Home Gaming The first big update for No Man’s Sky adds unique paths and lots more

The first big update for No Man’s Sky adds unique paths and lots more

5 min read
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No Man's Sky (1)

This may just be the most momentous week in all of gaming history, because it’ll finally mark the end of Al’s incessant “is it here yet” e-mails to Hello Games as No Man’s Sky finally launches. Some of you may have gotten your hands on No Man’s Sky early thanks to a friends with benefit deal at your local retailer, but just about everybody is going to start on even footing this week when Hello Games wipe their servers clean and set their universe back to square one for launch.

And just like every other game hitting PC and console these days, you can expect to say hello to an update the second you pop No Man’s Sky into your system. Here’s the list of tweaks, fixes and extras that’ll be downloaded into the game, with a small note here warning you of spoilers. You already jumped way ahead of this warning bit, didn’t you?

Update 1.03 (Spoiler warning)

No Man's Sky (3)

  • The Three Paths – there are now new, unique “paths” you can follow throughout the game. You must start the game on a fresh save, with the patch, as early choices have significant impact on what you see later in the game, and the overall experience.
  • The Universe – we changed the rules of the universe generation algorithm. Planets have moved. Environments have changed biomes. Galaxies have altered shape. All to create greater variety earlier. Galaxies are now up to 10x larger.
  • Diversity – Creatures are now more diverse in terms of ecology and densities on planets.
  • Planets – we’ve added dead moons, low atmosphere and extreme hazardous planets. Extreme hazards include blizzards and dust storms.
  • Atmosphere – space, night time and day skies are now 4x more varied due to new atmospheric system, which refracts light more accurately to allow for more intense sunsets.
  • Planet rotation – play testing has made it obvious people are struggling to adjust to this during play so it’s effects have been reduced further…
  • Terrain generation – caves up to 128m tall are now possible. Geometric anomalies have been added. Underwater erosion now leads to more interesting sea beds.
  • Ship diversity – a wider variety of ships appear per star system, and are available to purchase. Cargo and installed technology now vary more, and ships have more unique attributes.
  • Inventory – ship inventories now store 5 times more resources per slot. Suit inventories now store 2.5 times more per slot. This encourages exploration and gives freedom from the beginning. We’re probably going to increase this even further in the next update, for people in the latter game phases, and will allow greater trading potential.
  • Trading – trading is deeper. Star systems and planets each have their own wants and needs, based off a galactic economy. Observing these is the key to successful trading. We still working on adjusting this based on how everyone plays, but all trading values have been rebalanced across the galaxy, giving a greater depth. A bunch of trade exploits were uncovered and have been removed
  • Feeding – creatures now have their own diet, based on planet and climate. Feeding them correctly will yield different results per species, such as mining for you, protecting the player, becoming pets, alerting you to rare loot or pooping valuable resources.
  • Survival – recharging hazard protection requires rare resources, making shielding shards useful again. Storms can be deadly. Hazard protection and suit upgrades have been added. Liquids are often more dangerous
  • Graphical effects – Lighting and texture resolution have been improved. Shadow quality has doubled. Temporal AA didn’t make it in time, but it’s so close
  • Balancing – several hundred upgrades have had stat changes (mainly exo-suit and ship, but also weapon), new upgrades have been added.
  • Combat – Auto Aim and weapon aim has been completely rewritten to feel more gentle in general, but stickier when you need it. Sentinels now alert each other, if they haven’t been dealt with quickly. Quad and Walker AI is now much more challenging, even I struggle with them without a powered up weapon.
  • Space Combat – advanced techniques have been introduced, like brake drifting and critical hits. Bounty missions and larger battles now occur. Pirate frequency has been increased, as well as difficulty depending on your cargo.
  • Exploits – infinite warp cell exploit and rare goods trading exploit among other removed. People using these cheats were ruining the game for themselves, but people are weird and can’t stop themselves ¯\_(?)_/¯
  • Stability – foundations for buildings on super large planets. Resolved several low repro crashes, in particular when player warped further than 256 light years in one session (was only possible due to warp cell exploit above).
  • Space Stations – interiors are now more varied, bars, trade rooms and hydroponic labs have been added
  • Networking – Ability to scan star systems other players have discovered on the Galactic Map, increasing the chance of collision. Star systems discovered by other players appear during Galactic Map flight
  • Ship scanning – scanning for points of interest from your ship is now possible. Buildings generate earlier and show up in ship scans
  • Flying over terrain – pop-in and shadow artefacts have been reduced. Generation speed has been increased two fold (planets with large bodies of water will be targeted in next update)
  • Writing – The Atlas path has been rewritten by James Swallow (writer on Deus Ex) and me.  I think it speaks to the over-arching theme of player freedom more clearly now. Early mission text has been rewritten to allow for multiple endings.

Hello Games says that this will be the first of several updates, with chief big cheese Sean Murray remarking that “This universe we’ve built is a pretty large canvas, we’ve got a lot of ideas.”

This is the type of game we want to be.

No Man’s Sky is finally out this Wednesday on PlayStation 4, and globally on PC this Friday. You can’t take the sky from me, but I certainly can dash your dreams of there ever being a sequel series to Firefly as you potter around this new universe.

Last Updated: August 8, 2016

10 Comments

  1. Ottokie

    August 8, 2016 at 08:00

    Only 2 days of Beta testing. That’s strange 😛

    Reply

    • Pariah

      August 8, 2016 at 08:12

      EA do it.

      Reply

      • Ottokie

        August 8, 2016 at 08:15

        The only EA game I will still consider playing is SIMS xD

        Reply

        • Pariah

          August 8, 2016 at 08:18

          Dragon Age is still a great game series. Mass Effect too. Andromeda is coming up, and that’s an easy purchase for me. Sims isn’t bad, I do enjoy Sims 4 from time to time. I RIP’ed my last sim in like 2 in-game weeks. She got electrocuted while trying to fix a shower. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s funny af. XD

          Reply

    • VampyreSquirrel

      August 8, 2016 at 08:13

      Well… Life is Strange.

      Reply

      • Ottokie

        August 8, 2016 at 08:14

        What a good game. O my Glob

        Reply

    • HairyEwok

      August 8, 2016 at 08:36

      I wonder how flooded twitch will be of people playing No Man’s Sky on PS4 and asking Twitch chat for planet names.

      Reply

  2. iusedtobe(a)regular

    August 8, 2016 at 08:31

    Any word on how large said update is?

    Reply

    • Simon

      August 8, 2016 at 09:18

      800 mb Sean Murray (Mr mcBeardyface himself) tweeted in response to said question.

      Reply

  3. Draglor

    August 8, 2016 at 08:46

    “pooping valuable resources” – Gives a new meaning to Holy S#it.

    Reply

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