6281

BTW yesterday I was watching Captain Richard’s Twitch stream, and he summoned this thing called a Trade Rocket to where he was planetside. It landed vertically like SpaceX’s latest ones, like something out of an old sci-fi movie, and once it landed he could sell/buy stuff from it. What strange magic is this and how do I get in on that sweet action?

Anyone used these?

6282

The trade rocket is an upgrade you can purchase. If you are doing the expedition, one of the base items you have to build will give you the option to purchase the trade rocket.

6283

Neat, thanks for the reply. More reason to do the expedition. But is that something that you can access in any game where you’re building a base?

6284

I believe so. Haven’t gone far into all the base building options since it was introduced. I know you can also purchase it from the Anomaly once you reach it.

6285

Yes, I saw it last night as an upgrade in the Construction kiosk in the Anomoly (aka The Nexus).

6286

It’s a super duper pain that you can only build/construct/craft things at your base in the expedition, even simple stuff like crafting materials in your inventory. Thats a restriction unique to the expedition, for whatever reason. That’s maybe the worst part of the expedition (or possibly the aggressive sentinel planet depending on how prepared you are and some luck involved in how long you need to be there).

Again, best thing to do in the expedition is harvest a lot of copper on the first planet. Weird thing I didn’t know—you get a lot more copper or whatever ore from a deposit if you mine it with the terrain manipulator set to the smallest size. It takes a long time to mine one completely, but that’s the point! It’s a better use of your time than quickly wiping out the deposit for much less of a return and then having to search for another.

Harvest a bunch of copper and refine it to chromatic metal. You have a portable refiner in your inventory, it can be running while you’re doing other stuff. I don’t know exactly how much you need, maybe about 1k to do the whole expedition comfortably? You’ll be building bases (which need base computers) and various upgrade stations on several planets, and all of that plus a few other upgrades will require chromatic metal.

6287

As someone that has only very lightly dabbled with NMS, what is the semi-guided direction I should follow.? Basically I’ve rebuilt the initial ship a bunch of times on different platforms over the years, but now I’m much more motivated to go further now that I’m tinkering with the PSVR2 version. What is an “expedition”? Can I still do the stuff from the introduction of battle (an older “expedition”??) stuff? Are expeditions different than the rebuild your ship and learn words tutorial thing? How do I even mine the copper on the first planet? I see the ore spots, but I can’t use my multi tool on it. Also, I got some stuff from the Twitch drops, where did they go? Are they one shot and gone and I’m supposed to get them somehow in the expedition? Are expeditions sort of like seasonal saves and you are expected to do a fresh start for each one?

I don’t need detailed details;I’m afraid of looking too hard for information so as not to ruin the little story there might be. Basically, I’m just wondering what the general direction I am supposed to follow if I’m looking for more than just building a cool base somewhere random. I’m unclear on what the general structure of a NMS game is supposed to be.

6288

Eh, long time lurker, first time poster, I’ll try to explain to the best of my abilities.

As for guidance, after you fixed up your starter ship and take off, you’ll get a series of transmissions that lead you to certain coordinates. Follow those to unlock the basic recipes required for progress (i.e., hyperspace fuel cells) and the anomaly, which is a summonable (multi-)player hub. This is also where you can obtain the stuff from your twitch drops.
Afterwards, there’s two main paths, the artemis path, which is the revamped tutorial/campaign and covers most of the game mechanics, and the atlas path, which used to be the main storyline before all the revamps and addons. You’re not required to follow those, but if it’s your first trip, I’d recommend doing them. The story is pretty good, even though the delivery is a bit pedestrian.

Twitch drops (and quicksilver unlocks) are account bound and can be obtained once per savegame. So, if you start a new game, you can get them again, but it you already grabbed them, then that’s it.

