No Man's Sky - Exploring a 60s-Scifi-cover themed universe (post-release thread)

Never did find any cave creatures despite looking in several caves last night. In the end I settled for 1500 Plutonium, 1000 Iron, 1000 Heridium, 500 Platinum, 500 Carbon and 250 Aluminum (found a deposit) in my ship’s hold along with Nanites and a couple of other items, sold off everything else for units, freed up plenty of inventory slots on my exosuit and ship, and am ready to launch off-planet and see what the next phase of NMS has to offer tonight.

Maybe if there is a space station close to my planet I can grab the Terrain Manipulator mod for my Mining Tool, then return to the planet and dig out that crashed freighter to loot it’s holds as I’m super curious about that. I can look in some caves again at that point too to see if I can finish the fauna scans. Otherwise, it’s off into the vast expanse!

I’ve got over 10 hours into NMS already and haven’t even left the first planet. I have yet to explore space travel, progress the main storyline, shoot at any pirates, discover a totally new planet or system, upgrade my tool and ship significantly, mess with freighters, farming and the economy, or build a base. Even if I somehow manage to do all that stuff in the next 20 hours of playtime and then put the game aside, No Man’s Sky will have been well worth every single penny of the $18 I paid for it. With NEXT just around the corner, hopefully it will get even better.

From memory the Artemis storyline gives you a terrain manipulator pretty quickly, as it helps when base building. This should trigger soon after you leave the first planet.

No need to return to dig up the freighter loots, you’ll find them everywhere. :)

There’ll be plenty of opportunities to find all the critters too. The last one or two can be tricky as some are rarer so you need to fly around a lot. Keep in mind that many favour either day or night so will be more prevalent depending on time. This doesn’t apply to caves or water, as these always spawn at the same densities regardless of day or night.

I’m pleased that, like Subnautica, there is a narrative and plot lines to explore should you wish (and, which as a newbie, are often great insights into gameplay overall) but that you are not punished should you decide to just free range it.

That being said, what is the deal with being attacked in space? Is this going to happen every time I visit a ‘trade outpost’ kind of space station or just this first one? Maybe it is the game telling me I need a sturdier ship with more DPS pronto but I think more it is my ineptitude in dog-fighting those things. Can anyone tell me whether there are tips and tricks to defeat enemy fighter ‘drones’ in space or whatever? Should I just stand my ground and try to lock on them one after the other while soaking up damage? Or can I succeed in outflying and outshooting them? Right now I’m just a mess.

I have stumbled upon a couple of wrecked ships which superficially appeared to be better than my starter ship. I get it that several of their components are damaged and need repair but why can’t I just swap my working components (inc. my warp drive I’ve already charged up) and upgrade myself? And what is the deal with cargo spaces being ‘red’ and unusable; I did not see a way to ‘repair’ those?

Good to know about the Terrain Manipulation Tool, and the space station only had Exosuit upgrades for sale. How do I start the Artemis storyline? Seems like I’m on Atlas Path exclusively for now?

On the plus side, traded some of my nanites for improved Jetpack and Scanning (both Sigma) modules. After visiting the station, I made my way to a nearby undiscovered planet where I followed the Atlas quest line for a bit, and now have my Warp Drive and a single power cell for it. The planet was pretty barren in terms of POI’s, but was littered with Plutonium deposits (have 2000 in my hold now) and iron…and giant deposits of Gold were everywhere. I mined a full 250 stack of gold and took it back to the space station (while on my quest) to see what it would net. Over 100K units! That means every single one of those dozens of deposits I saw is worth 200K units or more. I may have to make a return trip with empty holds, as the profit from that would easily allow me to finish fixing up my starship’s remaining broken cargo and tech slots.

Next task in my Atlas quest is to warp to another system. Problem is, when I call up the star map, I can’t seem to figure out how to select a nearby system?!

For wrecked ships you’ll only want to swap if it’s a significant upgrade. For mine, my starter ship had 15 cargo slots and was worth 330K, which is like 250K in trade value. The wreck I swapped to had 23 cargo slots, and 8 tech slots, and a value of 2.8 million units (once fully repaired). That was a big enough upgrade to tempt me…but I am still paying to repair the last few cargo and tech slots that were red to start with.

It costs units (money) to repair those, and the cost rises with each slot repaired. I went broke just getting my wrecked ship up to 17 cargo slots, two more than my starter. Since then I’ve spent multiple “runs” doing mostly mining/salvaging for cash and used the income to repair more of my ship. I’ll have probably spent close to the 2 million units it’s worth in trade by the time I’m done, but it’s been worth it for the improvements.

As for the ships systems, they are usually pretty low cost (in materials) to repair. You can deconstruct anything you’ve added to your starter ship and get back half the materials, then rebuild it in the new ship (assuming you have slots available).

My first space station had no pirates or aggressive ships around it at all, so I think it’s just luck of the draw.

You won’t be attacked in space every time. It happens sometimes, and I think the chance increases if you have valuable stuff in the ship inventory.

My one tip for space combat is: you can recharge your shields on-the-fly, so make sure you always have plenty of yellow stuff (iron, zinc, power cells) to recharge them in case you get attacked so you can survive long enough to destroy your attackers. I’m not sure if you can just “lose” them - I think it’s possible though. I’ll test that when I can.

Actually, seems you start the game with the Artemis story, “Awakenings” so keep on it and you’ll get the manipulator. Or for the blueprint, you’d need a Vy’keen merchant as they sell the multi-tool techs.

It’s Atlas that kicks in a bit later after you make your first warp or two. Sorry. :)

The map is a bit of a pain to use at first. Think of it as operating in two modes - by default you’ll rotate and zoom around your selected system. If you ‘unselect’ that system you can then select a new one. It’s A (left mouse) to select a system, and B (right mouse) to unselect. Use D-pad L/R (Q/E) to change the navigation mode, though you’ll likely want to stick to the ‘mission’ pathing mode early on.

