---
title: "Eidolon - Getting Started"
canonical: "https://wiki.sinsofasolarempire2.com/space/SSEFW/3885727748/Eidolon%20-%20Getting%20Started"
format: markdown
---
# Introduction

New lifeforms detected. Scroll down to update your datapads with all the required information on currently available strategic assets in the so called “TEC space.”

This knowledgebase covers the Eidolon's unique mechanics, such as planetary corruption/terraforming, ship corruption, cloaking, madness and more.

# Lore

The Eidolon are the vanguard forces which have been chasing the Vasari for 10,000 years across the galaxy. They first emerged on a planet named “Kron,” as seen in the original Sins 2008 trailer. Until now, this ominous enemy remained a mystery, not even the vanguard forces of the Eidolon were known.

The vast Vasari empire crumbled under the attacks of the Eidolon. Their elite forces – the Dark Fleet – bought time for the remaining population to escape the Eidolon, before fleeing into deep space. 

With no way to stop the Eidolon, the only option for the Vasari was to flee. The Vasari left probes during their journey to keep a tab on the Eidolon progression; as even though incapable of fighting them, they would at the very least know how close their doom was.

With the Eidolon finally catching up, we are able to learn more about their nature. Originating from another layer of phase space, the Eidolon are ruthless outsiders intent on subjugating all sentient life. They are physical entities from a deeper layer of phase space. Valuing individual power above all else, they choose to wield abominable technologies and arcane energies in spite of the terrible toll it exacts on the very fabric of space.

The Eidolon see no distinction between biology, technology, and psionics, merging them to create warships and facilities that can be controlled by a single augmented being. They make use of “Corruption” to spread their influence.

Once a person becomes corrupted, the corruption is permanent, reaching down to their very soul. They do not perceive any difference in themselves, but their viewpoints are altered. Long effects of corruption will also change the appearance of the unfortunate individual. Even planets can be corrupted, which leads to unnatural weather phenomena and other unpredictable geological events there.

# Getting Started

If you liked playing Vasari for their quality over quantity approach, you are in for a treat.

Eidolon ships are stronger than their counterparts in a 1-on-1 battle, but they are also costlier. Nevertheless, this gives you quite an edge in the early game, as your first capital ship will feel a few levels stronger than those of lesser races.

At the same time, your economy will be handicapped in early game stages due to corruption, or rather the lack thereof. We will talk about corruption in greater detail in further chapters, for now let’s focus on the game start.

![image-20260902-233150.png](media://a929b90f-301a-4c3c-9803-c1d7a1b56853)

You start on a Geomagnetic World, with a rift open near to it. Give the game a few seconds for a corruption salvo to fire at the planet and your first ships to come out of the rift. Below you can see the purple shot traveling to the planet, which will corrupt it and turn it into your homeworld. This happens around 8-10 seconds into the game.

![image-20260902-233239.png](media://9713badb-9ae2-4c77-9b64-358793cf4b24)

Once corrupted, the rift will autospawn 2 scouts and 2 heavy frigates for you. There is no siege frigate present in the gravity well, so you don’t have to worry about losing the planet. Instead there are a few ships from the “Dark Fleet Rearguard.” Your basic frigates are enough to deal with them.

Unlike Vasari, who also have to capture their first planet, the Eidolon arrive without a starting capital ship, but can summon one, without any additional buildings. This gives them greater flexibility as you effectively pick your first capital ship, akin to TEC or Advent, but gain a much more powerful ship, than even Vasari can field.

That first capital ship will arrive from the rift - click on the rift to bring up the construction menu. Summoning it will close the rift, and you will need to build “Major Portals” (Heavy Factories) to summon new capital ships.

