No Man's Sky recently released on Xbox One, and players are excited to experience the complexity, scale, and detail that its randomly-generated worlds offer. However, before exploring at will, you'll need to survive the perils of your starting planet long enough to repair your ship. We made a full beginner's guide to help you get through most early obstacles, but there are some other things you should be prepared for, too. See on Amazon See on Microsoft Use what your ship offers you It's tempting to immediately venture far from your starting point, but your best bet is to stick close to your ship as long as you can. Though it's functionally nothing but a piece of scrap since it needs extensive repairs, that doesn't mean it can't be used as shelter. Violent wildlife, relentless storms, and a toxic atmosphere are all serious threats early on in No Man's Sky, but hiding in your ship gives you a way to hide from or avoid all three. VPN Deals: Lifetime license for $16, monthly plans at $1 & more Let the environment work for you<doc-sep>No Man's Sky is finally getting the second chance that it deserves. NEXT delivered a massive amount of improvements last year, and with Beyond it just keeps getting better. The game notably suffered a controversial initial launch on PS4 in 2016 after its marketing promises didn't live up to the final product, but its comeback story is one for the ages. Whether you're just jumping into No Man's Sky for the first time or have been here since the beginning, you may be confused as to where to begin now. Here are some tips to get you started on your journey. Engage No Man's Sky Take to the stars No Man's Sky is an ambitious space exploration sim from Hello Games. With the most recent updates, you can catalogue uncharted life on foreign worlds, build a home base with your friends and more. The sky isn't the limit anymore. $30 at Amazon First or third person Such a simple aspect can make a world of difference. Your game might start you out in third person by default, but should you want to change your camera view, here's how: VPN Deals: Lifetime license for $16, monthly plans at $1 & more Press down on the D-pad. Scroll to Utilities all the way to the left, then select it by pressing up on the D-pad. Once the secondary menu opens up, find Toggle camera view. The same can be done while in your starship. You're all alone on a strange planet. What to do first? No Man's Sky features a nearly limitless amount of procedurally generated planets (18 quintillion, to be exact) so it's impossible for me to guess what hazards you'll face immediately after beginning your game. Will it be toxic rain? Oppressive heat? Radiation? The possibilities are endless, and that's what makes jumping in so intimidating. It's easy to think you'll get screwed by starting out on a bad planet if you're unlucky. And considering the amount of planets there are, there's a good chance you just end up in a dump. But fear not! There are quick and simple solutions. Unless you're jumping into its Creative mode, I recommend starting on its Normal mode. Once you're set onto a planet, you'll immediately know what hazards you are dealing with. Gather Materials You might want to charge up your Hazard Protection System when the game tells you its shields are falling, but your first order of business should actually be searching for Ferrite Dust. Before wandering around aimlessly, search for small rocks near you. These may look different on every planet, but they're easy to spot. You'll use your multi-tool mining beam to gather Ferrite Dust from these. After you gather enough Ferrite, which takes less than a couple of minutes, you can repair your Scanner. This may be the point where you'll want to acquaint yourself with the game's menus, but if you're saving that for later, simply drag your cursor over the Scanner in the multi-tool menu where you view your resources and repair it as prompted. Charge equipment The bottom left of your screen displays two bars for life support and your exosuit's Hazard Protection System. Near the beginning of your journey, the latter will be your most pressing matter between the two. Go into your inventory again and find your Hazard Protection Shielding (this should be in one of the first slots in the first row). Hover over it and information will pop up telling you what resources charge that specific item. With your Scanner now fully repaired, you can press the left thumbstick to scan your environment. Symbols will then appear denoting the elements that can be found within range of your Scanner. If you need to charge it with Sodium, for instance, you'll see a waypoint with the symbol Na. The same steps can be followed to charge your mining beam. See what elements it needs to charge, scan your environment, and follow the waypoints to your destination. The gameplay loop in this regard is very cyclical and involves gathering resources frequently. When you eventually make your way to your crashed starship (the Scanner will detect this the first time you use it), you'll need to find even more complicated elements and craft different materials to get it back up and running. Don't instigate fights This sounds like common sense, but don't start fights you're not ready for. You're already at a disadvantage when starting out and it's easy to get overwhelmed by enemies who could have been avoided. You might see some robotic Sentinels scanning the area. Don't attack, just stay out of their way! If you kill one, reinforcements will follow. And if you haven't gathered enough materials to charge your tools, you'll be outmatched. Your HUD should warn you when an enemy is near so you can avoid them. Acquaint yourself with its menus They're dense, but important. No Man's Sky is almost a test in micromanagement skills. No Man's Sky contains various menus for your inventory, missions, discoveries, guide, options, and more. Unless you're interested in the more granular details of your journey or want a more in-depth guide, stick with the menu that displays Exosuit, Starship, and Multi-Tool for now— though the Guide will be useful should you need more specific help regarding its gameplay. It's within these menus that you'll spend the most time during the opening hours of No Man's Sky. This is where you'll see what resources you have available, what can be crafted, and what can be repaired. All of the symbols may look overwhelming, but I promise they're not. Tame and ride creatures No Man's Sky Beyond now lets you tame, ride, harvest, and milk alien