TAC Reviews...No Man's Sky in 2024

Date Posed: 10/11/24

The No Man’s Sky of 2024 is a very different entity to the No Man’s Sky of 2016, hell it is a very different entity to the No Man’s Sky of even 2023. So much so that if you haven’t logged into the game for a while you could easily think you are playing a sequel to the original. I have dipped back into the game recently and want to give the game a fresh perspective if you are yet to pick it up.

I have read back over my previous two articles on the game and whilst some of the things I have talked about have remained the same there are some differences now. If you haven’t read the previous articles then go do that, and then come back otherwise the below won’t make much sense to you.

You’re back???

Excellent, then lets crack on…

The first of which is that the space stations are not just generic diamond, cube or spherical shapes any more. They are unique designs based upon the race in control of them. They have the appearance more of places that those onboard actually live on rather than just sitting around waiting for travellers to wander over. I think for simplicity the interiors vary in terms of colour schemes, the layout is always the same, I imagine this was done so players are not running around trying to find out where the multi-tool upgrade station or the guild envoys are. Seeing differences in the stations is really cool and whilst it isn’t in the game yet it could be really interesting to have stations come under fire that need to be defended either from space in ship combat or from within repelling hostile invaders

I mentioned the pirate battles in my previous article and there are two events that can spawn. The first involves you warping into a system and finding multiple little ships attacking a civilian freighter, at this point you can attack the pirates, and if you defeat them, you are welcomed onboard the lead freighter. The captain will offer you the freighter itself so you can take it if you haven’t got one yet, alternatively, you can refuse the freighter and request a reward instead. One of the things that I haven’t mentioned before is that you do not have to accept the first freighter you come across so if you are hoping to get yourself an S-Class then you don’t have to settle for a C-Class. Just keep asking for a reward until the class you want pops up. The second can happen if you warp into a pirate controlled system and can come across pirate dreadnaughts attacking freighters, I mentioned this one previously, but what I have only recently discovered is that if you destroy the pirate’s ship’s engines, and the six large weapon platforms on it, then it will surrender. You can destroy it if you so wish, or you can go onboard. You can seize the dreadnaught as your own or demand a tribute from the crew. Both options will grant you millions in Units and a significant chunk of Nanites.

At time of writing there is still no way to upgrade your freighters, however, I have come across a way of increasing your chances of getting an S-Class pirate freighter. Essentially all you need to do is warp to a pirate system, if a dreadnaught is attacking a freighter then defeat the dreadnaught by blowing up its engines and weapon platforms, don’t worry about the shield generators. Go onboard and equip your visor, if the ship is S-Class seize it, if it isn’t then load your previous autosave. This should return you to the moment you warped into the system allowing you to attack the dreadnaught and defeat it again. The Class of the dreadnaught is random, although some videos on YouTube said it has a 5% chance of being an S-Class, so if it isn’t the class you want then…rinse, lather, and repeat. I tried this myself this morning and I estimate it took around an hour and a half of doing this over and over, and probably restarting the fight around 20ish times. Even the YouTuber who made a video on this said to warp out of the pirate system and back again to trigger the battle again, a comment on the video said to just load the autosave point to restart the battle, either way the point is that as it is apparently a 5% chance each time you trigger the battle then eventually you will find an S-Class but it could take dozens of attempts to get the Class you are after.

If you do find a Class you want and you don’t have a freighter already just claim it, if you do then the inventory of your owned freighter won’t transfer, nor will any upgrade slots that you have unlocked. In the case of the inventory what you need to do is transfer everything out of your freighter’s internal storage (and not any storage units you have built onboard), and store any upgrades that you have equipped in your exosuit or on one of your starships. Once that is done then transfer to the new ship, and reequip all your upgrades. The base layout of your original freighter can be transferred so if you have built a cool freighter base then you won’t lose it by changing ships.

I wrote an article about an Expedition that I did and I was not really sold on the concept. Still I always like playing new events and I guess that I do also get a bit of FOMO. If you don’t know what that means it is Fear of Missing Out. Limited time offers. Think about it, because you don’t want to miss out on a sale item or something that is only going to be around for a limited time, so you go off and buy it, or in the case of a game go off and earn it. GTA Online has started doing this with the GTA Plus (I think it is called) which is a monthly financial subscription which gives you access to vehicles, and cosmetics that other players cannot access. So real money for in-game items, basically this is a step up on the Shark Cards which are real money for in-game currency. Vehicles and cosmetics that, you’ve guessed it, only exist in the game for a short time and if you don’t get them when they are there then you can never get them later. Obviously if you get them, buy them, or earn them then they are yours to use whenever you play the game. I found this with the Halloween event a few years ago, Andy on Outside Xbox had a particular car that I thought was cool and only learned that particular vehicle was only available in the month of October, as a result I made sure to log-in and purchase the car in October. If I remember correctly I waited for this car for something like 8 months to return to the game so I could buy it. Now, as I have wandered from the point a smidge let me bring it back. I mention this because the Expeditions in No Man’s Sky operate in the same way. They are active for a certain amount of time, then end, and that’s it you can never play them again, and any cosmetics they had are lost to time. However, recently Hello Games have introduced the Expedition Console into the Anomaly.

