Starting In The Cold :: No Man's Sky Survival Gameplay (Survival) : #01

[@StyxAnnihilator]

Storage is the main issue early for me, so I ASAP get as many charts for pods I can and start using them, just stopping for passing POI's, main cost are easy materials. Also use some methods to get cash to buy some ships, for storage.

[@StephenSilverbeard]

Agree, like finding pods it gives a reason to explore planets,

[@monkeybarmonkeyman]

If asked, I would suggest everyone start the game with a long-term view. You will eventually, and soon as compared to typical survival games, have enough coins to get what you need from space stations / transport hubs. You can extract more o2 than you think from some of the hazardous plants (the puffy ones) by extracting (use the E key) o2 from those red pods. If you find one plant you can quickly amass enough o2 to not worry about it again. Once you get moving in space though, you'll soon not lack for anything, as most if not all of what you need you can purchase. 🙂

[@StephenSilverbeard]

Find NMS more of an exploration game, than a survival game, the first few hours can be tough, but once the pace settles down the pace changes to exploring the galaxy. Although would still like to have my own space station and fly a frigate. Maybe on day. :))

[@KamleshMallick]

Wow. Silverbeard! So this is the most hardcore survival mode in the game? Loved the start. So u need to track your Oxygen and Suit Power for thermal protection. And while you get components to fix your ship you mine resources and metals. Compared to Empyrion the mining is not so difficult - does not feel like a grind? No digging massive holes and go underground. So once you repair all components you are ready to leave the starter world and go to space. So going to space is not as much work compared to Empyrion. Once you go to space, what is the plan for the series? What do you do ? Do you have trader factions like the Polaris? Enemy factions like Zirax? Loving this survival mode.

[@StephenSilverbeard]

A key element of NMS is that once the player is up and running, it is possible to switch to a trading game/base farming minimising the need to mining. The only enemy are the sentinels. although Hello Games have been making them more powerful by enhancing space combat. What makes NMS special is the continuity of the games due to HG ensuring updates are save game compatible, before my PC problems I had a permadeath game started in 2017. Did not play it all the time, but it was fun to drop back into it when a new update dropped plus the plan was to visit all 256 galaxies in the game. Another element of the game is due to the procedural generation there is always a change of finding something no other player has ever seen, (this could be special planet, a multi tool or a ship), and sharing it with the community.

[@KamleshMallick]

@@StephenSilverbeard That is a relief! So you can get everything from traders if u dont want to mine. Empyrion forced u to start a new game everytime an update dropped. So nice to know NMS supports old saves. That is huge! Thanks for that insight!

[@rainlops]

It be nice to see 100s of episodes and just adventure and 100% completion after story.

[@StephenSilverbeard]

One aspect of NMS is updates are save game compatible, so it pays to have an established game to try out new features and the community missions. Plan to use one game for this purpose, although want to try a couple of challenges.

[@snafu2350]

Reminder: dioxite isn't just an efficient cold protection fuel, its's also excellent for refilling your suit instead of oxygen (keep the latter for crafting or underwater protection). On that subject, remember to pick up uranium for ship launch fuel & pyrite for pulse drive fuel (until you get your decent Sentinel ship ofc) A drop pod prior to the first expansion slot will cost you money: the 'first is free' only applies to the slots: once you've expanded by 1 the rest start costing, so don't bother with drop pods (& store any expansion slots) you find until you feel the expansion's getting expensive You could get all but maybe 2 of the freighter's cargo pods prior to your terrain manipulator simply by walking as close as you can to their indicator & look down: the 'E' interaction should still appear even if you don't dig Unfortunately I won't be able to offer as detailed advice as I did, as your new system setup is offering vids in HD mode, which turn into a slideshow on this ancient laptop I'm using to view them, even if I turn the resolution down to 360 :(

[@StephenSilverbeard]

Ty for the feedback. Really need to get my head back into the details, explore the new features. This video was made using Davinci editing software, it was my first attempt to use it in anger, the export to YT defaulted to HD parameters. Should have noticed something was off when it took twice as long to upload as normal. In the short term plan to stick with the old software while I learn Divinci (at the moment need tutorials to understand the tutorials), so the next video will be back to normal .

