Expedition Rewards

Subpage of Expeditions. Wiki path: Expeditions/Rewards.

Expedition payouts scale with fleet catalog value, zone difficulty, depth, research / class, and a variance roll. They do not use a flat node base reward, Charged/Dormant loot mods, or a rally multiplier — expeditions are solo.

What actually scales rewards

Lever	Effect
Fleet catalog value	Resource and ship finds start at 15% of the ships you sent
Zone difficulty	Easy ×1.0 / Medium ×1.2 / Hard ×1.6 / Extreme ×2.0 (resources)
Depth	Earning ×1.0 → ×3.0 from D1 to D10 (see Depth System)
Science Vessels	`min(100%, log₂(count + 1) × 5%)` extra loot and a matching cap lift
Explorer class	+12% loot; Warlord −10%
Expedition Basics / Legendary Expeditions	Extra loot %
Variance roll	0.7–1.3× base, plus rare minor / major / jackpot
Cargo	Resources scale down if the hold is full; recovered ships are not cargo-capped

Node type, node state, and rally participation are not live loot multipliers.

Resource formula

payout ≈ fleet catalog value × 15%

       × difficulty
       × depth earning
       × research + class loot
       × variance roll
       × (1 + Science Vessel bonus)

Then the total is split across resource types (steel-heavy, quartz-heavy, or gas-heavy emphasis is random). Full tables: Expeditions → How loot is calculated.

Resources by realm

Iridium and Silicium
Realm	Resources
1	Steel, Quartz, Gas
2+
3+

Silicium is a Realm 2 expedition resource, not a Realm 3 unlock.

Drops

Item finds are nano boosts, tech boosts, relic pieces, monument pieces, and (very rarely) cosmetics. There are no research fragments, blueprint fragments, or Codex entries on this mission.

Harder zones, and depths up to 3, weight item found more heavily. Past depth 3, each item type's chance drops by 2 percentage points per extra depth, to a minimum of 2% (see Depth System). There is no guaranteed fragment at depth 5 and no guaranteed relic at depths 9–10.
Deep Space Sensors, Monolith, Explorer class, and one specialist ship type bias the family of item (relic > monument > nano > tech). See Expeditions → Fleet composition.
In Realms 1–3, relic-piece weights are ×4 and monument-piece weights ×3 versus Realm 4 baseline.
Above 1 trillion player score, nano and tech boost weights drop to 10% of normal. Relics, monuments, and cosmetics are unchanged by that throttle.

Relic drop context: Relics → Collecting relic pieces.

Recovered ships

A ships found event pays from a ship-value budget (~15% of fleet value × a steeper difficulty curve: Easy ×1 / Medium ×1.5 / Hard ×2.5 / Extreme ×4, then depth and Science Vessel bonus).

Pool is current realm and previous realm only.
Class is capped near one above the strongest ship you sent (jackpots can stretch that).
Colony ships, Recyclers, Advanced Recyclers, Planetary Harvesters, Support Vessels, and Science Vessels are not recovered.

Failure vs rewards

A bad depth does not wipe or tax loot from earlier depths.

Outcome	Typical result
Empty / quiet	No payout this depth
Stun	Delay 15–120 min, then Extract or Continue; loot kept
Ship loss / pirate ambush	Permanent hull removed (small %, then capped — see Depth System)

Realm 1 is not stun-only. Easy zones can lose ships from depth 2 onward.

Caps

Per-expedition ceiling from player score (slower growth after ~1M) and a realm hard cap.
Daily ceiling = 15× the per-expedition cap (a small floor remains if you are near the daily limit).
Science Vessel bonus raises the ceiling on that run.
Legendary Expeditions raises per-run and daily ceilings further.

What this page used to claim

Ignore older copy that mentioned:

Rally multiplier 1 + 0.28 × log₂(participants + 1)
Meteorite coordinates as an expedition reward
Guaranteed fragment at depth 5
Depth 7–8 at 6× / depth 9–10 at 10× with guaranteed relic pieces
“No ship loss, stun only” in Realm 1
Research / blueprint / Codex fragment drops

Those are not how live expeditions pay.