I can't figure out how to play No Man's Sky

[air_show]

Ok. Since I'm enjoying Subnautica so much I figured why not give No Man's Sky another chance, see if I can put up with another survival game's bullshit.

But it appears I cannot? I cannot even get through the very very extreme beginning of No Man's Sky? I just die over and over again? How the fuck do you play this?

So here's what happens every time I play. I get dropped in a world and I am literally going to die in less than two minutes. I have very very little instruction for what do do and even in menus the clock is fucking ticking nonstop. I have to find resources to fix my scanner, and then use it to find stuff that will refill my hazard protection and life support. In less than two minutes. But even if I accomplish that the scanner is on an INSANELY long cooldown and is basically useless because the necessary survival resources seem to be scattered few and far between.

I found a crashed ship I can take cover in to refill my hazard protection, but not my life support it seems. I get an objective to reach somewhere very very very far away. I try set out in that direction and die in less than two minutes. Every single time. There's nothing I can do. I simply cannot find enough salt or oxygen or whatever other particles I need to live, the plants are just too rare.

So how do you play this freaking game?

 

[MetManMas]

I can give you some advice...after I update, anyway. Been a while since I touched the PS4.

Just need a reminder by actually playing it and I'll be good to go.

 

[MetManMas]

Okay, here's a few pointers. I should note I am playing on Normal here.

1) You can recharge your gear with gathered materials. Press the Down button on the D-pad and choose the battery icon. Sodium recharges your hazard protection, Oxygen recharges your life support, Carbon recharges your mining laser. Ion batteries and life support gel are better for restoring the former two respectively, but sometimes you need a quick fix.

2) Caves are your friends. The first planet you start on will more likely than not wear down your hazard protection. But going into a cave will regenerate the whole meter. This also makes them a good spot for your inventory management and crafting. When starting out, the first thing you should do is find a cave.

3) The Analysis Visor is more important than the Scanner. I mean, you definitely need the scanner to point you in the right direction, but the Analysis Visor is important. It lets you scan flora and minerals to learn what secondary elements they have. It tells you the nature of wild animals. And you receive Units (i.e. Money) for every new thing you scan. And it lets you mark objects of interest too.

4) Craft an Oxygen Recycler. Your life support will last a pretty long time if you're not on one of the harder settings but a recycler will definitely help it last longer.

5) Don't feel bad about rerolling if you get a starter planet that's too harsh. Sometimes the game gives you a bad roll. The first new planet I tried after the update had no nearby caves I could find and I died from radiation poisoning while desperately looking for one. Shit happens.

 

[air_show]

I feel like I've started the game at least five or six times and not once have I ever started on a planet that wasn't just a flat or mildly hilly desert with absolutely no caves anywhere to be found. That or I REALLY don't know what I should be looking for. And I've also never not been bombarded with harsh environmental effects.

 

[MetManMas]

If there's stalactites and stalagmites it's a cave. You might have to go a decent ways in for regen to kick in.

 

[zonetrope]

Not gonna lie, I had assumed this was some breezy, lite exploration game, and hearing that it has a brutal survival mechanic instantly made me interested. And all of the updates since it launched seem neat. I think I'm gonna check this out.

 

[Becksworth]

Seems like I picked a good time to try this again, as they are currently doing a limited time expedition where you can start a new game as captain of a frigate that needs repairs rather than having crash landed on random frozen/molten/irradiated planet and having to start from near total scratch. As someone more interested in going all Sid Meier's Space Pirates over doing a bunch of planetary survival to work up to that point this leg up pleases me.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Seems like I picked a good time to try this again, as they are currently doing a limited time expedition where you can start a new game as captain of a frigate that needs repairs rather than having crash landed on random frozen/molten/irradiated planet and having to start from near total scratch. As someone more interested in going all Sid Meier's Space Pirates over doing a bunch of planetary survival to work up to that point this leg up pleases me.

Oooh....

 

[Becksworth]

So can people jump on your frieghter and build things for you? Because I have had a couple of instances of materials mysteriously vanishing from my cargo and rooms just popping up on my ship...

 

[Becksworth]

Looks like it was a combination of both having my bases set to public without realizing it and an optional milestone were visiting someone's freighter netted you 5 million credits was drawing people to my ship like moths to a flame. All in all:

• A teleporter and an interplanetary scanner were installed on my ship by nice people as a thanks.
• Less nice people stole 1000s of units of gold and silver I had mined from a planet's rings from storage.
• One asshole stole over a 1000 units of copper/chromatic metal from me as I was refining it!
• Someone tried to thank me by adding a redundant storage room 0 to my ship (it linked to my existing storage room in the menus). I was at least able to tear it down and use the resources to make a proper second storage room.
• Someone actually tore down some random rooms on my ship. Nothing important, but still.
• Two people left save point markers on my ship, presumably to come back later and cause more mischief.

So moral of the story is make sure you go into network settings and set joining to friends/invite only.

 

[Falselogic]

Wait, this game is MMO?!

 

[Becksworth]

Not really, you can interact with small groups of people in the same system depending on network settings and you can see other people's bases on planets/freighters in orbit around space stations, but how you can interact with them depends on their network settings. There is no massive player hubs or anything like that. Even when I had my network settings open, I only ever saw one or two other players at a time. Most of my ship chicanery happened when I was either offline or off the ship exploring planets.

Also this is in the current expedition campaign, where the devs have a set of predetermined star systems we are travelling through, so I imagine players are even more spread out in normal play.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Yeah, the way I remember hearing it described when the game was new was that you could run across other player's ships and planets and such...but space is very big and the chances weren't that high. But it's also a completely different game from when it was released, as I understand.

Is the music still by 65daysofstatic?? That's honestly what got me interested in the first place, however many years ago (which was years before it finally released, itself many years ago now).

 

[Becksworth]

Approaching the end of the expedition, as I just got the last phase left to do. I think my biggest hurdle is going to be recruiting four more frigates to join my fleet (and the necessary credits to sign them on), but most of the other remaining tasks look pretty straight forward from what I read.

In addition to the expedition stuff, I found the blueprints to a device that let me find a giant alien squid creature that joined my fleet as a combat frigate, and with the help of the internet I found a S-Class solar sail personal spacecraft. This game is fun when your not dying of exposure on a random procedurally generated planet.

 

[Becksworth]

Also Friday I saw the most users in a single system I've ever seen (one to two dozen maybe). There were so many people I literally couldn't dock in the space station at first because all the landing pads were full.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I'm on PC and I started playing, I'm messing around building a meager base on the second planet I've been to. So far so good, although the lack of inventory slots is currently making me very cranky.

It didn't look like I could, but I was hoping for a way to start a separate save file to do the community expedition stuff too, whatever that is!

 

[Becksworth]

Setting up an expedition save was janky for me at first. I had to restart the game for it to recognize the new expedition had started. Is it saying you can't start a Polestar expedition save?

 

[Becksworth]

Glad I finished the expedition already because the latest hot fix update is causing weird momentary freezing issues on the Steamdeck. Probably going to take a break until that gets fixed. There's no deadline to finish the main story content.

 

[Becksworth]

Apparently the latest expedition has everyone sticking around a single system.

One of these planets is going just be one big giant interconnected base by the end I bet.