It is recommended to start with a “colony class” capital ship on your first few runs, so that you can focus on learning other game mechanics. This would be Izharien Demiurge:

![image-20260902-233535.png](media://cff4d1ec-7680-44f0-997e-4735a2a80587)

If you think that it being a colony capital ship means it’s more of a support ship with weak firepower, you have not gotten the gist of the Eidolon’s nature. They are an extremely egoistical race, so only a few ships will be actually “supporting” others, and the Demiurge is no exception.

It fields 2 heavy null beams – a high pierce, high alpha damage weapon, along with 15 (fifteen!) medium shock cannons. On top of that, it has some PD weapons and strike craft. A well prepared Demiurge can rival the firepower of battleships from other factions.

With your planet cleared of the enemy ships, you are free to begin your Corruption Crusade of this sector of the galaxy. So it’s time to learn more about it.

# Corruption Mechanic

Corruption is a unique mechanic of the Eidolon. They corrupt both enemies and themselves. Corrupting Vasari or TEC is always a good thing to do. Corrupting Advent may backfire, as them being a PSI sensitive race, they can yield their own bonuses out of the corruption, although in the bigger picture, even Advent have way more downsides than the occasional benefit.

Corruption affects both ships and planets, but in terms of game mechanics we can look at them separately.

## Planet Corruption & Shrouding

You will encounter planetary corruption before you get to play around with ship corruption. That’s because your very homeworld starts corrupted and shrouded.

Corrupted planets become mostly useless for non-Eidolon races, while the Eidolon have hard time making use of non-corrupted planets (with most of planetary upgrades being locked). Once a planet is fully corrupted, you can shroud it.  Shrouding takes time and a small amount of resources, but effectively terraforms a planet for the Eidolon to make full use of - opening its development tracks.  

Of course, corruption isn’t just about shrouding and development levels. Eidolon get to use one of four planetary corruption abilities once a planet is shrouded. Those abilities are activated individually on the corrupted planets, and only 1 ability per planet can be active.

If you dislike the corruption UI taking up space, you can unpin it, by clicking on the green checkbox, when a corrupted planet is selected.

![image-20260902-233555.png](media://f6168fc9-c3bc-4f89-a9e7-dcf34ed95257)

This way, you will have to hover over the corruption bulk, but will save a bit of cinematic space. If you want to revert this change, just pin it back by clicking the same button.

![image-20260902-233604.png](media://9b82a83c-4056-4c59-9f6a-d80398d23e74)

Corruption abilities use the “corruption” resource to remain active. So the stronger abilities will require more investments from the player to keep them up. However, if you do run out of corruption, only the ability gets deactivated, while the planet remains corrupted.

![image-20260902-233619.png](media://9a9ae19f-b40d-45e9-bac0-f742e9d10b1f)

## Propagate Mode

![image-20260902-233640.png](media://f2ebe73e-4ea2-483b-b891-5937b9a81848)

Propagate Mode should be your default corruption ability. It barely has any corruption upkeep, so that usually you won’t need any additional investments to keep it up. Plus, it serves the crucial role of corrupting nearby planets! Yes, this is the main way how you spread corruption. Your homeworld will be the first node of the corruption network, and unless you corrupt nearby planets from your homeworld, the corruption will never spread (with very few exceptions of getting planetary corruption through other means).

The initial spread radius will be usually enough to get to nearby asteroids, and maybe you will be lucky enough to even get a few bigger planets into that radius. Does not sound too impressive. Worry not, as all of the 4 abilities have 4 additional levels. 

![image-20260902-233656.png](media://96bc7b41-2160-46d0-b4df-bdaae309bfc4)

Increasing those levels will boost the values across all stats for an ability. As of the DLC release state of the game, you will be getting +50% to range, speed and strength on the Propagate Mode per level (the 50% relate to base level, and do not stack across multiple levels)

Meaning you can go from 5 AU to 15 AU at max level of shroud on your homeworld.


## Exploitation Mode

![image-20260902-233754.png](media://ef29465c-caa3-4094-be7e-ac9d1e5a276c)

Next up is Exploitation Mode. This is your economy boosting tool. It gives you a percentage increase in income, and is best utilized on powerhouse planets, such as your homeworld. 

