So, inspired by a couple posts I saw about doing this expedition the “hard way” on its original run, I decided to give it a try.
First issue is by avoiding the early dieing milestone, I don’t have the hermetic seal plans. On the other hand, you can buy seals from any minor settlement, so I repaired the manipulator off the bat and started tunneling. Got lucky and stumbled into a cave early on so I milked it for every bit of cobalt it had to make a full stack of Ion batteries. After that I tunneled to my ship, since it was near a monolith POI, and started heading north.
The trick here is that POIs such as minor settlements tend to line up in North-South lines on planets, so going directly north from a known POI increases my chances of finding one. The prep plus the run took a good few hours probably, but I got my seal, and I’d already repaired the launch thrusters before I left the ship so I could call it in on the landing pad and finish the repairs. Hard Part 1 done!
Second issue is the “build a base on an infested world” milestone. Since I didn’t die early, no base computer plans. However, all planets(I think?) have what’s known as “wild base computers” – pre-placed base computers anyone can claim. The kicker is that you can find these using the commercial maps from the space station – they count as a Shelter slot. So, I went and grabbed a whole bunch of nav data from hopping between POIs with save points over on a more hospitable world, grabbed a bunch of maps, then headed to the nearest infested world.
I actually had to go get a second set of maps once, as it kept finding other Shelters first that I had to clear, and I had to mark all the other types of waypoints without clearing them to eliminate them from the selection. Once I found one though(which has a purple base icon like other player bases), I laid down my base and checked off that milestone. Hard part 2 done!
(Quick note here: If you don’t plan to keep the save, delete your base after getting the milestone, or at least once you’ve finished the expedition. If you delete a “wild” base it restores the wild base computer so someone else can use it. There’s still only a limited number of these per planet so be considerate!)
Everything else is no different from a normal run of this expedition, and while I haven’t actually finished it yet, from what I read on those other posts when you finish the final milestone it “kills” you so you still get credit for that leftover milestone back in part 1 without any extra effort. I don’t expect that part to have changed, given it’s plot-relevant.
Main reason I haven’t finished it yet, though the finish line is in sight? I want to get all my memory fragments upgraded, so going to see how far along we get those first. If I want to keep this save around later, having a full set of high end gear would be nice.
One tip in general I’d like to add: one of the anchor planets(or systems at least) has beetles. Tame one! Since they fly, they’re perfect to ride across some of the crazy vertical terrain in this expedition without risking any fall damage. Plus, you can summon them anywhere and don’t have to plop down a geobay or fuel it up(other than via life support). This made some of the regular stuff so much simpler without having to go mole-man(which in itself doesn’t help as much when you have a deep valley to cross).
