Strategy to get to and activate yellow ending (NO SPOILERS)

The new ending (Yellow Ending) is undoubtedly the most difficult of the four to accomplish. Here I will detail what, at the very minimum is required to accomplish the yellow ending:

Absolutely Required technologies:

Wormhole Generator
Life Seed
Death Seed** (will be required for about 90% of playthroughs, if you get pretty lucky you won't need this. This is detailed below)
Gravitational Lens
Telescope

Absolutely Required Inventory

At least one stack of humans from the human ship that is discovered by visiting an anomaly after about 20 star systems.

Strategy to reach the Yellow beacon

Upon getting the yellow beacon event it is difficult to notice and you likely will not discover until the first attempt that the planet is very far out of reach past the red beacon (which you do not have to visit to activate the yellow ending). After arriving at the red beacon (we will assume you have been that far in the game before) there are 1-2 other planets that require about the same jump distance to get to as the red beacon, so if you can get there then you can get to these other planets. Beyond those 1-2 planets there is an impossibly HUGE distance between your location and two star systems. One will always be a black hole, the other will always be the yellow beacon star system. I have attempted to use the space folder/reactor with every powerup available to both to extend my range far enough to make the jump, but with all upgrades including the glowing blue "build next to" bonuses the jump range is JUST out of reach of the yellow beacon/black hole star systems.

If you are familiar with the game then you already know that the only possible remaining strategy is the following:

1. Use the death seed to create a black hole as close as you can get to the yellow beacon
   
   
2. Use the wormhole generator to jump through the black hole. Your telescope with a gravitational lens built next to it (you may be even able to not use the blue powerup bonus and still make it, but why wouldn't you?) along with the telescope boost from the wormhole generator will give you the telescopic range that you need to see the black hole.
   
   
3. Upon arriving at the far black hole it is a very short jump to the yellow beacon. You can probably make it with no jump range powerups
   
   
4. Upon arriving at the yellow beacon star system you will see a single rock planet. Use the life seed to terraform this and then land on the planet to activate the yellow ending!
   

**If you are lucky like me on my last playthrough then one of the star systems that you would normally have to transform with the death seed will already be a black hole! Out of five attempts, however, that only happened once so I wouldn't count on it.

General Tips and Tricks

Now I'll share some general bullet points that helped me as I went along that may make your trip to the yellow ending easier:

• Ship space is your most precious commodity. It gives you adaptability, which is the key to winning the game. You need to keep resources to fix stuff, account for random events, etc. Big ships may be less efficient, but you can still survive if a random event happens to go catastrophically.
  
  
• Build and dismantle frequently to accommodate for situations and maximize your resource and space usage. Look at everything as a value tradeoff. Here's an example: I use the hydrogen probe on a gas giant and get three full stacks of helium. I only have two spaces remaining on my ship, but I keep a stack of iron in case anything breaks. I dismantle my drill because losing three iron is much less than what I gain from having a third full stack of helium! In this way, instead of keeping quite a few of my technologies built, I will just keep stacks of resources instead and rebuild the technologies when I need them! This also allows you to easily repair your things after random events break them.
  
  
• In the above vein, iron is the most important and disposable commodity in the game. If you keep a stack hovering between 10 and 20 that will give you the freedom that you need to dismantle and rebuilt most important equipment as you see fit. It is fairly easy to mine iron (it's on nearly every rock planet you visit) so don't be afraid to burn through it by dismantling to make room for more precious resources and technology as you see fit.
  
  
• If you are going for yellow ending, start mining for Tungsten (W) from the very start if you plan on taking over the human ship (I won it with this ship, it's not too bad, though I prefer the ice cream cone shaped ship). Tungsten is required to fix the copious broken slots on the human ship.
  
  
• Always carry a stack of whatever mineral you need to fix a broken slot. No reason to give up precious space for several jumps because of a random event when you could just carry a full stack of that resource and use it for other stuff as well.
  
  
• To save space, you can store your resources in other technologies and break them down for a "final push" when you get close to the yellow ending. For example, you don't need the gravitational lens until the very end. It requires Hafnium, which is also used for the Subspace Reactor. When you are ready for your final big jump, just break down your Subspace Reactor and use the Hafnium to build your Gravitational Lens! Also, you will need oxygen, coal and cobalt to build death seed/life seed. You can save space by waiting to mine these from the last few garden planets you visit as they are very rarely used in other cases.
  
  
• The alien language is randomized every playthrough. However, there are strategies that you can use to help yourself learn it. There are two types of interactions that you can have with the aliens. The first one the aliens will basically say that they worship you, drop an omega at your feet and run away. The second type of interaction is a two part dialog where they ask you if you are an asshole and if you answer right they will offer to trade either an omega, a technology, or both of the above for that requested resource. This is where you can utilize some strategy to gain an advantage.
  