Also take a note that Exploitation Mode uses 50 times the corruption resource, compared to Propagation Mode. This kind of upkeep is not sustainable by itself, and will require a “corruption reservoir” – a unique Eidolon civilian structure, which produces corruption resource.

![image-20260902-233813.png](media://0db21a72-f89e-420e-babd-801170aa8a36)

You will want to have 3 of those on your non-homeworld planets and 2 on your homeworld to be able to sustain stronger abilities, such as the Exploitation mode.

Overall, Exploitation mode requires a somewhat expensive set up.  However, it can be achieved in early stages of the game as the reservoirs are a second tier technology. Usually this is also a timepoint where you will have nearby asteroids corrupted, allowing you to switch those roids to Propagate mode, while your homeworld could make use of the Exploitation mode for increased income.

And don’t worry about the naming. Exploitation mode is unlike the Vasari’s Strip to the Core. You will not suffer long-term economic downsides from having this mode running 24/7 (or whatever the phase space aliens use for their time measurement). Only thing to worry about is to have enough corruption production to sustain the ability itself.

## Summoning Mode

![image-20260902-233835.png](media://e3aaa8b1-8a48-4f9a-8f6d-8d5f77942cb4)

The next two abilities are more situational. Summoning mode allows you to quickly replenish your fleet through faster construction. Ideally, you do not want to be in a situation where you are switching into this mode. However, this may also be the “comeback” chance, should you suffer heavy losses in a miscalculated engagement.



## Phasic Veil Mode

![image-20260902-233852.png](media://1c497994-bb3b-4cd2-8539-955d0a00f757)

The final ability on the roster is Phasic Veil mode. This ability slows down all enemy phase space traffic. It can help you prepare your defenses by slowing down incoming ships; but it can also help you punish a fleeing fleet by slowing down the phase jump charge time, akin to a somewhat weaker phase jump inhibitor.

Even though the engine charge up time is weaker than that of a jump inhibitor, this ability will be far more reliable, as bombing out a planet takes far more time than destroying an orbital structure. Also, since there is only a cooldown after switching to an ability, but no cooldown in order to switch to an ability, you will be able to trick your opponents, by activating the ability just before they begin jumping out.

## Corrupting New Planets

To corrupt new planets, you will need to use the Propagation mode and fill in the “Corruption” stat of a planet. Smaller planets have smaller requirements, and bigger planets will take far more corruption and time to get corrupted.

![image-20260902-233906.png](media://aada8d52-0948-4132-8f9d-859755c45fa3)

If you have colonized the planet and filled the corruption bar, you will be able to “shroud” it.

![image-20260902-233921.png](media://6215a1db-d693-4bb8-b3c2-8bf98719c532)

Shrouding planets costs resources, but it’s worth every penny.

A shrouded planet will be corrupted for nearly the whole game (late game techs can unshroud a planet for non-Eidolon). Furthermore, an unshrouded planet will have most of its development levels locked, rendering the planet barely usable. Once the planet is shrouded, you get to use the corruption abilities on it, and get full access to the development levels.

This is a slow process, but with it, you are changing the landscape of the galactic map. (A future update will include late game techs for the TEC, Advent and Vasari to un-shroud planets).

For early game shrouding expansion, our Demiruge Colony xapital ship will come in handy, as it has the Vile Presence ability, which passively spreads planetary corruption.

![image-20260902-233955.png](media://c7e5814d-f854-4103-b3ee-d158adaaf7c6)

## Corrupted Planet Interaction of Lesser Factions

On top of suffering reduced number of planetary upgrades available on shrouded planets – other factions gain a further debuff from having corruption on planets.

![image-20260902-234013.png](media://7f4c8bab-6fb8-45d2-aba0-eb8e8e0d193c)

Even if you cannot shroud a planet straight away, corrupting them will cause some serious troubles for the lesser factions. Only in the extreme late game will they get a technology to reduce the effects the ever spreading corruption.

