No Man's Sky - Interceptor

[davejm]

Going back to this for the first time since release.  I only got a few hours in before, is it worth starting again?  I have no idea what I'm doing really.  Are there new tutorials that will only kick in if I start a new game?  Or does the game do a good job of introducing you to new features even on existing saves?

[TehStu]

How far did you get in? The two big patches did a good job of explaining what to do, which will start with finding a base to build. The tutorial before was all about getting you to a space anomaly to find those useless Atlas stones though.

[Stanley]

So this is pretty damn excellent. I find it very smooth, perhaps post patch, I don't know, and the transition from flying in space and watching a planet come into view, entering it's atmosphere, seeing the planet surface and landing is as seamless and impressive as I had hoped. 

[davejm]

1 hour ago, TehStu said:

How far did you get in? The two big patches did a good job of explaining what to do, which will start with finding a base to build. The tutorial before was all about getting you to a space anomaly to find those useless Atlas stones though.

 

It seems I didn't get far at all, as I hadn't even jumped to another system.  I've just been on now and the tutorial tasked me with jumping to another system which I did do.  It then asked me to craft some warp cells.  I made 2 warp cells; and it's asking me to use the hyperdrive again so I guess this part of the tutorial is having me explore a little bit.

 

I must say, everything is so much smoother and nicer looking on PC these days.

[Sane]

I bought this because of the positive vibe around the recent patch and it was on sale (and because I have a about a zillion other games still unplayed). Any tips for complete beginners? I'm running around trying to find zinc to repair my ship, but there doesn't seem to be any around, only lots of carbon and iron and some other rarer stuff. Is it just a matter of exploring?

[TehStu]

Do you start off with a scanner? Can't remember. Shooting a sentinel often gives zinc, they're the red floating robots. You may find zinc close by in a yellow flower you harvest. May want to check in all the various boxes and canisters near your ship.

[Kos Mos]

How do you warp to the space station from your base and back again?

 

Doing the base building tutorial and it's a bit tiresome constantly having to fly between the two.

[Davros sock drawer]

The option to teleport becomes available after you've warped systems a few times, I forget how many.

[Stanley]

How do I get a base?!

[Kos Mos]

After a couple of jumps a system scan indicated an abandoned base on a planet.  When I visited it the base building tutorial started.

[Mr Cochese]

NMS is on sale in Steam at the mo. Will I be better off getting that (on GTX970) or the PS4 version? And on PS4, will my lack of an online subscription hamper me in any way?

[robdood]

I have a 970 and pc version. It is mainly 60fps, if that is important to you. It also loads a lot faster than the ps4 version. 

 

Plus you can think with mods should you ever feel so inclined. 

[Mr Cochese]

Hooray. I hope I don't get bored too quickly.

[TehStu]

It doesn't need PS+. I've got my kids addicted to this, will post pictures later.

[SpagMasterSwift]

Things went weird in the lab tonight...

 

 

Saw another Golden Condor ship I want for the collection.

 

 

Got myself a new set of wheels.

 

[TehStu]

Golden Condor is amazing. I still fly a workhouse, nearly bought another ship today but trying really hard to hold out until I have a freighter. You don't exactly want for space when you start base building.  Anyway, finally wanted to get some pictures up. Apologies for not figuring out that you still need to hide the hud in photo mode, so most of mine have a crappy black bar at the bottom. 

 

Before I do, has anyone else noticed the suit health changes? Or maybe it's not new and I've only just noticed. Not your health, but the lower white health bar on your main hud. Anyway, I just noticed that running now causes it to double the decay rate, and using your jet pack triple. I'm sure I didn't used to need to fill it so much, but doing the melee bunny hop chips away at it, as does boosting out of water. 

 

Here is the frozen hell hole I used to call home. I've been to worse places, but -36C highs just starts to grate. No storms, thankfully. One of the last shots before I left:

 

 

Here's what got my 4 and 7 year olds hooked on this game, and they haven't stopped playing with me since (we sat down and 4 hours disappeared in a blink, today). It's really hard to get the sense of scale here, but the weird biped antelope on the right is taller than me:

 

 

But enough of that, as we've moved to New Iowa. The PS4's engine struggles with detail at this range, but it gives you a sense of this glorious (but not actual paradise class) world, with my base in a plateau crater type thing:

 

 

There's not a lot of animal life, sadly, and given it's actually pleasant (17C highs, 0 around evening and the occasionally -18C), resources aren't plentiful, perhaps just sufficient. I don't care though, because this photo mode is almost the exact lighting that I saw while driving down the coast:

 

 

To be fair, there are decent mineral deposits, if you know where to find them. I happened upon a gold vein the other night and wish I could have captured the scale. I probably should have parked my ship next to it and run back 100 yards for the photo. In the end, I got 3500 gold out of it before it was a mess of little pieces. I recharged my mining laser so many times that I switched to carbon from my usual Pu, and felt a bit like the guy from the Lorax after chopping down all the trees. 

