Holiday 2023 Expeditions

December 8, 2023.

Hello Everyone!

Another busy year for No Man’s Sky is drawing to a close, and this holiday season we are pleased to revisit our tradition of running remixed editions of this year’s expeditions.

Across the following dates, 2023’s community expeditions will be available once more, taking place in new sections of the universe, offering explorers another opportunity to experience these stories and events and earn exclusive rewards.

In addition to the 2023 expeditions, we are also bringing back a limited run of the community favourite Cartographers, from 2021. The bundle of rewards includes some of the most popular items from across a number of past expeditions, including the coveted Golden Vector starship – an exciting opportunity for players who missed out on the chance to earn these rewards during the original expedition runs.

  • Utopia: 8th Dec – 15th Dec
    Work together with other Travellers to rebuild an abandoned solar system for the mysterious Utopia Foundation. Utopia welcomes all contributors to our ambitious new communal habitation project!
  • Singularity: 15th Dec – 22nd Dec
    Begin to unveil the history and origin of the harmonic camps in this precursor to Echoes. A mystery that touches upon artificial intelligence, the will to exist, and the very nature of what it means to be alive.
  • Cartographers: 22nd Dec – 29th Dec
    Awaken stranded on the fiery planet of Coul Major, and deeply explore its surface as you work to repair your bespoke starship.
  • Voyagers: 29th Dec – 8th Jan
    A relaxing journey of exploration, encouraging Travellers to seek out remarkable worlds, reach planetary summits and oceanbeds, and catalogue your findings.

 

Rewards for the 2023 expeditions include the Robo-Warden and HoverDroid Companions, the Fearsome Visor and Wayfarer’s Helm, the Crimson Freighter Trail, and much more.

Cartographers presents some of the most exciting and popular rewards from previous expeditions: the Jetpack Bubble Trail, Feasting Casque, Exotic Wingpack, Streamlined Jetpack, and the legendary Golden Vector starship.

 

Left-Handed VR

Today’s expedition update includes a bonus feature that we have been wanting to implement for a long time: left-handed mode for motion controls in virtual reality. VR players may now toggle their preferred handedness between left and right.

The handedness setting in VR links your grip on the Multi-Tool, interactions with menus, selection and placement of base building objects to the dominant hand, while attaching the wrist menu to the secondary hand, allowing left-handed players a more comfortable and intuitive experience.

 

This Year

2023 saw another packed year of continuing to expand the engine and content of No Man’s Sky, launching on two new platforms and releasing three major updates, as well as releasing a regular stream of patches, improvements and community events.

Our first update this year was FRACTAL, which brought in a host of VR improvements alongside native support for PSVR2, as well as a general spread of quality of life and accessibility improvements, and the new Wonders catalogue of your most remarkable discoveries.

 

 

INTERCEPTOR formed the first chapter of the narrative introducing the Autophage. Planets across the universe began to corrupt, Atlantideum crystals sprouted from their surfaces, and occupying Sentinel forces twisted into strange new shapes. Sentinel Interceptor ships could be found crashed into these purple-hazed worlds, and Travellers began to claim these starships for themselves.

 

 

The MacOS launch of No Man’s Sky saw the rendering pipeline built from the ground up, taking full advantage of Metal and Apple silicon. This new version was free to all players who already owned the game on Steam, allowing experienced players to transfer their saves between the two platforms and continue their existing journey.

 

 

ECHOES brought a huge content update to the universe, introducing tactical space combat against massive outlaw dreadnoughts, and expanding upon the narrative threads running through the INTERCEPTOR update and SINGULARITY expedition. Travellers revealed the long-hidden civilisation of the Autophage, a fiercely independent society of robotic beings. Performing Autophage rituals, learning their language, and earning their trust allowed Travellers to assemble their own ceremonial staff.

 

 

This year we celebrated 7 years of post-launch development and support for No Man’s Sky, and it is overwhelming to look back at how much the game has grown since 2016 – and to look ahead to where it is going. We’re excited to share a little taste of what’s yet to come!

 

Nintendo Switch Visual Quality

Another feature in today’s update that we wanted to highlight: the rendering clarity on Switch has enjoyed further improvements. When we added FSR 2 on Switch in ECHOES, we were so happy to see the positive response from players and press (“With the recent patches, No Man’s Sky is now one of the cleanest, most visually stable games on Nintendo’s hardware.” – Eurogamer), and we’re pleased to be able to expand on that.

