Railjack in 2026: My Cheerfully Chaotic Guide to Space Yachting

I’ll be honest: when I first laid eyes on a Railjack, I assumed somebody at Digital Extremes stared at Archwing and whispered, “What if it was a haunted submarine with roommates?” By 2026, I have been wrong for years, but I am also having a blast. Railjack still looks intimidating, so this is my attempt to save you from becoming that Tenno who parks a burning spaceship in a ditch. Treat it less like a starship and more like a shared apartment with turrets, and everything starts making sense.

What Even Is a Railjack?

A Railjack is a four-player spacecraft with multiple stations: pilot seat, side turrets, repair duty, and a gloriously chaotic forge at the rear. Mine usually needs all four players panicking at once. Unlike Archwings, Railjacks have three unique abilities, equippable weapons, omnidirectional movement, and a modding setup that feels suspiciously like your Warframe borrowed a spacesuit and got a promotion.

Why Bother Owning One?

The Empyrean star chart exists as an entire second galaxy of missions. You can leech off a public lobby, but honestly, my host once brought a ship made of duct tape and disappointment. If that sounds bad, know that Ash, Oberon, and a few juicy Arcanes come from Railjack-adjacent content. You also need a Railjack to finish The New War, which gates plenty of 2026-era story goodness. So yes, you need the space canoe.

Building Your First Money Pit

Getting a Railjack is easier than explaining what an Empyrean actually is. You have two options:

• Finish the Rising Tide quest for free.

• Spend 400 Platinum in the Market and skip the legwork.

I went the free route because I value my Platinum and because Cephalon Cy deserves an audience for his aggressively deadpan commentary. Rising Tide sends you to scavenge six old war components through low-level missions, roughly level 20-35. Each recovered blueprint gets crafted in a Dry Dock before Cy sends you after the next piece. Find relay or clan Dry Docks, repair the Cephalon, and let Cy’s voice guide you into mild panic.

You will need about 150,000 Credits total. That gave me a small heart attack as a newer player. Farm the Index on Neptune; it is less a casino and more a credit printer disguised as a fight club. Here are the parts and their shiny price tags:

Part	Credits	Key Resources
Fuselage	25,000	Cubic Diodes, Plastids, Rubedo, Neural Sensors
Propulsion	25,000	Carbides, Cryotic, Orokin Cell, Nano Spores
Port Nacelle	25,000	Carbides, Circuits, Alloy Plate, Control Modules
Starboard Nacelle	25,000	Carbides, Circuits, Alloy Plate, Control Modules
Tail Section	25,000	Cubic Diodes, Ferrite, Polymer Bundle, Argon Crystal
Engine Cowling	25,000	Cubic Diodes, Ferrite, Polymer Bundle, Salvage

Upgrading: The Plexus Is Just Modding For Overachievers

The Plexus is your Railjack’s mod menu, and it has three tabs. Integrated mods passively boost your ship and guns. Battle mods are your active abilities. Tactical mods are the clever utility stunts you open mid-mission, like putting out fires automatically or freezing boarding parties before they ruin brunch.

Railjacks start with 60 mod capacity thanks to a pre-installed Orokin Reactor, and they level up as you earn Affinity. You can even throw Forma at Integrated slots if you enjoy resetting your progress like a tiny digital masochist.

Armaments and Components are where the gear grind lives. You can equip three weapon slots, plus shield arrays, engines, plating, and reactors. Each item belongs to a House:

• Sigma: boring but reliable, researchable from a Dojo.

• Lavan: sacrifices one stat to pump another to absurd levels.

• Vidar: like Lavan but with different trade-offs.

• Zetki: monstrous damage, though the weapons overheat faster than my patience in a spy mission.

Start Sigma, loot better House variants from Railjack missions, then dismantle your old garbage for Endo and materials.

Intrinsics are account-wide talents tied to five trees: Tactical, Piloting, Gunnery, Engineering, and Command. Each has ten ranks, and grinding them takes time. I focused on Command early so NPC crew members could babysit my ship while I flailed in Archwing. With a full squad, NPC hirelings do nothing, so assign real friends to real roles and argue about who gets the pilot seat.

Actually Flying the Space Brick

Every Railjack has the same layout: pilot seat up front, forward artillery behind it, two central turrets, exit hatches, an Archwing slingshot up top, and four forges near the tail. On a good team, one person pilots, one or two man turrets, and somebody handles repairs or forging. On my teams, everyone uses the slingshot at once and leaves the ship to scream.

Piloting feels like steering a reluctant whale through a supermarket. Use jump to ascend, crouch to descend, and try not to ram fighters until you have enough Piloting Intrinsics to make ramming profitable. Turret users should aim for the white leading marker, not directly at moving enemies; otherwise you will miss and embarrass yourself in space.

When things go wrong, the Omni tool is your fire extinguisher and repair wand. Critical malfunctions show up as red diamonds and give you about a minute before your ship becomes expensive confetti. Repairing consumes Revolite, which you can cook up at the forge using mission materials. The forge also replenishes ammo and energy, so a jog to the back of the ship is basically meal prep for a space war.

For solo players, your unmodified Railjack has all the durability of wet cardboard. I recommend doing the first few missions in Archwing, leaving the ship parked like a nervous parent, then returning once you have some upgrades and a hired NPC gunner. Once you are ready, board enemy cruisers by finding their stern or hangar prompts, or launch yourself from the slingshot at Gunnery rank four. Kill the pilot to steal the ship, or destroy the central engine to make it self-destruct and exit dramatically.

Railjack is a lot. But once it clicks, there is something wonderful about being part of a screaming, sparking, heavily armed interceptor with your name on the parking permit. Just remember to feed the forge and apologize to Cephalon Cy.