltip on obtaining more specialization points

Our recommendation is that everyone start with Temporal Operative due to its versatility and usefulness for ground content, progress to Strategist, then Intel, Command and the last three of Commando/Miracle Worker/Constable after that. To fully unlock all specializations, it takes 180 specialization points, which represents leveling up 180 times. Again, there is no need to rush this, especially since Pilot, or Constable specializations are rarely used and the only reason to complete them is that once you're done with them all you get Dilithium Ore when you level up.

It is worth noting that tier 6 starships can have specialization seating as well, corresponding to the five 30-point specializations: Intel, Command, Pilot, Temporal Operative, and Miracle Worker. These specializations do NOT have to match your captain’s active specialization at all, i.e. you might run Intel/Strategist on a ship with Command seating. In order to use this seating, you will need a bridge officer trained in that specialization. Ships that have the specialization seating on the highest-rank Commander seat are called “full-spec” and get an additional bonus.

Full-Spec Bonuses:

Some ships are “dual-spec” and have two different specializations. For example, the Lexington Dreadnought Cruiser is primary (and full-spec) Miracle Worker, but also has a lower-ranked seat with Intel specialization. Different specializations lend themselves to different types of builds so check out the Basics guides or our endgame builds to see how they can be used. 

Now, we’ll cover how to train your bridge officers to take advantage of the specialization seating and use abilities belonging to that specialization. You cannot train bridge officers in a specialization qualification until you have maxed it out yourself. 

To train a bridge officer in a specialization, you’ll first need a craftable item called a PADD, craftable from the Officer Training school in the R&D system (see 5.4.3 for a refresher). You can also purchase them on the Exchange. They take 30 minutes to make 1 and a small amount of refined dilithium. With PADD in hand, access the Officer Training school in R&D and select the specialization you want to train them in. You’ll probably find a big list of red icons below like this:

We do not have all the recommended reading material to teach this course. 

These are bridge officer manuals for both space and ground such that your newly-qualified bridge officer will have a specialization ability available for each rank of both space and ground. Head over to the bridge officer trainer at your faction’s hub and pick up the necessary books to make the qualification. Once you have all the manuals, craft the qualification. You can also skip this process and buy qualifications other people have made on the Exchange. 

Boff trainer and qualification menu from R&D open at the same time is the easiest way if you don’t care to memorize the prerequisites. 

Once it’s done, access the Status window (U) and find the bridge officer you want to train in a specialization. The dropdown at the top of their “Skills” menu shows active and trainable specializations. If you have multiple specializations trained on a bridge officer, you can select the active one here; bridge officers can only have one specialization active at a time. This is why it’s often a good idea to have separate bridge crew for space and ground missions; using specialization abilities requires them to have that specialization active. If you have a Qualification ready, you can train them in a new specialization, which will consume the qualification you made/acquired. Only Commander-rank bridge officers can learn specializations. Once your bridge officer has learned a specialization, they can learn other abilities in that specialization, either via manuals from the bridge officer trainer, manual purchases from the Exchange, or craftable manuals from the Officer Training R&D school. The latter requires a PADD for each manual as well as having completed the specialization on your captain to teach it. 

Bridge officer specialization selection/training screen. 

6.8 Admiralty

Admiralty unlocks at level 52, and is the space paperwork of Star Trek Online. It can easily be a time sink, especially across multiple characters. You might be tempted to just ignore it altogether. However, this is a great source for specialization points, dilithium and other limited rewards.  

Admiralty takes ships from across your entire roster, from shuttles to unused event ships, and essentially turns them into trading cards. Each one has numbers for Engineering, Tactical, and Science skills, generally based on the class of the ship. Each one also has a special skill that interacts with other ships you send on the assignment. With a wide variety of ways to acquire new Admiralty Cards, it won’t be too hard to get enough ships to fill up your assignment slots in one sitting. With a maximum of 9 assignment slots (eventually), and 3 ship slots per assignment, you can only use 27 ships at a time. If you start doing Admiralty more than once a day, you may find that some of your better ships are still on maintenance, or a cooldown after completing an assignment with that ship. Aim to do Admiralty just once a day and you will be generally quite successful. More than twice a day and you’ll be going through the best ships on your roster faster than they can cooldown unless you have a lot of ships. 

