Veldin

Veldin is a planet in the Solana Galaxy featured in Ratchet & Clank, Going Commando, Up Your Arsenal, and Ratchet & Clank comic issues, Ears of War, Thanks for the Armories, Multiple Organisms, and Bros Before Foes. It is a desert planet with a rocky terrain and few large bodies of water. The planet is home to Kyzil Plateau, which contains Ratchet's garage, his home. There is also a sector of the planet known as the F-Sector, which Ratchet and Clank also visited.

Veldin is where Ratchet grew up, and met his longtime companion, Clank, when the latter crash-landed on the planet. The two returned when the planet was under attack by Chairman Drek, who wished to destroy Veldin and use the planet's orbital position for his new planet. The two both defended the planet itself, and attacked Drek's fleet in the Veldin orbit. Years later, they visited the planet to defend it from an attack from the Tyhrranoids, led by Dr. Nefarious. The duo once again defended Veldin after it came under attack by Artemis Zogg, who wished to steal the planet to use for his own Artemis Galaxy.

Pre-Ratchet & Clank
When Ratchet was young, his father Kaden sent him to Veldin from Fastoon, which is located in the Polaris Galaxy. After this, Ratchet grew up on Veldin, living in a garage. He dreamed of exploring the galaxy, but was unable to do so, lacking a robotic ignition system for a starship.

Ratchet & Clank
In the beginning of Ratchet & Clank, Clank crash-landed on Veldin in the Kyzil Plateau after fleeing robots from Quartu. Ratchet then ventured through the plateau to find the crashed ship, and brought the unconscious Clank back to his garage. Upon returning, Clank awoke and presented Ratchet with an infobot detailing Drek's plans to steal a large chunk of Novalis for his new world. In exchange for travel, he provided Ratchet a robotic ignition system that would allow the two to leave the planet.

Later, Drek intended to use his Deplanetizer to destroy Veldin, in order to move his new planet to occupy Veldin's orbital position. Ratchet and Clank then chased Drek to the planet, first attacking his fleet in the Veldin Orbit, before landing to stop the Deplanetizer. After battling through his blarg guards and fighting his Ultra Supreme Executive Chairman Drek-Mech, the two were able to blast Drek off to his new world, flip the Deplanetizer over and destroy it, saving the planet from destruction and presumably killing Drek.

Following this, Clank moved in to live with Ratchet, while their life settled down following Drek's defeat and their new galactic celebrity status.

Going Commando
During an interview for Behind the Hero, in which Ratchet and Clank detailed their lives following Drek's defeat, the two were teleported away to a ship by the Megacorp CEO Abercrombie Fizzwidget. Fizzwidget appointed Ratchet as a Megacorp commando and gave Clank an apartment on planet Endako, and the two traveled to the Bogon Galaxy.

Up Your Arsenal
At the beginning of Up Your Arsenal, Veldin came under attack by Tyhrranoid led by Dr. Nefarious. After seeing the news report from their home on Endako in Bogon, the two traveled back to Solana using a gravimetric warp drive. The two joined forces with the Galactic Rangers to defeat the Tyhrranoid invasion force, and drove them away from the planet, before being contacted by President Phyronix to request a new mission.

Later on, Dr. Nefarious intended to use the Biobliterator to transform Veldin's population into robots. Before he could do this, Ratchet and Clank destroyed the Biobliterator and defeated Nefarious.

Between Up Your Arsenal and comic series
During Ratchet's Dreamtime sequence in Size Matters, his garage from the Kyzil Plateau appears.

Veldin was mentioned briefly in Tools of Destruction by Captain Wark, narrating for the Imperial Fight Festival, claiming during the challenge "Light a Match Mustachio!" that it was the deadliest gas he'd experienced since taking Helga to an all-you-eat grubsnucker buffet on Veldin.

Veldin was mentioned again in A Crack in Time on space radio, as the trailer for the film A Boy and his War Grok was released when Ratchet arrived in the Corvus Sector, revealing that the film was shot on Veldin.

Comic series
Ratchet and Clank returned to their home on Veldin after the events of A Crack in Time. At the beginning, Qwark, who had become the Galactic President of the Polaris Galaxy, requested the two investigate a disappearance of planets in all three known galaxies, to which Ratchet declined to help as he had retired. Artemis Zogg then ordered that Veldin be moved from the Solana Galaxy to Zogg's Artemis Galaxy, placing it into an ice age.

Veldin appeared again in the fourth issue, as Ratchet returned to Veldin, seeing its frozen landscape for the first time. In the fifth issue, Ratchet found General Glahm in Veldin's Planetary Defense Center, attempting to fire its missiles and destroy Zogg's ship. Ratchet protested, believing that Talwyn Apogee was still aboard Zogg's ships, but Glahm ignored him and destroyed the fleet.

Sasha Phyronix landed on Veldin and encouraged the depressed Ratchet to return to the Apogee Space Station. There, they defeated Zogg.

Geography
Veldin is covered almost entirely in desert and rocky terrain, with few, large bodies of water. It is home to several large buildings built into the features, which appear to be of lombax architecture, as many are similar in design, metals and light color to those found on Fastoon. It is also home to horny toad wildlife, which attack by biting their prey, and skreeducks, pterodactyl-like creatures flying in the skies of the planet. While little of Veldin's civilization was seen in the games, the comic series revealed that the planet is home to a population of many aliens, and has its own Planetary Defense Center.

In Ratchet & Clank, Veldin is a mostly barren planet devoid of much life, containing a few empty buildings and some shipwrecks resembling blarg ships. In the first visit, Ratchet cannot travel past Clank's shipwreck, though during the second visit, Ratchet travels to several larger buildings that operate with each of his gadgets. In Up Your Arsenal, Veldin is war torn, as all the buildings are almost all damaged or destroyed by the Tyhrranoid invasion. None of the wildlife is present, as Ratchet instead fights Tyhrranoid armies.

Behind the scenes
During the boss fight with Chairman Drek in Ratchet & Clank, in the original NTSC version, and the subsequent Ratchet & Clank Collection port, a glitch prevents the boss theme for Drek's music from playing, and the player will instead only hear the standard Veldin theme for the second visit. In all other regions and the Greatest Hits release of the game, Drek's boss battle music plays.

The largest building in Up Your Arsenal is inspired by lombax ears.