No Man's Sky - First star to the right, and straight on till morning

The Game Room
1041

Here’s how things have been going in my game, to give you an idea of this.

I followed up on that crashed my crashed pirate ship storyline for a little longer, until it asked me to go quite a few systems away. Since my settlement still isn’t profitable and needs a lot of work, I decided not to do that and instead to stick around the local area doing more local quests.

I went back to my settlement to check in and see if the building I started constructing had finished yet. (Settlement construction involves giving a building some resources and waiting a decent number of real life hours. During that time you can do whatever other quest thing you want. It also means that every time I start up the game something is done and new stuff can be begun.)

The building had finished which means my settlement now breaks even on hourly profits and has begun making up for the debt that is in.

But as I arrived I got a distress call from the settlement reporting a massive sentinel attack.

I fought off big waves of sentinels and, once they were defeated, a giant sentinel mech appeared! It scared the crap out of me and I had a hell of a time defeating it.

With it dead, I was contacted by an NPC on the Anomaly (the hub for quest NPCs and for multiplayer, it seems) who wanted me to come to him with anything I find in the wreckage. That was fine by me because the anomaly is a place where I can upgrade weapons and after that mech fight I really wanted to upgrade my gun.

So I go to the Anomaly and the NPC repairs the drone but hacks it to help me. Cool! I have to take it back to the planet and see where it leads me. But first, I upgrade my weapons!

I buy the tech for all sorts of neat stuff, like plasma launchers and a big laser cannon. But to actually equip it I need all kinds of rare materials, so I spend some time making those and gathering or buying what I don’t have.

Now decked out with badass equipment, I activate the drone and it leads me to a sentinel plot hook site where I fight multiple mechs at once. Glad I upgraded my equipment!

Now they want me to take an arm off the mechs I beat and put it on the Minotaur, the mech the player can build and ride around planets on. For that I need a base with a mech in it - I think once I have that I can teleport the mech to where ever I am, but I need to make one first. And I don’t want to just slap one down anywhere, so I decide to build a base on top of the mountain that overlooks the settlement I’m in charge of. That does mean some more resource collecting, but not that much.

That’s how far I got so far. In the meantime, I completed some random procedurally generated side quests, had an underwater adventure collecting rare pearls, and found an “Infested Paradise” planet that I will need to return to later…

1042

I think they have managed engagement very well. Not just the crazy amount of added content (without a singe DLC), but also the expeditions; which generally came along with a content update. The expeditions, if you haven’t tried one yet are like an accelerated restart, usually introducing new game play. At the end you have some new loot and a new character you can continue with normally if you wish.

I think they are counting on this engagement translating to success with the new game. Its a refreshing approach in this age of DLC’s and subscriptions.

1043

Sounds like you’re at the same stage I am, just about. I’d played this quite a bit a couple of years ago, but got bored with the grind. Then I heard all the good stuff about the Worlds II expansion, and decided to try it.

Turns out, you need to have completed some of the main quests I dropped because I wasn’t having fun with them, and this quest with the drone is one of them.

But now I’m screwed. The final mission didn’t work right, and I can’t get it to do what it’s supposed to to fix it.

I’m playing on Xbox, and tried all the ways I’ve found via Google to reset a failed mission, but nothing works. Most of the suggestions I’ve seen are for PC players, and it seems to me that Xbox works differently.

Has anyone else run into this problem? I’m going crazy here. I started a whole new game this week, but I’m dreading having to do everything all over again just to fix one glitched mission…

1044

Are you saying the end of A Trace of Metal is not working right? Is it something to do with handing in a brain? I heard that there is a bug introduced in the update having to do with that. Hopefully they patch it soon, quite a few patches have come out since this update released.

I’d help more if I could but I ended up doing the expedition, since it was extended by a week; I just finished it last night and so haven’t advanced much on my main save.

1045

Yes, exactly. I was supposed to kill a walker, and it showed some health bars on the screen, but I couldn’t find the thing on the map, and now it never spawns anywhere. The game tells me I can get the Pristine Brain by getting enough Sentinels to attack me to draw out another walker, but I’ve done that several times now, and they never drop the brain I’m looking for.

If it is a glitch, I guess I’ll just have to wait…

1046

Oh, that’s not quite it - when you hand in the brain the game soft locks, you cannot quit the conversation and there are no clickable options forcing you to quit the game.

As for getting the brain itself to drop - are you shooting the dropped capsules (yellow for Walker), or walking up to them and picking them up with the Use button? I think shooting them will give you some basic resources but not advanced items.

