No Man's Sky

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there's a frog in my snake oil
Wait...didn't everyone stock up on warp cores and blast from system to system unlocking all their slots for free? I sure did!
I've still got a few to go
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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here



there's a frog in my snake oil
Trip Report



Good Ventures:

I'm wary of black holes due to the base-wipe bug, but the red-sun oddities in this galaxy are keeping me plenty distracted

Found one of the light column worlds. The weather state is officially a mystery, but the lifeforms seem chill, if, um, unusual. It looks like the least-perilous gold-laden world I've found to date, so I've set up my first expeditionary base there. It was fun scrambling together what I needed on a whim, as ethereal lightshows fluxed in their own personal winds, and ominous music echoed off the nighttime mountainsides.

But hey, nothing tried to kill me over the first few nights, so I think I'm good

Mixed that up with cautiously pushing my fleet further out into space as they rank up, smooshing pirates for my Weapons expert, and running around smashing into manufacturing plants. Got the ole plasma balls working and they're a lot of fun . (You have to construct a shield unit, even if you don't want it, to make alt fire work. Because of course... ). Hand-firing them in the correct arc to hit Sentinels is grand though. And all the bonus loot you can crack into...

Grabbed the blueprints I needed that way, so I've finally crafted my prospecting visor. Gold farming beckons next session

(Although I hear gold extraction in particular is bugged )



Bad Blocks:

Ok so none of the above bugs really bother me, but damn there are some clunky issues in the background to the fun.

At the start of this session I was locked into my Freighter by invisible walls in all of the doorways. I managed to jetpack through/around them in the end, but for a while I thought the save was borked...

On base storage... nuff said

On the VR, an interface issue of note is the galaxy map. At the moment the game literally moves me the opposite way to which I'm pointing... Which I can just about fix by holding my hand behind me like a dorsal fin and slowly proceeding forward . But I suspect there must be a better way... (I think you're supposed to grab first and then extend your hand out like superman in the desired direction. It's just not really working...)

Kinda leads me too...



Retro Ponders:

VR play is making me feel like a kid figuring out a hacked game again. And it's kinda a gameplay strand in its own right

It's partially the grainy, lower-poly graphics that are triggering some fond nostalgia, and partially butting wits with defeatable bugs. But also VR ports come with this expanse of unexplained and/or untested interactions and oddities.

I don't blame them for not having comprehensive guides, or for all the edge case stuff and semi-bodged functions that don't translate neatly. (The new tutorial missions are actually pretty slick here). And thankfully it's actually kinda fun conducting physical experiments on myself to figure things out . Rocket Boots? Ok not convinced right now - being catapulted sideways at speed when landing on slanted ground is fairly disconcerting...



there's a frog in my snake oil
Trip Report: Mine All Mine

I'm gonna have to use bullet points
  • My gold planet really begged to be biked around, with its mountainous folds, and narrow gaps between formations.
  • Of course that's the only vehicle I don't have. So I end up hunting construction blueprints on this blue-grass planet instead...


  • It's brimming with life, including various gangs of predators who hunt me mercilessly. (I swear I was getting The Forest vibes from the way the dog ones circled and skulked in the long grass before attacking )
  • The aggro local Sentinels object to my self defence and join the chase...
  • After about ten minutes of hounding I'm finally safe. In a cave. With just a few murderous crabs dancing on top of it.


  • I can't remember how, but I ended up on this exotic next. I remember I needed Parafinium to build the bike bay, and it was all on my Freighter. I think maybe I wondered one system over to browse Frigates.
  • Anyway this place had loads of gold and eerie views too. And also loads of mats to build the green jump drive...
  • Having discovered that stopping to watch Peaky Blinders makes all the sensor tags disappear, I gave up on prospecting for a bit. And went green.
  • The green system was kinda tame, until a storm hit and taught me about Storm Crystals...


