No Man's Sky takes players on a massive space exploration adventure through over 18 quintillion planets open for exploration. Gamers have waited for three years to fly through the universe promised by No Man's Sky, but starting out the adventure could be almost impossibly daunting at first, due to this same enormous size combined with the title being largely free from direction.
For new space explorers, here are some helpful tips to start out your adventures in No Man's Sky.
Download The Day One Patch
A day one patch has been released for No Man's Sky, with the update less of an actual patch but more of an overhaul that affects significant portions of the space exploration game. The patch will not affect most players, as the interaction with the title before its launch has largely been through videos streams hosted by users who were able to acquire a copy of the game in advance.
The Start Screen
The game's start screen, made up of a largely white screen with the text "Initialize..." in the center, has confused many players. Some players thought that the game has frozen, while other thought that the game was still installing or loading.
To get through the start screen, players will only have to press on the square button of their PlayStation 4 controller.
Do Not Rush Through The Game
While No Man's Sky can be beaten by getting to the center of the universe, gamers should definitely fight the urge to simply finish No Man's Sky as fast as they could. The journey is more important than the destination, as the saying goes, and that very appropriately applies to No Man's Sky.
With that mindset, new space explorers will be able to discover a lot of things that they may not have if their only goal is to finish the game. For example, the game's starting planet already contains a lot of items to be discovered, with the crash site itself already bearing a lot of items in the containers lying around. Gamers who are looking to immediately fly out into space might miss these items.
Take Care Of Your Equipment
The equipment that players will use for scanning and mining are important to progress through the game, and so proper care should be given to them. Upgrades to the equipment should be applied as soon as the proper blueprints are found, with improved scanning equipment leading to wider scanning ranges to discover materials to pick up and areas to investigate, and improved mining equipment allowing for better materials farming.
When using the mining tool make sure to prevent it from overheating to prevent too much downtime. Players should stop using the tool when the bar in the top right reaches about 80 percent full.
Learn About Inventory Management And Elements
While No Man's Sky is a space exploration game, players will spend most of their introduction to the title on learning how to manage inventory. The game will provide little information on resources early on, but the basic point is that the player's exosuit has 12 slots at the beginning, with three of these slots going to essentials such as life support. The other slots can be taken up by as many as 250 pieces of an element or by upgrades that players can craft.
Learning about what the different elements can do and how to get them will need a guide of its own, but the recommended elements worth carrying at all times are carbon, iron and zinc.
Move Faster By Using The Jetpack
Walking around could take up too much time, but players have already found a way to move faster. By running and then pressing the melee and jetpack buttons at the same time, players will be able to move at a quicker pace, and for each lunge, the cooldown for the actions go down again, so players can keep doing this.
The timing is hard to get at first, but once players get it, a lot of time will be saved from simple walking.
Keep An Eye Out For Blueprints
Blueprints will not only be used to improve scanning and mining equipment, though. There are many blueprints in No Man's Sky that can either create new tools or to upgrade existing ones, and they will be using different materials, some of which are crafted and some of which are mined.
Blueprints can be found by investigating space stations and outposts, talking with non-player characters, discovering ancient artifacts, and through many other methods.
Keep The Peace
The floating eye robots that players can see are basically the space police, and if they catch any form of violence such as attacking animals, mining too many resources and destroying any properties, they will become aggressive toward players. This is not Grand Theft Auto, so players are advised to keep things as peaceful as possible.
Save Often
As with any game, players are advised to often save their progress. Players can save in space stations, outposts and whenever they enter their ship, and doing so will allow gamers to revert to an earlier state in case something goes entirely wrong.
Take It All In
No Man's Sky is an amazing spectacle in its own right, and players should ease up on their competitive sides and take time to simply appreciate what the game has achieved.
There are many more things to learn about the expansive universe of No Man's Sky beyond these simple tips, but hopefully they are enough to help out new space explorers in their adventures.
