X4 Foundations: How to get the Erlking
The Erlking is a one of two battleships you can currently get as a player ship. It can only be aquired through boarding, you can not buy the ship nor the blueprints anywhere.
Its main gun is not as powerful as the Asgaard (the other battleship you can get in X4) but what makes the Earlking a very nice player ship is the speed: My modded Earling has a speed of 522 m/s and a travel speed of 17,230 m/s (!), which makes it great for quickly interdicting hostiles. It also has a large cargo space, so it is very useful for quickly moving large amounts of cargo among your stations.
It got plenty of turrets for killing fighers and also some powerful turrets that will assist in quickly taking down enemy destroyers. However, killing a station with the Erlking takes some time but is doable.
The only drawbacks is 1) a very slow turning rate and 2) the main gun being slow to fire and must be charged and does not deal as much damage as you would expect for a large battleship. However, the turrets will assist in quickly taking down enemy destroyers so it is not that big of a deal.
Step 0: Preparation
I like to use two teams for boarding operations:
- Team 1 is responsible for taking down the turrets and getting the hull down to just below 80%
- Team 2 is responsible for the actual boarding operation.
Team 1 consists of your personal ship + a small group of corvettes (e.g. 2-3 Katana), frigates or gunboats. Your personal ship will stay far away from the fight – your job is to target the turrets of the Erlking and then order your wingmen to “attach my target” i.e. attack the turret.
Team 2 consists of 2-3 Shuyaku Vanguard large transports, as they can carry 200+ marines each. If you have money for an AUX ship, that is also useful for assisting with more marines for the boarding operation + repairing the Erlking after you have claimed it.
Make sure to disable the turrets in Team 2 to avoid damaging the hull too much as they close in to launch boarding pods.
Step 1: Locating the Earlking
The wreck of the Erlking can be located in sector Windfall III The Hoard near the VIG Keepsafe station to the north of the sector. In order to get the Erlking for yourself you simply need to board it with some marines and claim it for yourself. However, you will need a lot of marines as the Erlking has about 300 marines defending it!
Warning: If you fly too close to the Erlking, you will get a warning from the nearby VIG Keepsafe station – if you do not turn around quickly, a large number of fighters will turn hostile. For this reason I recommend you stay away and let your other ships do all the work – this will not trigger a response from VIG as long as you stay away until the ship has left VIG space.
Step 2: Claiming the Earlking
First, make sure to SAVE the game before starting the boarding operation.
Fly your personal ship into the sector but be careful to keep your distance – do not get too close or it will trigger an attack from the entire VIG security forces! Stay at least 50 km away and you will be fine.
Start by ordering Team 1 to attack the turrets. When they have been destroyed, shoot the hull down below 80% and immediately stop the attack.
Notice the Erlking has several repair drones, so it will soon repair the turrets. Make sure to destroy them immediately to protect your boarding pods and then stop your attack again to avoid damaging the hull too much.
Hint: Target a turret and press F3 to get an external view of the turret – that way you can easily see when it has been repaired and can quickly select it again with your mouse and then order your wing men to attach your target.
Hint: You don’t need to destroy the engines or shields but by destroying some of them, you will keep the repair drones busy so they will not repair the turrets as quickly.
After you have destroyed the turrets, order team 2 to start the boarding operation. If you have plenty of veteran marines, you may be able to capture the Erlking in one attempt, if not then only use your rookie marines at first boarding attempt as they will likely all be killed – there main purpuse is to reduce the number of defending marines as much as possible. You should be able to get the Erlking in second boarding attemt even without veterans. You can buy more marines at the shipyard in Windfall I Union Summit if you didn’t bring enough.
After you have captured the Erlking, you can repair it if you have an AUX in Team 2. Then order the Erlking to fly to a safe sector (I prefer flying south to avoid the large number of VIG fighters to the east!). Make sure to stay away until the Erlking has escaped to a safe sector – if you come abord while still in VIG space, it will trigger all local VIG ships to become hostile!
Step 3: Finding the blueprints
The Erlking requires five special blueprints for the engines, shield, M/L turrets and main weapons.
- Erlking L Main Battery
- Erlking L Turret
- Erlking M Turret
- Erlking XL Shield Generator
- Erlking XL Engine
The blueprints are located in Data Vaults that spawn at random positions in the six Windfall and Avarice sectors. More than one Data Vault may spawn in a sector and some sectors will have no data vaults at all, it is all random.
You can find the datavaults by flying around using the long range scanner, however, this takes a while. You can also order some of your ships to place advanced satellites all over these sectors while you are doing other stuff and then come back after the datavaults have been located.
Fly near the data vault, jump into your space suit and use your repair lacer at all the red locks to unlock the data vault and then locate the container with the blueprint,
Step 4: Repairing the ship
Final step is to build your own Shipyard, where you can repair the Erlking and install the missing equipment using your new blueprints.
Notice that the blueprint for a XL Ship Fabrication Bay is very expensive, so even though you can board and capture the Erlking early game, it will require some game time to get enough credits to build the shipyard and install the special equipment!
Step 5: Ship Modifications (Optional)
The Erlking is a fantastic player ship and for this reason I recommend you save your Exceptional Quality ship modifications for this ship.
I have installed the following modifications:
- Chassis: Nanotube (Mass Mod)
- Erlking Main Battery: Annihilator (Damage Mod)
- Turrets: Slasher (Damage Mod).
- Chassis Shield Generators: Traction (Recharge Rate Mod)
- Erlking XL Engine: Whirlygig (Rotation Thrust Mod)