  • And now I'm in this blue system. Which has Compacted Indesite! Or whatever it's called. And enormous fronded trees which lash about hypnotically. And storms which return colour to its monochrome world.
  • I'm back on the prospecting game. I've got my bike. And... dear god, it's a good thing I've got an iron VR stomach these days . Because the mixture of starter steering, jumping crevices, & lashings of lag make for a pretty rough ride
  • But I did it! I survived falling into a cave system, and digging a stunt tunnel out, and finding resources buried in indestructible trees. And... I found an A-grade source
  • And it was fun. And also kinda tough. But in a way which made it feel like an achievement.
  • And now I can lose myself in building a totally over-engineered base




Post Script: I Cannae Do That Captain
  • I keep impulse buying cheap Frigates, and doing terrible things with them. And then having to repair them.
  • I sent my Vyken warship on a war tour, with a Mining & Exploration ship alongside to toughen them up. It immediately got hammered and needed a recall. The other ships had a combined combat competence of about 4. Somehow the science vessel lasted another 8 hours, before contracting a virus
  • I bought a Trade barge with -1 mining. It turns out they have a very incompetent drill operator. I'm kinda expecting it to blow up on its current 'multi-purpose' tour.
  • Liking the 2mil returns on the 2 star missions. This fleet will pay itself off... by the time I reach the core maybe



A system of cells interlinked
More great fun reading your stories.

I had decided to spider my refinery base out, stretching to reach a silver source, only to figure out it was just C grade, so to hell with that, captain! Instead, I just drove around slurping up all the silver and gold deposits with my terrain gun. My refinery is in an abandoned blue system that doesn't even have a working space station, and it is quite spooky on the world itself, so it's always a nice break when I head over to grab my 20,000 tons of Indium to sell off!

S-Class shuttle fully operational. Oh...I'm afraid it's much too late for your friends now, young Skywal....oh...sorry.

I did some warping around in hopes of finally finding an S-Class freighter, but dag nabbit if the giant, really impressive looking one I saved from pirates was only C-Class. No thanks!

I think will also hunt around for S-Class Fighter, Explorer, and Freighter, as well... Ah, let's not forget the exotics, too!

meanwhile, I am still on the lookout for that perfect system with a perfect planet to name after my daughter. I've come close several times, but haven't settled on the right one yet...
__________________
“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



there's a frog in my snake oil
More great fun reading your stories.

I had decided to spider my refinery base out, stretching to reach a silver source, only to figure out it was just C grade, so to hell with that, captain! Instead, I just drove around slurping up all the silver and gold deposits with my terrain gun. My refinery is in an abandoned blue system that doesn't even have a working space station, and it is quite spooky on the world itself, so it's always a nice break when I head over to grab my 20,000 tons of Indium to sell off!

S-Class shuttle fully operational. Oh...I'm afraid it's much too late for your friends now, young Skywal....oh...sorry.

I did some warping around in hopes of finally finding an S-Class freighter, but dag nabbit if the giant, really impressive looking one I saved from pirates was only C-Class. No thanks!

I think will also hunt around for S-Class Fighter, Explorer, and Freighter, as well... Ah, let's not forget the exotics, too!

meanwhile, I am still on the lookout for that perfect system with a perfect planet to name after my daughter. I've come close several times, but haven't settled on the right one yet...
Haha cool

God I've no idea what style planet I'd name after my 6yo. It'd have to have dinos on it, I know that

Yeah my blue system actually has a station, but the weird monochrome extends there too, so there's no real respite from the oddness! I'm definitely just gonna make a concrete castle of convenience here.

Yeah I decided early on that I wasn't gonna be precious about prospecting grades, but C class was my red line. (I found so... many... S class Sodiums ). I don't care about making crazy creds, just wanna make enough to warrant the hijinks.

By shuttle do you mean you've got a three-finned trade mobile (that would look at home on Endor?)

(PS pix at some point! )



there's a frog in my snake oil
2.12 is live. Will be interesting to see if the optimisations have any bite.

In the meantime, this news is the best news...

