A small percentage of readers will immediately remember those last, sad lines of lamentation spoken by the Rockbiter from the film The NeverEnding Story (1984). Based on the 1979 German novel by Michael Ende, The NeverEnding Story is set in Fantasia, a world of imagination filled with strange creatures big and small, and one of the first we meet is the gigantic Rockbiter who travels on a stone tricycle and is a true rock aficionado with a discerning palette.
A delicious looking limestone rock. Nice bouquet, must be a real vintage year. . . . Mmmm. That was limestone, with a dash of quartz. Very tasty. Where I come from in the North, we used to have exquisite gourmet rocks, only now…now they’re all gone.
The NeverEnding Story, which I saw in the theater as a kid and have watched hundreds of times since, is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I was immediately impressed by what a superb job u/Antisocial_Gek has done in recreating him in the No Man’s Sky universe — complete with glowing eyes, blinking and alive! Upon seeing the builder’s post, I had to visit this Euclid base myself, and have put together a small “walk through” video of my own.
Hats off, u/Antisocial_Gek, on a job well done and for providing me and a few others out there a very nice walk down nostalgia lane.
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Touring Bases in VR and Talking “No Man’s Sky” as Guest on “NMS Wonders” Show
A few months back, Mehalaway of the YouTube channel VR Spaceman reached out to me asking if I would be interested in appearing as a guest on his weekly live VR show, No Man’s Sky Wonders, to walk through several of my recent base builds and just chat on about the game we all know and love so well. That sounded like a pretty good time to me!
On his channel, Mehalawy explores any and all space games that support VR across a variety of platforms and headset configurations. His weekly live show, NMS Wonders, he hosts and records from his perspective in PSVR2. As he describes,
This is a live talk show about No Mans Sky game In virtual reality, every Saturday We will tour some of the most wonderful bases in NMS while interviewing the base builder and listen to their NMS story, all this in virtual reality for a new & fresh experience.
On the show in questions, we were joined by co-hosts Kim and Max (@SparkleRain and @Maxamus88 on Discord) and toured three of my bases: The Lighthouse in the NMSCord Hub, Chimney Rock Overlook, and Blade Peak Chalet. Along the way, we had a nice, wide-ranging chat about life, the game, and even a dip into the topic of retro computing… It was a blast!
The motivation for me to finally sit down and write a post sharing this YouTube base(s) tour was that on the NMS Discord in the @nmscord-hub channel, my base The Lighthouse, which was visited in the video, was recently a featured base for the community. This brought many visitors to the base and quite a few comments sent my way. It’s always fun to have visitors!
A quick shout out to my fellow American Interlopers out there exploring the universe, travelling from system to system, galaxy to galaxy, here on the 4th of July, American Independence Day. To mark the occasion I’ve indulged in a modest fireworks display from my lighthouse base perched upon a craggy islet on planet Distira in the NMSCord Hub system (Euclid galaxy).
So, grab your space apron, get out in the yard, and fire up the Nutrient Processor for a good old-fashioned Hexungulatis barbecue. Have a great Fourth!
Lush Infestation Lodge: A “Tiny Home” Base on an Overgrown World
It’s been a while since I last shared a base build here on the blog, and I have several works in progress, but I wanted to share my most recent build which is another example of my favorite sort of base, a “tiny home” base. This outpost, the “Lush Infestation Lodge” is built on New Ammy in the Imitil X system in the Eissentam galaxy, which is an “Infected Paradise” world with no sentinels and calm, stormless weather that is described as a “Refreshing Breeze.”
The main base is a single-room affair (a single floor unit) that is accompanied by an outdoor kitchen and a dais with table for meals. A teleporter sits out back.
I discovered the world while seeking out worlds with highly complex ground features in order to try out the performance of my newly upgradedNo Man’s Sky gaming PC, which was originally put together back in 2016 shortly after the game’s launch to allow gameplay at higher resolutions and framerates than the base Playstation 4 upon which I started my NMS adventure.
New Ammy is a lovely world, and the base is nice and cozy. Come have a visit if you’re up for it. But a word of advice — watch out for the worms…
On New Year’s Eve, as we said “Goodbye” to 2021 and “Hello” to 2022 (this has gotta be a better year, right folks?), another community base-building event was on-deck for the Quicksilver weekend mission (worth 1,200 QS) in No Man’s Sky.
I love it when base-building weekends come along, as I indicated in my recent post covering the shenanigans going on during the last such mission back at the beginning of October. They are great opportunities to get creative and build a base on the mission planet, chat with other Travellers that drop in while you’re doing your thing, and visit the huge number of other player bases that inevitably pop up all over the system in question. These are highly social weekends and are, at the moment, my favorite recurring event in the game.
