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In general, whether Long Range Scanning is required for the Exploration items or not, it can help since related lockboxes or loot crates have different ping sounds and colours (with a top-end scanner) than those of asteroids and ships
Although the MK5 shields are given to the player for free, his old shields are still refunded at normal rates. This means that when upgrading from MK4 to MK5 shields you will still technically gain a few million credits, despite not having chosen money as the reward.
In free play starts there is no limit to how early one can get the shields as all pieces can be obtained right from the start and most are in safe areas. As such it is possibly to go directly to MK5 shields from whatever shield you started with. The only difficulty one may encounter is with the pieces in Maelstrom as they are near Xenon bases.
Mission details
The "A Piece of History" mission calls for the gathering of 5 Ancient Relics and the crafting of the "Ancient Relic Collection".
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