- If you go east of the1st waypoint that has all the artifacts, you'll find a Starhammer memorial inside a giant sphere. It dropped a precursor ship artifact and a precursor gunfor me. I also got ambushed by 8 aliens. The precursor ship can sell for almost$120,000. Side note: I don't always get the ship or gun, it's pretty random,but aliens will keep spawning in waves until you actually destroy theStarhammer. If you are tough enough (and save enough) you can gain quite a bitof XP here (I got ~600 my last game before the missile boats got to be toomuch).
Hephaestus (thanks to Goblin Wizard) - Idon't know if anyone mentioned that but you can get some good stuff very earlyin the game (right after you got Mastiff). When you flight to Elio forrepainting you go through the Hephaestus (you had to navigate between automaticturrets). There are 3 rings of these turrets and lots of wrecks around. Blowingwrecks outside the rings is pointless but inside there are two big (flat type)transport hulls that drops nice stuff. 1st gave me: Emerald, Armageddon, Sigil,Avenger, and Trident fighter. 2nd: Shining, Lycathrope, Mortar, Overbank,Berserk Laser and Hrimithurs (sth like that) fighter. After several tries Irealized that types of armament are fixed and only quantity of items changes (Ican get up to 8 items from one wreck) so you can get 600-1000K worth stuffdepending of your luck (fighter are always one, others may be multiple). To getinside you have to flight down and go under the turrets. You can start from thetop too but wrecks are at the bottom so going down is faster. Beware theturrets. Mastiff goes down in 3-4 shots from a single turret. The system istotally peaceful (maybe except gates area) so that's easy money .
Mission: Pirate stash - This is missable ifyou don't accept Heretic's offer right after meeting Ternie for the first time.Take his offer (and the money, lasers aren't worth it) and make sure hesurvives. He should let you work with the other pirate gang to get themothership. Once you get it you should have a couple of techs plead for theirlives and give you the stash location. Follow the story a bit longer and Terniewill ask you if you want to go find it, say YES! I'm not going to go intomission details except to say it can be tough for the beginning so I recommendfinding some other stashes first, then do the mission. *spoiler* In the end youmust intercept Paymaster and destroy the transports for the stash; it shouldinclude a Kali or Tungsten among other top tier equipment, well worth theeffort *spoiler*