[No Man's Sky] coming to Nintendo Switch

The Dude With Herpes

There is no risk to dorking with the expedition. You can hop in and out of it in the Anomaly. There is no risk to your file (even permadeath, there's only been one expedition with permadeath enabled, but it was a mechanic; so if you're playing permadeath and go into the expedition, it'll be disabled while you're inside.), and worst case you just leave and go back to the main mode, best case you walk away with some rewards. There is a time limit, sure, but there is no cost or anything (there's no microtransactions of any shape or size in NMS), so it's just free content.

I get that the fomo stuff isn't great for some people, myself included typically. However here there is no shoe to drop. No bait and switch. No luring you in for a taste to get you to spend money. If you bought the game, you paid all you're gonna pay. No season passes or paid currency. There is literally to drawback aside from them having a start and end date. However given that all but one of the expeditions have been able to be completed in 3-5hrs if you just focus on the milestones, there really isn't much pressure.

They aren't amazing or anything, ever really, and the rewards are hit or miss,; but again, no one is trying to fool you or bait you into the typical live service spiral.

Like I said, I get the weariness about live services, and fomo, but I don't get how worked up some people get about these. If they ever go in and add payments for quicksilver or expeditions, I'll be the first to uninstall and never look back. I can't imagine they'd risk destroying the goodwill they've spent the better part of a decade earnings, and they've obviously figured out some way to make this financially viable by continuing to update the game at no cost when the rest of the industry has gone the complete opposite way.

Hopefully their next game carries on this system of updates and they don't bow to pressure to monetize the game beyond the initial purchase.

Also, hopefully with the new system behind the expeditions, it might be easier to have them return or maybe even someday being able to do any of them any time.

NEO|Phyte

I'm not sure when specifically it ticked over but I finally remembered to check on the expedition again and the community goals have been met, so if you were waiting to get your parts to export to main save it is doable.

akThera

However! For a lot of us things are currently bugged where the QS guy says we own the blueprints (they’re not in the expedition rewards part, but in the general list), but still not available to build.

So before you leave the expedition, build the new tech to your expedition minotaur, and then package the parts and stash them in the expedition terminal at the anomaly before ending the expedition. Then you’ll at least be able to claim them as installable tech modules.

NEO|Phyte

Yeah blueprint unlocks don't transfer so you have to build, package, and use your handful of tech slots to move t hem.

Olivaw

According to the patch notes, those build part blueprints do now transfer over, so if you couldn’t make them work before, now they should!

The Wolfman

I was just about to come ask this. I finished the expedition on a new save. I went back to my main save, and went to the vendo and picked expedition rewards. I collected a bunch of posters and appearance stuff, but I didn't see any of the minotaur parts. Then I looked and they're in the quicksilver menu instead for free. And I was able to craft them onto the minotaur itself, so if that's a bug then luckily I didn't hit that. Had I known there was a menu that would let you smuggle equipment over from one save to another, I'd have done that before officially ending the expedition, but whatever it's fine.

akThera

As of this morning’s patch, they do work now. I had to go re-claim them from the quicksilver guy, but then all was well.

akThera

Sean dropped another emoji, so we’ll probably have another update next week.

McFodder

Tried to finish off the latest expedition over the weekend after starting it late, had been trying to line up time to go through it with a friend who hasn't done one yet but couldn't get our schedules worked out. Played a good few hours on Saturday night but for some reason it didn't save - we'd had a power outage not long before I started playing so not sure if it was connectivity weirdness or what.

Ended up back in phase 2 yesterday, got most of it done except for 2 small milestones but I'm gonna get at most an hour to play before it wraps up and I am not having any luck finding "alluring specimens" to make deep sea monsters spawn.

akThera

McFodder wrote: »

Tried to finish off the latest expedition over the weekend after starting it late, had been trying to line up time to go through it with a friend who hasn't done one yet but couldn't get our schedules worked out. Played a good few hours on Saturday night but for some reason it didn't save - we'd had a power outage not long before I started playing so not sure if it was connectivity weirdness or what.

Ended up back in phase 2 yesterday, got most of it done except for 2 small milestones but I'm gonna get at most an hour to play before it wraps up and I am not having any luck finding "alluring specimens" to make deep sea monsters spawn.

The final rendezvous planet has oceans deep enough for those, so use those water landing jets, or just go deep sea stomping in your minotaur.

McFodder

Managed to get it all done with minutes to spare! Which also saved my from my usual hour deliberating over what to take back to my main save with me, I grabbed the Liquidator mech parts and a few other pieces and that was it.

Got some major frame drops fighting sentinels towards the end, and that wasn't even playing in VR. Never seen performance dip like that in the game before.

