Playing multiplayer sessions has injected a fresh boost into my NMS playthrough, I’m now having regular weekly sessions with a friend in the next town over and we’ll often talk though the week about the plan for the next session.

During our last session, my friend was getting tired of flying his ship, but wanted to keep shooting pirates in system. I prefer to fly the ships and don’t have much patience with space combat in this game. So suddenly the idea of the two seater ships enters the conversation – wouldn’t it be cool if that was a thing? After all, we’re usually flying around together making mischief but the idea of a dedicated gunner holds some merit in the context of the multiplayer experience. Maybe this could be possible with something that amounts to a bomber class vessel?

After hundreds of hours in Normal and Survival modes doing the usual money-making and base-building, I decided to try playing the game a different way, what I’m calling scavenger mode in my first Permadeath save.

The main idea is that I will not be doing anything to make money, I will not be buying any items through galactic trade terminals, and I will not be purchasing upgrades from vendors at space stations. I will acquire nearly everything in the wild: mainly by mining and finding things on planets. I can also acquire materials by robbing freighters and sentinel depots, or fighting sentinels or pirates. New ships cannot be bought. They must be obtained by finding crashed or sunken starships and either fixing them up or scrapping them for their upgrades. New multi-tools also cannot be bought. They must be found in the wild, such as in crashed ships or given to me by NPCs.

I have allowed myself to use nanites to buy blueprints at the Anomaly because some of the really useful blueprints are nearly impossible to find in the wild or through the storyline. The only thing I’ve spent units on is exosuit storage slots, although I’ve also acquired many of my slots by finding and fixing drop pods. Essential items such as life support gel and ion batteries must be crafted. I may allow myself to do occasional Nexus missions for difficult to find and uncraftable items like wiring looms.

So far, I’ve been doing pretty well for myself. I have:

1. A nice B-class hopper explorer that I found and fixed up, along with another B-class explorer and hauler that I may fix up as well.

2. After many hours of getting by with my starter multi-tool, an NPC inside a building gave me a new B-class pistol with 21 slots. It was heavily damaged of course, but I’ve been able to fix every damaged piece except for two now.

3. I finally was gifted a decent freighter after a pirate battle: B-class with 30 slots. Just what I needed after struggling to manage materials in my limited exosuit and ship storage.

4. Mostly, I’ve maintained a savings of less than 1 million units. I’m now up to 5 million but only because I scrapped some found ships for their upgrades.

I’ve been spending most of my time on hot planets because I found an S-class heat protection in some damaged machinery. I’m letting the things that I find dictate to some extent the paths that I take in the game.