Alien Standing and Language — The Ladder and How to Talk
Plenty of people grind standing expecting cheaper shops. That effect barely exists. What standing really is, is a key that unlocks higher-rank missions with better rewards. Language works the same way — set “learn them all” as your goal and you’ll waste a lot of time.
This guide focuses on how the systems behave rather than reproducing number tables. The game files behind the standing figures are from an old build, so individual numbers may have shifted; the structure hasn’t.
The three races
| Race | Character | Specialist tech |
|---|---|---|
| Gek | Commerce and trade | Starships |
| Vy’keen | Military, strict honour code, deep hatred of sentinels | Multi-tools |
| Korvax | Machine race. Science and inquiry. Worship the Atlas | Exosuits |
Each star system has exactly one dominant race, and that determines two things:
- Which starships turn up at that system’s station
- Which language the system’s Knowledge Stones teach
So if you want to concentrate on one language, you stay in that race’s systems.
Standing with each race is independent. Raising Gek standing leaves Vy’keen standing untouched — there are no inter-race rivalries to manage.
There’s also the Autophage, a machine race that holds no systems and instead lives in camps on planet surfaces.
Standing is a single ladder
Every race and every guild uses the same thresholds.
0 → 3 → 8 → 14 → 21 → 30 → 40 → 60 → 100
And those numbers are exactly the unlock points for mission board ranks 1 through 8. Standing 3 opens rank 1 missions; standing 100 opens rank 8.
That’s the substance of the system. The rank names differ by race — the Gek use commercial terms (Customer → Trade Lord), the Vy’keen use military ranks (Enemy → Templar), the Korvax use research classifications (Unstudied → Traveller of the Atlas). The naming tells you everything about each culture.
Raising it, and what’s efficient
Only the figures that are actually documented:
| Method | Gain |
|---|---|
| Mission board mission | +1 (some high-rank ones give +2) |
| Guild mission | +5 |
| Donating to a Guild Envoy | +1 per item, up to 3 per station per day |
| Successful language practice | +1 |
The guild ladder is five times more efficient than the race ladder. Twenty guild missions get you as far as a hundred race missions.
Gifts, monolith answers, ruin puzzles, and killing pirates also raise standing, but how much each gives is unverified.
It can drop, too: destroying trade ships, wrong monolith answers, refusing a gift, abandoning a delivery mission (-1), and using threatening words in the wrong conversation. Even maxed standing at 100 can now decay.
What standing actually gives you
- Higher-rank missions — this is 90% of it
- Race-specific dialogue options
- Eligibility for certain blueprints
- Assistance during pirate attacks at high standing (Vy’keen 30, Korvax 8)
- A discount on station technology modules
That last one is the trap. The wiki describes the top Gek rank’s effect on prices as “very small”. Grinding standing for discounts is wasted effort.
Guilds are a separate ladder
There are Merchants, Mercenaries, and Explorers guilds, and they advance entirely independently of race standing.
| Guild | Aligned race | Extra ways to gain |
|---|---|---|
| Merchants | Gek | Earning units, growing crops |
| Mercenaries | Vy’keen | Killing sentinels and pirates |
| Explorers | Korvax | Scanning rare creatures, warping |
A Guild Envoy sits in the far corner of a station’s upper level. They aren’t a merchant — they’re a window that hands out rewards based on your standing. They now appear in settlement marketplaces too.
One guild is fixed per region, so every station in that region has the same one.
The rewards are substantial:
| Rank | What you get |
|---|---|
| 14 | 60% off 500 resources |
| 40 | Exosuit Expansion Unit, Salvaged Frigate Module, planetary chart |
| 100 | S-class upgrade module |
Feeding three Salvaged Data a day to the Merchants Envoy is enough to climb it. As covered in earning units, Salvaged Data turns up everywhere, so you can donate in passing.
Language — give up on completion
There are five languages: Gek, Vy’keen, Korvax, plus Atlas and Autophage.
Look at the scale first.
| Language | Learnable word groups |
|---|---|
| Gek | ~920 |
| Vy’keen | ~930 |
| Korvax | ~860 |
| Autophage | ~890 |
| Atlas | ~222 |
A single ruin yields 6–9 words. Completing one race means visiting well over a hundred ruins, and all three means three hundred plus. That isn’t a realistic goal.
Do this instead
Fitting Translators beats farming words. They translate unlearned words on the fly — a single S-class covers 3 words continuously, and a full set of four reaches 7. The benefit is immediate and independent of your learning progress.
Note that Translators don’t teach permanently; they only let you understand in the moment.
If you do want to learn, ancient ruins are far and away the best source. Three Knowledge Stones at the ruin itself plus a few nearby gives 6–9 per site. Monoliths also tend to guarantee three stones in the vicinity.
How you find ruins has changed. Signal Boosters no longer work for this. Use the Radar Power Resonator’s “Scan for Ruins” or a planetary chart. Older guides get this wrong.
What learning changes
Game text renders in each race’s alien script, with learned words appearing in readable characters. The Autophage are the exception — their language uses Greek letters.
Learning order is fixed, identical across every save.
Which dialogue option to pick — the practical part
When you hit an option you can’t read, whether it’s safe to guess depends on the situation.
| Situation | If you’re wrong |
|---|---|
| Ancient Plaque | No penalty. Both options give normal rewards |
| Monolith | Damage or standing loss |
| Manufacturing facility terminal | No reward |
| Language practice | -1 standing, sometimes damage |
Guess freely at plaques. Leave monoliths alone if you can’t read them.
Language practice follows a rule that’s easy to remember.
LORE is safe and favourable with every race. THREAT works only on the Vy’keen and is the worst option for everyone else. Never talk TRADE to a Vy’keen.
It maps exactly onto each culture. Talk business to a warrior and you’re dismissed; threaten a merchant and your standing drops. Korvax respond best of all to LORE, at a 45% success rate.
Common misconceptions
- Graves don’t teach words. They give portal glyphs.
- Gek Relics, Vy’keen Daggers, and Korvax Casings aren’t language items. Give them as gifts for standing, or offer them at a monolith to reveal that planet’s portal location.
- There’s no confirmed evidence that Operations Centres teach words. They give standing only.
- There are five languages, not four. Autophage was added later and older sources still say four.
- Maxed standing does decay now. It didn’t used to.
The bottom line
Don’t grind standing. Play normally and race standing accumulates on its own, along with the high-rank missions that are its real payoff. Guild standing, however, is worth farming — free Exosuit Expansion Units and S-class modules, funded by three Salvaged Data a day.
Don’t aim to complete a language. Pick up Knowledge Stones while you’re at ruins anyway, and fit Translators.
Related
- Earning Units — where Salvaged Data and other donation items come from
- Getting Started — the early-game order of operations
- Nanite Clusters — the currency that buys Translators