Sigh…imbecile.

I made a joke about collecting an S class shuttle the other day because they are all ugly and no one likes them and everyone is chasing Sentinel ships or classic exotics.

So I was on a Station and an S class shuttle landed. I scanned it and went to talk to the pilot…I have enough to buy it outright…should I? Ah screw it, might as well…

Went about my business, found a dumpy little C class fighter to claim and salvage and went about doing that and default called in my exotic, so I flew it home

So shuffling around a bit, get back to base, call my exotic home, go to call my A-class Hauler home and….not enough launch fuel. WTF. How do I do something so basic and dumb?

Went to a new system to try and spawn the freighter script and nothing. Not too broken up over losing an A class hauler but…it had ALL my crafting mats on it.

I really wish you could beacon your ships and go physically find them. I’m pretty sure what planet I left it on…I think…well, one of two or 3….OOF.

Sucks that I had also just spent half my cash on a joke, the S class shuttle. I guess that’s my new loot mule for now…until I acquire a freighter and call the other one home. I’m mad at myself. I used to be pretty good at this game and my old save has a dozen systems fully mapped, multiple bases, full fleet of S class ships and a well built freighter with frigates and the whole shebang.

I’m determined to do it all again, slow and easy so I don’t get overwhelmed and burned out. I could load it up and pick up where I left off 3+ years ago but meh, I was really having a good time.

Oh…I also, in the last week, got lost in a cave with a new multitool without the terrain digger installed. That was about 45 min of hellish frustration…..

Despite being a Day One player, with several hundred hours on the game (and all expeditions) I never attempted a Permadeath run.

My first day one “clear” was on hard difficulty and, depite the game being very basic at the time, it was challenging and never unfair. I almost always played normal during the years.

I have to confess that the harder difficulty settings of Permadeath is a lot more fun. I don’t mind about the fear of losing the save (I died 7 jumps from the core because I fell down a cliff) both all the balance setting that Permadeath implies. It was about the fact that despite a normal game, the event density (and their variety) is higher even if the difficulty is not so much challenging.

Being chased if you have valuables in the ship is fun, encountering lots of bounties is fun (you can never be sure they will evade or come after you), there’s more variety in fauna attitude towards the player and so on. Having the system patrol ships or the freighter fleets doing something useful is fun. Almost every jump lets you have an event. I completely forgot, for example, that pirates may attempt ground raids. It was so rare in normal difficulty that I was suprised to have 3 raids in a very short game (about 15 jumps, including a black hole hop that brought me at about 4K LY from the core).

The only mildly frustrating element is the material scarcity and the inventory limits (but is mangeable if you know the game very well).

Maybe the only part that is unfair is the starting tutorial. It has the same dilated timing of the normal run but in PD you don’t have time to lose: usually the starting planet is just a deathtrap you struggle to survive due to resource scarcity or very harsh environment. When you regain player agency and can plan your next move carefully and choose the risks when going afterresources in the next planet, everything becomes fun again.

I’m the only one that was surprised by how the permadeath difficulty settings makes the game more enjoyable?