Did you get lucky with the starting planet?
I got really lucky with my starting planet at launch. It was just gorgeous and I explored it for over 15 hours. Just that first planet.
Sadly I only ever found two more planets as interesting or better, but man, that starting planet for me was just a great way to start the game.
Did you activate the beacon thing at the starting crash site and choose to follow Atlas path? Used to be easy to miss that very first story step.
I did none of that!
It should be right near the crashed ship and look something like this:
Basically it starts you on the ‘Atlas’ storyline, which gives a bit of guided structure to your initial explorations. You don’t need to follow it but it’s easier to activate it from the start rather than try pick it up later.
Gah, I’ve already fixed my ship and left the planet, and am now chasing down a distress signal.
Enjoying this so far, only a couple of hours in. Started over twice, first time because my starting planet seemed very inhospitable, with acid rain/radiation that ate through my shielding fairly quickly and a sparse amount of resources in my crash zone. Second restart was cool, but I somehow pissed off the Sentinels early and couldn’t figure out how to calm them down. Finally got a decent planet with minor rad tick down and tons of great resources around my crash site. Also found a depot not far from my ship. I guess you can’t go inside those, but it did give me some extra goodies from the storage containers scattered outside.
Sentinels : What’s the deal? What irritates them, and can you de-agro them once they are mad at you?
Also, thank you for the tip on the Atlas beacon thing. I had no idea what that was and hadn’t activated it. I’m not far enough in to have left my crash site, so I’m going to activate and start the Atlas Path later.
The sentinels on some planets are always aggroed. If you aren’t on one of those planets, they aggro when they see you do things - harvest resources, shoot animals, or mine deposits.
From my experience, every planet will have at least one bad thing to deal with: bad weather, sparse resources, or active sentinels.
I’ve decided to restart so I can do this atlas thing. Thanks!
Yep, if they lose sight of you they’ll calm down after a while and you’ll see countdown timers attached to them while they hunt. If you keep attacking them they’ll escalate their response. The easiest way to escape is to pop into a building, but you can do it by running and putting landscape between you and them.
You can see the Sentinel aggressiveness for a planet on the Discoveries screen (and on the scan visor), some are basically attack on sight. The starting planet is usually prettty calm, at least in the normal game mode. You can get away with mining pretty much anything as long as you don’t keep doing it while they’re investigating your handiwork.
NP! Another big thing that is easily missed early on is getting credited for finding all the Fauna on a planet. Probably not something you’ll do all the time but it’s an early quest goal.
So normally you upload your discoveries with the button labelled 1 below:
But once you’ve found all Fauna on a planet, the button labelled 2 appears and this is what you need to click to get credit for finding all the critters.
Thanks for all the great advice! Man, I am having a blast with this game so far. I love wandering around, collecting resources, ducking into caves to reset my rad shield, marveling at the weird fauna and landscape features, and making up little stories in my head about why an abandoned depot or an outpost is located where it is. The fact that there are now little objectives, like repairing stuff, finding waypoints, visiting outposts, etc, just makes it more fun.
You’re going to be working pretty hard to come up with those stories once you take off and see they’re mostly cookie-cutter and scattered in great number randomly over every planet… ;)
I was actually hoping the player base-building that the Foundation update added meant they could generate these depots and structures procedurally, but it didn’t happen. It’s still one of the things I’m hoping for in ‘Next’ at the end of July.
Love the game, and you’ve barely scratched the surface! Lots more cool stuff to look forward to.
I have discovered a crashed/abandoned ship. It’s only slightly better than mine, same amount of cargo and tech slots, but better drive system and it has weapon enhancements mine does not. It’s explorer class versus my fighter class starting ship. Book value on the crashed ship is also 400K+.
If I repair the drive system, can I fly this ship to the trading outpost and sell it, then switch back to my original ship? It sure would be nice to make 400K units (minus the market markdown of course) in addition to the salvage and rewards from the crash site. How do I do this? Do I fly my current ship to the crash site? Transfer cargos? I can’t move everything because the crashed ship has broken cargo slots, and I read that those cost a ton of credits to repair.
Having just bought the game (GMG 60% off) I’m thoroughly confused by the Atlas talk upthread. When I activate my distress beacon it doesn’t say anything like that picture posted; It’s just a beacon and I don’t even have any idea what difference it makes choosing either option; I think they both say roughly the same thing.
Getting back into this today, hooboy, I had forgotten about the GUI in the game. Not the most intuitive.