Expeditions are seasonal events, basically putting a twist to the common game progression, while also pacing up the progress. You get an alternative start scenario, and a list of tasks required to progress to the end. Fulfilling these tasks usually give you ample rewards, with each major milestone providing an account-based unlock, usually for some cosmetic items like posters, starship trails, new bits and bobs for your avatar, and/or unique starships or companions.
Expeditions are time-locked, meaning they’re not permanently accessible. Hello Games did a re-run of 4 of them last winter, and IIRC there’s a new expedition running as I type.

I should mention that these require some familiarity with the game’s mechanics. They’re for older players looking for a new experience, and are somewhat unsuitable as a starting point due to the lack of hand holding in regards to mechanics.

All in all, it’s just cosmetics. On PC, there’s a save editor that can be used to unlock twitch drops and expedition rewards, on playstation, well, you’re missing out on a few cosmetics.

In regards to copper: For the big metallic “puddles” you need to use the mining function of the terrain manipulator mode on your multitool. The tool should either come pre-equipped with one, or the game will hand you a blueprint to build the module.

That said, the game is about the vibe for me. Yeah, I’ve probably seen it all before. And with the kind of gear you amass after a while “normal” mode is pretty chill, and the mine->process->recharge cycle is toned down to having to recharge my gear about once or twice per session.

But there IS something wonderous about breaking throug the atmosphere of a pristine world, soaring along the coastline, setting down the ship and enjoying the view (and maybe snap a few pictures). It’s relaxing. It’s colourful. It’s my little refuge from the mad, mad world I have to deal with on a daily basis. At least occasionally.

6289

There’s GOT to be a way to find the ship first, because making that trip back and forth between the base and the ship over that terrain is freaking EXCRUCIATING, especially in that crappy exocraft. Maybe there’s a way that lets you cheese the photo mode to find out where it is first. Or is photo mode limited to a certain radius around you? I remember cheesing that in Mad Max to find hidden stuff. It was glorious.

Problem is, you start out with no way of even telling the direction your ship lies, nor a compass. Maybe the only way would be to get to the top of the highest local peak and look around. Someone has to have posted on the web how to find it by dead reckoning with landmarks. If one can do that one can build the base there.

Perhaps the solution is to do precisely the minimum required to see the ship icon, see where it is in relation to landmarks, then start a new game and find the ship by dead reckoning. The prospect of having to go back and forth multiple times between ship and base make me lose my will to live. Maybe this expedition stuff isn’t for me.

6290

How many times did you have to do it? I built the base at my starting point and completed the other starting objectives there. Once I was supposed to repair the ship, I took the exocraft to it and figured out what I needed to make to repair it. Then back to the base to make the 3 things I had to make. And then to the ship again to repair it. So there-back-there again. Not that bad?

6291

I am almost 99% sure you’re either overlooking something, haven’t triggered something yet, or something is glitched, because I don’t think there was any guesswork or blind exploration to get to the ship. I’ll look for more details when I have a chance later, sorry I can’t remember exactly if there was a trick to that part.

6292

Any chance you didn’t install an Analysis Visor?

Here’s a playthrough with explanations of the first phase of the expedition if it helps. This is the guy I watched to get started.

6293

One more tip for anyone new (or who forgets how things work between games like me): don’t try to flee or fight in your ship if sentinels are hunting you down.

They’re much easier to evade on foot than in your ship. You won’t be able to outrun them in your ship, and once they’re in range they prevent you from landing or jumping away. You’ll have to destroy the wave of fighters and then you’ll have a very narrow window when you can land or escape before another wave arrives. But as soon as you’re on foot again, the sentinel ships disappear and you’re back to dealing with the ground forces.

This is good advice for regular games and expeditions.

I’m sure that with better ships, equipment, and more experience, you’ll be able to deal with sentinels in space at some point, but it can be very frustrating when you’re just starting out, accidentally incurred their wrath, think you’re going to even the odds a little bit by getting into your ship, and suddenly find yourself in a much worse situation.

6294

I’m a newb to the game and just started the expedition this morning (just about made it to the nexus on normal play).

