With around two months of near painful and confusing waiting from the No Man’s Sky player base, Hello Games have released the Foundation Update. What they have claimed to be the first in many patches that will help bring the content that many players have been practically lusting after since its release. Apart from the usual host of bug fixes and tweaks, the biggest thing to hit in the No Mans Sky Update is the creation of player bases, which act as your home, farm, laboratory and storage facility.
I logged in to No Man’s Sky and deleted my previous game. I wanted to treat the update as a completely new start, going from the beginning again and trying to see everything again for the first time.
Before I could even get started I was presented with three options. There were now two additional modes of gameplay. Apart from the Normal Mode or ‘chilled experience’ that players are familiar with the No Mans Sky Update has introduced Creative Mode that gives you infinite resources and no limits so you can build to your hearts content, and Survival Mode which makes the planets more hostile to you, with lethal environments, and angry wildlife. There would be time to try out the other game styles later. For now I wanted to see what the normal game now had to offer.
As my visor cleared and my exo-suit and multi-tool came online, I saw my crashed vessel as before and took a look around my first planet with the No Mans Sky Update. It looked kinda the same. The fauna may have been a little denser but I wasn’t sure if anything was dramatically different yet. I was taken through the first steps to fixing my ship so I trundled of to find some Heridium and Zinc.
Then after walking for only thirty seconds or so I saw three to four different species all at once. This was something that I had never seen before the update. They were all milling around and sort of playing with each other. Then when I turned around there was a giant bouncing mushroom in the distance, twice the height of my ship. The planet felt alive, or at least more alive. I also spotted a few plants and elements that I wasn’t familiar with, so they may have done a bit of planetary gardening. So far, I liked the changes.
I continued with the tutorial, I repaired my ship and found and built my warp drive. Along the way I found some outposts, supply depots and bases and they looked different. So far I have only encountered the Gex, but these buildings look different to how they used to. I’m hoping that when I come across the other alien races, that their structures will look suitably different as well.
This is all good, and the changes are certainly welcome, but I wanted to get to grips with base building, After all that’s the biggest and most interesting part of the patch.
If you’re not sure how to begin, just keep performing orbit and planet scans until you find something called a habitable base. Set your course straight for the marker and land. My base was simply a circular room with an interface computer and a non-functioning teleporter. By way of the tutorial you’re taken through the basics of base building, and it is really easy. Bases are modular, and can be expanded with new corridor and room sections. You’ll need to bring some iron with you, at least for the earlier structure pieces but iron is not exactly rare.
I built a construction computer and headed to the nearest Space Station to recruit my first employee, a rather helpful Gex who can speak perfect English. Although he seemed reluctant to teach me how to speak the Gex language fluently. That would have been a real time saver. Once you’ve visited a Space Station you unlock the teleporter there and can go from there to your base and back again at your hearts content.
I’m a little stuck now as my next step is to recruit a science advisor, but I’ll need to find a Korvax for that role, which means more solar system hopping until I find a Korvax planet or system. Then I can start to research my own things.
Ok, so with only a few hours of play what did I think of the No Mans Sky Update? Quite honestly, it’s brought some life back into the game. The planets are more full of life, and the base building (oh and let’s not forget freighter building, when I can afford it) have added more sandbox elements to the game, and the teleportation has meant that the exploration part of NMS is not really affected by this addition.
There are still some areas that remain unchanged, such as the main written part of the game to journey to the centre of the universe, but with the new modes, and different objectives that the Foundation Patch has brought, there are many more things to try without needing to go there.
The final question is, will this enthusiasm stay or will No Man’s Sky become stale over time like last time. Only time will tell of course, but if this is the start of what Hello Games has in store for the future then I will be eagerly awaiting the next No Mans Sky Update with anticipation.
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Jim Franklin
Jim Franklin is a freelance writer, living in Derby UK with his wife and his player 3. When time allows he likes nothing more than losing himself in a multi-hour gaming session. He likes most games and will play anything but prefers MMO's, and sandbox RPG's.