# Ship Corruption

Ship corruption is divided into 4 tiers: None -> Mildly -> Moderately -> Extremely corrupted. Those are hit at 0% / 10% / 50% / 90% of the ship's corruption pool. Unlike planet corruption, ships will begin losing their corruption level after several minutes, if no corruption increase happens. Eidolon also have a set of unique abilities to actively increase and decrease corruption. When decreasing corruption on their ships, they will usually get heal buffs, while decreasing corruption on enemy ships is usually followed by a damaging effect.

Eidolon ships get major bonuses from corruption, but still suffer some debuffs from it.

A Mildly corrupted Eidolon ship will get a 10% weapon damage boost, but will also disable repairs.

A Moderately corrupted Eidolon ship will no longer be able to regen hull, but its weapon boost will grow even further, and they will even get an in-combat shield regen.

An Extremely corrupted Eidolon ship will begin slowly losing its hp, down to 25%, but enjoy major boosts of weapon damage, shield regeneration, and antimatter regeneration.

There is a passive corruption decrease, which kicks in if the ship has not gained any new corruption for several minutes. You gain corruption from antimatter points spent, but also some abilities may boost your corruption level directly.

## Corrupting TEC

TEC receive debuffs from corruption in form of “Corrupted Sensors.” This effect reduces the range of weapons and abilities, but also of the cloaking detection. Oh yes, there is cloaking, and we’ll talk about it in the next chapter!

![image-20260902-234046.png](media://3df8326e-833f-4457-981d-cb058df61b79)

## Corrupting Vasari

Very fitting to the lore, Vasari suffer a different kind of corruption. Their phase engines partially fail under it, making it much harder to retreat from Eidolons! This makes every engagement of Vasari against Eidolon so much deadlier, and may mean a one way ticket for any offensive attempt on the Vasari side.

![image-20260902-234111.png](media://ff624a20-2ae7-4540-a60b-15be1076aba2)

## Corrupting Advent

In contrast to other factions, Advent gain both debuffs and buffs from corruption.

Reaching Mildly Corrupted status will reduce their capabilities casting Abilities, but at the same time grants them Psi Power, which boosts many of those same abilities. Increasing the corruption level will increase both - the debuffs of Cost and Cooldown on abilities - but ultimately will empower them with up to 50 Psi power on maxed out corruption.

![image-20260902-234130.png](media://9eea47d9-9794-4279-a516-bdba917639e8)

This makes Advent the hardest faction to corrupt, as you need to know which Advent ships make use of Psi, and which do not, so that you do not end up empowering your opponent, while casting corruption on them.

As can be seen in the screenshot below, a fully corrupted level 1 Progenitor will almost double its Shield Regeneration ability from the Psi power our corruption gave them.

![image-20260902-234145.png](media://32699b08-dd19-424c-ba05-b531ada6af35)

However, this does not mean that you should not use corruption against Advent.  There are many abilities in the Eidolon roster, which greatly increase damage against corrupted ships, to make corruption worthwhile.

# Cloaking

Cloaking is a new mechanic with the Harbinger DLC. In fact, the Eidolon won’t be the only faction capable of cloaking their ships!

Even though Eidolon start with the cloaking technology, only a few of their ships can actually cloak. The Vasari are the second faction to get cloaking. They do require a research, and due the complexity of the technology, they can only cloak small ships, such as their scouts and the raider corvette.

Cloaked ships will immediately decloak should they open fire, but you do get a damage bonus for striking from a cloaked state.

## Cloaking States

Cloaking has 5 possible states, ranging from 0 to 4. Every non-cloaked ship is basically at state 0, being visible to everyone. While if your ships are in state 4, enemies will not even suspect that you are present in a gravity well. States in-between allow the enemy to know that some cloaked ships are present, but limit their information on the quantity and position, depending on quality of your cloaking.