creatures that you see out in the wild. So why not give it a whirl? In order to do so, you'll need to use your analysis visor to analyze the creatures to find out which type of bait they prefer. Then it's just up to you to harvest the correct materials and feed them the appropriate bait. Not all creatures can be mounts — like those obviously too small — and you won't be able to take them off-world. Recover lost items If you do find yourself meeting an untimely demise, you can still recover your lost items. A waypoint will pop up on-screen labelled "Grave." Just follow the waypoint until you're at the site where you died and you can gather any items you lost. The good news about dying early on is that there isn't much at stake and you're not losing a lot of progress. Start all over Worse comes to worst and you hate your starting planet? Create a new save file and you'll be plopped onto a whole new one. You have several save files so you can keep doing this as long as you'd like until you're on a planet you're comfortable with. Creative mode Don't be afraid to start in Creative mode to get a better feel for the controls and gameplay before diving into the deep end. A lot of "hardcore" gamers tend to scorn the idea of easier modes, but there's nothing wrong with wanting less of a challenge so you can enjoy a game. You're all set! No Man's Sky Beyond also brings VR support and full-fledged multiplayer, so go forth and have fun! If you have any other tips, let us know in the comments.<doc-sep>No Man’s Sky Next is here, and it is big. Let’s say you, like us, stopped following the Atlas Path a couple years ago. And let’s also say that you, like us, are ready to dust off your Gek-to-Traveler dictionary and get back to exploring the universe. With everything new that’s been added in the last couple years — let alone everything added with Next — it’s an intimidating proposition to just jump back in. So consider this your re-beginner’s guide. It’s still the same game at its heart, but … You probably still understand the basics of No Man’s Sky — or it’ll come back to you pretty quickly — and nothing about the core of the game has really changed. Your backpack is still too small, your spaceship doesn’t have enough trunk space, and you’re always running out of resources. You’ll still spend a lot of your time shooting rocks with a ray gun. But it’s become much more than it was. If you haven’t revisited No Man’s Sky in a couple years, Next will feel almost like a new game. There are freighters and bases and teleporters and all new resources. If it’s been long enough and you try to hop back into an old save, you’ll even notice that all of your technology — modules and upgrades — are outdated and useless. So what’s a Traveler to do? Let the game guide you No Man’s Sky Next is full of new resources (with new uses), new upgrades, and new mechanics. The fastest way to learn them is to just start a new game. The game will walk you through (most of) the new things you need to know as you get your ship off the ground — similar to, but changed from the original version of this task — and teach you the basics of the new controls and mechanics. When you get to space, you’ll get a message from a fellow Traveler named Artemis. (If you don’t want to start an entirely new game, watch for the message from Artemis — he’ll contact you when you go to space for the first time.) Following Artemis’ story will bring you into contact with a lot of the games other new mechanics. So what’s so different? Let’s talk about some of the biggest changes you’ll see when you come back to No Man’s Sky. (Not all of these are new with the Next update.) Planets and minerals Planets are no longer just two elements and some crystals. You’ll find multiple elements — sometimes even within the same minerals. And you’ll be able to scan for the elements each planet has from space. Recharging No Man’s Sky has always had some sort of recharging mechanic, and you still need to pump fuel into your ship’s engine and recharge the batteries in your mining laser. But now, there’s a much quicker way to do that. Pressing down on the D-pad brings up the Recharge Equipment menu, letting you power back up everything from your suit to your multi-tool to your ship with just a few button presses. Refining When you’re selecting what to use to recharge your gear, you’ll notice that you have a few options. For example, you can recharge your mining laser with (raw) carbon, condensed carbon, or phosphorus. Mostly, these are just a span of common to rare elements (or more complicated-to-craft items), but there’s a twist to it. Sticking with our carbon example, you gather raw carbon from plants, but you can also refine it yourself into condensed carbon. And you’ll want to do this because a more refined element (or harder-to-craft item) is a more efficient power source — it takes much less condensed carbon to charge your mining laser than raw carbon. Pressing up on the D-pad brings up a menu where you can choose from several portable technology items to build (this is also the menu that you’ll do your base building from). The most important item here is the portable refiner. You’ll build it, charge it up with carbon and process elements through it. You’ll use it to turn raw elements into better power sources or break down items into more useful raw elements. Currencies There are three currencies in No Man’s Sky now. You still have your basic credits. You’ll use these in the Galactic Trade Network and to buy ships just like you used to. But Next also has a currency called Nanite Clusters (these were added back in the Pathfinder update in early 2017, but let’s assume you, like us, didn’t know that). Nanite Clusters are your dedicated upgrade currency (see Technology Merchants below). You’ll earn Nanite Clusters from repairing damaged machinery on planets or collect them out of buildings — originally, this was how you found blueprints for upgrade modules. You might also earn them by completing Missions for a Mission Agent (more on this below) or by uploading your discoveries (this is a great and easy way to earn a ton of Nanite Clusters). You can upload your discoveries from the Discoveries tab in your menu. You can hold down a button to upload each highlighted item individually, or there are buttons to upload all new discoveries at once. There are a couple catches and extra steps, though. You can only upload all fauna, flora, minerals, and one category at a time — you still need to click on each tab. Uploading all system