 

So we're making our way through missions from the 5 base workers and finding it increasingly difficult to find the stuff they want (see spoiler later). Hoping from planet to planet, I thought I'd better grab one of my shuttle:

 

 

As I was trying to leave one system, I couldn't call up the map because of a freighter battle. I didn't bother at first, as I barely have any mods, waiting instead to get a better ship. However, I couldn't warp out, and it looked like maybe 2 good guy ships, so I engaged the 6 bad guys. Popped them all, but accidentally tagged a good guy. This game really needs a better friend-or-foe system. Of course, despite saving the freighter, two sentinels turn up, which I just about kill (8 ships now, I've burned through all my yellow resources charging shields, and I'm limping). More turn up and pop me, the sods. I hate sentinels, even on all my friendly planets, where they won't even engage me while I'm mining right next to them, I shoot those buggers down as a matter of principle. 

 

Anyway, we've got the greenhouse setup. I've no idea if sunlight helps, but sod it, looks beyond cool. I may go up a second layer with stairs now that I've unlocked that blueprint:

 

 

 

We also unlocked the vehicles. I think the intent of some of the missions was that you were supposed to drive, probably giving it the turbo. Unfortunately, I'm on a very watery world, so just flew those missions. The Nomad is particularly cool, although don't make the same mistake I did and drive out into water to go resource hunting and think you can jetpack out and get back in while on the water. Had to swim to shore and summon it back.

 

I'll spoiler this next bit if you want to not know how to find these specific resources, although know that I was following these animals feeding them and picking up their dung:

 

 

Sorry for the typos, doing this from memory:

Spoiler

Coprite is dung. Feed an animal and then follow it around. When they have a magnifying glass over their head, you might see them bend down and red spray. That's them taking a dump. A green ! shows up over the coprite, which is actually totally obscured by the grass and didn't seem to show up when scanned. I'm currently on a massive dung mission to plant some plants which, apparently, grow dung crystals. My kids call them the poop plants. 

 

Antrium - easy one, glowing yellow flowers in caves and other darker areas with shade.

 

Respogig? Anyway, it's just a weed growing at the bottom of open water (probably not in shallow pools), has white balls like pearls at the tips.

 

The only one I've really had to be off planet for thus far is cande something, blue plant that needs gloves to pickup. But you'll get to grow that yourself, eventually.

 

I just wanted to show this one, without photo mode, for how awesome the lighting in this update is. No HDR, vanilla PS4:

 

 

Last thing we did tonight was get the Colossus, which is effectively the Mako. Just in case you want to discover the inside for yourself:

 

 

Spoiler

 

Love this thing! I like all the vehicles actually, all useful in their own way. And my last wish you were here, a shot from behind my base:

 

 

Love this game all over again.

 

Tip: Build containers as soon as you get base building (those garage looking things on the left). They cost absolutely bob all to build, hold 5 stacks of 1000 each, and when you dismantle (delete) them, they still have the stuff inside when you build the exact number again. Very handy for packing away your guff when you move base.

[robdood]

Awesome shots everyone! I'm feeling the urge to revisit as well! 

 

@TehStu remember to press the 'hide menu' button before screenshotting!

 

 

[davejm]

Amazing write up and screenshots @TehStu   I miss my lad being that age where he'd sit with me in awe at what I was playing.  He'd have loved some of the games like these.  He's a big hairy teenager now so no such luck

[Davros sock drawer]

56 minutes ago, Captain LeChuck said:

@Davros sock drawer You need a PS4 Pro!!  This game at 60fps is glorious!!  

 

I haven't even got time to play it at the moment. Perhaps when I'm done with Zelda in about a year's time.

[Lydso76]

I'm playing survival mode and getting a bit cheesed off at having to scrounge about for 250 plutonium every time I want to land. I know landing pads give free takeoffs but I need to land at Exosuit pod updgrade sites and the like. Anybody else finding this a chore or have you found more plentiful supplies than I have? Do caves hold much like they used to? 