[@snafu2350]

@@StephenSilverbeard Cheers! FWIW your current Empyrion series is the same, as is every other HD-tagged vid I watch from anyone else :(

[@StephenSilverbeard]

YT can be a bit frustrating as the uploaded videos are converted to an internal compressed format as part of the validation process. Had noticed that videos containing high levels of action, e.g. combat, take much longer to process than say a city building game. It is possible this has an impact on the final format.

[@snafu2350]

@@StephenSilverbeardOh, agreed WRT YT mucking about with their own encoding regimes etc, but this happens for me reliably whether the vid displayed is of a first-person viewpoint (with lotsa background constantly changing), a top-down RTS (with little background) or a static board/card game (with next to no background). Up until shortly before Xmas, everything was pretty reliable, but now I know to suffer if I want to watch anything YT tags with the red 'HD', regardless of resolution :)

[@snafu2350]

It occurs to me now that they may have adjusted the HD compression algorithm during that time to make use of the more prevalent multi-core CPUs. To my mind that would make sense, as the is affecting /any selected resolution/ purely for HD-tagged vids (& this is reflected in the incoming bandwidth), rather than a cruder method that affects all vids (BTW the specs here are a maxed, stock Thinkpad Edge 1143-H26)

[@KamleshMallick]

Wow. Love the pulse engine, boost mode. The spaceship goes forward with insane speed. So within the star system, you can use pulse and boost to travel to moons, space stations. And use hyper drive to get out of the system? This space travel system is far superior than what I see with Starfield. There the ship did not feel like it was moving, Here the boost mode is amazing! Would love to read on your insights on space flight here.

[@StephenSilverbeard]

NMS is very open when compared to other games, in theory it is possible to fly to between stars, think someone actually did it, but it took hours of gameplay. There are different types of ships that add to experience, there is something special about being in third person while flying a ship with solar wings. Personally like flying across the planet surface, there is something special over water watching the ripples on the surface, flying along canyons and between mountains.

[@KamleshMallick]

@@StephenSilverbeard Definitely planet surface and in-atmosphere flying is a lot of fun in Empyrion too. I can image them being so good here. But how is space flight in orbit? Can you fly from a planet's orbit to its moon? Can u fly from the orbit to a nearby space station? Can you fly to an asteroid field to do some mining? I like flying in space and finding a cool space stations or POIs. Once u get to the orbit of a planet, do u bother to check what is nearby and go towards it or u just focus on the planet enter the atmosphere, do stuff and come back to orbit and move on? Thanks again mate for all the insight!

[@StephenSilverbeard]

NMS imposes little restrictions on the player when it comes to travel, warping into a system places the player near the space station. Can use the pulse engine to travel to the local planets and moons. While in space can mine asteroids, have random encounters, including some hostile attacks. Can land on and explore any planet in a similar way to Empyrion. Upon travelling to the centre of a galaxy there is an option to travel to the next galaxy. although be aware it can take many hours of gameplay to get to the centre. Once I went the other way and travelled to the outer rim of the galaxy, there is not much there, but was curious to see the edge. :)) Space stations have teleporters that allow players to travel between system they have discovered and their own bases when equipped with a teleporter. On the planet surface there are portals, these can be used to travel the vast distances between the stars (Note: NMS has a ridiculous number of planets spread over 256 galaxies, so it is impossible to visit them all in a lifetime). The portal works a similar way to the TV series Stargate SG-1, where the player can dial in a destination. There are community groups where players post locations of cool ship, multitools, etc. Finally, there are Black holes which send the player to a random location in the galaxy, although there is a risk of the ship taking damage. Hope this helps.

[@KamleshMallick]

@@StephenSilverbeard Wowowow! Thank you so much Silverbeard! pulse engine for local system travel sounds cool! Empyrion should have something like that! So space travel sounds superb! Going to center of galaxy! Amazing. I will watch your survival series and get the game on sale!