On this New Year’s weekend I warped out to the Rulandt V system in the Euclid galaxy and set down on planet Petonia X which, by the time I arrived, was already covered in bases. I flew about, exploring the terrain from the air and found a tiny little rock island floating in a deep canyon and decided to build a cozy stone dwelling with a view and — I hope — a decent splash of character.
The video seen here includes bits and pieces I captured of my build process, along with a short tour of the finished base (which unexpectedly included a visitor checking out my handiwork) followed by fly-bys and quick on-foot exploration of 40 other bases made by fellow Travellers as part of the weekend event. There are some impressive constructions, out there, including a sprawling cave construction by u/E-Slick-73 that is extremely impressive (see video).
I hope you enjoy the video and please portal in for a visit to my base, as well as the many other great player constructions that await.
New Frontiers of Base Building in “No Man’s Sky” Expedition III: Cartographers
At the end of March, Hello Games released the No Man’s Sky Expeditions (v3.3) update which brought a new, periodic, community-focused play mode to the game. I published posts and videos about my experiences with first two community Expeditions, Pioneers and Beachhead, as I completed them, here at NMSspot. A several month hiatus from Hello Games followed but, happily, Expedition Three: Cartographers finally landed — and on the heels of the major Frontiers (v3.6) update that brought the all new Settlements dynamic, allowing players to basically run their own little Mos Eisley, as well as a massive overhaul to the base building system and the base parts to choose from. (And I must, here, mention that in the aforelinked release notes to Cartographers, I was humbled by Hello Games’ kind nod to a piece of my in-game photography, a pursuit I most enjoy while exploring within No Man’s Sky.)
Cartographers placed players on a toxic world with extreme geography and a disabled explorer ship. The ship in question was of a highly unusual configuration making the task of repairing it and getting off the planet a rather long and laborious one, far more involved than that of a traditional starship. Once repaired, the player was able to escape the planet and seek out the various rendezvous points in systems across the galaxy and complete the remainder of the Expedition.
Given that I would clearly be spending a considerable length of time on that starter planet, I built a base near my downed starship, trying my hand for the first time at construction using the aforementioned new base parts. And that was a learning experience; many of the parts were quite unfamiliar and in the days and weeks after the Frontiers release, a series of patches arrived addressing various kinks in the entirely new building dynamic. (Things have since smoothed out nicely.)
Building that initial base was good practice and by the time I was able to make my way to space, I was ready to give it another go on the final rendezvous world, the Expedition’s end planet (or moon, as the case turned out to be).
While I particularly appreciate the solitude that No Man’s Sky can afford me, I have also enjoyed taking part in the game’s community missions (see my mission posts for more), as offered in their various forms over the years, which originally appeared following the 2018 release of No Man’s Sky NEXT. And, while the release of the Expeditions update in late March of this year brought the biggest community mission opportunities yet offered in the game (as I write this, there are six days left in Expedition #3), some of the smaller missions still bring all the boys (and girls) to the yard. An example of this is the recent weekend mission (worth 1,200 units of Quicksilver in-game currency) that started on October 1st and in which I took part.
In the weekend mission in question, one was tasked with building a small base of specified construction in the chosen mission system. Base building missions like this, when they come along, are easily and quickly completed but offer a particularly nice opportunity to encounter other players and explore the bases they have constructed.
Upon embarking on such missions, all players are warped to the same star system with the same mission target planet. As such, a great many bases and / or communication devices can be found throughout the mission weekend and beyond. Over the course of the mission, while I certainly didn’t explore or even do a fly-by of every base on the planet, I probably saw a total of 250 or so base markers displayed on my ship’s HUD. And, that’s not to mention the bases built on other planets in the same system.
Of course, most of the bases encountered during such missions are exactly as complex as the mission calls for — base built, mission accomplished. Some, however, go much farther. In exploring this mission’s planet, I saw elaborate farms offering Cadmium, Sodium, and Curious Deposits of Runaway Mould. I encountered grand halls in the spirit of Heorot of olde. I explored great, towering bases of intricate construction — and some incorporating rooms floating high above, when a tower wouldn’t climb quite high enough. Among the simple and small were some very creative bases that were a joy to explore.
For my part, after construction of the requisite, prescribed base in order to complete the mission, I razed it and began constructing a fairly ornate, towering wooden base using the new base building components introduced in the recent Frontiers update. While I have been trying my hand at building with the new base parts, playing through the third Expedition (which I completed a few weeks back), I still have a little ways to go before fully getting a handle on the huge number of new resources that Hello Games has brought to basebuilding. My wooden tower constructed during this weekend mission has certainly been good practice, I must say.
The accompanying video provides a walk-through of my own wooden tower, as well as walk-throughs of several — and fly-bys of many — of the bases, created by other Travellers, that I encountered on the mission planet Lohampsa Ruto in the Warasu system. Along the way, I ran into a few of said Travellers, themselves, doing their own thing on the planet as well. Come visit this populous world, and I’d love to hear in the comments from anyone whose base I’ve visited or who simply has a story to share about the weekend mission.
