No Man's Sky

[Dweller_Benthos]

It's that time again, new update just dropped, called Echoes. New alien race, robots, new freighter battles, new weapons, etc.



https://www.nomanssky.com/echoes-update/

[PZ]

They sure do come out with lots of new content 

I wish more games were like that.

[fragger]

I just picked NMS up again (again) after reading an encouraging article somewhere about the current state of the game, and I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with the improvements. I haven't touched it for about 4 years and since I'd turned updates for the game off way back then, there was about 11Gb worth of them queued up for it 

But I bit the bullet and let it update. It took a couple of hours, but at this early stage (for me) it appears to have been worth it. The game looks fantastic now, and I particularly like the way the inventory system has been totally overhauled. You now get a more generous number of inventory slots for both suit and ship, and they each hold a much higher quantity of materials and stackable items. It's also now a breeze to manipulate the contents, and transfer them around.

Too many new things to go into here (and D_B has probably covered most or all of them anyway  ) so I won't go into details - except for a couple. One thing I really like is how you can now set difficulty levels for different aspects of the game independently of one another, and you can do it on the fly. I've yet to make my first hyperspace jump (I've got all the requisite gear, but I'm holding off while I familiarize myself with all the new goodies). I've had a brief play around with base building and have so far only made a rudimentary station, but I like what I've seen. It looks like there's potential for much fun there.

But what might turn out to be a literal game-changer for me is this: You can turn space combat off! I won't know for sure until I do my first jump (maybe D_B can verify) but I'm presuming that means no more getting jumped by pirates in space with monotonous regularity. I sincerely hope that's the case, because that was the ONE thing which kept turning me off the game. I got so sick of making my first hyperspace jump to a new system only to start getting attacked by space pirates and thrust into involuntary dogfights (which I would always lose) that I would invariably rage-quit. There's also an option you can select where if you do die in space, all your acquired gear doesn't end up floating in a capsule in the interplanetary void requiring you to go get it back - often only to get attacked by pirates again in the process, die again, and have all your stuff re-encapsulated.

Getting the hang of the wealth of new features, options and abilities is going to be a bit of a learning curve for me, but I'm keen It's early days for me, but this is really shaping up and I'm having fun with it. The game has certainly come a long way since the dark days of its inception.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Glad you're back, Fragger. There is a lot of new stuff in the last four years, lol. Tons of missions, things to do, etc. Too bad you've missed the first eight or so expeditions, as those give good loot. A new one should start this week, to go along with the new update. Expeditions require a dedicated new save though, so you essentially start out fresh, but all the rewards can be claimed in any other save. These rewards can give you a leg up in the next expedition, as you can usually claim them pretty early on, so you start a new save, fast track getting your hyperdrive, then jump to a new system, call the Space Anomaly and claim some good gear to help out the rest of the expedition tasks. Usually I have a large choice of more powerful ships and weapons to pick from to make the expedition go faster.

Getting attacked by space pirates almost never happens anymore, I honestly don't recall the last time it happened spontaneously, usually I only see pirates when I'm on a mission to attack pirates, and with my ship and all it's upgrades, space combat is pretty easy, hint, get an infra-knife and a couple S or X level upgrades for it, and you'll be blasting them in no time. Some of the new content does seem to require some space battling, so getting a good weapon system on your ship is a good goal to set early on.

But yeah, just relax and enjoy the game, no need to hurry anything.

[fragger]

Cheers bud

I'm really enjoying the game. And yep, I'm definitely taking my time with it. I've jumped to two other solar systems so far, just to satisfy a couple of the opening quest's requirements and to get access to a few extra goodies, and as yet the bane of my NMS existence, a.k.a. " pirates", have yet to show up. Early days, but I'm hoping it stays that way - at least until I can get my ship's weapons and defenses up to snuff. I've returned to my starting system now to w0#k on improving my gear and to further learn and experiment with base-building - which, as a big fan of building things in games, I'm very keen on. I've also learned close to 200 Gek words

I'm very happy with the changes the devs have made to so many aspects of the game. They have obviously listened to the player base, addressed their gripes and taken their suggestions onboard, which is good to see. It has finally become a lot more like the game it was originally touted as.

I found a very nice "paradise" planet in my starting system, which is agreeably grassy, has a clean atmosphere, good temperature and no predators. It's actually one of two moons of a larger planet and has good proximity to the local space station. There are some weird and wonderful critters living on it, such as a traveling cluster of eye-stalks which pop up out of the ground, look around a bit, then go back down (I can't tell if it's one animal or a bunch). It's kind of scary-looking, but harmless. There are also living jelly-balls which slowly roll around the countryside like big transparent marbles, and a couple of those hopping-beanbag type things.