[@AtomicArtumas]

As a long-time NMS player, I've just got to say this one thing: Setting all the difficulty settings to the highest is more annoying than it is anything else. SO many of the settings do absolutely nothing to make the game "more challenging", but rather, just more tedious - Like you may think initially "oh, having more limited storage will make me have to consider what I'm carrying around more and plan out resource usage more", well, that's what it would be like if NMS was a normal survival game.... but here? All it does is make it so you run out of inventory within about 20 minutes of starting the game and never have inventory space ever again. You'll literally be spending 80% of your time throwing junk out. Scarce goods? All this does is make you unable to spend the massive amounts of money you earn from doing literally nothing early game on QoL stuff, and instead have to manually farm it, which takes 10x longer than just buying it. Scanner recharge? Have fun sitting there for 30 seconds before you can scan again to find that one oxygen plant you're looking for. No, seriously that's literally all this option does. Makes you wait. It has ZERO effect on difficulty. I legit don't even know why it's a setting. Sprinting stamina? Just set this to infinite. All it does is save you time. Combat in NMS is absolutely simplistic, and there are almost zero cases where this will have any effect on the outcome of a fight. Jetpack fuel has a MUCH greater impact on survivability, and is entirely controlled by upgrades. Literally all sprinting stamina does is make you get to your goal slower. Which isn't even that notable, because 90% of movement is done via melee jetpack boosting. And don't even get me started on the absurd grind that is reputation grinding on it's most difficult setting. Fuel costs, unit costs, enemy frequency and damage taken are the only things that actually impact difficulty.... but unit costs might as well be non-existent since units in NMS are practically worthless - It's completely normal to spend between 1 and 20 billion in a single shopping spree, and the difference between expensive and discounted is pretty much barely even noticeable. Fuel costs practically only matter in your first 10 hours of a save, after which you'll have more fuel than you'll ever be able to spend, plus ship upgrades that make stuff like launch fuel almost a complete non-issue. Seriously, you can set this to infinite and barely even notice it other than having to menu less frequently. Which leaves us with enemy frequency and damage. Which... are really up to personal preference. Damage makes traveling more annoying because you can actually end up accidentally dying by jetpack boosting, but also makes enemies actually matter. Enemy frequency.... gives you too much money IMHO on high levels. No, seriously. With the update that has the mercenary guild give you free ammo, and a god-tier weapon available from expedition rewards upon save start, all that really happens by being attacked by more enemies... is you get more enemy drops. Which now include a LOT of extremely valuable items. Unless all you really care about is managing menus, resources, etc., it is seriously WAY more fun on average in this game to play with a lot of the settings on easier settings. NMS IS more-so an exploration game rather than a survival game, after all. And if you want to focus on stuff like resource management... you should honestly probably be playing a different game instead. While there IS plenty of crafting in NMS... it's not the core point of gameplay.

[@StephenSilverbeard]

For me the settings have become more of a habit over challenge as it fits my overall playstyle. Generally do not worry about resource management or making cash, like to wander through the galaxy collecting what is needed, with the occasional pause to collect what is needed giving a reason to explore a planet in more detail. The main reason for starting this series is to replace a long running game lost to a major systems failure. Eventually it will replace my lost 'chill' game for when I need to spend a couple of hours wandering around the galaxy after a bad day.

[@KamleshMallick]

48:20 - why did u say u have only one take off and landing? No fuel?

[@StephenSilverbeard]

In NMS each take off consumes a fixed amount of fuel, in this case the amount of fuel was insufficient to take off. Each ship types uses to different amounts of fuel, but these can be modified by applying upgrades plus there is a tech that regenerates the fuel over time. It principle it is possible to get stuck on a planet with no fuel, but this is only a real risk at the start. On the surface NMS's survival challenge feels easier then other games, but it has a sting as there are numerous opportunities to get yourself killed or stuck. For example, once while starting a permadeath game I wandered into a cave to collect cobalt, did not pay attention to the life support (it is consumed while moving), had no oxygen to recharge it and there was none nearby. So was trapped in the cave with no way back to the ship, game over.

[@KamleshMallick]

@@StephenSilverbeard Thanks for that insight! So what happens when u have low fuel and u r on a planet? Can you mine yourself and make that fuel? Getting stuck due to lack of fuel is the saddest way to end!!!

[@StephenSilverbeard]

Ship fuel needs dihydrogen and metal plates (ferrite dust), both of which are relatively common on most planets. However, it can get interesting collecting resources on a planet either an extreme planet or one with aggressive sentinels.