Accessing the Admiralty system is done from the Duty Officer menu, where the summary tab also has an Admiralty summary. You can view your Admiralty Campaign progress for the 4 different factions from the campaign tab on the same screen. 

Admiralty Summary 

Admiralty Campaign Progress

The Admiralty tab itself will show available assignments as well as campaign progress, found at the top of the Duty Officer menu. 

Each of the four factions has a queue of 3 possible assignments, with 2 additional assignments on deck. All of these preview what the rewards for succeeding the assignment will be. 

• Federation assignments reward a higher value of skill points which will either level your character from level 52 where Admiralty is unlocked up to the level cap, or once at level cap start converting into specialization points (spec points). 

• Klingon assignments have a higher chance of rewarding Dilithium.

• Ferengi assignments also have a higher chance of rewarding Dilithium as well as the largely superfluous currency Gold Pressed Latinum. 

• Romulan assignments focus heavily on R&D Materials. 

To start an assignment, select a faction and the available assignments will be listed. If you plan or pass an assignment, the next one up from the “On Deck” assignments at the bottom of the screen will enter the available queue. 

Left: Assignment listings; Right: Pass or Plan options

Plan opens up a new screen for assigning ships to the missions

When assigning ships, you want to assign ships such that you meet or exceed the requirements listed. Exceeding the requirements increases your chance of a critical success on the assignment. Some requirements are increased or decreased by event modifiers, and some admiralty ship cards have the ability to negate those modifiers. This does not negate the reward, and can be very useful when the event adds +100 Engineering to the requirement. 

Left: Assignment requirements highlighted; Right: Event modifiers

You have three slots per assignment to add ships into, but you don’t have to use all three slots. As for the ships themselves, some ships that you’ll earn through the admiralty system are one-time use only cards, and you can earn more admiralty cards through leveling up and acquiring ships, to a point, from events (see section 6.3) and the Phoenix Box (see section 4.6) as well as any purchased ships. Slot the ships you want to use, then select “Begin Assignment.” After your ships complete the assignment, they’ll enter a maintenance period before they can be used again. 

Selection button for ships

Left: Selectable list of ships; Right: Begin assignment highlighted

Each faction has a Tour of Duty assignment that takes 20 hours, so it can essentially be run once a day. There is a meter at the top that shows your progress on this assignment - and with good reason. After running all 10 of the Tour of Duty assignments, which increase in difficulty as you progress, you will be rewarded with a larger reward based on the faction you finished. Federation rewards 2 Specialization Points, Klingon rewards 40,000 Fleet Dilithium Vouchers, Romulan rewards 4 Universal Upgrades, and Ferengi rewards a 30,000 Dilithium bonus pool. 

Tour of Duty highlighted

The Romulan Upgrades aren’t anything special, and are far inferior to Phoenix Upgrades and Omega Upgrades, but they can be useful for items that are already at Epic rarity and just need a mark. Klingon Dilithium Fleet Vouchers are simply refined dilithium that can only be used to contribute to fleet holdings (NOT fleet purchases like consoles and gears). Since this is restricted to just fleet contributions, it essentially is 120,000 Fleet Credits, which is a nice boost for players just starting their fleet unlocks. It also doesn’t impact your Dilithium refining limit and as such is an independent source of Dil if you need it for your fleet. Vouchers will be contributed first over refined dilithium. 

Each assignment also has one of several events that change up the required stats as well as rewards for the assignment. Successful completion, critical or not, will award the rewards for the event. If you use a ship that negates the event difficulty modifiers, you still get the rewards.

Dilithium Ore: For most players, especially with only one main character that they run, Admiralty is a top contender for the best source of Dilithium per day. The Ferengi Campaign has roughly 50% of Assignments that reward Dilithium, anywhere from 500 to 50. Getting a Critical Success will increase this value by 50%, so a 500 becomes 750 Dilithium.

6 different events reward 500 to 2,000 Dilithium in addition to whatever the reward for the assignment is. While you can’t see what events are on deck, you can start to recognize the few events that reward additional Dilithium when they show up. Events won’t get boosted rewards for a Critical Success. 

• Refinement Surplus - 500 Dilithium

• Intermix Chamber Salvage - 500 Dilithium

• Rogue Dilithium Asteroid - 500 Dilithium 

• Dilithium Dust Synthesis - 500 Dilithium 

• Lucky Vein - 1,000 Dilithium 

• Lucrative Mining Contract - 2,000 Dilithium

Depending on how assignments fall, expect to see typically at least 1,000 Dilithium per day just from various assignments and events. 