So for now that's where I'll be setting up my first proper base. I'd earlier made a very rudimentary habitat on my beginning planet, just to start getting the hang of how the NMS building system works, but I got rid of it once I found a nicer world on which to set up shop. It's a very good building system from what I've seen so far, comparable to Fallout 4's, which was terrific.

The base teleporter is a very welcome addition to the game, as are the base storage containers NMS has been screaming for those. It's nice to be able to teleport to the space station instead of having to fly there every time, and have somewhere to store materials and supplies outside of the suit and ship.

Speaking of space stations, those have been improved out of sight since I last played. Now they are more like actual trading hubs with vendors and activity - no longer the sterile, uninhabited metal caverns which were only good for finding a new ship to trade up to, or to access the Galactic Trading Network terminal.

Very impressed so far

[Dweller_Benthos]

Glad you're having a good time with it Fragger. I saw on Steam you made a bit of progress so I figured you had been busy. My main base is also on a paradise moon, but it's been there so long that the changes in the game have changed the plants and animals around it. I have a base on the same moon that's next to a portal so I can dial anywhere I have coordinates for and travel there, makes it handy when someone posts a cool planet online and you can go there and see for yourself. Also have bases on quite a few other planets, with various conditions on each. Since it's pretty cheap to put down a base computer, anytime you find a cool planet and want to go back to it later, just plop a base there and you'll always know where it is, I think now you can even teleport to it even if it doesn't have a teleporter set up, you just have to leave by ship until you build one. Fairly easy to do, a single room, teleporter hooked up to some solar panels and you are good to go.

[fragger]

I had close to an all-day session with it today. I built a small base - small because I don't have much stuff to put in it yet - but of course I can expand it as necessary. I built it just on the other side of a hill from a Trading Post, figuring that when I have the dough to trade up my ship I can skip over there to see if anything tradeworthy comes in. It's also handy to have a trading terminal nearby, until such times as I can build my own (and my own landing pads). When I get to that point, I'll probably relocate and build something more extravagant.

I've already managed to wrangle a pretty good Multi-tool, a B-Class rifle-type one with 26 slots and some cool add-ons and upgrades, some of which are S-Class. Just got the Plasma Launcher for it actually, but I haven't installed it yet.

I really dig the Portable Refiner That thing is a godsend! I never leave home without it

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah there have been a lot of additions that make playing the game much more enjoyable. Early game is tough, you're short of everything, which is usually the case with these types of games. Things to look for to buy are scanner upgrades, which make everything you scan worth more money. I forget the exact amount but I think mine are upgrades in the thousands of percent, so scanning an animal is easily over 100,000 units worth, I've even scanned some worth close to half a million. So scanning everything on a planet can net you a couple million easily. Adding in my mod to make scan times shorter, I can rack up money fast. Same goes for pretty much everything else, finding those upgrades to make mining faster and give more resources, make your ship faster and more powerful, etc.

[fragger]

Indeed, it's early days for me. I now have an A-Class Multitool with a bunch of upgrades and have added a couple of high-level updates to my scanner, so some dough is starting to come in. I have yet to get a new ship, but my starting vessel is serving me well enough for now.

Getting there!

I built my first Exocraft, the Nautilon sub (that seems to be a requirement during the initial quest line). It's kind of cool to go motoring around underwater.

Here is my simple, bare-bones starting base - very modest at this stage, of course

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This was just the trial run, to get the hang of how the building system works. I built it using just the basic structure options that you get to start with, but I've just been to the Anomaly and have seen what's on offer in the base-building department, so now I want to go and start mining heaps of material and digging up piles of Salvaged Data so I can start unlocking all the serious building items There's some pretty cool stuff there, a lot more than I thought there would be. I can see I'm gonna go nuts with base-building in the not-too-distant future

I'm glad I picked this game up again, it's leaps and bounds ahead of what it was the last time I had a look And it's certainly no longer the tepid affair that it was on release. I have to hand it to the Hello guys, they took their lumps in the early days but they stuck with it and they've made it into something truly fun.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yes they've certainly (almost, some people would say) made up for the launch which I thought wasn't that bad it just didn't live up to expectations and it never could, no game could live up to the hype that surrounded NMS at launch.

