No Man's Sky: Your First Planet

[Neverhoodian]

With all the debate over what people think of No Man's Sky, I thought I'd open a separate thread for those who've played it to discuss their first experience on their starting planet.

Because RNGesus hates me, I began my adventure on a mottled red world with high doses of radiation in the atmosphere. The stark landscape reminded me a bit of Morrowind, particularly since giant mushrooms and tall, twisted vines were what passed for trees. Animal life was scarce, but the few I ran across were suitably exotic; floating crabs with tentacles for legs (again like Morrowind and its netches), some small stegosaurus/beaver hybrids and a family of finned bipedal crocodiles with lion heads.

My first few expeditions consisted of meekly toeing a few dozen yards to mine for resources at a nearby mineral and flora cluster before sauntering my way back to the ship to recharge. Eventually I figured out where the sprint toggle was and decided to make a break across the landscape to a distant hebridium deposit, periodically harvesting resources in an attempt to keep my strength up.

I ran across a Korvax outpost about halfway there. I gave its inhabitant quite the scare as I sprinted inside to recuperate, but I quickly struck up a rapport with it (or at least the best I could manage given I couldn't understand a word it said). The outpost contained some supplies, a tech blueprint for my multi-tool, and a computer that provided expanded scan data of the planet after solving a simple logic puzzle. Feeling reasonably well-equipped, I set off again. It wasn't until after I reached my destination that I realized I could have taken shelter in the caves that dotted the landscape as well, making me feel a bit silly in hindsight. On the flip side, it made the trek back far less hazardous.

After getting far more hebridium than I needed from the deposit, I eventually scrounged up enough zinc from large yellow flowers to fully repair my ship. While my first instinct was to head for space immediately, I also felt a reluctance to leave, despite the planet's hostile conditions. I had spent well over an hour there, and I had grown accustomed to its stark beauty. I decided to harvest a bit of thamium9 for ship fuel, a task made exponentially easier now that said ship was flyable. I also stumbled across some Korvax monuments and gleaned a few words from their language as a result. Eventually I had enough juice in the tank to feel confident enough to blast off for new horizons...

 

[Tohuvabohu]

I was kindof hoping to start off on a toxic hellhole of some kind, but I ended up starting off on a beautiful green and 'pleasant' planet full of resources and creatures.

Spoiler

[img src='http://i.imgur.com/Gjt2BBz.jpg'][/spoiler]

Finding most of the resources I needed to get started was easy... until I was told to find Heredium. I just couldn't find any of it nearby.

After wandering around for a distance, my scans told me of advanced life located a 10 minute jog in some direction, past a pretty huge grassy mountain. I tried making my up the mountain only to fall into a cave opening masked my the grass that I couldn't make my way back out of, so I had to follow the caves until I got back outside again.

Eventually I made it to this 'advanced life' which turned out to be an outpost, I ran inside quickly and found an alien, a Vy'keen. So in my eagerness to talk which an alien, I ran right up to him and spoke, and the alien immediately reacted aggressively towards me, grabbing my multitool and yelling in a foreign language. It was pointing at my scanner and seemed to demand I give it some of my resources, which I did and seemed to make it happy, then let me go. So my first alien encounter involved being threatened and extorted.

I finally found Heridium, another 10 minute jog in a different direction and had enough resources to get off the planet and up into space. I visited the space station and found another aggressive vy'keen, but this one offered me a new and improved multitool for free instead. Then I made some trips back and forth the planet, finding monoliths and trading resources, until I felt comfortable enough to visit the 2 moons.

Moon #1: Which you can see in the picture above, looked lush and green from orbit... But the vibrant green was actually the clouds. After descending through the green clouds, the moon was red and storming toxic rain. Fauna was nonexistent, and flora was restricted to giant mushrooms.

Moon #2: Was completely dead. No atmosphere whatsoever, Flora and Fauna read as "Devoid" meaning there was nothing there but rocks and minerals. I was lucky enough to find some giant stacks of gold though.

Just made it to my next star system last night. Found another large planet, which appeared green from orbit. After landing, it's a completely rocky world covered in green moss, poisonous rain, and "Devoid" of Fauna. Oh boy.

 

[Neverhoodian]

For the record, the above two posts alone made this game sound more unique and interesting than any of the hype that surrounded it before release. It's like everyone playing could have a very different story to tell. Can't really say that about many games where all the content has already been decided by the developers.

I think that in itself seems to prove that a lot of the harsh feedback the game's been getting is if nothing else, pretty short-sighted.

 

[Lightspeaker]

-snip-

Hello Games needs to hire you as their PR and marketing director.

