Holy crap, Expeditions looks awesome! I may have to revisit NMS if I am ever after I am done with Valheim.
The amount of content these guys keep churning out, for FREE, is astounding. I suppose they’re operating on the Minecraft model, where every new big release drives more sales of the base game. At this point they’ve long ago been forgiven for the fiasco at release with all of the ridiculous quality and quantity of content added since.
I know I bought three copies of the game; first one was on Steam, but I also bought it on GOG and on the PS4/PS5 to support Hello Games. They deserve it.
I’m unclear as to if the expeditions can be completed solo. In the actual patch notes, it says that at times you have to go to a rendezvous point where all players meet up. It also says everyone on a current expedition starts on the same planet. So does this mean you can see them? Interact? Co-op play? And if so, do you have to? Can you just embark on your own?
I just started the current expedition and it began by spawning me onto a planet with a handful of other players about 500m away from a cluster of player ships. The first mission was to get to the ships.
It was kind of cool having a bunch of players together all working on their initial resource hunting to get their ships working. Not really co-op. Just players that were near each other doing their own thing.
Nice, so this is kind of like a Diablo Seasons thing where you’ll start fresh every x months to try get the reward at the end.
Keen on seeing how those performance improvements impact VR!
Do I remember correctly that the PSVR still only works on the PS5 with the PS4 versions of games?
I believe that’s still correct.
Couple of quick things I thought I’d mention:
I think its a really neat way to encourage people to actually work or play together instead of just being completely alone all the time, as a vast universe will most often have people be.
As I understand it, you can do your own thing, adjacent to others.
No Man’s Sky is running a Twitch drops campaign for the next couple of days. Watch Twitch streams to earn in-game goodies.
EDIT:
You can use this link to check your progress :)
https://www.twitch.tv/drops/inventory
do you know how to redeem these in game?
Yup yup from the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion on the Anomoly.
The new game mode is much more fun than I was anticipating. Highly recommended.
Now if someone could come up with a mod that adds Survival difficulty, I’d be a super happy camper.
Yeah, I’m really enjoying it. Up to phase 2 now. Gotta farm. ;)
This is on Game Pass, I’ve heard it got better, and I wanted something chill to play. And I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be doing? Right now I’m working through what I think is the tutorial - I just fueled up a warp drive. Do I just keep following that? Should I switch over to the new game mode?
Yeah. The tutorial is kind of… extended. Keep going until you at least get to the Anomoly station with the aliens Polo and Nada.
Yeah, the main stories (Artemis & Atlas) are essentially one big tutorial. You can safely put them aside after unlocking the Anomaly, and you’ll have access to most of the important features, but at some point you’ll want to finish it.
Or, if the story bores you, and you don’t mind figuring stuff out, the new game mode might appeal to you. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure stuff out on your own, especially if you’ve gotten as far as unlocking the Anomaly in another mode. I find it to be super refreshing and satisfying, although some of the rewards are a little too good.
In my time in the Expedition I’ve only completed Phase 1 (almost, see below), but it just seems like the regular game with some very minor tweaks.
No tutorial missions—probably a welcome change for a seasoned player who wants to start from scratch and doesn’t care about those early hand-holding missions. Kind of indifferent on this one, I’ve never finished the original game.
Milestones are basically just slightly remixed achievements/milestones to replace the ones in the original game. Just a little incentive to chase some different stats, but not exactly significant.
Cluttered UI thanks to other players. Lots of people in the same systems mean the HUD is a mess of waypoints and bases no matter where you go along the rendezvous path. It’s actually a pain when you’re trying to pulse-engine to something specific and it keeps snapping your focus to one of dozens of stranger’s bases you’ll never care about.
As a player who never finished the original game, I think I’m better going back to that. I don’t really see the appeal of Expeditions. I was hoping it was going to be a little more of a curated experience of exciting sights and wonders. Maybe that gets cooler later in the expedition? I’m only at the end of Phase 1, although having completed all the other phase 1 goals, the one for reaching the first rendezvous point repeatably crashed on me twice when entering the atmosphere of that planet, so I gave up for today and I’ll figure out if there’s another way to approach that later. Right now I it only further sucks my enthusiasm for playing.
Anyone that’s gone farther in the Expeditions want to tell me what I’m missing?
You wouldn’t be missing much as far as content goes. The biggest draws are escaping the tutorial and coming up with fun ways to work on the new milestones. I managed to complete the Expediton once, and tried a couple more times but couldn’t stick with it when I realized it doesn’t have a ton of replay value (mostly due to it involving the same systems). Even editing my save and changing game mode to Survival didn’t help with that.
You can usually avoid that kind of crashing by disabling multiplayer in network options. There’s no good reason to leave that enabled in any game mode, imo, unless you just like the feeling that comes with being near other players, or if you like to check out other bases, etc. That option won’t reduce the icon clutter much (or at all, depending) but it does avoid the issue you described.