![image-20260902-234212.png](media://f2e4e1ea-6439-44fc-8d39-14a9baa61308)

Ships with cloaking have a basic value for their cloak quality, albeit some research may improve it.

For example, the Eidolon frigate Kaziel Shade starts with cloaking at strength 3, giving them good cloaking from the get go. But you will be able to research an upgrade to give them a +1 on cloak quality, pushing it up to perfect cloaking, so that enemy won’t be able to know if those are even present in a given gravity well.

The Kalizaeth Profaner is a capital ship, but can also cloak. Its base value sits at 2 and can be increased to 3 by the same research. So you won’t be able to completely hide your capital ship from enemy sensors, but with the upgrade, you will be able to hide the number of your cloaked capital ships!

Fun fact, the Kalizaeth Profaner changes its visual appearance as it cloaks!

The Vasari scout and raider corvettes get fixed cloaking at strength 2, once the they spin up their technological progress.

Finally, there is the Eidolon titan; you’d think such a huge ship will have even worse cloaking. You could not be any more wrong! You will be required to research an end-game technology, and install a titan module – but for that you’ll be getting a titan cloak at strength 5! Keep in mind, that max strength is 4, so you’ll have a point of cloaking strength to spare against detection!

Speaking of decloaking, the bottom left of screenshot below you can see ships at cloaking strength 1 (unknown ship, known location, known quantity). Those ships are grouped together with ships at cloaking strength 2 (unknown ship, unknown location, known quantity), and listed in the planetary overview as “15 ?”

![image-20260902-234229.png](media://bfbd2785-a295-4593-9d6d-90ee4e90d373)

Ships at cloaking strength 3 and higher would not contribute to the number of 15 cloaked ships, as their quantity remains hidden. This allows you for various strategies, by mixing lower quality cloaked ships with better cloaked ones.

## Decloaking

While understanding cloaking will elevate your gameplay, understanding how to find cloaked ships may end up saving your playthrough.

There are 2 sources of decloaking: One is detection used by specific ships and structures; the other is cloaking degradation through actions.

Detection is an active tool which can be used against enemy cloaked ships. By default, all research laboratories have a stacking detection strength of 3. That means 2 labs will be enough to decloak even the perfectly cloaked titan, as the titan has cloak of strength 5 versus 3+3 detection strength.

On top of laboratories, each faction gets a cruiser and a capital ship with detection. This detection is built into the ship, so you do not need to do anything but bring it to the enemy cloaked ships.

Most ship detectors also have stackable decloaking with strength 3, but you need to keep in mind, that there is also a range of decloaking, both for ships and labs. So a perfectly cloaked ship could still sneak by your detectors, if it takes the longer route.

![image-20260902-234304.png](media://db44a948-c1d5-443a-913b-2df248f590ae)

The Eidolon are a slight exception to this rule, as they do not have a capital ship with built-in detection, but any of their capital ships can install a module to detect ships from the very start of the game. That module will provide perfect detection of strength 5.




The TEC detector cruiser is another exception, as it does not get built-in passive detection, but has an active detection ability. This gives the ship a temporary detection strength of 4 in a medium range.

## Detectors Table

The table below lists the detector ships for every faction:

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Faction | Detectors |
| TEC | Dunov Battlecruiser; Hoshiko Robotics Cruiser, Research Laboratories |
| Advent | Revelation Battlecruiser; Prisma Witness, Research Laboratories |
| Vasari | Antorak Marauder; Severun Overseer, Research Laboratories |
| Eidelon | Any capital ship with module; Israthil Silencer, Research Laboratories |

## Cloak Degradation

![image-20260902-234514.png](media://3133a52d-0f77-4c3d-b9c1-e4e10444e920)

Cloaking strength degrades from specific actions. Opening fire will immediately reveal any ship, even a perfectly cloaked one. Making a phase jump or taking damage will usually reduce the cloaking strength by 1.

