Thorne
6301
The Atlas pass blueprints are sold aboard the Anomaly. There’s 3 levels of them.
Atlas pass level 1 opens the red drum shaped fuel containers you can see on some trading posts and ground installations. Those usually contain components for hyperdrive fuel capsules (housings, antimatter and similar stuff)
Atlas pass level 2 opens the doors inside the bigger ground installations. There’s usually some lootable containers inside.
Altas pass level 3 opens the locked doors inside space stations, which have some lore snippets.
If you have the blueprint, you can build them in your inventory, if you have the resources. Select an empty slot and hit the crafting option, they’re under the miscellaneous tab from what I recall. You only need the highest ranked variety, i.e. a Level 3 pass can open the level 1 containers and level 2 doors.
To be honest, I’ve never found the Atlas passes to be worth the trouble. By the time I can make them, all the items I find with them are trivial to either make or buy.
A matter of opinion there. That Nomad exocraft doesn’t hover nearly high enough as a normal thing, and the terrain is all choppy with gullies you’re constantly falling into (thank God for turbo), etc. I know some would say, “EVERYONE KNOWS how to repair the ship, geez, just craft the components at your base ahead of time, before the first trip!” …but I don’t know those things, having only ever done one game start, and I depend on the tutorial messages, which you don’t get till you actually get to the ship and find it busted. If the mission design respected the player’s time, they’d tell you what components you’d need and in what quantities to craft them so you could make the trip just once. It’s an artificial time-waster and tedious to make you make the trip three times.
Thanks for the link, maybe it’ll help. I followed all the steps and got the visor, but bottom line this expedition start, as @NI1 points out, by default makes you travel between the starting spot and your ship 3 times before the ship is fixed and air/spaceworthy. I think that’s pretty much BS
Some have suggested tearing down my base once I have the visor working and all that, getting to the ship, and setting a base up near there. Would that work, does anyone think? Does NMS allow me to do a “hard save” for my game so it’s not overwritten, if that doesn’t work?
Shards
6305
This is puzzling me, because I just got in my space car, drove over there and fixed the plane up… I had no prior knowledge of what was required but I either already had what I needed from the mission rewards or was able to grab it from the surrounding area? Was I just lucky?
NI1
6306
Oh, absolutely. I think this might be a hint that you won’t enjoy NMS or at the very least won’t enjoy the expeditions. There’s often a fair bit of travel to complete quests etc and usually your are not told exactly where to go, just the general area.
Are you talking about a normal game start or a Utopia Expedition start there? “Because reasons” (“Anomalous Cosmic Rays”) you can’t craft anything away from the immediate area of your base for the expedition start, so grabbing from the surrounding area is all well and good, but without being able to craft right near the ship is of limited usefulness.
Now you did say “space car” and if you chose that dune-buggy exocraft maybe the trip is less of a PITA. My only experience was with the suggested Nomad exocraft and it was not an enjoyable way to travel. Hell, going by foot/jetpack would be preferable.
I didn’t care for the Nomad exocraft either. I used it, it beats walking, but just barely. It felt awkward to steer because it seemed like you should be able to strafe—it hovers! And I agree it handled hills poorly.
That guy has a YouTube video for every phase of the expedition, and it will probably cut down on the frustration of “I sure wish I knew that before I walked/flew/travelled all the way over here!” moments, but it’s not wrong to be annoyed by those moments either.
As was said earlier, the expeditions aren’t really designed to be an introduction for new players, more like a remixed challenge for experienced players or players looking for the expedition rewards. That said, apart from the frustration, the expedition isn’t difficult, it’s totally doable by a new player.
Oh and check out the trick for the melee + jet pack movement in those videos. If you use the melee attack and a half second later engage the jet pack (without jumping), it launches you more forward than up. A handy traversal tip I wouldn’t have known otherwise!
Oh, I enjoy NMS just fine (I have a near 100 hour save from near launch, of which close to 90 are from 2017), and they’ve made lots of improvements since (upping the stackable quantities in inventory was huge, but happened after those near-90 hours). It’s the artificial constraint of not being able to craft outside of my base that I’m not crazy about, plus that Nomad exocraft: what’s the use of a hovercraft that only stays 2 feet off the ground by default, unless you’re navigating the Bonneville Salt Flats or have smooth roads to make it to your destination?
Heh, I’m an old hand at melee+jetpack. Glad they never took that out. You do have to be careful because of possible fall damage.
Shards
6312
Yeah, Fractal expedition and the nomad floaty car thing
Thorne
6313
Well, to be completely blunt:
The nomad is the only exocraft that can reliable traverse water surfaces. Every other exocraft has to slowly crawl across the ocean/lake floor, and the submarine is limited to bodies of water.
Also, there’s the new “supercharged” slots, even in exocraft, that give a huge boost to whatever module you slot in there. Combined with the adjacency bonuses for similar modules, you CAN make the exocrafts a lot faster.
The “stock” version barely beats walking. The finished product usually manages something like 40 units/second and still has enough cargo space for stripmining your surroundings since the inventory revamp.
NI1
6314
Well, the Nomad can traverse water. Personally, I find the Colossus to be the least useful exocraft.
Technically I believe Fractal is the name of the update, and it includes the Utopia expedition.
@NI1 an @Thorne OK, that is a cool feature, admittedly (provided there aren’t any large waves of course, heh).
And THANK YOU @WhollySchmidt for that video. The guy does on his own exactly what I wish the game would tell you do do before you make the first trip*, namely craft the necessary items to fix the ship. I’ll just memorize the needed stuff, craft it then, make ONE trip, and I’m good.
*and he even points it out, saying it’s a PITA to do it the other way.
Can I say once again how much I hate the sentinels in this game? I hate them to my very core. They’re not interesting to fight. They don’t offer any elevated gameplay. They’re dumb as rocks. And to make matters worse, fleeing them in your ship is basically impossible. Just, blech.
BTW, something weird just happened in my new Expedition game that I’m sure is a bug, because I swear I experienced the same thing before. I saw a free tech upgrade for the Exocraft engine in my inventory but when I went to install it it magically became an upgrade to my ship’s fusion engine, go figure. Even packing it up for storage, it remains the starship fusion engine upgrade. Hmmph.
Maybe I messed up by accidentally installing it in my starship both times but I don’t think so.
In fact I don’t see how I could have done that last thing because I would have been out of range back at my base…
Silent
6319
Flee underground. Use the terrain manipulator to burrow underground, don’t go in a straight line. You can lose them that way and they’ll give up pursuit once you are out of sight for awhile.
This is the way. Underground and make a jog in the tunnel so they can’t see you.
