A bit of a vague title, but the truth nonetheless. I got in to No Man’s Sky somewhat late; a couple of expansions dropped, the tide already turned. No Man’s Sky was seen as a decent game, lots was achieved after launch.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun! The first couple of hours were mesmerizing, and I was excited to see what was to come. Fast forward about 50-60 hours, and I was already kind of done with the game. I was earning millions of units with an Activated Indium farm, something that was recommended to me by the many YouTube ‘guide’ videos surrounding this game. I had reloaded a Freighter battle almost 50 times and achieved a Capital S-Class Freighter. I had a massive farm that I used for nanites. I was maxing out my inventory and I finished building somewhat of a base.

Now what? That was the question I had, and it never really went away. Somehow I felt as if I didn’t really ‘complete’ the game, but I also no longer had a goal to work towards. I was earning an absurd amount of units, with nothing to really spend it on. I no longer had any motivation to engage in the vast majority of the systems the game had laid out, because why would I? The rewards gained from exploration were not worth it, I wouldn’t gain anything from it.

I briefly played on both a hardcore and a permadeath save, but after getting the associated achievements, I realized that the changes these game modes provided were not the changes I was looking for. If anything, they seemed detrimental somehow; on top of not having a goal once I set up a few farms somewhere, I now also had to fight a limited inventory system for naught but a level of tedium. If this was No Man’s Sky but difficult, I realized that I did not desire ‘difficulty’ in this game.

I stopped having fun, so I stopped playing.

Then, some time later, I realized that I messed up. I realized that No Man’s Sky, for all of its faults, is not meant to be min/maxed, at least, not for me. I hopped into the game again, determined to go against what I normally do in games like these. This time, I did not rush any sort of farm for mass units and nanites. I did not hop around systems to find the perfect S-Class Freighter. I did not look up any ship catalogues, or teleporter coordinates for valuable exotics or multi-tools. I even started roleplaying my traveler a little bit.

Man, what a world of difference. Suddenly, I find myself having something to work towards constantly. No longer do I skip over 90% of the content in the game because it’s ‘not valuable enough’. I get excited when I find a cool treasure that’s worth a lot of units, or when I find a crashed freighter somewhere. It’s fun to scour planets and systems alike for valuable targets, resources, and settlements.

This might sound totally obvious to a lot of you, but I can’t begin to tell you the epiphany I had when I started playing the game like this. This is what No Man’s Sky is meant to be. It’s not a space economy simulator, it’s a space exploration game. And though that is apparent everywhere in the game, it somehow took me over a year to realize that.

So to all of you who got bored with the game due to a lack of goals, or because making money/nanites etc. is ‘too easy’, try a different approach. Maybe you shouldn’t go for an Activated Indium farm. Maybe it’s best to delete that generous gift from some player in the Anomaly that’s worth millions upon millions. I’ve learned that when I try to game No Man’s Sky, I simply end up gaming myself out of tens, if not hundreds of hours of fun.

See you Space Cowboys…

1. Multi-tool cases to store all the multi-tools we find in the wild. Great for a weapon workshop builds or just decoration.
2. Animal rooms: Rooms where we put an egg and a pet spawns inside. Could be options for multiple sizes and maybe multiple ecosystems. Bonus points if it’s also available in the freighter. Extra Bonus points for actual aquariums (like in subnautica for example)
3. Animal beacons: a small device where we put an egg and a pet spawns and lives around it, the beacons can have multiple radius from 5 units to 200 or more. Allows for more versatility than the animal rooms. Great for Jurassic parks, zoo or reserves type of builds.
4. Storage landing pads: act as containers, not actual landing pads. You store any one of your ships in it and it is displayed on it until you pick it up. Could be built inside, as a garage for example. The ship stored isn’t part your ship roaster anymore but can be reclaimed from the storage pad if needed.
5. Ship miniaturizer : an alternative to the storage landing pad: you put one of your ship in it and it generates a model version of the ship. This model version can then be placed around your base. put the model version back in the miniaturizer to restore the ship and claim it.

extra idea: mannequins to display the various customization we can make to our exosuits. Could act as an extension of the appearance modifier.

I remembered being extremely excited when No Man’s Sky was set to release. I preordered the game and was hooked from the get go. I played the heck out of the base version, did pretty much everything you could back then and just sorta moved on to other games as you do.

Fast forward a few years and I recently decided to dive back in again, this time on the PS5 and I’m just blown away by the amount of content this game has received since launch. Back then there wasn’t all that much to do really looking back. I’ve been trying my hand at various activities, freighters, settlements and stuff.

I remembered it being a LOT easier to get credits from mining though lol. I recently had a streak of good luck though. I spent a few hours mining and managed to get about 8 million credits. Came across a system with an S Class Multi-tool Rifle and then I only had 3 million credits left 🤣.

I pulled in to the anomaly last night, left to go cook dinner, came back and saw that someone had given me stuff. After doing some research online I found out that the 5 “Stasis Device” they had given me were worth a fortune! Thanks random person! Yes I was still flying my Radiant Pillar since I hadnt changed ships yet.

A few hours later, I’m system hopping to look for a new ship and I’ll be blown away if an Exotic doesn’t land right in front of me. Wasn’t cheap but now I’ve got an S Class Multi-tool and Ship. Now the grind begins to upgrade everything. I’m going to be playing for a long while I think. See you out in the stars!

P.S How good does Light No Fire look? I’ll be jumping on that when it drops 😀