Well, I finally went and did it. I’m among the 0.7% of NMS players on Steam who journeyed to the center of Euclid in Permadeath mode.

Since I did all of last year’s Expeditions when they came out, I decided to make my own expedition-like experience – earning the “To Live Forever” achievement. The first hour or so was worrying. There were some close calls here and there. But my main impression of the Permadeath mode was annoyance:

• I kept hitting the inventory limitations even after setting up a base and freighter.
• Trying to mine guaranteed a Sentinel spawning nearby and getting big mad at my audacity.
• Pirates showing up and offering to free up inventory slots by taking my stuff every other time I went into space.

My chosen method was to go up the main story/quest line. It’s been a long time and the changes Hello Games made to it since the days of yore were interesting to see. I also took the opportunity to make some different choices this time around. It turns out that everybody is remarkably chill with letting Artemis die.

In the end, I reset the simulation and I found myself on an extreme radioactive planet in another galaxy with a bunch of broken gear. I struggled for a moment, but since I was planning on deleting my Permadeath save anyway, I calmly waited and let it self-wipe.

Going back to my legacy save and seeing the vast expanses of inventory space was like booting up a whole different game.