How the Expedition Console works is that if you want to start a current expedition then you can go to the terminal and start the expedition from there. By doing this you are basically creating a parallel save with your main game, allowing you to switch back and forth at will. Recently there was a new Expedition out: Expedition 16: The Cursed. I started this the same way I have done with others in the past, started on the main menu, created a new save file and started the expedition. I completed it, and then reloaded my main game and unlocked all the rewards I had earned. However, if I had activated the Expedition from the terminal then you can transfer items from your main inventory into the terminal which you can then collect them when doing the expedition. It gives you the opportunity to start off with a few decent resources instead of having to start completely from scratch.

Since completing Expedition 16 a week or so ago I returned to the Anomaly again as I wanted to test a hypothesis. I wondered if the terminal would let you access any Expedition you want. Expedition 2 was currently active so I started playing though that, completed it, and unlocked the rewards. One of which is the Normandy from Mass Effect which was a cool frigate that you can add to your freighter fleet. Once the expedition was complete I returned to my main save and accessed every reward I had unlocked. I also discovered that you could transfer over the ship and multi-tool you were using in the Expedition, I had stumbled across an S-Class ship and decided to add it to my fleet. Unfortunately I misunderstood what the terminal meant when it said importing the new ship would replace the one I was currently using. I assumed the ship I was using would be returned to storage but instead the other ship overrode its save slot. A message pooped up saying if I wanted to undo this then return to the original ship to reclaim it, unfortunately, the original ship had disappeared from the Anomaly hanger and I couldn’t figure out how to get it back. As a result I lost a fully upgraded ship with all of its technologies and purchased upgrades.  

At the moment it seems as though the Expedition terminal is just a short cut to accessing expeditions using some of your main game equipment rather than granting the ability to access any of the expeditions that you have not yet done. There are rumblings in the fan base which suggest the ability to access any expeditions you want is going to be a feature that will be introduced, but if Hello Games run a past one every two weeks then as long as there is a consistent timeline about which one will be replayed then at least fans know when to drop back in so they can play any they missed.

The duplication glitch still works and content creators on YouTube have even advised new players to learn how to do it to give themselves a leg up in the early game. I think Hello Games must be aware of the glitch because whilst they haven’t tried to prevent you duplicating 99% of things in the game, the one thing that you can no longer duplicate are the upgrades. This is why it was particularly annoying to lose one of my ships because you cannot just replicate upgrades so that each of your ships have fully powered weapons, shields and so on.  There is probably a work around for this but as of yet I have not been able to find it.  

Previously you had to rely on ships that you either found crashed on planets or purchased off other races, but now you can make your own. You have the opportunity to buy components to build a custom-made ship, picking the design, the classification like: explorer, or fighter, and change the colour scheme. It is a nice feature but it would be nice if players could edit their existing ships to make them a bit more unique.

A couple of final point to make are that for some reason it is still not possible to upgrade Exocraft so they cannot be given more upgrade or inventory slots. No idea why this is but considering what Hello Games have done to No Man’s Sky since 2016 it is unlikely that we will never get the ability to add more inventory slots. Also ships can have Aqua Jets installed which allow you to hover over water without needed to find the nearest island to land on.

Finally a recent update added the ability to catch fish, and honestly I have absolutely no idea why, as there are no stamina mechanics in the game which mean you have to ingest food. As a result I haven’t really figured out the point of that one yet, but if nothing else it just adds more content and more things for players to do.

At the end of the day that is what No Man’s Sky in 2024 is, basically it a mass of various things to do, it incorporates base building, ship and planet exploration, ground and space combat, fleet management, and now just fishing. All in all the game is now a massive sandbox that you can spend hours in just doing what you feel like, hunt down bounties if you want, do deliveries, chart different species, go on community missions, and replay past expeditions.

I originally gave the game a Thumbs Up and whilst that hasn’t changed if I had given it a fully review now I think I would have given it a higher rating, as a result I am going to increase my initial rating from a 7/10 to an 9/10. If you haven’t played it yet, then get it, because you will not be bored if you do because there is a literally an infinite number of galaxies to explore.