The pristine walker brain is a normal item, not a quest item, so it should continue dropping normally.

1047

I’m picking them up. They only seem to give me the usual resources, though.

I saw some people suggesting that the Pristine Brain was in a special drop container, but I never saw anything like that drop. I suppose I could just keep killing walkers in hopes that one eventually drops, but god, that sounds annoying.

ETA: Is it labelled “Pristine brain”? I seem to have a lot of other brains, but the game is still telling me to look for the Pristine Brain. Maybe I’ll try giving him one of these brains…

1048

It sounds like you might have to pick it up from the Walker’s body itself with Use after it dies?

1049

So I played on and finished that quest; I had to pick up the brain from the Walker’s body when it fell over. I also had the option to shoot the dead walker (and did after I had the brain) for a more standard pickup of energy recharge and stuff.

Does your quest marker point anywhere? Not sure what else you can try…

I also went on a bit of a frigate shopping spree, using up much of the money I got while doing the Cursed expedition. I came out of that with a brand new decked out multitool (B class with a 4 S upgraded Pulse Spitter, which is my new favorite weapon); a few thousand nanites; and a few million credits. I spent most of those on frigates, but have rapidly earned back 30 million. I’m sending out five frigates at a time now.

I also came out with 7 inventory slots that I didn’t use when granted them by the expedition; I was able to pull them out and get them on my main character. I then realized that I could get enough inventory slots to need to scroll, so I traded every bit of navigational data I had for exosuit location maps. I think I got 30, and have gone to different planets, flying between exosuit locations, staying on a planet long enough to scan all life forms while exploring any landmarks I can see from the exosuit’s location or that I spot on the way down.

I’m pretty satisfied with my exosuit inventory; the next step is to upgrade my freighter. There are a few key upgrades I really want: a teleporter; the tech that lets you beam up materials; and storage rooms. For that, I need lots of salvaged freighter data, so looking for some crashed freighters is my next task.

While I’m doing that I want to keep saving up money so I can get an A class freighter eventually. I saved one that made me drool from pirates (it was super cool looking too!) but was going to cost me 120 mil, which is 10X what I had at the time.

I should also do the Artemis and Atlas quests, at some point. Maybe I’ll head towards the systems that involve those while I search for crashed freighters.

1050

I’ve fancied trying NMS again after maybe a year’s absence - what deterred me on my last attempt was that I found myself on a planet (and presumably the rest of the star system) which had already been discovered and named by sone other player - is this common, does anyone know? I thought the game was big enough that this wouldn’t really happen. I have zero interest in the multiplayer/community aspects so it put me right off…

1051

Really depends on which region you’re in and new star systems were just added so you’re bound to find some unnamed ones in those. Planets aren’t the only things to discover and name: planetary points of interest, plant species, animal species, etc.

If you’re in a region which has mostly been discovered already, there are ways to change regions. Starting a new game, for one; alternatively, find a portal and experiment with glyphs. You might need to cheat a bit so your character can learn all the glyphs.

1052

I haven’t played in a while, but I jump back in every now and then. It usually doesn’t take long to find undiscovered systems. Pretty much any play session I get first discovery on dome planet or whole system.

If you are playing from an expedition or some other community goal everything close by is to going to be mapped out. If I remember correctly there is a starting Galaxy that you can leave at the end of the main quest line. Obviously that starting Galaxy is more explored than others, but it is still HUGE. Generally if you just head out hyperspacing in any direction you are going you end up in some uncharted territory before too long.

If I can’t remember if the portals send you to new Galaxies or not. But there are other ways to get there. There are community posted bases that you can go visit. Some of those are in the other, less explored Galaxies. Pretty sure you can visit one of those bases, call your ship and just head off into the black. Once again that system is going to have been explored already, but head off in any direction and you will find new territory before long.

1053

I had forgotten about black holes; I think they can also be used to change regions.

ETA: yep; warped to a system now registered as discovered by me.

1054

I eventually gave up, and started a whole new game. That let me speed run (50 hours is fast, right?) all the main quests, and got the thing to work.

Except now the galaxy doesn’t look all that different. I’m not sure if it was worth it. The exploring is all pretty much the same, and I’m not huge into base-building games. I’ve got a freighter and a starship, I want to wander the galaxy and get into adventures, not settle down! But just going system to system seems a bit pointless.

I’ve got enough frigates in my fleet to max out all the daily trade expeditions, so making money isn’t a problem. I’ve figured out ways to make more nanites, which was always the limiting factor in how much I could upgrade things, but I’m not sure I see the point in it.