Split Story Line – X4 Player's Handbook

Starting

Save now. Starting the line, ou’re about to get locked into two long dialogs that can be interesting (the first couple times anyway) but will force you to start all over if you have to exit to deal with a problem somewhere.

Start by talking to Dal Busta on your player HQ (so obviously you have to have the HQ, and completed the requirements to get Dal to show up there).

He’ll explain that split politics are complicated (surprise!) and have you get started by acting as a taxi for a split. And he, in turn, will require you to ask a whole bunch of questions before the dialog option is open to tell him to get on your ship.

Once you enter split space with your passenger, you’ll be interrupted by a split warship. You just sit and listen, after which you’ll receive a new mission.

Save again. You don’t want to sit through those dialogs again!

Rebellious Thralls

Your first task is to find a ship of escaped slaves that have taken hostage the woman you’re supposed to be finding. Rescuing her will hopefully earn you a friend. Just follow the mission guidance through several false targets until you finally reach the real ship. You’ll end up half a dozen sectors away, exploring in Free Families space.

You’ll find an abandoned split Cobra along the way, which you’ll need to claim and enter. The ship is very heavily damaged and fairly slow, so you may want to just sell it instead of keeping it (depending on your resources) as it won’t be of any use to you without significant investment in repairs.

Note that once you find the target ship you’ll learn that you need to attack it. The mission tree forces you to start in an S size ship, so consider trading up to an M before heading off to the final target, and having your S ship follow you.

Once you deal with the ship and it surrenders, you’ll need to dock to get the hostage. Here you need to have an S size ship again, since you need to take a passenger on board. She’ll automatically board your ship, then you’ll need to transport her to a nearby trade ship.

Now you find out that your efforts… were unnecessary. But you earn some goodwill, and get an invitation to “gift” some very expensive caviar at a ceremony you now have to attend. You also learn about the existence of a split cultural tradition, the “Curbs”.

Get your caviar (see Inventory Items if you need help), and head to the meeting.

Tomb of Patriarchs

At the “dormant” accelerator you find it’s not so dormant — the Split are using it to shoot dead guys off into space. Nice.

Wait through the ceremony, follow your mission directions through some conversation, and then head off on your next mission to try to get more acceptance by the split factions.

Court Case

“Court”.. ha ha! Get it? Oh, right, not yet. You will.

Head to the trade station, looking to track down some business records to help the case of this split who’s in trouble.

Follow the mission guidance, drop and then repair a satellite (apparently it’s an Egosoft requirement that every mission tree involve at least one activity in a spacesuit or something).

You learn that money isn’t being stolen, but it is being funneled to the Funeral Service. So back to talk to them.

Tax Evasion 101

You failed, too late, patriarch executed! (Don’t worry, no way to have prevented this.) Oh well. At least there’s a fresh body to be shot off into deep space through the accelerator.

Saving now, before you talk to Dal, is a good idea. You can leave him waiting and go head off to take care of any other business, come back and initiate the conversation whenever you’re ready.

Talking to Dal will set some events in motion that you should deal with all in one go, as involves you flitting around the unfolding events to insert yourself into the process. Or into the coffin ship, in this case.

Follow directions and use your spacesuit and an EMP bomb to gain access to the ship. (Wait briefly for the ship to launch from the dock and move forward then come to a stop, making it easier to hit with the EMP). Oddly, for your “infiltration” you actually have to ask the coffin ship for docking permission. Not very stealthy… But the ship is unmanned.

Wait, and eventually you’ll end up in a cell on ship in an unknown sector. Talk to the guard and get yourself released. Follow the mission guidance to the Court of Curbs audience.

Seem Valuable

You may want to save here, in case you want to try different conversation options.

You have to prove Worth and prove Dedication.

Worth: apparently split measure “worth” in credits. Lots of credits. At least 1 million. Offering less will not get the result. you need. It’s like you’re dealing with the Teladi here…

Dedication: more straightforward and less expensive, you get sent to destroy an M-size split cobra.

If you explore a bit, you discover you’re on a split Raptor somewhere. You can’t see the sector in your map, but you can teleport out to one of your ships in another sector. If you exit the raptor in your space suit instead, the sector will be revealed in your map. Finally, there’s also an S-size trade ship on the raptor you can claim and use to leave if you like (or just leave here as a convenient place to teleport later).

You’ll find you can now use the accelerator to travel into the Boneyard sector, but there’s not much of anything there (other than an abandoned S-size mining ship). Later it’ll be useful to have an Advanced Satellite near the Raptor, so you may want to do that while you’re here.

You learn from Dal that there’s a choice here: either proceed with Dedication and kill the cobra, or talk to Dal and get word to a ZYA police contact.

There’s a decision point here, but it’s not obvious! If you want to side with ZYA eventually, you need to talk to Dal now, on the funeral service ship. You can still switch later and side with FRF, and talking to the police contact can help with steam achievements (if you care about that).

Either talk to Dal and then his police contact, OR head off to kill the cobra as requested.

Killing the cobra will earn you a reputation hit with ZYA, as they own the ship (which is kind of the point).

