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Month: May 2020

Moon Base: Disco 1 – A (Tiny) Patch of Color on a Dark, Dead World

Moon Base: Disco 1 – A (Tiny) Patch of Color on a Dark, Dead World

This week, I left behind my third “tiny home” planetary base at the north pole of a fungal moon (where sunsets are not known) and began construction of Moon Base: Disco 1 on the Life-Incompatible Moon of a large Bone Spire planet.

I was struck by the amazing view this barren world afforded of the ring system of its host planet. I explored large stretches of its surface until I came to a breathtaking area where the ring system soared above like a milky, illuminated ceiling. It was just then that I noticed a dark tower of sorts rising above the horizon. After setting down, examination revealed it to contain no door, window, or feature of any sort. Its sides, I observed, extend in the precise ratio of 1 : 4 : 9 (the squares of 1, 2, and 3).

I took this to be a fortuitous discovery, and chose a nearby location to build my base.

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The Sun Never Sets on My Third “Tiny Home” Planetary Base

The Sun Never Sets on My Third “Tiny Home” Planetary Base

Last week I shared the second “tiny home” planetary base I’ve built since deciding it would be fun to create these cozy little dwellings all over the galaxy. Well, galaxies, I should say; my first two bases were located in the Eissentam galaxy, while this latest can be found in Euclid, on PC, in Normal mode.

For this base, I chose a rainy, rocky fungal world with low-slung mountains, carved deeply with caves and outcroppings, that stretch off into the horizon. The sentinels are frenzied and often come knocking for a visit… This world’s rock formations are so distinct and pronounced that it wasn’t hard to find an interesting spot to build, once I identified the general area where I wanted to build.

In doing so, I utilized a short guide by Redditor u/Cheater42, entitled “Banish The Sun: How to locate your base where the sun never sets,” which caught my interest a few days before this build. Following the guide, in about 25 minutes I had found the vicinity of one of the planets poles, and then set about looking around for a particularly interesting spot. In short order I had located two facing outcroppings of rock that allowed me to build my base in a sort-of “bridge” arrangement. The planetary coordinates of the base are +24.80, +107.85 (but I don’t feel that these correspond with the polar area of other planets).

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Continuing My “Tiny Home” Base Undertaking, I Present My Second Effort

Continuing My “Tiny Home” Base Undertaking, I Present My Second Effort

Last weekend I shared the first in what I expect to be a long list of “tiny home” planetary base builds to come. After completing the last, I moved on from that lush and violent, purple world to a desert moon that I had visited several months earlier and saved in my records. It is tormented by frequent dust storms that cause the atmosphere to take on a particularly ominous aspect, which is what made the world stand out to me when I first discovered it. And the sentinels are on high alert.

Upon returning to this dusty moon, I spent some time flying over different parts of it in order to find a spot with a nice view of the orbital planet, as well as dense and varied flora. I think I did alright in this regard, in the end.

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A Look at My “Forever Starship,” Found Way Back in NMS 1.0

A Look at My “Forever Starship,” Found Way Back in NMS 1.0

On Saturday, October 29, 2016 (at about 9:52am) I found my forever starship. It’s a fighter, of silver and red.

This was in the original release of the game, when crashed ships were everywhere and you could grab one, fly off, find another, and repeat — usually jumping up a notch in slot capacity every time. That dynamic ended a few weeks later, though, when the Foundation update landed.

I present this post as a pictorial of one of the very nicest looking ships I’ve encountered in the game in my nearly 2,500 hours in, but also as a sort-of bug post aid for Hello Games because, as you can see, with the release of Beyond, the wing nacelle color treatment has become anti-symmetric; the color of one wing engine evolved to not match the other over the course of a few updates. I have only seen this in fighters with this particular wing arrangement, known as Wing_K (and quite a few other than mine: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4). I’ve reported the issue to Hello Games via the ticket page, but it is, as yet, unaddressed. [Update: Skel#8634 (Discord) let me know that there is a mod that partially works around this issue, for PC users who want to give it a try.]