A Look at “Threadneedle: Expedition II Base Omega”
This morning No Man’s Sky Expedition #2: Beachhead drew to a close after its two-week mission clock timed out. As with the Expedition before it, I found it to be a great deal of fun seeing players zipping about the various systems along the mission route and visiting some of the many bases they left behind.
Having been a rather more basic set of missions than the initial, two-month expedition, I managed to finish the expedition after about a week of play and then set about constructing a base in the system hosting the fifth and final player rendezvous point. Within the final system I found a planet characterized by gigantic spires of rock and frequent storms bringing “walls of flame.” At the very top of a particularly tall spire I began constructing a concrete base in the shape of a ring that is positioned such that it is being impaled by the tip of said spire.
Doing what’s needed in-game to acquire blueprints for items with which to build the base and fill the new space (make it “home”) — gathering Salvaged Data, Quicksilver, and Tainted Metal — takes time…and, as such, I spent a total of about 20 hours play-time on this expedition, where the core missions were completed in around 12.
As I type this post, the on-screen timer counting down the end of No Man’s Sky Expedition #1: The Pioneers reads 1 hour, 31 minutes left. After that, the mission will end and players’ Expedition save will convert to a Normal mode game save. Anyone who hasn’t completed all of the goals in the five phases of this first, two-month mission will find themselves bereft of victory.
On Wednesday, March 31, Hello Games released No Man’s Sky Expeditions (v3.3) which brought a new community focused play mode, Expedition, to the game. Expeditions involve a multi-stage mission along a preset path through the galaxy that must be completed within a set period of time (two months for Expedition #1), at which point the current Expedition will conclude and a new one set out by Hello Games will begin. Everyone embarking on the active Expedition starts off on the same planet, with a limited set of technologies, and will need to make their way many lightyears to the final destination point, fulfilling achievements along the way to progress through the mission’s various stages and on to full completion. Helpful awards are granted along the way as achievements are met and stages completed. Those who emerge victorious will be granted major awards, such as the Golden Alpha Vector fighter, which is the chief award for completing Expedition #1.
As a player fond of base building, I wanted to take advantage of the huge community aspect of Expeditions as an opportunity for a few bases of my construction to be visited by other players. (Unlike any of the other play modes, online players are everywhere in Expeditions, working their way, system-to-system, through the mission at their own pace.) As such, I took my time and built up my player by acquiring the many construction and technology blueprints necessary to build the bases that I felt would be a fitting mark to leave on this social undertaking within the No Man’s Sky universe.
[ Update: It is worth noting up-front that the weekend following the publication of this blog post brought the “Mud Huts” discussed here as a buildable item that can be purchased in the Anomaly from the Quicksilver merchant. As such, searching for the ideal hut is (perhaps sadly) no longer a requirement for those seeking such a base shelter. In a recent video, Mac Foraday demonstrates the building of such huts. ]
The first few weeks after No Man’s Sky Origins landed, I spent a great many hours in the game traveling from system to system, exploring the entirely new worlds added to the universe, as well as the dramatically expanded diversity found on the planets that have been there all along. Almost immediately I discovered a fiery hellscape of a world that was so unlike anything I’d encountered in the game before, I had to setup a base from which to explore it in detail. After several weeks’ journey, I paused to share some of the amazing sights I encountered.
Aside from the aforementioned hellish volcano worlds, another new type of world is a swampy sort marked by dramatically rooted trees, glowing fungi, and a sort of organic pod dwelling that players have taken to calling “Yoda huts,” given their similarity to the well known Degobah homestead of the aged Jedi master. Not long after installing the update, I encountered my first world of this sort, but I didn’t immediately notice these little organic huts situated at the base of certain trees. But, as soon as I came across my first, the possibilities got me quite excited given my fondness for “tiny home” bases.
The unfortunate thing about these organic pods is that surrounding flora is heavily clipped into almost all of them, cluttering their interior space with leaves and brambles. Finding a hut that is both nicely situated and free (or nearly so) of intruding plants is a time-consuming process, I’ve learned. They can often be found in small groups close together or even growing in and amongst one another in an overlapping sort of way. Some are inaccessible, the main opening being entirely in the ground or in the trunk of a tree. But, if you want to find just the right pod-home on these new swampy worlds, with a little patience you can.
The photos and video shared here start off with the first pod I found enough to my liking to put down a base computer and settle. The encampment is a series of three huts located on a hilly world that’s more misty than swampy, really. The main hut is the “cleanest” of the lot, the other two being rather overgrown, internally. I was still able to utilize them though, placing my base teleporter just inside the entrance of one, and using the other to conceal power storage and host a bouncing blob terrarium.