In particular, with today’s update, Switch players will experience a reduction of ghosting artifacts – visual noise that can linger on screen when the image moves – and an overall improvement to image sharpness, via a highly bespoke implementation of AMD FidelityFX’s Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS), customised to perform optimally on Switch.

 

Community Research

The Quicksilver Synthesis Companion has working continuously throughout the year, powered by Travellers completing missions available at The Nexus. Their current synthesis project is a trio of cargo-themed base parts: an industrial crane as well as covered crates and silos, whose contents may well be of Outlaw provenance…

Global community progress towards unlocking these exclusive decorations can be viewed in the Mission Log, at the Quicksilver Bot’s kiosk, or at the Galactic Atlas site.

 

Featured Bases

Iteration: Mercury, custodian of the Space Anomaly’s teleporter, has established links to a new set of Featured Bases. Visit them to tour the cosy Polestar Potions & Apothecary and Wizards Rest, the tranquil Butterfly House and Ealpha Base, or the magnificent Last Egg from the First Dragon-UD22 – CCAS.

Polestar Potions & Apothecary by Nerozii-

 

Community Spotlight

u/babookluke created this stunning reproduction of an Anomaly visor.

 

u/TheKittyNomad shared this 3DS painted by their sister – we love it!

 

This beautiful and imaginative Atlantid piece was drawn by @Starry_ZiTong.

 

u/OtterbirdArt created this tender depiction of a Vy’keen and their tiny blob companion.

 

Lovely in-game photography captured by @maupalma07, @abella80s, @Lewozz and u/alienhelix

 

Development Update

The team are already hard at work creating new content and features for No Man’s Sky in 2024 – we are dreaming up some exciting new things that we can’t wait to share!

Update 4.46 is available across all platforms today, which includes the 2023 expedition remixes, left-handed VR mode, and a number of stability and gameplay fixes.

Our journey continues.

Sean

 

4.46 Patch Notes

  • Fixed an issue that could cause the starting Multi-Tool to be green instead of orange.
  • Fixed a rare issue that could allow frigates to attempt to call the player when they were not in a starship.
  • Fixed an issue that caused Multi-Tools to appear too small within the UI.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion to be difficult to interact with.
  • Fixed a rare issue that could cause multiple “Current Mission” paths to draw on the Galaxy Map.
  • Fixed an issue that could allow players to summon the Space Anomaly in inappropriate locations.
  • Fixed a number of issues with the Multi-Tool reload animation.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented ByteBeat songs and message module messages from being correctly uploaded as part of a base.
  • A multiplayer status message is now sent when feeding a creature.
  • Upgraded the Havok implementation to 2023.
  • Support has been added for Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian and Ukrainian text in multiplayer chat.

    •  

  • Fixed an issue that could cause derelict freighters to be inaccessible on Mac.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented terrain manipulation from working correctly on Mac.
  • Fixed an issue affecting performance on Intel-based Macs with AMD graphics chips.
  • Fixed a number of issues related to texture streaming on Mac.

    •  

  • Introduced a significant visual improvement to particle rendering on Nintendo Switch.
  • Introduced a number of signification visual improvements and performance optimisations for FSR2 on Switch.
  • Fixed a number of visual issues when taking screenshots in Photo Mode on Switch.

    •  

  • Fixed a number of issues with foveated rendering of terrain edits on PSVR2.
  • Improved the latency of eye tracking for foveated rendering on PSVR2.
  • Fixed a number of issues with the foveated rendering of particle systems on PSVR2.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause flickering on the logo and legal notices screen during boot on PSVR1 and PSVR2.

    •  

  • Fixed a PCVR input issue that prevented players from tapping on the wrist menus in Build mode.
  • Fixed a number of control issues when using a Windows Mixed Reality VR headset.

    •  

  • Introduced a performance optimisation for PC related to shader management.
  • Introduced a significant memory optimisation.
  • Introduced an optimisation for player animations.

    •  

  • Fixed a crash related to networking.
  • Fixed a rare crash related to the node hierarchy.
  • Fixed a rare crash that could occur when quitting to the save select screen.
  • Fixed a rare crash related to animation.
  • Fixed a rare crash related to metadata loading.
  • Fixed a number of rare crashes related to memory allocation.