Screenshot: No Man’s Sky
Whether you played No Man’s Sky two days ago or haven’t played since launch, returning to the game since the Next update is going to involve some adjusting. If you’re wondering how to make Warp Cells or where to find resources, here’s a few tips.
You Can Opt Out Of Multiplayer
A lot of people are excited for exploring the galaxy with their friends now that No Man’s Sky has multiplayer. Others liked the solo exploring experience of the previous iterations of the game.
In the new update, other players won’t be able to join your game as an avatar without permission, but you can still see them as glowing orbs that can use voice chat like you did in the previous version. If you don’t want to bother with some random, chatty glowing orbs, you don’t have to have other players enter your game if you don’t want to.
If you go to the options menu and select Network And Voice and then turn off Network Play, other players won’t be able to join your game.
Sell All Your Old Crap
If you’re a returning player, the first thing you’ll notice is that your inventory is full of items named “obsolete technology.” You can sell these at the nearest space station and bask in your excess credits.
When I loaded up the game, some of my other old items had turned into something called a “technology module.” You might not need those right away, but it’s worth hanging on to a couple of them because you’ll need them for some recipes down the road.
Be On The Lookout For These Elements
In the Next update, the recipes for fuelling your Launch Thruster, Pulse Jump and Hyperdrive are completely different. Now they need Dihydrogen, Tritium, and rare metals like Copper. Dihydrogen makes fuel for your Launch Thruster when you combine it with metal sheeting.
It looks like blue crystals jutting out of the ground, and you can find it on pretty much any planet. Tritium, used to fuel your Pulse Jump, can be mined from asteroids using your photon cannon, and is also pretty easy to find. Copper is used in the process of making Antimatter, which is necessary for fuelling your Hyperdrive.
It’s a bit trickier to find, but you can scan planets from space and see whether or not Copper will be there before you land. In case you forget any of these recipes, if you hover your cursor what you want to build there will be an option to pin the recipe to your options screen.
This is what it looks like when you use the analysis visor.Screenshot: No Man’s Sky
The Analysis Visor Will Show You Where You Need To Go
In order to find Copper, you’re going want to land on a planet and then bring up your analysis visor. This also works differently than before the update. Now your analysis visor doesn’t just scan nearby flora, fauna and minerals, it also tells you about nearby buildings, cargo drops, and resources.
If you look through your visor you can move your cursor over the different icons to see what’s nearby. Resource deposits are where you’re going to find precious metals like Copper. In order to mine them, you have to have a terrain manipulator for your multi-tool, so you should also make that as soon as possible. Don’t worry — it doesn’t take rare resources to make that one.
Refine Elements
Some ingredients in craft recipes have to be refined before you can use them. This is where the Portable Refiner comes in. You’ll find it in your build menu, which you can find by pressing up on the directional pad if you’re playing on a console. From there, you need some carbon to fuel the refiner, and then you put, say, Copper on one end, and Chromatic Metal comes out the other.
Chromatic Metal is one of the ingredients you’ll need for Antimatter, and you make a Warp Cell by combining Antimatter and an Antimatter container. It’s a good idea to stockpile Chromatic Metal, because you’ll also be using it in other recipes, and the process of making it is a little tedious.
You should also keep in mind that the Portable Refiner is portable, meaning you can put it back in your inventory when you’re done with it and place it somewhere else by going back to your build menu.
Here’s that handy portable refiner.Screenshot: No Man’s Sky
Recharge On The Go
Your other utilities, like your Mining Beam, Terrain Manipulator, and the shields on your ship will also need fuelling. If you’re in the middle of a firefight or just don’t want to go back to your menu screen, if you hit down on the directional pad, you can bring up a menu that allows you to recharge any of these things while you’re still out in the world.
Just scroll over to the symbol that looks like a battery, press up on the directional pad, and then select which item you want to refuel. This is handy if you get stuck in a fight and want to keep your shields up.
Upload Your Discoveries For Nanites
If you’re coveting any upgrades for your Exosuit or Multi-Tool, remember to upload all the flora and fauna you’re scanning on the planets. It used to be that when you uploaded these you got credits. Now your discoveries are exchanged for Nanite Clusters, which can be traded for blueprints for upgrades.
