Introduction

If you are interested in decorating your Orbiter with floofs (fluffy animals), then Fortuna Animal Conservation is right up your alley. Even if floofs aren’t your thing, Conservation is an excellent way of gaining Solaris United standing and can be a fun activity overall. This activity is unique to the Orb Vallis so we’re going to cover all you need to know to get started. Feel free to skip to the table at the end which lists standing amounts for capturing each animal.

Getting the Proper Equipment

Before you can get started, you must purchase the Tranq rifle and at least one Echo lure from The Business. The Solaris United syndicate unlocks after you finish the Vox Solaris quest, so go complete it if you haven’t already. The Tranq rifle and cheapest lure available both cost 500 Standing each so you can get started with as little as 1,000 Standing.

Once you have both the Tranq Rifle and an echo lure, you’re all set. Make sure you equip both items onto your gear wheel. You can do so while still in Fortuna by opening the game menu –> Equipment –> Arsenal. If you have multiple lures, you only need to equip one onto your gear wheel as the others can be accessed through the unique hunter inventory management system. We recommend assigning a hotkey to your Tranq Rifle so that you can quickly switch between it and your weapon as you’ll come across Corpus enemies frequently.

How to Start Hunting / Tracking Animals on the Orb Vallis

Now that you have your hunting items equipped, it’s time to head onto the Orb Vallis. Equip your Tranq Rifle and pull up the advanced map (hold down M). Your map should be marked with hunter locations for any of the animals you currently have lures for. If you only want to see one specific type of animal, hold down 2 (the lure button) and select a lure from the wheel (if you have multiple). This will equip the lure instead of the Tranq rifle. If you pull up the map while holding a lure, the map will only show hunting locations for that particular animal.

Finding the Lure Spot

Head to a hunting spot of your choice (usually whatever is closest). Once there, you’ll find a pile of animal poop (yum) that you can use to track the animal. Go ahead and start the hunt by interacting with the poop. This spawns a set of animal footsteps that you are supposed to track to find the appropriate lure location. Unfortunately, these footsteps are rather difficult to see for most players so we have two solutions to help you alleviate this problem.

The first solution is technical: Try playing around with your in-game Display settings. We were able to find a reasonable point where the tracks showed better by changing our Brightness to 15, Contrast to 40 and enabling High Dynamic Range + Adaptive Exposure. We also lowered gamma on our monitor which made the tracks easier to see as well.

There is a delicate balance you should be aware of when changing your settings. Most of the time, any actions you take to improve their visibility against snow will decrease their visibility against darker surfaces such as mountains. Again, we recommend playing around with it or giving our settings a try. Here’s the before and after pictures for our settings.

While this works to a point, there are still certain areas where seeing the tracks is unreasonably difficult such as the orange fungal areas of the map. Our best advice in these cases is to use your Codex Scanner to find the lure spot. The Codex Scanner highlights anything that can be scanned each time you aim down its sights.

However, the Codex Scanner only highlights objects for roughly a second, so you’ll have to repeatedly look through the Codex, put it down then look through it again to keep re-highlighting objects. The most important aspect of the Codex Scanner is that it can see objects through walls and other obstacles, meaning you can find the lure spot without following the tracks at all! The circle on your mini-map denotes the area the lure spot can be in, so you can simply search this area using the Codex instead of following the footsteps.

Luring and Capturing the Animal

Once you’ve found the designated spot, it’s time to lure the animal out! Hold down “2” (lure button) and select the appropriate Echo lure for the animal you’re hunting. Equipping the lure will bring up a small bar to the right of your Warframe. The small glowing line inside the bar moves based on your mouse movement. For your first call, it does not matter where the line is inside the bar so go ahead and use the echo by holding down left click / fire button.

This will make a sound similar to the animal you’re hunting. The animal will respond with its own call after you finish yours. Listen very carefully during the animal’s response as it will inform you of the general direction the animal will come from. Your goal is to mimic the animal’s cry with your echo lure by keeping the glowing line inside the small white pointers which will move based on pitch. Steadily move your mouse to mimic the movement of the white bar and you’ll have no issues.