Talking to the authorities will get you enlisted as an undercover agent.

The actions you take from here will be largely similar, as you’ll be following the Rebels and doing what they want. Later, you’ll reach a real decision point where you either help ZYA or go against them.

Slave Trader 2

Report to the ship (spacesuit or S-size ship to dock), and follow directions. You’ll need to attach (but not detonate) spacesuit bombs on three of the ship’s cargo drones. [Why they launch the drones and have someone in a spacesuit fire bombs at them… vs just walking up and attaching bombs while they’re sitting in the ship… who knows.]

Note: you may want to have an M-size combat ship available and following you. A ship will be provided, but you may want something more sturdy.

The ship flies to the Hall of Judgement (the main ZYA facility here) and you have to head into the station to free some prisoners from The Pen (jail). There are two cells you need to open. Follow directions, and the cargo drones will be detonated as a distraction.

You’re given control of a Chimera at the station’s dock with the escaped prisoners as your crew, and need to leave the station.

Fly to the Slave Trader 2 and wait. The idea now is that ZYA will send ships after the Slave Trader 2, and you need to help defend it. You’ll have to wait briefly for the enemy to arrive, and even then you may have to dock at the Slave Trader 2 and take off again to get the ships to attack.

A few tips here:

You get a reputation hit with ZYA for destroying the attackers, so you may want to shoot at them until near-destroyed then let your friends get the actual kill.
Be careful about damage to the Slave Trader 2’s engines. It needs to be able to move to escape.
Even if you’re planning on siding with ZYA, it’s ok to destroy the attacking ZYA fighters

Note also that drones cycling in/out of the Slave Trader 2 may cause any ship you left docked to get put into the trader’s internal storage. Teleporting out of the sector can help if you’re having trouble getting them out again.

When complete, you need to return to the Boneyard sector, and board the Raptor (so it’s useful if you left that Tuatara docked to teleport to).

Have some more conversations with the Curbs. You’re finished here for now.

You’ve now reached the final decision point, and will need to make the permanent decision to support either the Patriarchy or the Rebels. Talk to Dal at your HQ to get information that may help with the decision.

One side or the other is about to need ships, especially the FRF as they previously weren’t allowed to build any military ships. If siding with FRF/Curbs, you may want to pause here to get a Wharf at least up and running to help supply their military when the time comes.

Choosing Sides

Talk to dal, listen to his comments, then choose a side to support.

Note that if you assemble and deliver the fleet before talking to Dal, this will count as siding with the Curbs (since you never give ZYA a chance to install bombs on the ships).

Either way, you’ll be doing essentially the same thing, with a stop to talk to the ZYA representative first if you side with them.

You now need to assemble a (large and expensive) fleet. It helps quite a bit if you have your own wharf/shipyard, or at least equipment docks for refitting minimally outfitted hulls you’ve bought.

Before delivering the fleet, you may want to stage a fleet or warships of your own in the Boneyard to help with the coming battle. You can do it in any ship, but it’ll go faster and easier if you bring some of. your own resources.

Declaration of Curbs

If you join the curbs, you’ll need to deliver space fly caviar and listen to a long speech, and then the Curb fleet you delivered will be attacked by ZYA. Neither side is hostile to you (unless you provoke them) so there’s no direct battle in which you’re involved unless you choose to be.

Several stations in Heart of Acrimony and elsewhere will change ownership to the new CUB (court of curbs) faction, and the factions will be at war.

You’re now free to pursue your own agenda, helping one side or the other as you see fit. If you have a shipyard, make sure the “buy ships” trade rule allows for the new CUB faction if you want to help them.

There will be some additional requests for support, both credits and ware deliveries, but the storyline is essentially over. Once you deliver 400 million credits and help destroy a station, the Zyarth withdraw all forces from Free Families space (though it’s likely that if you’ve built infrastructure supporting FRF/CRB in their space Zyarth may not even have any ships left given that and pressure from the Xenon).

Once you deliver an additional 800 million credits (give or take) the Curbs will send you on another “deliver a ship full of bombs” mission to a Zyarth station (though this time you don’t have to actually do the prep work). Fly the. ship to the station, and it will cause a slave revolt with Argon taking the station.

This was the last straw, and another patriarch (Rhak) overthrows patriarch Zyarth and ZYA becomes RHA, a new faction. They sign an armistice with the Curbs, and the war is over.

Zyarth Patriarchy

If you side with the Zyarth in your conversation with Dal, you’ll need to assemble the fleet then deliver it first to the Zyarth for “refitting.” They’ll place bombs on the ships, which you’ll then deliver.

You’ll be asked to place spacesuit bombs on the shield generators of the Curb’s carrier, and then attend the declaration of Curb independence… at which point the Zyarth will invade. Even with the crippled ships, there’s still a whole lot of enemy ships here. Having brought in a destroyer or two will help considerably.

Once the battle’s over, the political landscape shifts as expected. The Curbs seize several stations, and the Zyarth begin to exert even more control over FRF space while seizing control over FRF defense stations.

From here, there are a few tasks you’ll be asked to help with (donating 400 million credits, destroying a station) but the the story line is essentially over.