After almost 900 hours of play time I decided to start a new game in Survival Mode.

The wiki details are pretty sparse (https://nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/Game_mode#Survival_mode) , but basically what I’ve seen comes down to a few changes:

1. You die you lose your carried stuff
2. Your inventory stacks are severely limited
3. Planet resources are further apart
4. Enemies have more health
5. (anecdotal) Planets are set up to kill you

One – This is reasonable, especially if you die (like I did) early in the game in space.

Two – This also includes the amount you can place in refiners. This is just annoying and time consuming. Nothing about this is harder or “survival”, just gets in the way. It makes the game much more boring, as you end up feeding the refiners constantly rather than setting them and coming back a little later.

Three – Again, more annoying and time-consuming but not harder. You can still find the resources you need, but takes more hunting to find the resource you need near enough to a power hotspot. More boring.

Four – Good. No objection. They may have increased the number of enemies (for pirate raids or Sentinels), but I don’t think that’s actually happened. Seems about the same. I think more enemies is a much greater risk than greater health, as they have an easier time targeting you while you’re focused on picking them off.

Five – This SEEMS to be the case but I may just have bad luck. Every single planet I’ve been on has had weather or environmental damage at play. However, I’ve only encountered one seriously aggressive predator (a very fast bonecat) in about 30 hours of play though.

Summary: I think Survival could use some work. Adding difficulty doesn’t have to come along with making the game slower or less enjoyable. There’s a few tweaks I’ve hinted at above that could improve playability and fun.

Change my mind 🙂

There is a famous solar system in Euclid (11FFEAF8879) in which any derelict freighter run will produce S class freighter upgrades.
The system is therefore FULL of bases and at any one time there are probably 5 or 6 people in the system.

Most people will come into the system, buy a scanner from the scrap dealer (at quite a high cost) and then go and run the freighter themselves.
You know the feeling, you’re alone on a dark empty freighter in the freezing cold, opening boxes and fighting random aliens and faulty security drones. In a little world of your own.

I had an idea. I’d sit near a planet looking at the space station. When I see a person come out of the station I wait for the ‘this user has found something in deep space’ message, then I’d warp to their location.. Wait for them to go in and then join them.
There they are opening boxes.. I run past them and go straight to engineering, get the module, teleport out and leave.

When I did this the first time.. I actually went and stood in front of the guy and jumped up and down expecting them to at least try and shoot me. They were clearly surprised to see me, but they didn’t shoot me so I went and got the module from engineering and left.
At the time I didn’t know if this would prevent them from getting the module (it doesn’t). But I didn’t care it was a bit of fun.

I do this all the time now. I don’t bother buying a scanner.. I just warp to every spot in deep space that shows an active player, and run and get the module.
Not a single once (I’ve done it over 20 times) has a player ever shot at me. Though most times I just run right by them, some never even notice me.

Everyone should do it.. it’s hilarious 🙂
And it’s harmless, the player who bought the scanner still gets everything they went for. Plus they get the heart racing moment of being confronted out of the blue by another real human 🙂