No Man's Sky - You are not -kzzzt- alone

[Dekafox]

So I picked this up a bit over a month ago. An ESO streamer I follow was going to give it a try after not having touched it in a while, and I'd been considering both this and Elite Dangerous for a while as a dedicated Space game, since Star Trek Online is fairly slow about actual new content and I've done pretty much everything in it. It turned out to be interesting enough, and between that, Twitch drops that gave me a couple free A-class ships and an A-class Multi-tool, and a half-off sale, I jumped in.

The tutorial itself turned out to take at least 5 hours... less than 16 anyways. There's no clearly defined line, really, but once I was able to get to the Anomaly and collect all my free stuff, that was good enough for me. Since then I've clocked over 100 hours on my main normal save and finished most of the story, ran the expedition(think of it like a Diablo 3 season with a changed story) and actually started a Permadeath save.

Permadeath means that if you die, the game deletes your save files, like how that one Xbox mecha simulator did if you didn't eject. I have yet to die on either of my previous saves, and there's an achievement that unlocks a title for making it to the center of the galaxy on Permadeath, so I figured I'd go ahead and do it.

Despite almost screwing up yesterday, I'm making good progress there. In short, I was hopping to other player's bases so I could hit the space station in their system and expand my suit's inventory(as you can only buy one upgrade per system from the main station, and one from the anomaly there). This base's portal dumped me a ways away from the actual base, on an extreme world, in the middle of an extreme storm, and I was still running only barely upgraded hazard protection. I started to run for the base, then noticed the landing pad with my ship was a ways up, so I turned and tried to find someplace to dig down and wait it out. My hazard protection was gone and my shield was 2/3 of the way down by the time I found someplace to dig and got deep enough to no longer take damage. And this took place over like 30 seconds, if that.

Not sure if it was a troll or a bug, but I survived and got away with it. Now I'm turning to roaming my home base's planet for cargo/backpack slot upgrades and collecting nanites to fill out my protection so I can keep on moving ahead.

My main save on the other hand is fairly built up now. I'm still mostly using the blue Hauler I got from Twitch, but nearly maxed out - just need to expand the cargo hold. I've got a solar ship though I'm planning to move to once I get it built up properly.

It handles like a dream already. Only downside is it has a smaller cargo hold, but I can summon the hauler if I need it. I've also built up a freighter as my mobile base too:

Still needs work though - I've only gotten the functional equipment in, none of the extra decoration to make it feel like a proper ship. I think I've got maybe 16 frigates at the moment for the frigate missions too. Somewhere around there. This planet is also where I've decided to make my main planetary base of operations until I'm ready to head for the center on this save. It can look very pretty at night.

And this is the look I ended up with for this save:

Unfortunately since I got it on Steam it uses my Steam name, so I can't use different names for different characters.

I was afraid before I wouldn't like it since it leans heavily on being a survival game and none of those had really interested me before, but this one hooked me - I think in part because of the exploration aspect.

And while there certainly wasn't 16 people posting in the thread about it before the old board died, I know there was at least a few. Any of y'all still playing?

 

[Dekafox]

Was in the middle of doing salvage runs, and this scene was too pretty not to share.

I do really like how you can smoothly leave atmosphere for a suborbital hop between different parts of the planet. Makes getting around feel fairly smooth.

 

[Ungnome]

The game is a great wallpaper generator, especially after the last couple of graphics updates.

 

[Dekafox]

Yeah, I saw a retrospective video the other day and wow did they improve the graphics since then.

Also, over 40 hours now into this Permadeath save that was originally made just for getting to the center of the galaxy, and I just started the living ship questline, need a metric button of silver to fill out the freighter, got a settlement going... I think I'm going to be keeping this save around a while. If I die now it'll also be either due to a bug or my own stupidity, as my ship minces pirates, and my ground gear is fully kitted out so Sentinels aren't an issue - though I still avoid pissing them off where I can just because I don't want to spend the time fighting them or hiding waiting for them to deaggro.

Not to mention, the inventory management minigame is real.

 

[Dekafox]

Really should be in bed but stayed up way too long to finish a base project to link a Activated Indium mine 1000u away to my mining base for Oxygen and Faecium. Turned out the hotspot was just a bit too far out of range, but I managed to abuse the buildcam to get the extractors in place. It was a pain to hook up that whole chain though, with a huge mountain in the middle of the path, plus running back and forth between platforms every 150u to hook up the electricity, teleporter cables, and supply pipes. That was after having to pathfind while slapping down the walls to extend the base borders from 300u to 1k. And I had to resupply on metal plating a couple times, which meant I had to reload each time I got back to continue to unlock the 1k build limit again.