Energy Credits: There are several rewards for Energy Credits. While nowhere near as effective as other endgame methods for Energy Credits, expect to see a few million Energy Credits per week from consistent completion of Admiralty missions and when you’re new, that’s a big deal. Events that award energy credits include:

• Pirate Raiding Party: 50,000 EC

• Industrial Replicators Request: 50,000 EC

• Astrometric Data Exchange: 50,000 EC

• Grateful Freighter Captain: 100,000 EC

• Abandoned Treasure Trove: 200,000 EC

Experience: The Federation Campaign has no assignments that reward Dilithium, but rewards on average twice as much Specialization Experience as the other campaigns. The Tour of Duty also awards 2 Spec Points. 

155,872 skill points are required to gain a Specialization Point. Once you max out Specialization Points, excess Specialization Points are converted into Dilithium at a rate of 2,880 per point. Once you have max Spec Points, and the Federation tour of Duty is worth 2 Spec Points, which then converts to 5,760 Dilithium. 

Tips for Maximizing Admiralty

If you are short on ships on your roster, head to the ship vendor and purchase as many small craft as you can with small amounts of Energy Credits. This should net you somewhere around 8 ships on your roster, depending on what you have unlocked and Cross-Faction flying. 

Use small craft as "pass tokens" to pass on missions you don't want or need the rewards for without spending the better ships on your roster. 

Always try to be running a mix of the 4 factions as you get a daily Admiralty Experience bonus for the first mission from each faction you run daily.  Once you hit level 10 in a faction, this is no longer necessary and focusing on Tours of Duty should be the primary concern.

5.13 Endeavors

The endeavor system unlocks at level 60. Endeavors offer three daily tasks, an easy, intermediate, and hard challenge and are the game’s way of encouraging you to engage in different systems, task force operations, or mechanics that you might not otherwise. Every three days, there is also a universal endeavor. The universal endeavor is for all players, while personal endeavors are randomly selected and unique to your account. 

ALERT: Progress is NOT shared across characters, so if your objective is to destroy 30 Herald Ships and you do 20 on one character and 10 on another, that will not complete the endeavor.

Example: Endeavor screen

Completing endeavors offers two sets of rewards. The endeavor reward itself grants a box which might contain dilithium ore, energy credits, R&D materials, a choice of Reputation Marks box, or ¼ specialization points. The harder challenges award more rewards and the universal endeavor box has the most rewards in it. You can see your progress by clicking the button above the endeavor list. 

Endeavor Progression Screen

This screen also lets you use Reroll tokens to select a different endeavor. These are a limited commodity so we recommend only using them on hard ones. 

Example personal endeavor reward box. They’re not all this nice. 

Endeavors also grant Endeavor XP, which earns you perk points. Perk points add account-wide bonuses for all characters above level 60. Again, the higher-difficulty endeavors award more endeavor experience (650/3200/8000), although the universal endeavor does not award very much (400). You earn a new perk point at 20000 endeavor XP, and the perk options will be randomly selected from three choices available to you, of which you’ll pick one. The perk tab shows the account-wide perks you’ve earned. These add up, but this is definitely a long-term system as even the most dedicated players earn less than 1 perk point per day and there are over 1000 perks. There unique rewards unlocked for higher ranks of endeavors, viewable through the Rewards Store button. 

Left: Endeavor Perks visible; Right: Endeavor store

When you earn a perk point, the endeavor button will glow green. Click it and choose “Spend Perk Points” to view the selectable options. In space, damage and critical hit/chance, as well as hull capacity, speed, and turn are the highest priority. On ground, kit performance and sprint speed are the biggest priority, followed by other damage boosts. 

Left: Spend Perk Points highlighted; Right: Perk point selection screen

It’s your choice whether or not to engage in daily endeavors. Some endeavors, like Completing 3 Lukari TFOs, are quite time-consuming or difficult. Some, like “X damage in space” are quite easy. Stressing out about completing this system is counter-productive. The individual perk point bonuses are not impactful and while they add up after a long time doing it, it’s better not to worry too much about this and simply do them when convenient unless you have lots of playtime available.