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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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!

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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)

Hello! Wow, that post blew up! I had never imagined that my little journal about my space travels and how they were helping me in life would get so much attention. Writing has always been a challenge for me, despite my love of it, and I am glad that posting my writing here is something that y’all enjoy. To everybody that read or commented on Part 1, thank you so much. Your open ears and your kind words truly mean so much to me, and it has given me a lot of motivation to see this through! (Also, my first silver, ever! Wow – thank you so much!) There’s a lot more that I feel that I could say here, but in the interest of getting to the actual journal part of this post, I’ll just say that I am truly grateful for your support, and I’m incredibly glad that my stories have touched so many people’s lives. Seriously, this community rocks. If you are a new reader, you can find part one here.

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Today, I went adventuring. After a brief nap in my ship, I left to investigate the hills around the crash site. After a few minutes of climbing around and taking in the scenery, a radioactive storm suddenly came up on the horizon. With my hazard protection quickly depleting, I looked around frantically for a means of protection, and my eyes quickly settled upon an opening in a nearby hill. As I walked inside, and my hazard protection began to stabilize, I saw a wide cave extending downward in front of me. I had watched a few guides during my break at work today, and quickly crafted an analysis visor. After some quick scanning, I realized that a lot of the rock formations in the cave were made of cobalt! (And other minerals). Knowing that they were valuable from watching a guide, I decided that tonight, I was going to strike it rich.

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It was challenging, at first, to mine with such intensity. I knew around how much money I wanted to have from mining, but the tedium of the thing soon began to set in. As many of you know, I am playing this game as a way to help overcome my prior addictions, and once the game became all about mindlessly pointing the mining laser, my mind began to wander. I really did want to power through this feeling, both because I knew that getting a lot of money would really make the early game a lot more fun, and also to prove to myself that I could exercise a modicum of self-control. I turned on some Twitch in the background, and that helped a lot. I actually ended up getting distracted by the stream a bit, and lost track of time, so I ended up mining way past my goal. Whoops! I also found some things called “Vortex Cubes” – not sure what they do, but they look like one of them would make a pretty cool lamp.

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After my spelunking had concluded, I decided that it was high time for me to repair my ship. I set out in the direction that the map beacon was indicating, and immediately got distracted by something else. I found a crashed pod on the side of a hill, then from there, I found a tower, waaaay off in the distance. My curiosity was peaked, so I headed out in the direction of the tower, to see what it had to offer. It ended up taking a bit longer to walk there than I had anticipated, but it was really cool to see it grow in the distance. I managed to scale it with the help of my trusty jetpack, and accessed some old logs at the terminal on the top. Unfortunately, it seems that my real-life foreign language skills translate into the game, and I was left staring at letters on the screen. I’ll have to make a note and come back to this later.

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Finally, I jumped down and headed over to the beacon that I had found, scanning creatures and plants along the way, and reading facts about them in the pause menu. Apparently, the tentacled creature from yesterday actually doesn’t have any bones, which makes me wonder how it stands up, Truly, nature is beyond human comprehension. I soon arrived at the little settlement, consisting of two tiny houses, right next to each other. I accessed the terminal in one building to win some money via the stock transfer (is this legal?), and found a hermetic seal in the other one. After repairing my pulse engine, I decided to call it a night, as I have an early morning tomorrow. Thank you so much for reading and sticking around! Hopefully this is as enjoyable for you as it is for me – next time, we’re getting off planet, so help me god. I don’t know if I’ll have time to play tomorrow, since I’m gonna go visit some old friends, but we’ll see. Pics below.

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Spelunking!

Like the companion cube, but slightly more….. trapezoidal.

Caught this dinosaur sleeping in the sand

Apparently, this is a rock? Wild

Waaaay off in the distance is a crashed pod, near the bottom of the valley

The tower, but from really far away

A half marathon, maybe more

This alien technology looks really cool, holy cow

I want one

Saw a freighter on the way back to my ship. I hear that you can fly one?