Those cloaking degradations have rather short cooldowns, so you will usually regain your full cloaking strength if you disengage from combat. This also means that even Eidelon upgraded frigates won’t be able to make a perfect sneak attack.

With their upgrade, they do get to cloak at strength 4. But once they complete a phase jump, they’ll get a debuff of 1 on their cloaking strength, so that their quantity would remain hidden, but the opponent would still get a notification that some cloaked ships are present in their gravity well.

If you wonder how a cloaked ship can take damage – while untargetable by normal attacks - cloaked ships are still susceptible to AOE damage. An opponent can try to randomly shoot radiation bombs at a gravity well entry point to degrade your cloak. Such strategies should be enough to decloak Vasari ships, or an un-upgraded Kalizaeth Profaner, after they have just completed a phase jump.



The only ship capable of making cloaked jumps is the Eidolon titan, as it sits at 5 cloaking strength. So it is possible to bring in an immensely powerful ship completely undetected, for a sneak attack. But you won’t be able to escort the titan, if you want to keep it a complete surprise.

![image-20260902-234545.png](media://9ed8a28a-1009-469c-b27a-9e63858f95a9)

As you can see, our titan did get a cloaking debuff from jumping, but still has the perfect cloak!

# Phase Echoes

Another unique ability of the Eidolon are the “Phase Echoes.” It’s a late game ability which has a chance to proc on corrupted planets. Once researched, there will be a chance for any destroyed ship to become an “echo” of itself, as the ship will continue to live for up to another 90 seconds, while being invulnerable, before finally perishing.

![image-20260902-234641.png](media://89dc8c00-a961-461d-9d5b-193f5276e2ed)

# Madness

Driving enemies Mad is no longer something limited to Sins' lore. The Eidolon titan can effectively drive any enemy ship insane which has reached moderate corruption (50%). This will make the affected enemy go into berserk mode and shoot at the closest ship, even if it’s friendly. Mad ships will even use abilities against friendlies!

With the synergy between the Eidolon titan and the colony capital ship, you’ll be able to spread corruption in an AOE around your colony capship, for the titan to drive the enemy ships mad. Sadly, for balance reasons, ships are not made permanently mad. The enemy player will eventually get ahold of their ships back. Or at least what’s left of them.

![image-20260902-234702.png](media://21f12306-7809-4ca3-9344-2428c58bed84)

While the Eidolon titan is the most spectacular ship to spread madness, it’s not the only one. From the very start of the game, you get access to minor maddening, which affects only enemy strikecraft. You can find this ability on your basic defense platforms!

![image-20260902-234718.png](media://54d6f9ca-0bb2-491a-b634-3064b5bc5b2b)

Another ability is somewhat hidden. Your cloaking capital ship ultimate causes a maddening alike affect on enemy ships, albeit weaker, than that of a titan. While Eidolon titan is capable of driving any ship in range mad, Profaner can madden only 1 capital ship at most, and only if selected as the main target. Its ultimate will drive all smaller ships mad, making them target that capital ship. The duration of it is rather short, so the mad/confused capital ship is likely to survive, but it will receive some heavy damage while you also render enemy ships uncontrollable for that period of time.

![image-20260902-234739.png](media://a1d9b9b0-ac98-4d1a-8241-2c183409bee2)

# Final Remarks

This guide should ease your way into playing the new faction, but there is still much more to master. You’ll need to study Eidolon ships, abilities, planetary and ship modules, the tech tree.

But who needs all that, if you can build a titan with a perfect cloaking module, and madden all your enemies? Oh and by the way, there is no penalty for using abilities in cloaked state, so you could actually madden enemy fleets, with your cloaked titan, without them even getting the slightest idea why ships went rogue!

![image-20260902-234754.png](media://3e8ed1a0-2005-4a98-b0a1-3bf4069eb2f5)