data — the list on the left — does not upload any of the flora, fauna, or mineral information. Space stations The concept of space stations is still basically the same. You can still come here to access the Galactic Trade Network and sell your stuff and shop around for a new ship, but there’s so much more — a lot of the game’s upgrade mechanics have moved here now — that we decided to give space stations their own section. We’re going to break them down into left and right, based on facing the exit of the station — the way your ship is pointing when you get out — like in the image above. Right side The right side of the space station is dedicated to your gear. At the right side, you’ll find a hallway back to a small room. There will be a few NPCs hanging around and a Galactic Trade Network hub. Appearance Modifier All the way to the left side (toward the front of the station), the first thing you’ll come to is the Appearance Modifier. Now that you’ve got the option of a third-person camera, you’re going to have opinions about how you look. The Appearance Modifier will let you change it at any point for free. Technology Merchants Along the wall, you’ll find three Technology Merchants. Their stalls, from left to right, sell technology for your suit, ship, and multi-tool. While there, you’ll spend your Nanite Clusters on either blueprints for upgrade modules or just a one-time use upgrade module. The difference here is that a blueprint will build and rebuild the module as many times as you need to, but you’ll have to collect the necessary resources each time, whereas buying the module outright lets you skip the resource gathering, but you won’t know how to make a new one if you need to. A quick, but important aside: If you walk just a little past the suit technology merchant into his stall, you can interact with the suit hologram. This will let you purchase additional inventory slots for your suit with credits. This is similar to how drop pods used to function. (You can still find drop pods in the game, and they still let you upgrade your suit. Now, though, instead of taking credits, you get the upgrade for free once you complete some very resource-intensive repairs on the drop pod. Those repairs mean that you’re not going to be able to use a drop pod to upgrade your suit for a long time when you’re just starting out.) Left side The left side of a space station is about your relations with the local alien race. It will be full of NPCs to talk to.<doc-sep>
With everything new that’s been added to No Man’s Sky in the last couple years — let alone everything added with Next — it’s an intimidating proposition to just climb back into your spaceship and take off. No Man’s Sky is almost, but not quite, a new game. We talked a lot about what’s new and what has changed in our No Man’s Sky Next rebeginner’s guide, and here we’ll refine that into bite-sized pieces of advice. Don’t force the game to play the way it used to It helps to think of No Man’s Sky Next as a new game, and that means there are new rules. If you come into the update with the same goals and, frankly, baggage as you had a couple years ago, you’re going to end up both confused and frustrated. The game is sometimes a lot more complicated and complex now. Don’t just come to it like it’s an update. Give the game a fresh chance, and let it show you what it can be now. Find new ships A couple years ago, the best way to upgrade to a larger ship was to find a crashed one and fix it up. While you can still find ships this way — and they’re often very good ships — fixing them up has gotten a lot more intense. Not only are the various components broken, but many (most, in our experience) of the inventory slots are taken up with damaged parts. And you can’t use those slots until you complete some extensive and expensive repairs. Instead, we’ve found that it’s a lot more productive to save up a lot of No Man’s Sky Next credits and buy a slightly better ship, then repeat as necessary. It means spending a lot of credits, but credits are easier to come by than thousands of units of chromatic metal, for example. Missions, missions, and more missions Making money in No Man’s Sky Next is — or, at least, feels — slower. The exotic items — things like albumen pearls — are still going to earn you a healthy profit, but we’ve found it a lot harder to earn ship-buying money in Next. Instead of relying on trade or finding exotic goods, the best way to earn credits now is to take on Missions from the Missions Agents on Space Stations. You can see the rewards when you take on the missions, so you can pick and choose what’s going to earn you the most. (Even if you don’t get credits directly, you’ll often get very valuable trade goods as a reward.) And completing these missions often increases your standing with the local race and guilds, giving you even better missions to choose from. A lot of the time (especially early) mission goals will overlap — you’ll find a mission to scan three minerals right along side a mission to scan four minerals. You can do them both at the same time, and that means you can earn as much as a couple hundred thousand credits with 15 minutes or so of work. Buy your way out of problems with upgrade modules Nanite Clusters and the Technology Merchants change the way you’ll approach upgrading your gear. Since you can earn hundreds of Nanite Clusters just from exploring planets and scanning everything you find, this makes upgrades a lot more accessible. If you just purchase the best upgrade module you can afford instead of the blueprints, you don’t have to worry about collecting resources. This will let you install some powerful upgrades early, so you can focus on other things. There’s a lot more to do and that’s both good and bad There was a time when you had to make your own fun in No Man’s Sky. But that’s different now, especially with the Next update. The main storyline will move you along through mechanics, upgrades, and star systems pretty quickly. But there’s also plenty of reason to stick around a system. You can take on missions for the locals to earn money and increase your reputation, you might find a planet full of valuable resources, or maybe you just found a really nice beachfront property where you want to build a base. Navigating Next and having fun is about balancing these two things. You need to make progress into the galaxy to find new stars, planets, and resources, but there’s also value in knowing when to slow down to explore more fully and put down some roots.