 

Also the hot planet I'm on is blindingly bright red for half the day so its really hard to spot the stuff, scanner isn't showing up much anyway and takes an age recharge.

[Davros sock drawer]

You just have to plan ahead. I like the relative scarcity of Plutonium in survival mode, it means you spend more time on foot and adds risk. When I was collecting Drop Pods I'd often just find a free landing spot and head out looking for them on foot.

 

Otherwise, buy Plutonium whenever you can - from space stations and from other ships, and never, ever use it to refuel anything. Carbon first if your multi-tool needs charging.

[TehStu]

I've started doing that even in normal mode, for things I don't see often, e.g. Chrysolite. 40 units here and there, it's pennies really.

[Pob]

Are Permadeath mode and Survival mode actual legit ways to play? I mean, actually rewarding and worthwhile rather than just an afterthought?

Does permadeath mode import the settings from Survival?

[Lydso76]

I like survival mode, in the beginning it was really hard but getting to my ship was a great mini game all in itself. I couldn't go back to Normal mode now. I don't think I need to restart yet again in Permadeath though because Survival is hard enough and how many times does somebody want to start all over again!

 

I've been doing all those things, buying up supplies when I can etc. I guess I should have stocked up more though as I underestimated my current fragile state with hostile creatures now thrown into the mix, I only landed on this planet to avoid space pirates who wipe me out too easily. I dice with death as soon as I leave a planet because of weak ship weapons and shields. I'm on a planet with loads of hostiles. It's tough but I'm probably only a two or three decent upgrades away from making survival a lot easier.

[Davros sock drawer]

1 hour ago, Pob said:

Are Permadeath mode and Survival mode actual legit ways to play? I mean, actually rewarding and worthwhile rather than just an afterthought?

Does permadeath mode import the settings from Survival?

 

Survival mode is awesome, and probably what the game should have been on release.

[amc]

I tried survival mode off the bat after downloading. Didn't have an igloo what my objective was really. Well that's a bit of a lie as I was pretty sure it was to make it to my ship. So using the little base at the start as my sanctuary was the aim to mooch about and get myself up to snuff suit and materials wise to make it to my ship? I died 8 times before I opted for normal mode.

[TehStu]

Permadeath just doesn't interest me, but I'm definitely trying a survival game once my normal mode is into a sort of steady state. I did wonder if it would be worth trying a creative game to try out the various base components. Some aren't obvious how they go together until you've plonked them down, but I don't want to waste resources on that.

[Jonzo]

I never really got into NMS, but I loved those few dreamy hours.

 

Imagine if the haters could see this thread though. Really lovely stuff. I might get back into it.

[Mike1812]

Another update today to 1.22

 

It seems you can build exocraft on any planet now. 

 

Changes & fixes currently on Experimental (Path Finder) Hello,

Thank you to everyone who’s played the Path Finder Update so far! Your feedback has been incredibly helpful - please do keep it coming.

Soon we’ll be releasing a patch to the experimental branch. Here are the patch notes:

Exocraft Geobays can now be crafted on any planet - this means vehicles can be summoned anywhere (whereas previously, vehicles could only be summoned on your home planet).

HUD markers have been added to allow you to easily navigate back to an Exocraft Geobay

Fixed a bug that caused vehicle weapons and mining lasers not to drain charge

Fixed a rare issue which could cause the Starship cockpit to vanish when exiting

Fixed some freighter door texture issues

Fixed a rare crash when scanning from a vehicle

Fixed a rare crash when feeding creatures

Fixed an issue which caused weapons to miss-fire when using Plasma Launcher

During warp the quick menu now hides properly as intended

As soon as we’re happy that these changes are stable, we’ll go ahead and roll out to the live game.

We'll keep this thread, and will update it as we make changes to experimental. If you experience any issues while playing on experimental, please do let us know by posting below.

Thanks

 

From here:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/5z5a3g/122_is_live/

[TehStu]

29 minutes ago, Mike1812 said:

It seems you can build exocraft on any planet now. 

Brilliant. I hope a fully upgraded exocraft will be present when you build elsewhere. I really don't need the Colossus on my home world, although it's handy as a transit van. It'll be really bloody useful when you're miles away on a toxic hell hole, though.

 

edit - so that's the first time I've explained patch notes excitedly to a 4 year old, who was similarly excited to hear it.