Edit: How had I never tried going ocean stomping before? I assumed the Minotaur was for dry land only

Selner

Aquarius!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu-OxnMETY0

Fishing!
Fishing Expedition!

And somehow this is still listed as Worlds Part 1!

Dr. Chaos

Can we fish out like a giant sea leviathan?

I still think NMS has a lot of untapped potential as a shit your pants simulator now that they're diving more into water stuff.

The Dude With Herpes

I have to assume this is somehow related to the development of their new game.

I can't think of a feature NMS needs less than fishing.

I mean, hey, if folks enjoy this stuff, fantastic!

But for me, this combines two things I couldn't care less about in a space exploration game. Fishing and cooking.

Such a weird thing. First straight up miss, for myself, with the updates over the years.

Selner

And the new update is Live on Switch!

akThera

The Dude With Herpes wrote: »

I have to assume this is somehow related to the development of their new game.

I can't think of a feature NMS needs less than fishing.

I mean, hey, if folks enjoy this stuff, fantastic!

But for me, this combines two things I couldn't care less about in a space exploration game. Fishing and cooking.

Such a weird thing. First straight up miss, for myself, with the updates over the years.

What’s bananas about this is they were apparently “inspired” by fanart and screenshots of people just… chilling by the water wishing they had a fishing pole in their hands. Then they went and pumped out this mini-update (with an expedition even) in like a month.

Now, clearly Light No Fire is gonna have some fishing so lots of the hard work was probably done already, but I’m still super impressed. Some of these expedition planets were discovered *three days ago*. That’s wild they could put all this together that fast.

I get that fishing isn’t for everyone, and this is practically a meme update, but it is nice to have something to “do” while you’re standing there admiring the view.

Dr. Chaos

Didn't even know you could cook in this game.

Time to open the bistro at the end of the galaxy.

Jazz

Dr. Chaos wrote: »

Didn't even know you could cook in this game.

Time to open the bistro at the end of the galaxy.

The ghost of Douglas Adams applauds that reference.

The Dude With Herpes

Wait, did the expedition start already?

akThera

It started the day the update came out. But also it’s extremely short, so don’t stress about it.

The Dude With Herpes

Oh I'm not stressed about getting it done, though I do it on 3 platforms and god I wish they'd put in some sort of cross-account system.

It's just unpredictable when expeditions start after a major patch. Sometimes it's that day, sometimes it is the following weekend, sometimes like a week later. Nevermind when different platforms actually get the patch.

The Dude With Herpes

Finally getting around to doing the expedition. I've done it now on PC and Switch, just need to do PS5.

It's easy, that's for sure.

But it is god awful boring, and confirms my confusion about why NMS needed fishing and what it adds to the game.

It didn't, and nothing; are the answers.

I usually build bases on coasts or islands anyway, so I'll likely plop down a few of the auto fishers, but I can't imagine, short of being required for something (nexus quest or whatever), that I'll ever fish intentionally.

Like, even from the perspective of it being a thing to do to just chill out, it's not really even a very enjoyable version of game fishing. Wait till line turns green, hold button down. That's literally it.

I knew going into it that the fishing wasn't going to be for me, I just don't totally understand who it is for. Though, to be fair, I felt/feel that way about the whole cooking thing too. There's no survival mode with food/thirst or anything, it is purely isolated and doesn't integrate into any other aspect of the game; and now the fishing is the same. Though I guess they do interact with each other? I dunno.

Baffled.

Anywhoo, they can't all be winners for all people. Looking forward to Worlds 2 or whatever the next major update ends up being. Customizable Sentinel ships plz.

Enigmedic

Fishing is almost always a super boring mini game in everything people put it in. And they really needed to add something else to ocean/water biomes to make them interesting anyway. It kinda feels like a half-assed patch.

Steel Angel

Enigmedic wrote: »

Fishing is almost always a super boring mini game in everything people put it in. And they really needed to add something else to ocean/water biomes to make them interesting anyway. It kinda feels like a half-assed patch.

It's almost certainly a way to prototype Fishing in Light No Fires where it probably will play a more useful role given we probably won't be consuming raw molecules to stay alive there.

akThera

It's also there for "I'm a gamer who simply can't stand there and just look at a pretty view... I have to be doing something productive with my time, however small" people. The skiff is silly and fun, the fishing is silly and fun, and the whole thing took them almost no development time to put together. (see: Light No Fire prototyping also) The goodwill they bought from the community is priceless tho.

