Hello, all! It’s good to be back and posting. I got back from visiting my friends pretty late last night, and there was a lot of driving that I had to do to get back, so I ended up crashing in bed before I could get online! I was really itching to play today, though, and got on pretty much as soon as I got home from work, and binged a few hours of game-time. Lots of really exciting stuff happened today, and I’m truly glad to have so many fine people following along on my journey! I’ll likely say this every time, but seriously, thank you all so much for your support. I make sure to read every comment and message, and I’m glad that my writing has been able to help so many other people.

​

Today, I was a spaceman on a mission. I was going to get off-planet and finally explore this system. Looking up from the irradiated ground of Az Kaban, I searched the skies, looking for any heavenly bodies, but my efforts remained fruitless. Oddly enough, there ended up being several other planets in my star system, but I just happened to be at the right place on my planet to not be able to see any of them! I cobbled together a Portable Refiner and began to refine the materials to repair my ship, and also mined some Uranium from the rocks around my makeshift campsite, as I figured out that I could use it to fuel part of my ship, in a pinch. After a few minutes of work, I had my launch thrusters repaired, and set off into the final frontier.

​

And man, this game doesn’t disappoint. This wasn’t my first time experiencing space travel in this game, as I did play it a bit on launch, so I had an idea of what to expect, but the view was still incredibly breathtaking. There were several other planets floating somewhat close-together far in the distance, and one of them even had rings, which I’ll get back to later in this journal. A strange transmission came across my screen, directing me to a crashed satellite on a nearby Hyperborean planet. After activating my pulse engine (the third person view of this is seriously insane. WOW!), and a few seconds of travel, I landed on the planet. The original name of the planet was “Nokaric,” and I honestly thought that sounded really cool, so I went ahead and registered that as the permanent name. Despite the temperature being colder than -50 degrees Celsius, Nokaric was an incredibly beautiful world. I’ve always appreciated the stark beauty of winter, and this planet demonstrates multiple aspects of winter quite well. At night, the world is a place of calm, dark blue hues and gentle winds, and during the day, the ground is bright and almost shining in the sunlight, and small hints of life peak through the snow.

​

I adventured around the planet for a good while, finding some old boxes and gear, scanning the flora and fauna of the planet, and eventually made my way to a crashed satellite, which the mysterious signal had directed me to. I gained some new technology from this satellite, one of which was the Base Computer! I had heard that the base building in this game was pretty extensive, and I was really looking forward to building my own base (or two!) in this universe. I saved the plans for later, and after some more exploring, found a hyperdrive upgrade module in another crashed satellite a few hills over. This looks really valuable, so I’m saving it for later in case I want to use it on a better ship. I learned some of the Korvax language from a weird stone tablet I found also. I wonder if they can get that on Duolingo?

​

Anyhow, I finally left Nokaric to check out the other worlds in my star system. I landed next on a very rainy planet – the system called it an “Endless Morass.” Not entirely sure what it means, but the planet was seriously cool. High cliffs and small flora made this planet feel like I was on perhaps one of the British Isles, and the rain and fog definately contributed to that feeling. I ended up naming this planet as “Naiadia,” after the greek name for their river goddesses, due to how much water there was on the planet. I also met my first real alien on this planet! Shortly after entering the atmosphere, I noticed a metal structure similar to ones I had seen before. They even had a landing pad, which I ended up using to dock my ship. When I went inside, there was a Korvax manning a technology blueprint stand, as well as his friend, who was moving about inside the base, tending to the plants and making sure the technology was all in working order. After a poor attempt at conversation, my new Korvax friends sold me a blueprint for a teleport receiver (I think), and I sold my cobalt and some other goods to the galactic trade module embedded in the far wall of the station. The rain was absolutely tanking my framerate, however, so I went on my way after not too long.

​

The last thing I did today was stop at the ringed planet. This was a garden planet, with sunshine, grass, forests, cliffs, and beaches that looked like something out of Super Mario Sunshine. An incredibly gorgeous place, truly. I soon learned that the local wildlife was not as friendly to me as on other planets, as some medium sized animals soon began to make their presence known. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like they travel in packs, so I never had to worry about more than one chasing me at a time. I snapped a lot of pictures here. I ended up ending my adventures for the day here, after naming the planet Alethia. The word is greek for “truth,” I think, which I find appropriate in some ways to my own personal journey, outside of the game. That, and I think it sounds really pretty anyhow. I plan on exploring the rest of the planets in the system next time, and hopefully choosing one to build my base on. I think I would eventually like to build bases on all of the planets in my star system (yes, even Az Kaban), just to really make it feel more like home, but we’ll see. If you’re still with me, thanks for reading along!

​

​

Leaving Az Kaban for good (Look at the cool patterns on the surface!)

First glimpse of other planets

Haha starship go brrrrrr

On approach to Nokaric

A stunning vista

Found this weird bear-ish animal wandering around Nokaric

A fleet of starships above a frozen sky

Higher Education

Good Morning, Nokaric!

Some green peeks through the snow

No way this is a natural formation, right?

Naiadia from above. Lots of valleys on this one

My Korvaxian friend! 🙂

Some of the fauna of Naiadia (Formerly Dustil Prime, I guess)

Another shot of the rest of the planets in the star system

Alethia from above

From the ground

Potential base location? (Ignore the bad water, my computer is a toaster)

These are some of the things I’ve discovered while playing, as well as information I’ve gathered from browsing and lurking this sub, among other places. Hopefully they’ll be useful to others.