Basically, base radius for a base is 300u, but if you slap down a wall at the edge of that, it makes a bubble that you can build from, and the buildcam uses -your- position, not the camera position, to tell if you can build or not. So you can make a tunnel of buildable area that way out to the real limit of 1k, and go a bit beyond using the build camera. But if you teleport to a different system, it'll hard-lock you to 300u, so you have to reload to unlock it again. And the reason for the platforms is you can't run teleport cables or supply pipes longer than 200u, so I just set up waystations every 150u or so in case elevation changes pushed it close to 200.

Oh and of course there was extreme storms every so often. At least I had plenty of Ion batteries.

I could only set up one set of extractors sadly, given the difficulties in building beyond the edge of where the buildcam can go, but since this was on my Permadeath save, it's not like I could make good use of a huge multilevel farm. This is pretty much a standby anyways for easy money, since I'm working on putting together what I need to make stasis devices and fusion injectors from all the part the frigate expeditions keep throwing at me.

And speaking of buildcam tricks:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/xar2sc

 

[Dekafox]

So I went back to finish the AI mine on my normal save. And when I had to make a supply run I realized I'd over-engineered it.

It's actually within running distance from the complex, but when I initially set everything up, I set it up with a teleporter that actually takes you FURTHER away from the mine before taking you back, and in a room with a teleport to a different location(not shown) just to add to the confusion.

After I finished the tank towers though, I went back and wired it up properly. Doesn't look half-bad either overall.

Also looks like one of my squadron pilots is two weeks from retirement...

 

[Dekafox]

As of last night, I finished the main story on my Permadeath save and jumped Galaxies, getting both the Survival and PD versions of the achievement for that in one go. Funny thing Is I made all these preparations to survive after arriving, since I've got like 130 hours on this save and jumping cores breaks all your tech in your main inventory on yourserlf and your ship(which is really bad if you land on a hostile world)... and I instead land on a lush peaceful planet in the middle of a purple-flowered meadow. No danger whatsoever.

Called in my freighter, repaired up, and tonight I should start exploring baking. Might start a base on my arrival planet too since it is pretty, but I tend to live out of the freighter nowadays.

 

[Ungnome]

Well, he DOES have a below average life expectancy. He's gotta become an echo eventually.

 

[Dekafox]

News about 4.0 (due out this Friday) has been trickling out the past couple days:

- New "Relaxed" mode that seems like it'll fall between Normal and Creative, and can be applied to existing saves as well as new
- Survival difficulty will be made harder somehow for those further in
- You can combine Permadeath and Relaxed somehow? (was mentioned offhandedly)
- New Custom difficulty will allow you to fine-tune aspects of difficulty somehow
- Streamlined and expanded inventory
- Able to level up ship and multitool power further(likely related to the inventory thing?)
- There'll be a new autosave mechanic to automatically save away from the ship or save points so you can quit anywhere without losing progress
- Early game is redone to better integrate the past 6 years of content and how you unlock it
- There's some sort of improved catalog/log that'll make it easier to catch yourself back up where you were after a break

As far as the Switch itself, it won't have Settlements or multiplayer at launch, but word is it runs pretty well, and it's all the same worlds and everything as the other platforms.

 

[Ungnome]

Early reports indicate that it's another 'Doom' quality port and that other than the lower resolution and it missing a few bells and whistles graphically, it looks and runs great.

Quick-saving anywhere will be a godsend, given how often I get my sessions interrupted these days.

 

[Dekafox]

So 4.0 is out. Lots of people pissed that you're limited to 3 of an upgrade now that there's no General(where you could have 3 in each section before), but from a logical standpoint this setup works for me.

All saves have dynamic difficulty now, so now that I already have my PD galaxy jump achieve, I may turn off the PD portion of things and run it as regular Survival, as I've gotten a bit attached to it. (Though I am also considering setting the inventory stacks to Normal levels, since that's its own setting now, and the inventory management game on PD/Surv is kinda annoying.)

Saves can be renamed so no more guessing which is which. Multiplayer now groups everyone together except Expeditions and Permadeath.

Raw material selling got hit with a nerf nuke, Activated Indium especially. On the other hand, ships are worth like 6x-15x more, so running around salvaging ships became a lot more lucrative.

Couple inventory FYIs: There is a bug where when you're buying a slot(which you can pick now!) it doesn't automatically advance or re-prompt so if you spam the "buy" button you can buy the same slot multiple times. And if you think you're at the limit, try hitting the left or right buttons on the D-pad(or the KB equivalent) and it'll open up the next row for purchase.