It is interesting (this issue aside) to see how the design of a ship’s features has evolved over the nearly four years since No Man’s Sky launched, especially the extraordinary details that have been added in recent updates. With the release of Beyond, the scale of the game’s ships increased significantly, a move necessitated by the addition of VR gameplay. This allowined for greatly more intricate details to be put in place. The ships, today, look incredible and far more refined than they did “at birth.”

No Man’s Sky 1.0x – October 29, 2016
No Man’s Sky 1.0x – November 6, 2016
No Man’s Sky Foundation – January 15, 2017

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Community Event #27 : A Pearl of a Weekend Quicksilver Quest

Community Event #27 : A Pearl of a Weekend Quicksilver Quest

No Man’s Sky Community Event #27 took place this past weekend on a lush world with skies and grass of blue. The event was centered at the site of a crashed starship. Upon arrival, players found the wrecked hull of the downed ship aglitter with a strange static energy. The sickly smell of scorched hair and flesh emanated through the waves of static. A demand was heard — and a threat. The hunt for Albumen Pearls commenced.

I participated in the event in the early afternoon of Sunday the 3rd and saw much activity on the ground and in the skies as other interlopers labored to quell the demands of the static anomaly. As well, a more than usual number of player bases had been constructed across the surface of the event planet, and other planets in the system. Some of those I visited were quite impressive in their design and construction. And some were well-stocked with a certain, particular type of flora that made things a little easier for those accepting the assistance… (And this weekend, that was me.)

The accompanying video shows some of the highlights of the weekend event, as I experienced it.

It’s great to rake in that Quicksilver, as a player who recently resurrected a two-year-running Eissentam galaxy save file that sat dormant since NEXT landed in 2018, and is trying to secure all the base adornments. But, the real fun of these events, for me, is seeing other players doing their thing, along with the wild bases they inevitably create within the event system.

My First “Tiny Home” Base and a New Twist on Exploration

My First “Tiny Home” Base and a New Twist on Exploration

No Man’s Sky got base building as a play mechanic with the November 2016 release of the Foundation (1.1) update. While exploring the unknown is the thing I most enjoy doing in the game, I immediately took to base building, as it allowed you to inhabit one of the worlds you discovered — a world that really stood out, to you.

Basebuilding got even better with the arrival of the NEXT (1.5) update. NEXT provided a great many new building materials, allowing for completely new types of bases to be built, and it allowed players to build not just a single base, but many. I presently have around 15 bases between my Euclid and Eissentam galaxy saves. Some are pretty rough, some are quite nice. Some I’ve more or less abandoned.

I have shared several base walk-throughs on this blog — a few of the stand outs. But, here I am sharing the first of what I think will be many “tiny house” bases or encampments.

Oftentimes, I will discover a world that I find interesting and unique, but I’m unsure as to whether I want to put the time into actually building up a proper base on the world, though I might like to revisit it occasionally. When this happens, I usually end up jotting down a description and the coordinates in my NMS travel notebook, and moving on. (And, I rarely make it back.)

Small notebook with Atlas logo on front

Well, a short while ago on the subreddit I noticed a post by u/TempTheTempster that really stood out to me. This user shared a few photos of his “Ultra Tiny Home” base that I found clever and very well done. Cozy. Seeing this, I recalled the recent efforts of another Redditor that I had been enjoying, u/NewGodOfWar84, who has been doing a sort of one-base-a-day build series and sharing them in the sub for the past few weeks. These two things came together in my mind and it occurred to me that it would be a lot of fun to (as always) explore and, upon finding one of the aforementioned worlds that has something about it that stands out to me, build a tiny base, varying them as I can along the way. This will actually serve as a driver for deeper exploration, I think.

The base I am sharing here is located in the on an extremely violent, lush, purple world in the Eissentam galaxy, in Normal mode on PC (coordinates can be seen in one of the photos). As is plain to see, I have borrowed the base design quite heavily from u/TempTheTempster in this first build, but it will be fun to work through finding my own particular approaches to so small a planetary dwelling. I am currently building my second tiny base and will share it, or one of the next few, as my effort progresses. I hope you enjoy.

UPDATE: See the other “tiny home” bases I have built during my travels.