General

• To cover more ground faster, do a forward melee attack before jumping: it’ll keep your momentum as long as you keep moving forward.
• Your own plasma grenade CAN one shot kill you.
• Extreme weather goes away after a number of real-time minutes. If you pause the game and come back after ~5 minutes, the storm will clear;
• Your hazard protection won’t drop while you are in Build Mode -> Free Camera. Sentinels can still see and hurt you.
• Whenever the game counts you as “inside a building” (no longer losing life support, restoring hazard protection), sentinels drones will completely stop attacking you and lose sight of you. Bigger sentinels, such as Quads, might still attack.
• If you are within your base, you can build several “open rooms” of 4 archways + one roof (or floor as roof) which can act as a shelter from sentinels and weather and still have ample line of sight for everything around you.
• Atlas Cylinders (the red ones often found around settlements) often have Antimatter and Antimatter housing.
• The rooms that an Atlas V3 pass opens inside space stations often has just a bunch of plants for carbon and some ammo boxes. Not worth the effort
• Keeping a stack of Uranium is usually better than carrying Starship Launch Fuel around
• Activated version of star metals (Copper, Cadmium, Emeril and Indium) are never used for any recipes. They’re only useful for selling or refining into Chromatic Metal.
• A ship’s Economy Scanner can also be used to look for planetary Trading Posts.
• If you sell stuff to pilots that arrive in Space Stations, it won’t affect the star system’s prices. This is very useful for Hardcore and Permadeath modes, where you’re more likely to take Active Indium all over your exosuit, ship and freighter.
• These pilots that stop by Space Stations can offer any of the specific weather elements (Pyrite, Phosphorus, Dioxite, Parafinum), Pugneum, Chromatic Metal, as well as Alloy Metals (dirty bronze, magno-gold, etc). How much they have depends on the system’s economy level.
• Although selling to these pilots won’t affect the prices of the star system, their inventories are affected by the prices shown at the Space Station. You can, for instance, crash Metal Plate prices down to -80% at the trade terminal and buy full stocks off the pilots for the same -80% discount
• On that note, waiting around a 3-star economy space station is the fastest way to fill up your inventory with Metal Plates, if you ever need more for your mining farms.
• Pilots that land on planets often have one or two of the 6 plants used for crafting super expensive things.
• Do NOT attempt to crash the prices of Wiring Looms, Microprocessors or pretty much anything else that’s expensive and ready to buy out of a Space Station’s trade terminal. Wiring Looms’ base prices are 50k/25k buy/sell. For Microprocessors, it’s 19k/2k. Launch Fuel is 40k/450
• Markets are usually fully restocked after 2 hours of real time.
• Crashed markets take over 24 real time hours to recover.
• You can transform Units into Nanites via Outlaw Space Stations. The illegal goods sellers there always have a number of Suspicious Packets (Technology) and (Weaponry). While it’s not a 100% chance they’ll drop X mods, the chance is very high.
• These Outlaw sellers often stock Larval Eggs and Hadal Cores, which you can refine into 50 nanites each. Having a number of these outlaw stations ready to visit can be very good for your nanite account.

Mission stacking

• If you are too far away from where a mission is supposed to happen, you can reset it and it’ll most likely point to a planet within your current star system. This is best done in systems with 2 planets.
• The Scan (Minerals/Fauna/Flora) and Take a Photo of X missions can stack. If you reset them while in a small system, you’re more likely to get all of them for a single planet.
• All the “Kill” missions (sentinels, fauna, monstrosities, pirates), as well as the “feed animals” missions can stack and will count for completion simultaneously, no matter which system or planet you kill/feed the things. If you have 3 “Kill 1 predator” missions active at the same time, as soon as you kill 1, all 3 will complete.

Money money money

• Starting out fresh, mining for Cobalt might be the first bit of easy money you can get. Find a cave and mine away. Once you can build your first Medium Refiner, you just need to buy Oxygen and put both on the refiner.
• Oxygen is a “universal multiplicator”. Stick it + any of the following elements in a refiner to get more of said element: Condensed Carbon, Ionized Cobalt, Chlorine.
• If you have access to plenty of Trituim and Dihydrogen, you can use them to craft Frigate Fuel. The return of investment is usually around 100x, as both elements are extremely cheap and 50tonnes has a base sale price of 20k
• Planetary trading posts might have Drop Pod Coordinate Data for sale. You’ll notice that these are always sold at ~33% discount. You can immediately sell them at any space station for a hefty profit. With enough inventory space and Teleport-saved trading posts, you can even crash the drop pod markets of several systems before selling it all to a space station. Combine this with the time it takes for economies to recover and you can spend a good day hopping back and forth for immense profits.
• A Cactus plantation on a desert planet is one of the easiest, lowest maintenance and time consuming ways to get lots of money. Each cactus yields 150-180 Cactus Flesh. With 200, you can craft one Unstable Gel, which has a base selling price of 50k. This makes each planted cactus worth roughly 35-40k
• You can always visit other players’ activated indium or whatever else farms. If they’ve uploaded their base, they want other players to drop by and get the stuff, because they no longer need it themselves. They want to help you and others.
• Mining machines work on a diminishing returns math. The overall yield drops among all miners the more you put around the spot.
• Minor Settlements NPC sellers usually have 1 or more advanced materials that you have to otherwise craft yourself, such as Semiconductors or Nitrogen Salts.

Making upgrades better

• If you put similar upgrades next to each other, they gain a small bonus (10%) to their efficacy. A +5% damage for your Infra-Knife besides another said upgrade will make both give you +5.5%, for a total of +11% damage.
• You can only have 3 nanite bought upgrades of the same thing (shield, specific weapon) per tab. You can, for instance, install 3 shield upgrades on your General exosuit tab, plus another 3 on the Technology tab.
• Crafted upgrades do not count for the above maximum. They still count for giving the proximity bonus.
• Any upgrades that are in the General tab of your ship can be damaged by Black Hole jumping. Any upgrades in the Tech tab of your ship and exosuit are always safe from being damaged.