Read a post by another traveller a few days back who completed the expedition without dying (apologies to you, Traveller, I’ve forgotten your name). I had actually started a new run of the expedition at that time anyway with the intent to see how much I could do before you HAD to die. Turns out… you don’t. But this post opened the possibility of completing the expedition without dying. Here’s how it went:

I started off by ignoring my ship. I decided I was going to try to find a crashed ship on foot or a trading post where I could buy one. As it happened, that wasn’t in the cards. I did a huge circle that took 10 hours on foot on the starting planet but was never fortunate enough to find either of those things. What I DID find, though was a minor settlement where I promptly bought a couple hermetic seals. I also bought the blueprint for the Advanced Mining Laser.

During my wanderings, I dug up a lot of buried tech modules and found a fair number of clusters of ancient data structures. These yielded some drop pod maps, which are actually reasonably valuable. I sold off both the the tech modules and maps at trade terminals (I found 3 or 4 in the wild). I also encountered a lot of curious deposits. Mined a few of those after installing the AML and refined into nanites while I waited for storms to blow over.

When I finally arrived at my ship, it was 10 hours in, I had about 12 million units and just over 5200 nanites. I’d also found a couple drop pods to add inventory slots and even got a few upgrades for the exosuit and ship from damaged machinery. I also learned 177 words and managed to bag a decent C class multitool with a lot more slots than the starting weapon.

After fixing the ship, I was in a position where I really just needed to make a base on an infested world as the only obstacle and then I was golden for all other milestones in the Expedition. What I did was I went to Uncharted red and green star systems to search for the proper world type (I purchased the drive blueprints on the Anomaly after I got my ship up and running).

I had grabbed maps for commercial buildings to use to search for a base computer in the wild (this is one of the things these charts can locate) and used those on the proper world when I finally found one (actually didn’t take too long. Maybe a dozen systems). Why uncharted? Well, that’s because the planets don’t have any buildings other than shelters and wild base computers. It took a grand total of 2 maps before I located a wild base computer. I flew in, landed, claimed it, and built a base. The game considered that good enough for the milestone.

Now I was all set. I just carried on from there and completed the expedition. I refused to die and did it without doing it on purpose. Dying was the only milestone I had left at the end, and turns out at the very end, the game kind of makes you ‘semi’ die, as it restarts you as if you’d died. But the key here is… you spawn in with all your stuff. You lose nothing. So you never really die at all, but the game gives you that milestone (which was the final unfinished one for me in this expedition) when you spawn in after the end.

Anyway, the grand total play time was about 15 hours. Obviously not the optimal way to play it, but it was a fun experiment and very satisfying.

I’m just some random doofus who wants to add his two cents.

I grinded myself into a supergod with upgrades both in my tech and regular inventory using only my cargo and freightor inventory to house my items with two activated indium mines to source me effectively with infinite money. It felt like i had reached a gameplay dead end with nothing more to do. I built absurd things, walked across every kind of world they offer. The whole thing was turning stale for me. Less an adventure and more of a meditative drifter simulator. Still great and profound imo, but just stale.

When i jumped back in, after the update, my entire set up was a disgusting mess both in my suit inventory and my ship inventory as well. After an hour or two of sorting the mess out, i settled on a chosen setup. It was a bummer to have been nerfed, but i also think it was fun hunting for it all anyways. You knew, journey vs destination. That’s just me. If you disagree, that’s fine. I love you anyways.

I switched it from normal difficulty to a survival difficulty and ran some quicksilver missions and once more found myself feeling vulnerable to the elements and it really did breath a fresh sense of life into the game for me. Space battles had stakes again and storms were once again terrifying since i could no longer hide behind 3 layers of hazard protection.

Also nerfing the activated indium was a great move too IMO, because after bankrupting myself on shipspace slots (my goodness those are expensive) i find myself really appreciating once again the currency systems with running trade routes, building circuit boards, being a space pirate, and selling settlement production. I have a deep joy in being a space trader and the update made it feel like a meaningful challange again.

What makes it work so well for me is that they allow me to do it that way. My joy is not everyone else’s joy and it feels to me that they tried to account for that in the difficulty slides.

I get the frustration for the minmax nerfs and i appreciate the expression of frustration. Alot of hours were put into the grind and i get how it feels like a massive stab in the back. However, i doubt HG actually did this in bad faith. I’m sure they’re working on a way to account for it and fix it. No doubt, they see the backlash.

The thing is, I’ve never seen a franchise do something like this before, in the sense that they built a game then spend the next 6 years building heavily unto itself. In a way, it feels like HG is flying blind through a model entirely of their own creation and mistakes can and will be made. In the past they have been made. Outlaws hit players with entirely too many pirate attacks, then they fixed it. Endurance lacked ramps in freighters and they eventually added them in. People wanted space whales. We got space whales. They’re listening, and I’m sure they’ll find a way to make it right.

I see what they tried to do, and they fell on their face for a lot of people, but there’s no doubt in my mind they’ll pick themselves back up and take care of you. I have faith in them.