Most of the time you’ll only have to mimic the animal once, but sometimes you must mimic it several times. The animal always makes a unique sound to denote that it’s coming out of hiding. Hide yourself from the animal’s line of sight by placing an obstacle between yourself and the direction the animal is coming from. You can always tell which direction they are coming from based on the sounds they make during the Echo lure part, so make sure you’re listening closely!

Equip your Tranq rifle and start aiming down your sights after you are hidden. The Tranq rifle highlights animals through obstacles at surprisingly far distances when you are aiming down sights. Additionally, the Tranq continually highlights animals unlike the Codex scanner so it’s actually better to keep your sights aimed down to keep an eye on the animal at all times. The Tranq Rifle beeps while you’re holding down sights as long as the animal is close and being highlighted even if you aren’t looking at it.

The last step is to take the shot and tranquilize the animal so you can rescue it. Be warned as the Tranq Rifle is a projectile weapon which moves fairly slow so you should lead your shots if the animal is moving. It’s also worth mentioning that animals can hear you if you shoot or make too much noise close-by. This will alert them and cause them to run away which can result in you not catching anything at all! The same can happen if the animal sees you or smells you (wind direction), so do your best to keep hidden and only take guaranteed shots.

If you tranquilize the animal without it being alerted, you are awarded with a Perfect Capture which provides the highest amount of Standing. If the animal is alerted and you only tranquilize it after it begins running away, you are awarded a Good or Bad Capture which provide less Standing. Using the Tranq Rifle and being stealthy is the “normal” way to hunt, but using Warframes to hunt is far superior and results in nearly 100% Perfect Captures.

The Best Warframes for Hunting

Equinox

Our favorite Warframe for Conservation is Equinox and it isn’t even close. Equinox’s second ability during her Night form, Rest, can put animals to sleep from insane ranges without even aiming directly at them. Follow the steps from above up until you are hiding as the animal comes out. Use your Tranq Rifle to locate the animal, then put away your Tranq Rifle and aim in that general direction. Spam the Rest ability (“2” by default) until you see your Warframe cast the ability.

As soon as you cast the ability, the animal is put to sleep (even if you didn’t see it – Rest can sometimes affect animals that aren’t even in line of sight). Use your Tranq Rifle to locate the sleeping animal and recover it. You’ll get a Perfect Capture every time as long as you aren’t spotted before sleeping the animal. This works even against Bolarolas which typically require you to aim at their underbelly. Mod for maximum range, moderate duration and high enough efficiency to not have to worry about energy.

Ivara

Ivara is another excellent choice for hunting thanks to her Sleep Arrow. However, due to the mechanics of how her sleep arrows work (with enemies capable of being alerted as they are asleep), it is more difficult to get Perfect Captures with her than it is for Equinox. Still, she is more than effective and you should have no issues once you get used to her.

Ivara doesn’t have to be as well hidden as other Warframes since she can use her Prowl ability to go invisible. It’s worth noting that animals can still detect you when you’re invisible, so it’s still wise to at least put a small barrier between you and the animal before you take your shot. Like Equinox, Ivara can sleep Bolarolas without hitting their underbelly. Mod for high range, moderate duration and moderate efficiency.

Other Choices

Revenant and Loki are both strong candidates for hunting on the Orb Vallis. Revenant can use Enthrall to effectively pacify the animal, allowing you to shoot at it freely. Loki has invisibility which helps him avoid detection by the animal. Again, keep in mind that animals can still detect you while you’re invisible so it isn’t a perfect solution. Feel free to take any Warframe you like, but Equinox and Ivara are our favorites since they allow you to sleep animals using an AoE ability rather than the slow, projectile-based Tranq Rifle.

Conservation Standing Rewards

King of the Floofs

If you went on Reddit at any point during Fortuna’s release, you probably saw at least an Orbiter or two filled to the brim with floofs. Head over to the Business and select the “Trade Tags” option to check out all the different floofs that are available. We hope you enjoy decorating your Orbiter with these fuzzy animals and that our guide helped you in some way. As always, feel free to leave your own useful advice in the comments below!