Since its launch on Xbox One and the release of the NEXT update across all platforms, No Man's Sky has received something of a new lease on life following its rocky 2016 launch. Going forward, developer Hello Games is looking to keep that momentum going with a fresh set of community events and even a continued focus on fixing any lingering bugs.
In its latest development update, Hello Games highlighted some of its current efforts and what it has planned for the future. First up are some updates to its recently launched Galactic Atlas community site. Here's a look at what's been recently rolled out the web portal:
- New regional hubs submitted by NEXT explorers, including official community links for those who would like to join, as well as Euclid portal addresses for explorers who would simply like to visit.
- Discovery progress for all regional hubs, revealing how many bases have been claimed in each region, as well as how much space is yet to be discovered. All explorers from community-led factions can contribute to their region's progress by uploading their system and planet discoveries.
- The names of the current leading explorers for each regional hub.
- An indication of where the first community research mission is taking place within the galaxy.
- The final batch of Atlas Rises POIs, completing this archive of memories.
Diving into the game proper, No Man's Sky giving players some new quests to embark on with its first season of community events. The first event revolves around players helping Specialist Polo explore a "previously undetected iteration of the universe." Starting today, players who have completed the first Space Anomaly mission can head out to explore and excavate a set of strange objects that have appeared in a far-off corner of the galaxy.
Once you've explored the region and excavated the objects, Polo will be able to turn them into six new base building parts, three decals, a new emote, and a new character customization option. Hello Games promises that this will expand to more than 50 items over the coming weeks.
Patch 1.58
In addition to the launch of its first community event, No Man's Sky is rolling out a large patch across PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Here's the lengthy list of all of what's new:
- Added user permissions for multiplayer, on a per-save slot basis. Settings for visibility, damage + base editing can be customised to apply to all players, friends only, or no-one.
- Improved the terrain edit saving system, reducing the chance of terrain regenerating. Further improvements to this system are in progress.
- Improved the visuals of player starship trails.
- Added archaeology missions to the available pool of missions from planetary NPCs.
- Fixed an issue that could prevent players with very large save games from saving.
- Fixed a number of issues that prevented save games from loading.
- Fixed an issue that incorrectly synced information in multiplayer.
- Fixed a number of issues that could cause mission markers to be attached to the wrong destination.
- Fixed a number of issues around the refiner and general inventory systems. Improved the pick and drop system of inventory management.
- Fixed an issue that caused visual glitches in clouds at higher resolutions.
- Fixed occasional crash in geometry streaming when exiting planet atmosphere.
- Fixed issue where cloud shadows would interfere with reflection rendering.
- Improved consistency between tessellated and non-tessellated terrains.
- Improved performance when leaving planets.
- Various memory savings, improving overall stability.
- Various performance optimisations.
- Fixed an issue that could prevent players from going through black holes.
- Fixed an issue where players were able to warp and get stuck on the other side of a portal.
- Fixed an issue where players were able to enter their freighter base when it was not loaded in memory.
- Fixed an issue where players could start their game in inappropriate systems when starting in multiplayer.
- Fixed an issue that could cause vast numbers of Sentinel Drones to spawn.
- Fixed an issue that prevented players with pre-NEXT saves from fully upgrading their Exosuit.
- Fixed an issue where freighter crew would change race on warp.
- Fixed an issue where player ships could spawn on the same landing pad in multiplayer.
- Fixed a number of cases where freighter battles were not correctly synced in multiplayer.
- Fixed an issue where players were not able to land on other player's freighters.
- Fixed a number of issues affecting the interaction with captains of freighters not owned by the player.
- Fixed an issue that caused expedition length, difficulty and rewards to scale incorrectly relative to the power of the player's fleet.
- Fixed an issue that caused players to exit their ships / exocraft while tagging a marker.
- Fixed an issue where ships landed on freighters to be labelled ON PLANET.
- Fixed an issue that caused player ships to have incorrect information when viewed through the Analysis Visor.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Sentinels to appear as undiscovered creatures when viewed through the Analysis Visor.
- Fixed the axes used to calculate planet coordinates shown on the Analysis Visor.
- Prevented players with freighters from warping other players in multiplayer to systems they would get stuck in.
- Fixed an issue where the freighter dock lights were not correctly lit/unlit when a save was loaded on a freighter.
- Various text fixes.
If you still haven't embarked on your own space exploration journey, No Man's Sky is available for as little as $46 now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