Nav data now stacks to 20. Some other changes to stack sizes.

Ships are still on fire though.
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On the downside that means no more freebie slots. But I think I've only got one last one to go in the cargo section. (And my 2* trade route came back with 12m last night, so I'm feeling alright about it )



there's a frog in my snake oil
Staying Still Report:


  • So the update grew a giant tree in the middle of my base...
  • Which is actually kinda cool, as it convinced me to do something I'd been wrestling with: Trash the base and rebuild it halfway between the actual energy and mining resources.
  • While biking around in storms doing that I found an even better energy source that was much closer. Which was cool. But also inside a tree...
  • Luckily this time it was just beneath the tree's impenetrable surface, so I could burrow to it.
  • Weirdly placing lights wasn't extending my bases range to link everything up, but flags worked in the end. And they look kinda fitting too. So now I've got a flag-lined entrance to an evil electricity cave
  • Base is all juiced up. Just need to get some chroma-metals and I can get this money pit whirring.
  • (I'm really tempted to make a chroma-metal pit now too... :/)
  • [EDIT] Wait, I'm a dumbass! Indium is a chroma-metal isn't it . Ok, so I just need some chroma to build my chroma mine. Glad that's sorted

I'll be kinda happy to get moving again though. This place is cool in many ways, with its red-bleached dawns and 'inverse storms'. And building my first proper base (several times over ) has been good practice.

Time to get out and cause some trouble soon though. Maybe buy a troublesome fighter while I'm at it


Update: Shifting Gear

So I've got a grind-palace of industry. Amazingly everything works. Teleporters, 14k unit storage, 7k ph output. Admittedly the teleport rooms are full of dirt when I arrive. And last night nothing worked, and I accidentally killed myself by grenading a flagpole instead of deleting it. But maybe that helped?

Tried the Nexus community mission out. Thank god for tool tips. After chasing a lot of poo down hills, accidentally killing a baby dino-deer with my clumsy VR hands, being chased downhill by its mother, and firing the wrong type of bait out of myself like a cannon... I did the thing. Overgrown planets are cool. Not sure about cooking gameplay though



there's a frog in my snake oil
Tutorial: How To Survive Death By Freighter

Bugs afoot in this patch. My Freighter tried to kill me. Here's what I learnt:
  • If you get flung through the ceiling into a limbo of ceiling tiles, do try walking through the gaps.
  • This seems to have a 50/50 chance of plopping you back in a corridor.
  • If instead you fall to a horrendous death, don't gather your resources by headbutting your ship into the Freighter. I mean you can, but there are better ways.
  • You can try landing inside the Freighter. But if all the textures are missing internally, don't just step out and fall to your death again.
  • Do jetpack up desperately onto your ship as it spins into departure position. Or best of all...
  • Don't even go there. Just summon your Freighter off to the side and pick up your corpse at your leisure

I lost a fair few mats due to that :/. Thankfully most of my precious stuff was safe in my maxed out suit cargo though

The Freighter behaved alright after that, so I'm wondering if it's a positional thing. Or if it needs the reset of being recalled. (Hearing tales of quite a few people experiencing this).

On the plus side I seem to have 40mil in cash, so went off and bought a load of semi-competent Frigates. Retail therapy

My mid-range plan now is to get into a large fight with some large sentinels...



A system of cells interlinked
As usual, my plan to start another game was foiled by me finding yet another S-Class ship! A fighter this time... which or course needed a ton of repairs and therefore had me tooling around working on it for most of my play session. The thing is crazy good though, and after maxing out upgrades on the Proton Ejector or whatever it's called I am one-shotting all the pirates. Seems a tad unbalanced, but is still very fun for now.

Still no luck on a better freighter, and man, mine is total ass as far as slots are concerned.

Oh yea..I need to post pics! I keep taking more, but not posting them. D'oh!



there's a frog in my snake oil
I've got a super rare Fri/Sat night free if anyone's up for multiplay? I'd have to be on voice-chat (because keyboards and VR face don't really mix...). Can set up a Discord tho, or Steam VOIP if that's still a thing. (Think I should be able to see chat too. Can in the Nexus at any rate.)



