Elite: Dangerous' second alien encounter has been discovered

Around half-a-year ago, players finally started to come across the long-teased aliens of Elite: Dangerous, after this astonishing first encounter with the frightening Thargoid species. It was an event that was reproducible, with a bit of persistence, and a pinch of luck, and the same is true of humanity's second encounter with the eerie Thargoids, which occurred recently. It's not clear who the very first player/players were to make second contact with the aliens, but one of the first was seemingly YouTuber Mass_Locked Mafia, who details how that encounter went down in the following video:

The encounter is triggered on planets, near alien structures, and if you're lucky/unlucky enough to find yourself staring up a Thargoid ship, here's what will happen: your ship will be disabled, and briefly commandeered, and the alien vessel will then proceed to hit the xeno-structure with a big wobbly line of energy. It'll then scan you a bit, and then eventually let you go. In the video, Mass_Locked Mafia breaks free and attempts to attack the Thargoid ship, but doesn't make a dent. The Thargoids aren't interested in a fight...yet.

Thanks, PCGamesN!

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.