After confirming some of the details of No Man’s Sky’s 1.3 ‘Atlas Rises’ update a couple days ago, Hello Games have now released the patch and gone in depth on all of the changes and many new additions to the game.
For one thing, there’s now much more story in the game, to the tune of 30 hours of new content. A new interdimensional race have appeared, ancient portals have activated, and there’s more depth to the lore and interactions in the game, letting you uncover the background to the Abandoned Building logs, the World of Glass, Sentinels and more.
Speaking of portals, they’re very much like Stargate, in that there’s a series of mysterious glyphs that could be deciphered to let you visit specific locations. That more easily enables community meet ups, and for the first time, there’s a step toward full co-op play, as you get to see the position of up to 16 other players via floating orbs. Interaction is limited, but you have local voice chat and could theoretically us the terrain editing Multi-Tool enhancements together.
The Galaxy Map has been overhauled to improve navigation and let you see the wealth, economy and conflict levels in each star system. This enables you to much better live the life of a trader, buying low and selling high in nearby systems. You’ll also be able to filter the map to specify certain characteristics and see your entire path so far.
There’s new exotic planet types to discover, while the quality of the different biomes have been improved, the exploration of which may uncover crashed freighters, which could be part of a salvage mission for Guild rewards.
Speaking of which, there’s now a Mission Agent in space stations that will hand out procedurally generated missions in scanning, trading, combat and exploration categories. Completing them improves your standing with different NPC guilds, leading to more difficult missions.
There’s tons more to the update, from better dogfighting to low-level planetary flight (and dogfighting!), improved interfaces, depth of field and on and on, which can be read about over on the No Man’s Sky page dedicated to it.
With the one year anniversary being celebrated this week, is this going to tempt you back to the game?
Source: Hello Games
camdaz
That all sounds pretty good, I’ll be giving it a go over the weekend.
TSBonyman
So many great changes, can’t wait to get home this eve! :)
GoosePies
Really excited too, only question is do I keep my 250+ hour save or bite the bullet and start again. I think there is so much new stuff I’ll do the latter.
TSBonyman
Hello Games have pointed out that you don’t need to start a new game to experience the new content/features – but i’m also tempted to begin anew … maybe backup existing save first then revert if necessary.
ron_mcphatty
I’m very tempted by a fresh start, especially to see the new story additions from the start.
MrYd
Yes, it’s very tempting to start a new game. I think I’ll be doing that.
MrYd
And having just had a little go, I think that was the right decision to start again.
Obviously you have a bit of an advantage, knowing what you’re up to.
But there’s new things straight away. Which I won’t spoil, but one of the first things is mentioned on that page detailing all the updates. And looks quite impressive.
So yes, backup your save to a USB stick just in case, and start a new game.
ron_mcphatty
Good to hear :)
TSBonyman
A common issue seems to be that existing bases were compromised by the terrain changes, so it’s probably best to start a new game if you haven’t been playing regularly.
But i only recently acquired the final jetpack upgrade after many hours searching so i’m going to stick with my old save for now. Can’t face into redo-ing everything from scratch when there’s all the new stuff to be getting on with too.
MrYd
The game is also on sale as whatever Sony are calling this week’s PSN sale. Just £9.99, which is a huge bargain. It was worth full price a year ago (despite what some people would have had you believe), and now there’s even more of it. For a fraction of the price.
Nate
For all the fuss that has been made about it, it is easily worth a tenner!