The new expedition started yesterday (or Wednesday?) as well. You might want to look at that, as expedition rewards are pretty nice and usually include a bunch of base building stuff you can't get otherwise (plus ships, weapons and appearance upgrades). The thing is, you have to start a new game to do them, but in reality it's pretty fun, at least I think so. This one is different as you start on a freighter that you own, so right off you have a large base to w0#k from. No starting on a hostile planet like you usually do. The tasks are pretty straightforward in this one as well, essentially what you'd be doing in game anyway for the most part. Things like scanning creatures, learning alien words, building a hyperdrive, etc. Then once you're done, all the rewards can be claimed in any of your other saves so you can get that stuff in your main save game. Usually the expedition takes about 8 hours or so of game time to complete, if you rush some parts you can sometimes get them done in 6 hours.

A bit of advice, each stage in the expedition usually gives you a reward for that save only, stuff like equipment and ship upgrades, etc, but sometimes they give you say three amino chambers or quantum computers and you'll be confused as to what to do with them, a lot of people sell stuff like that, only to find you need it for a stage further along, so any materials like that you get, hang onto and it's most likely you'll need it later.

[fragger]

Thanks for the heads-up D_B, I might look at that. I've been playing offline though as given my generally lackluster internet speed, when I visited the Anomaly while online it got a tad laggy with all the other players coming and going. From the standpoint of online interaction, it sucks to be in this part of the world

I've already learned the folly of selling stuff when I don't know what it is So having learned the hard way, I've taken to sticking stuff that I'm not sure about in the storage container at my base until I find out what it may do.

I've acquired a bunch more building items since visiting the Anomaly and I've expanded my test-bed base site a little. It now has a landing pad and a connecting structure (and a mildly curious living marble rolling past):

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I like how you can incorporate underwater building segments into above-ground structures, like that octagonal glassy room near the center of my base. There's nothing in there, other than a ladder to get to it. It's all part of the experimenting process.

Thank heavens for the Electrical Cloaking Unit to hide all the power connections. I don't know why they didn't just make the connections for electrical items invisible in the first place, but whatever. I made the cloaking unit hide in a room by itself under the main part of the base (there's a level under the main structure, inside the stone "foundation" walls, where the power generator and batteries for the solar panels on the roof are housed).

This all just experimentation, of course. Now that I can build my own trading terminal and landing pad and such (and am looking towards manufacturing and growing things), I'll eventually uproot everything and attempt something more serious, away from the constant rocket-racket of the nearby Trading Post. I mean, this is how close I am to it:

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I know you can recruit aliens to be staff for various purposes, but I'll deal with that when I come to it. All in good time!

All in all, this game is now seriously engrossing. It's certainly keeping me occupied and I have a hard time tearing myself away from it

[PZ]

Nice to see two of us playing the same game 

Good to see you're having fun!

[fragger]

Thanks PZ

Actually, I'm cheating a bit - sort of. I discovered that among the individual difficulty settings, you can set "Purchases" to "Free". This allowed me to grab all the base component options I wanted at no cost, without having to grind for hours and hours mining the necessary materials and digging up hundreds of "Salvageable Tech" items to buy them. Frankly, I'm too eager get into playing around with all the base-building options, so bugger it, I got all the parts the quick and dirty way

You can also set "Base Power" to "Free", so that everything requiring power magically works without power generators and wiring. I left that setting alone though - working out the power system is part of the fun.

I also set "Creatures" to "Passive", "Enemies" to "Weak", and "Space Combat" and "Foot Combat" to "Off". I don't particularly want to do combat in this game - not yet anyway - so I made any enemies I encounter, such as Sentinels, easier to deal with and eliminated the threat of predatory animal attacks. I'm also relieved to finally be able to flit around between planets without those pesky pirates killing my buzz. Maybe later when I'm geared up a bit better I'll restore those options. For now, I just want to derp around with minimal hassle.

You can also set "Crafting" to "Free" if you want to build (and make other things) without needing the necessary materials and components, but I'm leaving that as it is. I don't want to eliminate challenge altogether... In fact as soon as I got all the base components I wanted, I set "Purchases" back to normal. I just wanted to get all the base parts so I can play around with them.

[PZ]

I'm playing another run through Valhalla and they installed settings items similar to what you're describing. I can set my character up to 20% stronger than any opponent (except bosses), and a wide variety of other things to make advancement easier. Definitely my way of playing 

[Dweller_Benthos]

I finished the expedition today, after having to use the save editor to fix a bug in the game. Other than that, it was a decent time, though not as focused as the previous ones, which usually highlighted the new content, this one was more general in what it had you do. You could say it was a really involved tutorial really, and if you were starting a new game, might be a good way to get a jump on it as you get a freighter right off the bat and the rewards get you set up with a lot of upgrades that are otherwise a bit of a chore to get.