Galaxy hopping now breaks everything period - since there is no more General, apparently Tech slots aren't immune anymore.

The one thing about the inventory upgrade reduction that does annoy me is the freighter effects. I had things set up so I could send one or two frigates, with fuel reduction and max out the stats and have cost be low or none. I'm probably going to have to send more ships now and spend more in fuel to get my living ship inventory upgrades. :/ Hopefully I won't have to re-spec the living frigates after all the re-speccing I just did last week.


*edit* and now that I'm home and can actually look about I found a few things that didn't really get discussed in the upgrade furor.

Permadeath is still locked into Permadeath, so no changing back to Survival for me. (At least not wihtout save editing perhaps.) It also restricts some of the changes you can make to difficulty:

All other saves can toggle pretty much everything except inventory stacks and turning on Permadeath.


All the races and guilds got a new milestone thing, but nothing new for the journey milestones.

There's in-game dictionaries now that tell you the original alien word for the words you know.

And they did add records of all the datalogs you find in structures, not just the quest text.

Also it will retroactively translate the Atlas text in the Atlas Path as you learn more Atlas words

There's some visual revamps too, like the new Fleet Computer on freighters:

 

[Ungnome]

Started a new normal game, though I did turn off base power. Never really was a fan of how base-power was handled. Overly cumbersome and the wiring looks horrible compared to the rest of the base building stuff(I know you can build a device to cloak the cables, but I don't really like that). I like the storage changes, overall, though I'm not exactly a min/maxer so I never really bothered tuning my upgrades to the point I'd need the doubled-up upgrade exploit.

 

[Dekafox]

I turned down the "Equipment Breakage" setting to Minimal after a plant broke my jetpack while I still had full shields. If it was ablative armor like Battletech, I could better understand the "golden BB" but it just felt like BS to me. I don't mind it when shields are weakened, but not at full.

I did also find out the Neutron Cannon is bugged to do no damage, but next patch fixes that, as well as FINALLY allowing us to remove the Photon Cannon on a ship if we have another weapon installed. The other thing that caught my eye in there is all pre-patch saves are going to get some bonus exosuit tech slots added, even if you already loaded the save and used it post-patch.

I need to get back to my Normal save to get it caught up, but I have some stuff to do in ESO so right now I'm just launching to do my frigate expeditions and settlement decisions until that's done.

 

[Dekafox]

New patch is out, and my solar ship on my normal save is over 1k maneuverability again. Photon cannon is gone, and my neutron cannon's working again. ALso got a bunch more free slots here and there in tech, which is just as well, because of something that just hit experimental.

Once that goes live, all your equipment will have 1-4 special slots(depending on class) that give a huge boost to anything slotted in them. And the slots are chosen based on your full inventory so if your tech isn't fully unlocked you may not have access to all the supercharged slots. Someone testing today though managed to get their Infra-knife up to 100k DPS(mine is 25k DPS right now for referance). It can also boost base tech, not just upgrades.

Something like this being planned (because that isn't something you'd kick out overnight) gives a very good reason they did not just give a 0/3/6 upgrade difficulty slider or set the limit back to 6, and explains why they left it at 3 from the get-go when they ditched General inventory. This also puts the "one layout to rule them all" issue to rest, because with these slot positions randomly selected, people are going to want different layouts to boost their tech rather than picking the best one based just on adjacency, which is a change I like a lot.

Apparently there's a bug with living ship tech not working with it right now, and I hope that gets fixed before it goes live.

Speaking of, I got a nice screenshot showing my current favorite pet(a diplo with anxiety named Cloudella) and my ship(The Missing Number). Gives an idea of how large my diplo friend is.

 

[Ungnome]

That reminds me, I need go back to my previous main save and continue giantizing an already large proto-gek's offspring into kaiju territory.

 

[Dekafox]

UltraGek?

 

[Dekafox]

Head's up for anyone who has it: for the next week only they're re-running Expedition 3, which is the one that gives you the Golden Vector ship.

The expedition itself also gives you a S-class exotic ship, if you decide to keep the character.

Older pic here too - mine had the tall B-wing type fin on top but was otherwise like this.

 

[Ungnome]

Truly amazing to me that they still have AT LEAST ONE major update scheduled for release on this game even after announcing their new open world fantasy game(which has itself been being worked on for the past 5 years in secret). For a team of their size and given the state NMS released in it's kind of mind boggling what they have been able to pull off, especially when you consider all the updates to NMS since launch haven't costed an additional dime for those who purchased it.