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Category: Synthesis 2.2

Community Event #16: A Bean-Feast to Allay the Anomaly

Community Event #16: A Bean-Feast to Allay the Anomaly

The 16th No Man’s Sky Community Event brought us to a lush, mountainous world and sent us on a quest to allay the anomaly by feeding its hunger for materials of the planet, in this case, Impulse Beans. As is always the case for me, seeing the player bases and multiplayer commotion on the event planet’s surface was the real fun of the event.

Here’s a short video highlighting my running of the event on Saturday afternoon.

( Update:

Bean-feast [ been-feest ] noun. Chiefly British slang.
  1. (formerly) an annual dinner or party given by an employer for its employees.
  2. a celebration or festive occasion, especially when a meal is provided.

)

Community Event #15: The Culling of the Blobs And…A Mysterious Code

Community Event #15: The Culling of the Blobs And…A Mysterious Code

This weekend’s No Man’s Sky Community Event #15 brought us by portal to an exotic world with gigantic purple spires rising high into the purple-hewn sky. Upon locating the Anomaly some short distance from the portal, I saw that it had taken the form of a traveller’s grave. Interacting with the grave marker brought forth the following message.

Davene, Generation RL0/A12/W80 is unquestionably dead, yet an echo of their unique signature still exists in this place. More than just a memory, it is as though the essence of them is still here… A static field cradles the grave in long crackling fingers. In the noise, a message: bring materials from this world. Sacrifice them here. Stabilise this anomaly.

This is a rather interesting message, what with the code-like component attached to the name. Davene. It’s a female name that means “beloved”, “little deer” and is the Hebrew form of “David.” The code is mysterious. Was Davene a child? Age 12, weight 80 lbs, perhaps? The “RL” of “RL0” does’t speak to me, unfortunately.

A Google search of the code leads to many things, one near the top being a PDF scan of a document dated 1846 from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, England, entitled Transits as Observed and Computations of Apparent Right Ascension [ PDF ] and on page A12, the tracking information of several celestial bodies is presented. What it might mean, were it even possibly relevant, I cannot say. And maybe it means nothing… It did remind me, to a degree, of the mysteries presented in the Waking Titan ARG leading up to the release of the Atlas Rises update.

What perhaps makes this even more mysterious is a message conveyed during Community Event #13, a few weeks back. Iteration: Mercury on the Anomaly, to whom Hello Games instructed us to speak in setting out on the mission, as part of their Beyond Development Update 6 notes, stated the following.

The voice of the static is…intoxicating. Staring into that rift is like a window into a dream. I see Soleth Prime. I see how I once was. An earlier version. And I feel raw, like the dream is looking directly back at me.

Those who had their eye on No Man’s Sky prior to its release may recall that Soleth Prime is the name of the planet shown in the famed, 2014 E3 preview video leading up to release.

YouTuber Procedural Traveller pointed all of this out in a video he posted a few days back discussing this enigmatic message and its reference to the early planet — the first planet in the No Man’s Sky universe, really — and the possibility that in the future we might be seeing worlds akin to Soleth Prime (or, perhaps, some worlds with the vibes of earlier versions of the game, I might suggest). Speculation, speculation… In the end, time will tell.

Arriving through the portal on Friday night to the event planet, I saw many ships arrayed about the place. I wandered about, visiting a few player-made bases, and then made my way to the Anomaly. Up the sheer cliff bordering the site I found a base someone had constructed that periodically dropped a series of balls down into the Anomaly area, making interacting with it a mild challenge. After the task was done, many of us were making a game of blasting the balls up the cliff face with our multitools. It was a crowded bit of fun rounding out the weekend event.

Community Event #13: The Culling of the Fish

Community Event #13: The Culling of the Fish

This past weekend’s No Man’s Sky Community Event #13 took us under the sea to a distress beacon and a voice that ominously spoke of a wound in reality requiring a sacrifice. The voice conveyed that it must consume material from the planet to quell the disturbance, and that meant culling indigenous aquatic creatures for their meat, in the form of the consumable Salty Fingers.

I joined the event (on PC) mid-day on Sunday and found the sea strewn about with carcasses and those creatures yet living, very much on the run. The host planet was violent with storms and the land covered in gargantuan flora. As could be expected, quite a few player bases were constructed within the system, some of which I visit in the video, below.

The sea — it foamed red that day, traveller.

A Glimpse of the Action at Community Event #11

A Glimpse of the Action at Community Event #11

This past weekend was community event week #11 in the No Man’s Sky universe and, as you might expect, I portalled in and took part. I enjoy the sort of mayhem that these weekend events bring, and was worried that the action I’ve been seeing during my typical, late-Sunday arrivals (as the event timer is nearly spent) would be absent during this earlier, mid-day Saturday partaking. Happily that wasn’t the case.

Stepping out of the portal and hopping over to the event site, I saw players chasing players, sentinels chasing players, walkers melting players, and raging, horned lizard-beasts that seemed pissed off at the whole affair. And, of course, player bases peppered the planet. I captured a little bit of the action while I was there.

See you out there next weekend, travelers.

A Look at the Wild Antics of Community Event #6

A Look at the Wild Antics of Community Event #6

The No Man’s Sky Beyond Development Update 3 (Patch 2.15) brought back the community events that we first saw for a period following 2018’s release of No Man’s Sky NEXT. I have participated in most of the events and have enjoyed them all, more for seeing other players on-site — the shenanigans going on — as well as the player-built bases that can always be found here and there in the vicinity of the mission target.

"Hot Air Balloons" above a river in a No Man's Sky screenshot

One of the busiest (even downright chaotic) events I’ve observed was community event #6 on the weekend of December 7th. I started the mission at the Nexus on Sunday, in the late afternoon / early evening when there were only a few hours left before the clock ran out.

I arrived to find five or six ships landed near the access portal, with many more zipping about at the mission target, a monolith by a lake, over which were flying two impressive “hot air balloons” (cleverly constructed bases). Players were everywhere — on foot, in starships, in ground vehicles. I came to find, later, that I caught footage of the Galactic Hub Defense Force (in their distinctive all-white, large fighters) engaging a number of “griefers” who were trying to obstruct the mission target with terrain. (Shortly thereafter, Hello Games released a patch including a bullet-item addressing this: “The ability to edit terrain in a multiplayer game is now its own permission setting, alongside the permission to edit a base.”)

It was quite a scene to behold.

I captured several minutes of video of the mayhem as I carried out the mission (on PC), which can be seen.