The No Man’s Sky NEXT update is amazing. There are so many quality of life improvements to the game, it’s hard to unpack it all. It’s almost a whole new game. It’s incredible that this is a free update. And the game is currently on sale (for PC and PS4) if you don’t have it yet.
The crafting and materials system has been reworked, and it’s basically all new. New minerals to gather, and now you can refine them with a portable refinery, which converts base materials into higher grade materials. Portable equipment is new, as well. You craft a signal booster, drop it to find something interesting, and then pick it up and put it back into your pack. It’s a neat addition. I had just learned this weekend that you could dismantle the signal boosters and get some of the resources back, but this is better, I think.
The starter mission is new, as well, and I think the Artemis mission is gone, which means I never finished it. Oh well, it was kind of pointed as it was. (UPDATE: Nope, it’s still there, just started it!) I wonder if the base-building missions are there as well. There’s a new system where you find salvaged technology and use them to get blueprints, so I’m wondering if we need those base-building quests at all?
The game, overall, seems a little bit easier. I’m rocking space combat, which has never happened before, and I don’t think that I got that much better. I’ve already got fifteen kills, which I think is more than I’ve ever gotten before. And I’ve got a million credits already, and a capital ship, so I think they want me to see the end game activities and get into them. It’ll be interesting to see what the weeklies entail — from this, I’m willing to bet that they will probably involve capital ships.
If you want to play with other people, the game will randomly match-make you, and people can randomly join your game. If you just want to play by yourself, you can turn network play off. I had another player randomly join my game. I turned around and he was standing there. He started yelling, “Oh my god! We’re not alone anymore!” I was playing through remote play, so I didn’t have a mic and couldn’t reply, but it was still pretty incredible. I friended him, and then he showed up in the creative game I made for the boys to mess around in. So, think about whether or not you want visitors.
Right now I’m scraping together the pieces to make a warp cell for my frigate, and then we’ll head to the next system. The only story missions I’m doing are some new ones for Polo, which are time-gated (another neat addition), and then the Path of the Atlas, which right now just asks me to explore. I’m going to wander towards the galactic core, but I want to set up a base so that I can process the salvaged tech that I’ve found. Actually, it would be fun to build a base and see how it goes.