You can find all your discoveries in the option menu. Scroll over to the Discoveries tab, make sure to check each planet you’ve been on, and upload everything from the flora, fauna, and waypoint menus.
You Can Build Anywhere
The new planets you’re landing on can be toxic, nuclear or beset by constant boiling rain. If you’re too far from your ship or a structure to hide out in, you might want to build a base. In the latest update, you can build bases anywhere. You can also build bases quickly out of commonly-found Carbon if you’re in a rush.
If you’re a returning player, you should know that the process of claiming a spot for your base is a little bit different now as well. Instead of finding an abandoned base and claiming that structure, you need to build a Base Computer.
You can find it in the same menu you as where you build the Portable Refiner, and you’ll need Chromatic Metals to build it. Once you do build it and place it in the world, you can then make a base as extravagant as you desire.
Comments
13 responses to “Tips For Playing No Man’s Sky’s Big Update”
looks good, might buy it now
Yes, do it!
If you look past all the hype and extremism from when it launched, there was a great product there. It was just unfinished. That has most definitely changed over the past 2 years.
That original product was always worth the investment. What was missing wasn’t so bad it ruined the game. It just ruined expectations, which were over the top to start with. That’s not saying things weren’t missing, but more that the advertising was TOO good.
Today, with copies as cheap as a tenner for a 2nd hand PS4 copy, it should be a no brainer.
Some good tips in there. The biggest issue for me with the update was the change to all the elements and relearning what I needed to recharge certain items.
I ended up starting a new game and playing for a couple of hours just to get the updated basics, now I’m pretty confident I can jump back in to my old game and figure the rest out from there.
As a returning player it’s been a huge change, but as long as my fleet of ‘S’ class ships don’t disappear from my freighter again, I’ll be happy lol
Yep, same here. Definitely want to revisit my old freighter.
Just on the article, I’m pretty sure “obsolete technology” dismantles into “technology modules”, the latter I’d definitely hang onto for updating your now obsolete tech upgrades. That is, don’t sell your obsolete tech for credits.
Yes, that’s what I did (without knowing any better). I have a heap of tech modules now, but I’m sure they’ll come in handy in the near future.
One thing I’m not sure about, having finished the game is…
… will there be many other players in subsequent universes? It’s tempting to restart in Euclid to boost the chances of MP encounters.So is it an advantage to keep old save or should you start new with the update? Kinda tempted to start again but don’t want to if its just the same thing and I could get a head start with my old stuff
I guess it really depends on how many units you had, your ships, backpack upgrades etc.
You can always start a new game to get accustomed to the new features, then go back to your old save.
I started a new game last night to refamiliarise me with it and learn all the new stuff. It does a really good job of tutorial-ing you through the start which was nice.
Id say if you dont have a great ship or many upgrades to your wepaon and suit then start again. You should be able to play catch up fairly quick if you know the game enough.
Otherwise play an hour or two from scratch to learn the new bits then jump back into your original save!
Finally bought it, as did my gaming buddy and started a new game together. It’s awesome! I wasn’t really invested in the hype originally and just waited till it got good.
Not sure if this is new to the latest update but there are blue plants around, before they gave you a mineral but now they give you a boost to your jetpack (seems to be about 15 seconds)
If you do the meele longjump animation and hit the jetpack you can fly a fair distance rapidly.
Good if your getting around on foot.
If you had a base from before the NEXT update, you apparently need to find an existing base computer and use that to recreate your base, you can’t access it through a crafted base computer at this time. This is a slow-ass process because as of right now, there is no way to specifically look for a habitable base, but rather you have to use the habitable base category in the scanner (which costs one data module per attempt) which can detect: Minor settlements (renamed outposts), observatories, transmission towers, trade posts, and shelters. The one you are after comes under the shelters category, but not all shelters are habitable bases, some of them are genuinely the small shelter buildings from pre-NEXT. Furthermore, these scanners only have a limited range, so if the base isn’t within the range, it won’t show anyway. What this means is that if you are unlucky like me, you can spend hours searching for one of these existing base computers and have nothing to show for it except an inventory full of stuff you can’t use until you get your damn base back.
Welcome to Hello Games. Please assume the position.
RIP if you bought it through GOG 🙁