OK, apologies if this is a worn topic; I’m fairly new to the game and still discovering things.

Early on when I was learning my way around space stations, I found that room off the side of the technology merchants’ area, with a little hallway leading to a locked door that said “AltasPass v3 Required”. My interest was piqued. I eventually found the recipe for an AtlasPass v3 and saw that it needed Emeril. So I looked up Emeril and found that it can only be found on planets around green stars, and that required a special update to my ship’s hyperdrive. Now I was really interested! Something that takes that much work must have an interesting reward, right?

So I eventually got my hyperdrive upgraded, visited a green star, found an Emeril deposit on a planet, and mined it. Crafted my pass, and I was good to go.

The next station I visited, I ran straight to that door, opened it, and… WTF? A hydroponics garden? That’s it?

I felt a bit like Ralphie in A Christmas Story when he finally decoded his Ovaltine message. Is that really all there is to this room? Does the AtlasPass v3 have other uses?

No complaints here, it pushed me to explore a little more which is part of the point of this game. I just thought it was a little weird to have to go to so much trouble for such a pointless room.

I saw a recent comment from a newbie saying they didn’t know what an expedition was or why they’d want to play in one. I think we, as a community, may have started assuming too much context and should explain ourselves.

So TL;DR: An expedition is a game mode where you start a new save from scratch and participate in a series of challenges that lead to rewards you can share with all of your saves. Unlike the normal game, you do this in the same systems as everyone else playing the expedition!

The rest of this is not a guide to any particular expedition, but will give new players a sense of how you interact with one. Feel free to comment with non-PC control options or corrections.

You start an expedition when one is active by selecting “Play Game” and then “New Game” from the main menu. One of the options on the New Game screen is “Community Expedition.”

Once you start, you get the usual starting sequence and you follow the on-screen instructions until you get into the game itself.

Expeditions start on a specific planet. Everyone starts there and as usual your first mission is typically to find and repair your ship. But from there, you are led by a series of expedition challenges. There are some number of phases to the expedition and each phase has a set of milestones you must accomplish. Once you accomplish each of the milestones in a phase you get a reward that will be sharable with your other saves, even the non-expedition ones!

You find these milestones by pressing Escape and then going to the “Expedition” tab in the menu. You’ll see a jagged line through a number of phases, with each of the systems showing the milestone achievements you need to complete in order to finish the final step (don’t forget that there’s the final achievement for having done all of the previous ones in a particular system. This will give you the permanent rewards you can share with other saves (in gold text).

Here’s what an expedition looks like.

Each phase has a “rendezvous” associated with it which is another star system you have to get to and find a specific point of interest. This is very much like any mission you may have gotten in the normal game that involved a location. You will get an approximate location (make sure you have selected the milestone you want so it shows up) and when you get there, your scanner will help you narrow down the location.

Usually the rendezvous is in a place that helps you accomplish the milestones that are in the same phase. So if you need eggs from some creature, for example, they will be available either on the same planet as the rendezvous from the same phase or nearby.

Ultimately, when you finish the whole series of phases, you get a final phase that’s just a free “you did all the things” to complete the expedition and claim the final prizes.

Why should you do it?

Expeditions aren’t for everyone, but the rewards are pretty compelling. They’re often things like a ship or freighter or companion that is unique and may even make some of the regular game a bit easier.

You claim your prizes on other saves by going to the Quicksilver vendor in the Space Anomaly. If you don’t know what that is yet, keep going and you’ll get there. It’s pretty early in the main game. Once you get there, you will find a merchant close to where your ship lands who has a “claim expedition rewards” dialogue option.

Can I do it with friends?

Absolutely! Having shared goals on the same planets makes it really easy to share the experience with others.

Is this a PVP thing?

Players can attack other players if you have PVP turned on. Obviously with expeditions happening in the same systems, this is a big deal, but you can turn off PVP at any time. Just go to the settings in Options -> Network and turn off “Allow PVP with…” if that’s not your jam. Keep in mind that this is reset for each new save, so you will want to do this as the start of a new expedition.

When is the next one?

There are a series of shorter expeditions happening right now. Check out: https://www.nomanssky.com/2022/11/holiday-2022-expeditions/