Huh, looks like they changed it since I last started a new game, and yeah both options now seem to activate the Atlas Path. I guess the important thing is actually noticing that initial beacon in the first place, and activating it before you take off. :)
You can’t sell ships. And until you get a Freighter you can only own one ship.
When buying a new ship you get a trade-in on the value of the old one, so you could fly it to the trade post and trade in for a new one. But I don’t think it’s financially viable, as you’ll find the trade-in value is a percentage (70%?) of the listed value plus each damaged slot reduces that value.
The main benefit of the crashed ships is to give you a “fixer-upper” where you can repair/unlock slots as you go, since buying a new ship outright is unfeasible early on.
Often the wrecks are only slightly better though (not worth it), but keep an eye out for ones with a bunch more slots. When you’re in the air you can see ships (including wrecks) as red dots on your radar. Using left/right dpad to cycle targets gives you a preview of the ship on the HUD (1-3 if on keyboard).
Also try group any “+” bonuses together, as this increases their value too:
You can see the overall bonus on the coloured rings, eg. the dark red portion at the end of the red Laser ring shows the synergy bonus:
Great information again, thank you!
I did abandon that crashed ship as the value/upgrade difference wasn’t enough to justify the work and expense. I spent much of my time yesterday low-altitude flying while hunting for more points of interest. I found three drop ships, two within sight of one another, and now have upgraded my suit four times (four inventory additional slots). I also found multiple observatories, so I now have several locations to explore in space. Collected a lot of loot from crates and such, and sold a bunch at one of the outposts. I also found several knowledge stones and a monolith, which have increased my understanding of Korvax language and standing with them quite a bit.
I just found a second crashed starship before I logged out last night. This one is a Class B Explorer, with several more inventory slots and minor improvements on all systems over my starter ship. It’s book value is also over 1mil units, which would translate to 700K in trade value if I fixed it up, used it, then traded up for something better later on. I’m tempted, as having extra slots while continuing my low flight exploration would mean far less trips to the outposts to sell off stuff.
Speaking of trips to the outposts…holy shit does this game need a planetary map like yesterday. It’s ridiculous that the entire point of the game is exploration and discovery, and yet somehow you’re not plotting everything on a map you can bring up and navigate with. I’ve lost track of so many sites with unopened boxes, locked doors and other goodies I would want to return to, simply because I can’t find them again.
Yeah, they really should provide maps, but the good news is there’s very little to lose. There are the same boxes, doors, and resource items available elsewhere on the planet, elsewhere in the system, and elsewhere in the galaxy. Just fly randomly around for another minute and unless it’s a really barren world, you’ll find something just as good.
The bad news is the same. With the exception of some storyline stuff, everything is generic. The same “rare” materials occur on the same kinds of worlds virtually every time. If you can’t find a weapon you want on this space station, fly to another one and it will turn up eventually. Sure, some things are rarer and more lucky encounters than others, but the way everything is just so uniformly distributed really takes a lot of the joy out of exploration.
The thing you should try to get used to in this game is that it’s not really like a “metroidvania” where you genuinely need to go back to stuff you previously found.
What you’ll realize, hopefully, more quickly than I did, is that stuff like this is scattered everywhere and on almost every planet. You don’t need to go back to where you were because there are millions more planets you can go to with stuff that’s just as good or even better as you continue exploring.
Trying to be a completionist in No Man’s Sky is a quick way to never want to play the game again.
I know, and you guys are right. I’ve opened countless boxes containing stuff like Korvax and Gek artifacts which I usually sell at the outposts with a trade interface or give to the Korvax for a boost/gift because I know there are more in every box at every site, and the sites are literally 2 min apart all across the world I am on.
But occasionally, like with the original crashed ship where I didn’t have the inventory space to open the distress beacon and get a reward, or the Operations Center I found but couldn’t get into (didn’t have boltcaster on my mining tool yet so couldn’t destroy the door), I find a place I’d like to return to when I have the proper inventory or equipment to exploit it. Sure, I’ll probably find another place just like it…but maybe not for awhile. Hell, sometimes I’m just full up on stuff I’ve found and would really like to lay in a nav waypoint for the most recent outpost with a trade interface so I can go sell off…
That’s what the beacons are for. If you craft and place one it’ll mark a point in your navigation system so you can find it again later. You can have 5 per planet.
For the doors, grenades work well. But the sneakiest tip (that also avoids hostile entanglements), is to take off and shoot the door with your ship guns. :)
Great to see you’re enjoying it. I spent many hours savouring the first world before heading out to space.