A system of cells interlinked
I will see what I can do about multi-play!

Meanwhile, here are a few screens, as promised.

Hexagonal World



World of Light



The only life form on World of Light



Sharded World



Frothing World



More to come! Must go to sleep, as behbeh gets up early!



there's a frog in my snake oil
I will see what I can do about multi-play!

More to come! Must go to sleep, as behbeh gets up early!
Sleep is gold dust. Gather that gold

If anyone's about tonight though I've knocked up a discord. Or hit me up on steam. Sat's a no go now for me.

Will knock the dust off my old survival save just in case. Reckon I've got Nexus access there at least



there's a frog in my snake oil
I am thinking our time windows won't align but I will see what I can do!
Ay probably a stretch . I can stay up til about 1am max, so that's til 8pm Boston time I guess. Could be fun to get an hour in if we can tho



A system of cells interlinked
Ay probably a stretch . I can stay up til about 1am max, so that's til 8pm Boston time I guess. Could be fun to get an hour in if we can tho
I will see what I can do!



there's a frog in my snake oil
I've bailed

But working up my Survival save was pretty fun. I did a fair bit of running away . From pirate trios, skittish looking dinos, you name it

I thiiink the save is working. It's trashed almost all my old tech, but on the plus side I got a load of wired looms out of it. It's also trashed my base though, and is insisting on me rebuilding it at a specific spot on each planet. Which is old build behaviour.

But hey, I built a shack anyway, rejazzed my multi-tool, and made it to the Nexus. Ready to rumble on another day

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EDIT:

Trip Report:


So, aside from logging in to smashed up kit on a frost-bitten planet, my Survival save also confronted me with this. The lumpiest jalopy in the world:



Apparently I'd been running around in this asymmetrical C-class, with only its large storage bay to recommend it. And god do you need the storage in this mode! I'm already inured to the mining tool singing 'NO FREE SLOTS' while I singe carbon out of a tree and unwanted chemicals bounce off me.

This planet was a properly unloveable, spanking my meagre shields with every step. So when I encountered this skittish fiend mid-way through a dash to a mystery encampment, just his strange snarling scuttles through the undergrowth were enough to see my scampering back to my ship



I kinda like these cowardly split-second decisions and desperate dives for cover. You don't get them quite as much in Standard mode. It would have been just as fun to be chased across the tundra to safety, but hey, I definitely kept all my limbs this way . (His bio described him as an 'unpredictible' carnivore, and I like how his weird, panting, zig-zagging behaviour kinda backed that up )

Being chased down to the surface from space by a trio of pirates was also distracting . I liked that I could jink back up and hide in the Nexus like a coward to dodge them though

Maybe these hurdles will get clunky, but think I'm definitely going to try and maintain this save too. See if my dissolved base will recongeal inside the base recovery unit, and generally set up shop.

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In another world entirely, I'm kinda liking how my ramshackle 'Eden' starter base is completely over-grown... landing pad and everything...





It's all very civilised now, despite the jumble of batteries and wires outside, and the intermittent brown outs. And the humming Colossus where I store things that are a mystery to me.

My baseline pastime is working through the base building missions. Which is getting increasingly daft as I've already unlocked half the stuff through the new Nexus/nanite confluence. But I figure certain story elements may fall out of the end, and I'm quite enjoying the daft dialogue. And most of all, the giant Sentinel fight the Vykeen got me involved in . (I'd forgotten the weak spots on the big ones, so figuring that out again under pressure was fun. Getting stuck in 'dips' behind trees in VR was less fun though :/. Felt like being stuck in mud... while a giant cyclops shoots you with his laser eye...)