I was able to get the expedition spaceship started just by finding it with the exo craft (and analysis visor). The backpack processor was enough to make what was needed I found.

6295

Thank you for taking the time to outline this. It sounds like once I leave the planet I will have some sort of labeled path options of:

  1. Artemis path (revamped tutorial line)
  2. Atlas path (main story path before Artemis). I think the initial crash site has a locked box requiring an Atlas key

Either of these lead me to the Twitch stuff and it’s one per game start. I think I need to restart my game since I think my game start was a day or two before I link Twitch for drops.

But there is an Expedition path (Fractal I assume) that appears…somewhere. For the statements here by others it is sounding like they are having a very different start than I did with exocraft and sentinels from the get go.

I think I will restart again today. I’m not far in and clearly rebuilding the initial ship is my favorite thing anyway. That way I can be sure the drops will be on that save.

It sounds like even though the expedition is a time limited event, you suggest I ignore it and follow the Artemis (revamped campaign) path as the best way to go for a first run today?

6296

Expedition is a game mode selectable when starting a new save. There’s usually only one available at a time. As demonstrated above, some knowledge of how the game works is recommended, since expedition starts also disable the normal storyline progression.

Twitch drops are account bound and should be obtainable even on older saves.

The Atlas path starts when you first find an Atlas interface. No worries, you’ll recognize those when you see them. You can ignore that and get to it later, as it requires some advanced materials to progress.

The Artemis path should start automatically. You’ll receive a transmission from someone named Artemis relatively early in the game (IIRC shortly after you unlock the anomaly, but it’s been a while since I was at that point).
You’re free to ignore it, but it does provide a lot of perks to complete it.

6297

As someone that specializes in that part of the game apparently, and who did it just recently, I can help.

Once starting a game you will have some basic mining and recharging. Then you will get a HUD indicator of where the crash site is. Once there, you do a bit more basic interactions until you are told to go to find something for the damage ship. Again there is a HUD indicator. This leads you to a set of shelters. Once there, the game tells you to go back to the ship and talks about the visor.

This is where it can get annoying. Depending on how you interact with the menus you will either have prompts to go to the ship (no HUD indicator) or have prompts to do more local mining/recharging to repair the visor. Once the visor is repaired, you will always have a ship HUD indicator and also be set points of interest on the HUD. If you are stuck on the HUD-less ship prompt (which I was just yesterday in fact) instead of the visor repair, you can change that in the log menu (I think that’s the menu— it’s one of the options tabs) I believe.

As one newb to maybe another, I hope this helps.

6298

Oh! It is literally a different game start. Now that makes sense as everyone is talking about things (exocraft before the first ship) that was not making sense to me. I can’t remember the order, but it could be the PS5 update hit right before the Fractal event, so maybe I didn’t see the expedition prompt as I jumped into NMS as soon as it was live for PSVR2 and have been loading that save.

Do you remember if improving inventory storage part of the revamped story line? That’s something I’d like to lean how to do.

6299

Oh, that bit got a LOT easier. Inventory was simplified a few patches ago, you now only have tech slots (where stuff that does things go) and cargo slots (where resources get stashed).
Every space station has a booth where you can upgrade your suit one slot at a time, and the first couple of dozen slots are pretty cheap.
There’s also drop pods you can repair for a free suit slot upgrade, but finding them requires maps sold by the station vendor and is best done when you can afford both maps, materials and the storage space to do so.

Ships can be upgraded with modules obtained from scrapping ships, multitool slot expansions can be gotten as mission rewards and rare loot from freighters, and freighter slots…eh, we’ll get there when you get there.

6300

Tangent question. On my main play I’m pretty sure that I purchased a “blueprint” for an atlas level 1 card (so I could open the locked containers at cache sites).

Now, I’ve no idea who I bought this from, can’t find them again and also have no idea how (if possible) to craft this card… Any ideas?

Edit: I’m pretty sure I’ve not encountered any Atlas story content. I’ve triangulated for Artemis but no further on that story line