Get better shields and guns. ;)

They’re more likely to attack if you have high value cargo, so one old tip was to move that to your suit inventory where it won’t be detected.

You do get warning of incoming hostiles, and a viable early strategy is to run. You can also contact them and pay them off. :)

Also enemies don’t fly well on planets, so if you enter atmosphere and fly down near the surface you have an advantage. Finally they give up entirely if you land. Eventually they become mere annoyances when you level up your guns, but it’s really tough to win with your starting weapons.

Why is there sometimes a ‘shield’ shaped icon in the lower right of the screen and why is it sometimes an angry red color?

It means your inventory is full.

Damn it, I’m getting tempted to start over from scratch with this game.

Yeah me too. :)

But I’m going to try hold out for 8 more weeks until the big update drops!

Is charging up my Warp Drive (20%… 40%…) allowing me to warp more times or to warp farther distances?

Also, should I only warp to new, undiscovered (to me, anyway) systems and always seek to use the space station Terminus to warp back ‘home’? (if it in fact is saving Warp Fuel)

Man, this is playing so nicely. I’ve died a few more times to pirates but I’ve also blown several out of the sky and redeemed myself. And death isn’t so bad it seems; in fact I can’t determine if they actually take anything when I go to my ‘grave marker’ it feels like I get it all back? But components are damaged obviously.

Funny thing, I’d heard about missions but never been offered one. Then by chance I noticed the left-side ramp in a space station… DOH! Turns out every station has both the trading post / blueprint side and the missions side. I can be so unobservant sometimes.

Also getting the hang of what elements are needed for extending my exploration of new worlds; just keep topping off stacks of Plutonium and Iron with the occasional Thamium9. But as I go through the boxes which are scattered around POIs I am getting stacks of stuff like ‘cubes’ and ‘daggers’ and ‘Geknip’ which I know I can use to increase my standing, etc. And there are other things like Korvax Husks which drop less often. Are they just to sell or should I be hanging on to a sample of those as well? Similarly w/ yellow components… I have some use for a few things now but many others I do not know what use they can be. I guess what I’m asking is “are there things or categories of things I should always be hanging on to or always be selling or getting rid of because they are nigh worthless and just take up space?”.

Final note; been upgrading when and where I can; much better multi-tool, more slots in the backpack and of course a new ship. And I keep window shopping for the next one but it feels like I should keep saving my credits. Think the most I’ve had in hand is about 3 million and the ships that I yearn for next are all about 10-20 million to upgrade to.

Generally speaking I’d avoid spending huge amounts of money on anything for quite a while, because you’re more likely to find superior ships and tools and so on while exploring. You want to scan for signals when you can and look for any nearby radar traces as you fly around a planet because the traces tend to be crashed ships (if they are not live ships in transit to a spaceport). And “installations” (the kind that have doors you have to shoot open) may well have a nice tool or weapon or something like that to pick up.

I hear you but I have been cramped by the lack of space on my first upgrade. Jumped into a 29 slot B-class Shuttle at my local space port for the low low upgrade price of @ 3M. Ugly as sin but she’ll do. What I really want is one of the Firefly “Serenity” type ships I see every so often but I got impatient once I had enough money.

My home planet is really feeling like home. It’s teeming with fauna (I’m still looking for 1/12 to complete it) and only one of the species is aggressive. It’s very easy to recognize and it’s a total asshole. It rams and kills any other fauna that it is near. Now I constantly keep a “kill” mission handy as I have no qualms about offing those fuckers.

Maybe it’s the way of the game but when I came across my starter base it turned out to be a 15 second flight to a space port which is of course very useful. Plus I’ve got a nearby planet with gold deposits and passive sentinels. I’m looking forward to going back with my new shuttle and making a quick few million credits.

That sounds similar to the experience I am having. After jumping a few times I found a system with a planet that had no fauna (radiation storms killed them all off it seems) and decent flora, and was loaded with huge and easy to spot deposits of Heridium, Gold and Emeril, especially Emeril. It’s all over the place in deposits that yield 1500-2500 each with little effort. I renamed the planet Kashmonay Prime so I could easily find it again in my star charts, then discovered a habitable base right by some water and surrounded by deposits of Emeril and Heridium, with caves full of Marrow Bulbs nearby. Best of all, there is a Vy’Keen Trading Post 10 seconds fly time away…AND a space station in orbit above the planet. It’s like the perfect place for a beginners base. I’ve made millions selling Emeril and Gold, totally repaired my ship’s cargo and tech slots, and have advanced the base quests to the point where I now need to kill sentinels and pirates.

I figure I’ll need to go off-world for the sentinels, as I don’t want to piss off the peaceful ones on my money planet. I’m also having a difficult time with the pirates, space combat is terrible in this game. I probably need ship upgrades, but man, maneuverability and weapons aim is a huge challenge. I did just read though that you can tap “1” to lock weapons on a ship, and that upgraded weapons and shields are a must for serious combat, so looks like I have a couple of tasks ahead of me.

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LOL, that is exactly the reaction I had when I reached the space station trade terminal and discovered my stacks of Emeril (from just one deposit) were worth a cool 750K units. BAM!

For what it’s worth, check the prices at the space station trading terminal. Then go back down and trade with every new ship that lands there (in the station). You’ll often find deals you can buy from them to turn right back around and sell at the station for a tidy profit.

The limitation is that ships don’t land consistently that have good deals like that.

I saw this thread pop up so I have to ask, what’s in the big update?

A missing animal type can generally be found in caves. They may still be rare even underground, though.