Weirdly I'm enjoying the basic fetch quests to get the plants going too. There's something about the zen nature of going to each of the different planetary biomes and just mooching around in their vibe . (While doing about 5 other mini jobs simultaneously of course )



there's a frog in my snake oil
Trip Report: I Will Survive

Back to snatched gaming, but still main-lining this whenever I can.

And dammit Seds, I haven't left my Survival build since I dropped into it



Performance in VR is smooth enough now that I can deal with most of the added risks, especially as the main ones are just space muggings. Which my barely-pimped Hauler seems able to deal with. (Following red engine trails with your gaze as you hand-steer after their tail makes it all pretty involving, for all the basic-ness of the blam-blam )

My home planet for now is all arid hills and giant cactus spires. Not the most stimulating, but it doesn't scorch me by day (between the storms), and the clear navy nights are grand for outpost hunting.

I finally gathered the bones of my old base, and they're sitting happily in the retrieval unit, glowing with my previous grind efforts. Alongside some rebuilt storage units I'm feeling mainly on top of the item issue. Although my main aim is to buy the 43-slot Hauler that lives in this system... (Which is 44mil just for the C-class, so it's gonna take a while...)

Naturally, as soon as I'd found my feet, and an expensive overarching plan, I spent all of my money on a swarm of Frigates. Because I think I have a problem on that front...



To cut many mini-adventures short:

Words don't touch what's cool about this. And screengrabs normally come too late... (I have to scrabble for my keyboard )

But it's the towering mountain pinnacle above a market base, as you descend onto a red-grassed planet, and watch it get enveloped by a brewing firestorm, then revealed again by its parting mists. It's the weird strangled cries of the hopping locust heads in the purple long-grass. It's tearing over the horizon into the sunlight in a blur of busy-work. It's the Vyken nodding sagely at the Gek's excited chatter. It's the sheer number of vents on that ship that just landed. It's the distant marker for 'home'. It's all good

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WARNING: "for Seds" spoilers below
Dad Corner:

No Libertarian likes to be told what to do, but I'm gonna put this here anyway

I remember my attempts to game during Kai's first year+. I remember I tried to play Fallout 3 for the first time. And it got its hooks in me. And there was a prolonged period where sleep and fantasy-land battled for primacy.

And then sleep won. Because it always will in the end . I'm sure you're being savvy about it, but just in case: If you find yourself trading a bonus hour in bed for games, snatch that bed time instead. They all add up over those early years

(Plus all of this game cornucopia will still be here for years to come. When you wisely decide to buy a headset and come VR-game with me down the line )



A system of cells interlinked
Hahah, fair point, and wise words, for sure.

We lucked out, and lil Stelly is a sleeper. Last night I got almost 9 hours in, only having to pop up once to do a quick change and a fast bobbie for about 10 minutes.

As far as gaming is concerned, I still tend to play mostly on the weekends, usually in the morning hours when I wake up, and the wife is catching up on sleep. Stelly likes to play in her jumper, and doesn't pay much mind to things on screens (yet). This weekend, i took a wee break from NMS to do a few hours of questing in The Witcher III, which was a nice change of pace.

Sage advice, though, and I will keep that in mind moving forward!



there's a frog in my snake oil
Hahah, fair point, and wise words, for sure.

We lucked out, and lil Stelly is a sleeper. Last night I got almost 9 hours in, only having to pop up once to do a quick change and a fast bobbie for about 10 minutes.

As far as gaming is concerned, I still tend to play mostly on the weekends, usually in the morning hours when I wake up, and the wife is catching up on sleep. Stelly likes to play in her jumper, and doesn't pay much mind to things on screens (yet). This weekend, i took a wee break from NMS to do a few hours of questing in The Witcher III, which was a nice change of pace.

Sage advice, though, and I will keep that in mind moving forward!
Sweet, glad you're not on the 3 hour wake-ups, that burns for sure

(Yeah I was pretty lucky with K going down for long sleeps. He just never wanted to sleep before ten. And not much has changed )

Sounds like you've got it all down, weekend mornings sound like a plan. I was just checking you weren't being as daft as me