Stormwatcher

the fishing came along cause some fan drew a traveler sitting on their ship and fishing after Worlds 1 update
they thought it was cool and made the whole aquarius thing

The Dude With Herpes

Is that for real? Or just what you imagine. Because if it's true, that's actually pretty rad. EDIT: Also insane turnaround; which even if it is true, I have to imagine it is in some degree from LNF, because while it's not complicated, that's a lot to do in basically a month or two in a game as likely complex in code as NMS.



Also the skiff would be better if it had more stability; any moderate waves would make it bounce like a jack russell terrier and fling me off.

Repeatedly.

On every platform I played the expedition on.

Zetx

It's mentioned in the patch notes: https://www.nomanssky.com/2024/09/aquarius-update/

Something people really loved in the Worlds update was the new water technology – tons of players were posting videos of themselves just chilling at the water’s edge. One piece of fan art in particular stopped us in our tracks, of a player lazily fishing from their wing of their starship. This art, and others like it, was right at the heart of the inspiration behind the Aquarius update.

akThera

The Dude With Herpes wrote: »

Is that for real? Or just what you imagine. Because if it's true, that's actually pretty rad. EDIT: Also insane turnaround; which even if it is true, I have to imagine it is in some degree from LNF, because while it's not complicated, that's a lot to do in basically a month or two in a game as likely complex in code as NMS.



Also the skiff would be better if it had more stability; any moderate waves would make it bounce like a jack russell terrier and fling me off.

Repeatedly.

On every platform I played the expedition on.

They patched the skiff stability about a week later, it’s much better now. It also now offers hazard protection.

Zetx

I played through the expedition last weekend and if that's the patched version then I cannot imagine how bad the original one was. Cuz ooof, the skiff likes to do everything but stay still.

Lucid_Seraph

So I just got this game a few weeks ago!

I'm so bad at the controls. Um. There's a lot going on. what am I doing. Why is silver so annoying to find. I just want to talk to every alien and learn their language.

*edit* that said my partner gave me max inventory slots so that helps

Steel Angel

Lucid_Seraph wrote: »

So I just got this game a few weeks ago!

I'm so bad at the controls. Um. There's a lot going on. what am I doing. Why is silver so annoying to find. I just want to talk to every alien and learn their language.

*edit* that said my partner gave me max inventory slots so that helps

Many minerals will depend on a planet's various categories, e.g. you'll have an easier time finding Uranium on radioactive planets while Copper is found on planets with yellow stars.

Silver is one of the few that you can find shooting asteroids though.

But also don't overlook being able to just buy a resource you need with credits. It's often faster to sell something you collected in abundance on a planet to buy what you need instead of hopping planets trying to mine it yourself.

Owenashi

https://youtu.be/QyPJUtsQiEY

pentium166

Owenashi wrote: »

.

• I've seen things you people wouldn't believe
• Millennium Falcon
• Pirates of the Caribbean Davy Jones skin?

NEO|Phyte

Oho, I just noticed in the steam newspost that this is the 16th expedition.

Zetx

Worth mentioning that it is a 2 week expedition starting today. Short one!

akThera

That’s not Davy Jones, it’s Cthulhu

IceBurner

Some of the Expedition 16 milestones have really poor directions.

The worst offender this time is Phase 5, Milestone 1, "Stone Ghosts". Its explicitly says you need to find 2 "Alien Ruins", not really clarifying that this is a rigidly-defined type of alien structure. In spite of this, some Alien Plaques count without the milestone hinting so--it's the ones where you can interact with the same dome structure found on Ruins. Not only this, but the literal ruins with keys & treasure are formally "Artifacts", and don't count. Charts can't lead you to the required structure, just "Monoliths" and "Artifacts", neither of which count.

In addition, the milestone's instruction to use a Signal Booster is terrible, since it locates any nearby structure with no filtering abilities. What I ended up doing was spending some data and nanites to unlock an exocraft and the top tier Radar module, which can explicitly search for alien "Ruins" as its 2nd-to-last option. Ended up getting it right away, after wasting hours attempting any and everything else. While the community has (as usual) setup helpful bases to get around the search process, none of them would load for me as it seems Discovery Services are half-borked at the moment--some bases load and others won't.

Apart from the occasional rather bad directions, I had fun with this one. It's neat to see the game set up to behave fairly differently from normal. I hope Hello Games considers adding some of the special modifiers from expeditions to Anomaly missions or elsewhere, before they finally move on from updating NMS.

McFodder

So I'm late to the party, but the 'Ancient Artifact' charts took me to the right kind of ruins for the expedition. I'd skipped the Aquarius expedition but loved Cursed.

Ianator

Today's update includes a refresh of the Normandy expedition as well as cross-platform saves.

Gonna see if I can convince some friends to pick up the game today