No Man’s Sky Important Things You Need to Know
No Man’s Sky Important Things You Need to Know
No Man’s Sky is an open world exploration, survival and science fiction video game planned for release in June, 2016. The game is inspired by imagination and adventure, it presents you with a galaxy filled with unique planets to explore. These planets are procedurally generated and comprised of various lifeforms and dangers.
Below are 10 things you should know about No Man’s Sky;
10. Multiplayer But Not MMO:
No Man’s Sky is a multiplayer video game but it’s not an MMO. All players exist in the same universe but they exist far away from each other. You may spawn in one galaxy and your friend in another. You and your friend may find each other but it will definitely take time. In the words of Sean Murray who is Managing Director of Hello Games,
The Game isn’t sending you information about what every single player in the universe is doing at the same time.
He also said that they are thinking of implementing a type of lobby system for players, if they were to ever meet each other, but the chance of meeting another player is very rare.
When you spawn at the start of the game, you will be alone on a unique plant; and this is important to the type of exploration and survival game that is No Man’s Sky. Although you will be one of possibly thousands, and maybe millions of people who will be exploring the same universe at the same time, the universe of No Man’s Sky is so vast that it will be nearly impossible to meet with another player.
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9. How No Man’s Sky’s Universe Works?
The universe in No Man’s Sky is procedurally generated, there is a galactic map so that you can find different planets to travel to. There is no mini-map when you are on a planet, however there will be a markers on-screen for players so that they can locate their ship, station, landmarks they discover, or the beacon where they can upload discoveries. All your discoveries will be marked as twinkling stars on the galactic map.
There are different galaxies in this universe and you can fly in any direction you want forever and it is unlikely that you will actually get to nothingness. The planets exist in star systems and orbit around stars. Planets and other celestial bodies exist in varying sizes and planets have unique environments, such as a deserts, forests, huge mountains or deep seas.
Each planet contains different eco-systems which are finely balanced, and which dynamically interact with each other. For example, predatory animals across land and sea, will hunt for their prey. The time of day also affects the behavior of the wildlife, with some animals becoming more violent at night time similar to Far Cry Primal. The fact that all these systems can be explored and affected by the player is pretty amazing.
8. No Man’s Sky’s Gameplay:
As I mentioned earlier No Man’s Sky works as self contained universe, and the gameplay is focused on exploration and survival within that universe which means there are different obstacles within the universe. For example, there are dangerous creatures on different planets and space pirates attack different convoys, if you help the convoys or the space pirates it will create your affiliation with that faction.
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If you are in the middle of a fight and have a strong affiliation with pirates or other groups you can call them for assistance. But the fighting is not the main focus of this game, yes you can play as a fighter but you can also play as trader or explorer.
If you play as a trader then you have to mine different resources on different planets and then sell those somewhere else for money. You can also use those resources to craft things that upgrade your suit, armor ships and weapons. The game does not force you to choose your play style and given the vast universe this game has, I think it’ll keep us busy for a long time.
7. The Atlas:
The Atlas is a black diamond shape object in space and works as database. When you make a new discovery you need to locate a beacon in order to upload your discoveries to the Atlas. The beacon looks like a droid or machine of some kind, well they work as a save point in a certain way.
The information and data stored in the Atlas is shared across the universe of No Man’s Sky; this means that any discoveries uploaded to the Atlas can be accessed and seen by other players. If you are the first player to make a new discovery, it will be named after you and other players can see it. Players are able to discover, and therefore name a wide variety of things in No Man’s Sky; this may range from plants to planets and everything in between.
6. Space Stations:
There will be at least one Space Station in every system. In these Space Station you can trade resources for Units or purchase new ships. You can attack a station but cannot destroy it as every system should have at least one. But there are other reasons to attack, the developers refer to these space stations as ship showrooms or shops, there are also trading posts on these stations which are a necessary part of No Man’s Sky’s gameplay.
5. No Man’s Sky’s Ships:
There are different classes of ships in the game such as fighter, trader, and explorer. All these ships have varying levels of hyper drive, weapons and other characteristics. Explorer ships have the best hyper drive in all these classes. All ships require fuel to fly, and fuel is really expensive in the game, but you can find different resources on different planets to make fuel.
You can upgrade different elements/parts of your ship such as hull, hyper drive, laser, plasma, shield, increase cargo space, etc. If your ship is destroyed all the upgrades associated with that ship will be gone.
4. NPCs and Player Interaction:
When you are not in your ship you can walk, run, jump, swim and use jetpacks(once acquired). Your inventory includes a multi-tool, a suit, a jetpack (once acquired), Units (in-game currency) and whatever resources you collect. One thing you should be happy about is your suit because when you die your upgrades associated with your suit do not vanish like they do with ships.
Your suit has a flash light which is nice because it will get dark in various places and at certain times as well. You will be interacting with different NPC races in the game who speak different languages and have different personalities. You can unlock different words of alien languages by finding different monoliths of each alien race. Every monolith will unlock one word at a time so you will gradually learn the language.
There are different factions of these races such as pirates, convoys, police, etc in the game. You can gain favour from each of these factions but remember one thing that when you gain favour from one of these factions the others will become your enemy.
3. No Man’s Sky’s Weapon/Multi-Tool:
The Multi-tool is basically your means to mine different resources, but this is also a weapon. The Multi-tool will not be able to mine certain resources immediately, which means you need to develop and upgrade it. You can also upgrade your multi-tool to develop a fine weapon.
You can build your multi-tool by finding blueprints either from exploring planets or purchasing them from traders. Your multi-tool upgrades will be there even if you die which is really good because players will get attached to it after spending money and and resources to upgrade it.
2. No Man’s Sky’s Currency:
Units are the currency in No Man’s Sky. You need units because there is an in-game economy and this economy makes it possible to have agency within the game. You need ships, fuel, multi-tools and upgrades. To buy all these things you need Units. There are many ways to earn Units like trading resources at trading posts on space stations.
No Man’s Sky is a full $60 video game and I hope there will not be any micro transactions. Sean Murray has confirmed that there will be no micro transactions in the game once it is completed. He has also stated that it is his intention to continue supporting the game with free updates and improvements for all players when the game is released in June.
1. No Man’s Sky is Ridiculously Vast:
No Man’s Sky is a ridiculously vast game. There are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets in the game, I can’t even comprehend how many planets that is! Obviously Hello Games did not go about making all these planets by themselves. These planets are procedurally generated, it would take lifetime to create all those planets and try to make them unique.
The Planets in the game are generated as you discover them and currently exist as seeds. The Seeds are just numbers that tells No Man’s Sky to generate a planet with a set of criteria when you discover that planet. Sean Murray explains this idea of procedurally generated universe than me in this short interview.
System that creates planets is really unique as one planet may favour different traits and has different eco-system. You should remember one thing that you can not explore the entire universe of No Man’s Sky because your life does not span for the time required to explore all these planets which in my opinion is extraordinarily amazing!
What things you are looking for the most in No Man’s Sky, tell us in the comments below!
