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A Living Ship is an organic starship you grow from an egg. Hello Games added them in the Living Ship update (2.3) as “rare, sentient starships” with their own organic tech. You don’t find one sitting at a trading post. You earn the first one through a multi-day story mission called Starbirth.
Here’s the whole route, from buying the egg to flying the ship.
Step 1: buy a Void Egg
Go to the Space Anomaly and visit the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion. The Void Egg costs 3,200 Quicksilver (Fandom). Quicksilver comes from Nexus missions, so if you’re starting from zero, run those first.
With the egg in your inventory, fly around any system using the pulse drive. Eventually a strange starship hails you in a space encounter, and Starbirth begins. The Cosmos update made this easier: the Living Ship in Starbirth “now patrols around infested outposts, and can be actively sought out during the mission.”
Step 2: the four plaques
Each stage follows the same loop. A space encounter points you to a planet, you find a Korvax plaque, it gives you a blueprint, you build the item and hand it over. You get a fragile part that matures over about a day, then the next encounter starts.
| Stage | Item the plaque wants | Recipe | Grows into |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Consciousness Bridge | 250 Hexite, 80 Pugneum, 1 Korvax Casing | Mature Neural Stem |
| 2 | Pulsating Core | 250 Liquid Sun, 100 Gold, 80 Mordite | Mature Heart Node |
| 3 | Impossible Membrane | 100 Chromatic Metal, 1 Hypnotic Eye, 150 Living Water | Hardened Shell |
| 4 | Seeds of Glass | 100 Magnetised Ferrite, 100 Fragmented Qualia | Singularity Core |
Where to get the awkward ingredients, per the Fandom Starbirth page:
- Hexite: the first plaque gives you directions to a crashed freighter that has it.
- Liquid Sun: the second plaque gives you the Solar Ray blueprint (50 Magnetised Ferrite, 50 Cobalt). Use it on metal deposits.
- Hypnotic Eye: found at a marked underwater Abandoned Building.
- Living Water: go back to space and interact with a Child of Helios.
- Fragmented Qualia: the fourth stage gives you the Animus Beam blueprint (100 Condensed Carbon, 50 Sodium Nitrate). Point it at living creatures.
Fandom lists the growth times as 18 to 25.5 hours, 19 to 25 hours, 20 to 24 hours and 18 to 26 hours. Do something else in the meantime. The egg changes name as you go (Active, Stirring, Awakened, Cracking), which is a handy progress check.
Step 3: the Soul Chamber
After the Singularity Core matures, the final encounter sends you to a portal address in the Euclid galaxy: 026A:0084:0C16:0219, the Ischel-Althu system. You need the first 12 portal glyphs for this, so collect them from Travellers before you get here. If you’re in another galaxy, travel to Euclid first.
On the planet, a terminal hands you a Soul Chamber. Fill it with three souls from fallen Travellers’ graves to make the Archived Soul.
Step 4: hatch the Fallen Host
When you get back in your ship, the egg offers to hatch. Make a manual save before you accept. The ship spawns as a Fallen Host at a crashed ship site, and its look is random. If you hate it, reload the save and try again.
Once you like what you see, perform Biogenesis with all five parts: the neural stem, heart node, shell, singularity core and soul. The ship is yours.
What you get
According to the Fandom wiki, a Living Ship:
- is always S class, with a 36 + 30 slot inventory
- warps to red, green and blue systems without the Cadmium, Emeril or Indium drives, but still needs the Atlantid Drive for purple systems
- can’t be scrapped, only traded
The catch is tech. Hello Games’ notes say they “cannot be upgraded by conventional means.” Each core ship system has an organic equivalent, and each one’s recipe calls for creature parts and space junk:
| Organ | Replaces | Recipe |
|---|---|---|
| Neural Assembly | Launch Thruster | 2 Walker Brain, 40 Living Slime |
| Pulsing Heart | Pulse Engine | 15 Processed Meat, 40 Runaway Mould |
| Singularity Cortex | Hyperdrive | 4 Larval Core, 40 Viscous Fluids |
| Scream Suppressor | Deflector Shield | 2 Hadal Core, 40 Runaway Mould |
| Spewing Vents | Photon Cannon | 5 Sac Venom, 40 Living Slime |
| Grafted Eyes | Phase Beam | 3 Hypnotic Eye, 40 Viscous Fluids |
Upgrading a Living Ship
Upgrades come from Psychonic Eggs, which hatch into procedural organ upgrades. Extra slots come from Spawning Sacs. The Fandom wiki lists two sources for both: frigate expeditions that include Organic Frigates, and shooting the living ship space encounter.
Upgrades can be grown to higher classes with nanites. Fandom notes that once a Neural Assembly upgrade hits S class, the Neural Assembly recharges by itself. If you need a nanite income for that, see our nanite farm guide.
Getting a second Living Ship
Starbirth only runs once per save. To get another ship, buy another Void Egg and pulse until the encounter triggers. It leads straight to a new Fallen Host, which Fandom says costs 10,000 nanites to claim.
Sources
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Frequently asked questions
Buy a Void Egg from the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion on the Space Anomaly for 3,200 Quicksilver, then fly around with the pulse drive until a strange starship encounter triggers the Starbirth mission.
Most of the time is waiting. Each of the four grown parts takes roughly 18 to 26 hours to mature, according to the Fandom wiki, so plan on several real days.
Yes. Starbirth only runs once per save, but buying another Void Egg leads straight to a new Fallen Host. The Fandom wiki says claiming it costs 10,000 nanites.
No. Hello Games' patch notes say Living Ships use their own organic technologies and cannot be upgraded by conventional means. You grow upgrades from Psychonic Eggs instead.
The Fandom wiki says they can reach red, green and blue systems without the Cadmium, Emeril or Indium drives, but still need the Atlantid Drive for purple systems.