No Man's Sky developer Hello Games has broken its long silence by revealing the details of the space-exploration game's first major content update, titled the Foundation Update.
Following months of little to no communication after the overwhelmingly negative reception to Hello Games' space-exploration title No Man's Sky, the studio has finally broken its silence. Studio founder Sean Murray has now revealed the details of its first major content update, via a new tweet.
[HTML2]
Titled the "Foundation Update" and touted as the first of many free updates, this upcoming patch comes in at a sizeable 2.7GB - approximately half the size of the game - and will add new game modes, additional gameplay elements such as camping and farming, and a base-building mechanic that was teased about prior to the release of No Man's Sky.
The new update will add two new additional game modes, the first of which is called Creative mode and will allow players to build a base and explore the universe with no limits. The second new game mode is called Survival mode, whereby players have to survive the galaxy with stronger and more aggressive enemies, increased hazards, and limited resources.
Perhaps the most significant upcoming update to No Man's Sky is the addition of a base-building mechanic, which will allow players to claim a home planet by finding an uninhabited base and creating their own, fully functioning homestead. Not only can players now create their own field of crops with the base-building mechanic's new farming feature, alien lifeforms can now also be recruited to help with various tasks such as the aforementioned farming, researching new technology, and developing new weapons.
[HTML1]
For those keen explorers, the Foundation Update will also add in a new camping mechanic, which allows players to place save points anywhere in the universe, as well as build essential equipment needed for survival. Moving beyond what is now possible on solid ground, the new patch will now allow explorers to purchase huge interstellar freighters. A freighter not only acts like a movable home base in space - complete with recruitable aliens - but it also allows players travel to more economically favorable systems in order to maximize earnings.
In addition to the major gameplay additions, the patch will also feature a number of smaller but significant improvements, such as a new selection of resources and technology available for discovery and research, an improved user interface that will streamline inventory access, and a long list of bug and glitch fixes. As for when players can expect the Foundation Update to drop, no release date has been revealed yet.
Based on the long list of incoming features and fixes for No Man's Sky, Hello Games has been hard at work in the face of massive criticism these past few months. It remains to be seen whether the Foundation Update will be able to win back the game's playerbase, but it certainly appears that this upcoming patch is the first step in the right direction for the struggling space-exploration epic.
Below are the general gameplay fixes for No Man's Sky, with the full notes available over at the game's website.
- Fixed technology becoming instantly fully charged when repaired
- Fixed ship appearing on incorrect pad in space station after loading
- Added interactable objects that required certain tech to collect
- Added shootable objects that require certain tech to mine
- Rebalanced resource availability and technology charge requirements
- Fixed initial game flow - where travelling to space too quickly after visiting the monolith could prevent the first atlas station notification appearing
- Prevented player being prompted to scan for buildings before leaving the system after visiting the monolith
- Prevented laser and melee attacks while in space from attempting to edit terrain
- Improved calculation of resources received when mining terrain
- Renamed Signal Scanners to Signal Boosters
- Signal booster objects updated to search for playable bases, suit upgrade pods, and mineable resources
- Removed signal booster from being distributed on terrain, as player can now build them
- Improved accuracy of environment detection, fixing cases where it rained inside caves
- Fixed galactic waypoints not loading correctly across saves
- Removed atlas pass v1 requirement from doors in stations
- Suit upgrade pods are no longer spawned in stations
- Suit upgrade pods can now only be used once
- Fixed collision in anomaly that was causing issues when exiting larger ships
- Increased the number of different NPC character models generated per system
- Fixed the game always remaining in day time for players who began their save prior to patch 1.03
- Fixed a potential crash in foliage instance renderer
No Man’s Sky is available now for PC and PlayStation 4.
Source: No Man’s Sky