  The key to gaining an advantage on the first part of this dialog early in the game is by looking at the words. This first part always follows a format something like this.
  SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING
  SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING
  YOU LOVE/HATE/WANT GOOD/EVIL/US/PEOPLE DEATH/LIFE?
  
  The key is always in the final line of the dialog. The others are always unimportant. Essentially they are asking you if you are a good person. If you say no they will run away and you lose the opportunity to get to the second dialog. If you see the name of the alien in the dialog, the word right before it can give you context clues. If the dialog goes WLKDFS WONKSA EADS [Alien's Name] and you answer YES, resulting in them getting pissed off at you, then you can be fairly certain that EADS is a word that means evil/death/hate even though you haven't translated EADS. You can write it down on a notepad and reference it later.
  
  For the second part of the dialog and the aliens ask you for the resource, the word for that resource will always be the very LAST word of the second dialog window. Since the aliens all speak the same language, it will be the same for all aliens. Again you can write this on a notepad or something. If you give them iron and that wasn't the resource they wanted, then you will know for the next aliens that you offer it to not guess iron for that word again if it comes up. You can start to use process of elimination to identify what mineral the word represents and increase your chances of getting it next time.  
  
  
• In the first 10-15 star systems, aliens will only ever ask for iron or hydrogen and as you progress further they will begin to ask for more esoteric minerals.
  
  
• Later in the game when you know most if not all of the language, you can cancel out of the "give resources to alien" dialog and encouter them again. They will ask for a different resource if you make it past the first "are you good or evil" dialog window (which you should if you know most if not all of the language). This is a foolproof way to get an omega on every garden planet that you visit.
  
  
• If you haven't had the blue "attack" event yet keep three stacks of humans. The "attack" event almost always kills around ten of them. If you have, really only two stacks is necessary while you farm technologies and when you get close to the red beacon you can drop a stack as you only need one stack of humans to activate the yellow ending.
  
  
• Farm up all of the technologies before you go for the ending. This will give you flexibility to accommodate for different situations and help you in your decision-making abilities. It will also ensure if used along with the alien strategy discussed above that every garden planet you visit will yield an omega element. The only technology that I've found truly worthless, especially since Omega version, is the Ansible (in Omega version Mi Clos seems to have seriously nerfed the presence of blue enemies to little more than a nuisance when before it was a possible game ender if you jumped to the wrong star system and every planet was taken). Cryonics runs a close second as it is useless on its own and none of the big ships have a low enough base ecosystem that shared cryonics is of any use. The planetary expander is for the most part unnecessary but can be useful in rare occasions. Gravitational well generator should be avoided in favor of other similar upgrades because copper can only be obtained from garden planets and it's usefulness in other technologies is limited.
  
  
• Copper is a big space waster and should be the first thing discarded if you run out of space. Likewise, don't carry around coal or cobalt unless you are trying to build a death/life seed or you need cobalt to fix your ship.
  
  
• Elements you should always be carrying a stack of around, in order of importance:
  
  Fe: (fix your most important stuff and repair hull). I sometimes carry 2-3 stacks of this depending on situation
  H/He: (Fuel). This also applies if you are using one of the crazy ships that runs on oxygen or coal etc.
  Th:This goes into quite a few of the most important jump technologies that you will always want to repair and rebuild
  W: Used to rebuild shield technologies
  Si: Used to rebuild telescope and space folder and many other important technologies, if you keep a stack of this you can just blow up your telescope whenever you need more space and rebuild it after.
  Au: Used for many useful but nonessential technologies, it's nice to have a stack of this if you have any of these built and you will definitely need some for yellow ending.
  Hf: I try to avoid keeping this one on hand and it's always the first one I throw out but if you have space then it's worth keeping if your subspace reactor breaks down.
  
  
  
• I won't go to much into this because it's very circumstantial but if you get the death/life seed technologies relatively early they can be used to your advantage in combination with other technologies. There are quite a few creative ways to utilize combinations of technologies and different strategies to develop from them.
  
  
• I picked this up from another post and again it's very circumstantial but if you are extremely low on a resource before you jump, don't refill until after the jump. A random event will never end the game for you, it will only drain your resources to 0. Therefore, if you have 5 fuel left after your jump and the event drains 20, you've just saved yourself 15 fuel.
  

Hope this sheds some light on what many critics have called a painfully difficult game! Happy spacing!

I never drop human stacks. Out of respect. Transfer them to a different ship.
Thanks a lot for this guide. Now I will try yellow ending.