I will preface this by saying if we had the option between single/multi-biomes and some of you played with and actually liked the multi-biomes, then that’s perfectly fine – it’s all subjective, and just because I know I wouldn’t like it doesn’t mean you wouldn’t, too. My view is from the fact that we DON’T have multi-biomes, and I believe that the majority of people that think they’d want multi-biomes on planets would actually have less enjoyment if they ever got their wish, and here’s why.

Have you ever tried flying around a planet in NMS? I’m not talking about circumnavigating it, I mean flying over rougly every square mile of the planet. And if you actually have, did you ever do it a second time? My guess is that 99% of people are going to say “no” to at least one of those questions. So why is that? Because these planets are large, and doing so would take wayyyy too much time.

I don’t know about you, but I spend more than enough time on individual planets as it is, and if I knew that each planet could have multiple biomes, as an explorer-type gamer, I would want to see each of those biomes because… well, what if one of them is reaalllly cool? That is why most of us go visit a planet, in regular NMS, right? To see what it is offering? After visiting hundreds of planets, I still want to check out almost every planet I come across, even if I only give a planet a few seconds to form my opinion of “eh, this one isn’t very special/new”.

And that’s my main point – with how big planets are, checking out multiple biomes on each one would guarantee adding a bunch of waiting as we pulse over to the next biome. Let’s do some numbers here: Let’s say you have a solar system with 3 planets. In normal NMS, you’d dip into a planet, explore as much as you want, leave, and then pulse to the next planet. That’s gonna be about 3 breaks in between. In the hypothetical multi-biome NMS, if each planet has 2 biomes, then each solar system gets 6 breaks total. 3 biomes would have 9 breaks total, and so on.

TL;DR Abstracting planets into single biomes instead of pursuing realism makes NMS more digestible and fun, because it allows us to immediately judge within seconds of visiting a planet whether we want to spend more time on that planet. If multiple biomes were added, then more than a few minutes of waiting would have to be invested into searching a planet before we even could make the decision that “yep, there’s nothing interesting here, let’s go check the next planet”. And not only would it slow us down in how much time we have to invest in each planet, it would then multiplicatively increase the amount of time spent in each solar system, which is the opposite of the point of the game. They didn’t give us quintillions of planets to explore because they wanted us to spend all our time in each solar system. All that said… if they could give us the option for how many biomes could appear on a planet, then everyone could be happy, and I have no problem if there are some of you that would enjoy what I described above.

This post will be refreshed every few days. The old post are still available for answering questions in those post.

Below are a few popular questions that we’ve received from our past FAQ thread. As always we ask that everyone be respectful and we welcome everyone’s contribution so have fun!

Q- I’m keen to start a new passive money making pursuit. What are some good ideas or guides post-Waypoint?

A#1-Gold farm, then take that stack and sell it at a terminal (not traders) in systems that sell gold. Sell all your gold to the terminal and crash the economy. Then buy it all back at 80% off discount. You just got free money and keep all the gold. All this takes is an initial investment on a gold farm, then you carry all that gold with you and just sell/buy back when you get to another system that sells gold. With 50 stacks in my ship’s cargo hold, I can make somewhere around 150 million units in each system I do this in.

A#2-Start a Farm, Fusion Igniters or Statis Devices Farm which will increase your profits to 100- 200 mil fairly quickly and you can even send out multiple freighter missions which will help you get aronium, magno-gold, Enriched carbon and more which will increase the profits even more.

A#3-Quickest way I’ve found to make a TON of units: Harvesting Storm Crystals. Find a VERY hot planet that has frequent fire storms. DURING STORMS ONLY – you can see the bright white light from Storm Crystals if you fly around low enough. Fly to them, land, quickly harvest them, get back in your ship and fly to the next before you burn up.

Q-How do I get the Advanced Mining Laser? I don’t have the option to craft one, and the multi-tool upgrade vendor at the space station doesn’t have the blueprint for sale.

A-In order to get it, you have to look for the blueprints in crashed ships or abandoned facilities. You get it from the main story (awakenings) or you can buy it on the anomaly.

Q-What do I actually do in the game? I finished the tutorial, is there anything else beside gathering stuff, building a base and repeat?

A#1-It’s really whatever you want, there’s a base story, (assuming you haven’t completed it already), follow the quest log and you’ll figure it out, but things You’d want to do for end game? You can collect multiple multitools, ships, built a fleet for your freighter, etc.

Q-Is there a planet that is populated by many players, and they built their base close to each others like a city?

A- Yeah its the Galactic Hub Project, Its a place where many people have bases and each day the numbers grow. Please help yourself. There are many factions in NMS that do this, even NMS Pirates Hub.

Q-I’m still pretty early into the game, just making my way to the center of the galaxy, what should I be spending my credits on?

A-Go hang around a outlaw/pirate trading post. Cheapest S-class start at around 8-8.5 million without a trade-in. I recommend Vikeen pirate, as then you have two good and 1 remote chances at high-maneuverability S-class: fighter, solar, exotic.

With Light No Fire on the horizon, a repeatedly huge game that will probably get a lot of content updates like NMS has, what do you think will come next for NMS?

Of course, my worry is that they will phase out continued support. But, they have added so much at this point that maybe ceasing continued development will be forgiven. We don’t know when the next game is coming out. Maybe we will see a huge final content update with a gameplay overhaul. Something like fully customizable and buildable ships and freighters, a more in-depth reputation system with the ability to engage in combat with NPC’s, on-foot pirate combat, and world’s with multiple biomes.

Then again, maybe the engine just can’t do these things, so perhaps they will eventually come out with a proper sequel?

I don’t know. But what would you folks like to see from NMS or what do you think Hello Games will add moving forward?