No Man's Sky's Next Big Update Tries Something Very Different (2024)

By Steven T. Wright on May 29, 2024 at 9:45AM PDT

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No Man's Sky has been out for almost eight years now, but players have never been able to feel truly alone within its massive star systems. That's set to change with the game's recent update, Expedition 13: Adrift, which radically refocuses the game at a basic level.

As explained in the blog post announcing the update, Adrift is intended to capture the feeling of early, unreleased versions of No Man's Sky, when there were "no NPCs, no shops, [and] no help." To achieve this, the update removes all lifeforms from the game, and renders all buildings broken and rusted. It also increases the number of sandworms and fiend eggs the player encounters. However, it's not all bad, as there is a "ghostly frigate" that players can encounter, as well as a Hauler starship called the Iron Vulture that will help players out.

Adrift also brings a number of other changes to the game, including more ship customization, more multiplayer missions at the Space Anomaly Nexus, and Adrift-specific rewards and collectibles. As the below patch notes reveal, the update fixes bugs and adjusts several aspects of the experience, including optimizing memory usage, improving the audio of planetary titan worms, and a number of other minor changes. The expedition will run for "approximately seven weeks," so definitely get going if you want to see it for yourself. No Man's Sky's last update, Omega, added new planetary missions to the game, as well as a starship called the Starborn Runner.

No Man's Sky 4.70 Patch Notes

• Expedition Thirteen, Adrift, will begin shortly and run for approximately seven weeks.
• During the expedition, every star system has become abandoned, removing all NPCs, all active starships, and destroying system economies.
• A number of other gameplay changes have been made to reflect the strange nature of this universe, including to gameplay events, to player communications, and to the distribution of various hostile entities.
• Rewards include new posters, decals and titles; a set of starship wreckage base building parts; a vile and gnawing companion; a unique cursed frigate; several new starship customisation options; and the exclusive Iron Vulture hauler.

• Introduced a number of significant memory usage optimisations.
• Fixed an issue that caused base parts to pop in after loading.
• Improved the speech audio of the Assembled Construct on the Space Anomaly..
• Improved the audio for planetary titan worms.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent the Space Anomaly from playing its warp-in effects.
• Significantly improved the visual effects around the Space Anomaly’s Prime Terminal.
• Fixed an issue that caused distorted Travellers to pop in when interacting with Unknown Graves.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the crafting page to use incorrect text when attempting to build an object while lacking sufficient resources.
• Fixed an issue that allowed markers belonging to separate resources to be merged together when part of the same clump.
• Fixed a rare issue that could allow damaged technology to appear in the list of refinable items.
• Planets with synthetic or robotic creatures will now report this information in the “Fauna” category of their data readout.
• The purchase UI screen has been tweaked to improve clarity when the current item is unaffordable.
• Fixed a number of rare issues where incorrect rewards were listed in the UI or in the interaction prompt.

• Fixed an issue that prevented the Atlas Path from appearing in the Collected Knowledge section of the catalogue.
• Fixed some misleading mission instructions in the They Who Returned mission while in an uninhabitable star system.
• Fixed a number of rare mission blockers that could occur while reloading a save in the middle of space combat.
• Fixed a number of rare blockers in A Trace Metal related to Tethys’ interactions.
• Added a catalogue guidance mission for Atlantideum.
• Improved mission text clarity in the event that a player travels a significant distance away from their current mission target.
• Fixed a rare issue that could add an “ON PLANET” label to the Atlas Station’s marker.
• Fixed a number of minor text issues.

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