I needed cadmium for my first hyperdrive upgrade. I looked online and saw that cadmium was found on planets that orbit red stars. I opened the galaxy map and swapped filters to get a nice black background instead of the hazy red nebula that I was in to help me spot red stars. Every time I flew to a red star, it wouldn’t be red. Time after time after time I would warp and sigh because it wasn’t what I was looking for. For 4 hours over 2 days I searched for a red star. I found every color imaginable and saw some very cool planets, but no cadmium. I thought that maybe the systems were color coded in a different way so I googled how to find red stars in No Man’s Sky. There were no helpful results. Because nobody else had been so stupid.

After 5 hours searching I realized that I had been flipping the filter to “lifeform” to get rid of the red haze which changed the colors of the stars. According to the Steam achievement I ended up warping to more systems than 84% of players ever had. When I left the filter off I found cadmium on my first try.

I don’t even know how to feel. I’m glad I got cadmium but I am reconsidering if I’m cut out for space exploration.

In terms of game mechanics, I know it’s an unreasonable anxiety, but I can’t help but think if I was in this game for real, I would NOT trust the teleporter in a barely functional space station no matter which direction I was going.