I've been MASSIVELY cynical towards this game and the fact that the game seems extremely shallow in what you can actually do in a "mile wide but an inch deep" kind of way put me off it. Combine that with the apparent lack of the game actually going anywhere or progressing much (much like every other survival style game out there) and I was definitely never buying it at launch.


Your post here, on the other hand, actually makes me want to play this thing. I probably still won't get it right away. But now I might pick it up down the line if it goes cheap (and after they get all of their DLC and expansions out of their system).

 

[Ragsnstitches]

For the record, the above two posts alone made this game sound more unique and interesting than any of the hype that surrounded it before release. It's like everyone playing could have a very different story to tell. Can't really say that about many games where all the content has already been decided by the developers.

I think that in itself seems to prove that a lot of the harsh feedback the game's been getting is if nothing else, pretty short-sighted.

You know, the game can still have problems even if it delivers on some of its promises.

Personally the game looks fine to me (haven't got it yet, don't know when or if I will), it's in my area of itnerests being a sci-fi themed exploration game with some mild survival elements. That said, its scope is about the only exceptional thing about the game, the individual elements that fill it in are less impressive. There are better space games, better survival games, better exploration games etc. The sum of its parts is kinda underwhelming given the scale of everything.

I'm hesitant to throw down ?60 for what I've seen thus far so I may be waiting for a price drop. ?40 seems more apt for me.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Righty ho then, btw that green planet looks lush...I am on third planet now, but I keep accidentally (that's what the courts will hear anyhow) shooting large spaceships and having to run away after realising I did not plan for battle at all.

First planet: Red and purple with loads of blue caves, red water for some reason....I like to think of it as the planet of blackcurrant juice or blood, I forgot to name this one because the amount of systems I was suddenly taking on board and was scanning everything in a sense of wonder that brought back comfortable memories of the Metroid Prime trilogy and the OCD levels of life scanning involved. First thought: Can we get a cool visor look too for this exploration?
Spent half an hour in some cave networks in the vain hope it was a shortcut to my first chunk of special material, decided to turn back to find way out...got lost again but found a hole in the ceiling! Yay! ...Jetpacked the fuck outta there and right near the material needed. Found many locked devices that require pass keys I still have yet to find. Got off planet and into a space station.
Nobody home! Locked doors! Some form of shop to confuse matters also. Learnt some alien words, being the multicultural hippy that I am.

Planet 2: Realised only now I could upload and name every damn discovery for money. Sweet! Not allowed to name things "tri-bollocks" ...not so sweet. Fair enough, Solar system now officially named "Hobbling Hippo" with each planet a part of the Hippo's hobbled anatomy. This planet is now "Hippo's Hobbled Leg." An unsuspecting passing moon now named "Hippo's Hobbled Face." Thought it could get away...hah!
Green and blue, very grassy planes/plains...many many creatures and some airbound flying worms that look like something out of Dune managed to ignore gravity. Found crashed ship with bigger inventory. Why not...it's mine now suckas! Oh wait, it's broken. Time to go hunting. Oh crap there's a massive dinosaur thing with a bulbous head and it's attacking me! Ruuun!
Found first gold, good times. Found out ship can compact element loads, better times! Started work on learning more words, helping out last aliens by guessing what they want, found a site that has some living growth all over it, not sure what thats about, but nevermind, robbed the place blind anyway. Found out that shooting doors makes flying robots very unhappy. Must be more careful.
Out of the planet...time to work on the hyper drive.

Learnt that you can buy other ships from spacestations off any passing alien, interesting shapes. High prices. Ok then, onto next planet!

Planet 3: Am closing in fast. Had to get away from what I thought was an empty space cruiser that I shot at. Not as vacant or as forgiving as i'd hoped. Maybe they'll forget about me...must check out tbis last planet before next hyper jump.

Am loving the variations of the soundtrack. I remember seeing that it's supposed to be procedurally generated music, which is possible i'd imagine with the right rules. It seems to hit each mood just right, from the mellow exploration to the exiting/entering space stations with building excitement.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Great reads so far. No Man's Sky is definitely a "water cooler" game.

After a bit of system exploration it's become clear I'm in Korvax territory; they're the only sentient aliens I've come across so far. Based on my interactions with them, they value honesty and stoicism.

I've visited a space station and two other planets so far. Planet #2 was a dead, dark world with only a few luminous plants for life, so I didn't stick around very long (still didn't stop the Korvax from building a few outposts, though). Planet #3 is decidedly more promising, a vibrant world covered with red and aquamarine vegetation, along with what looks like Cretaceous-era dinosaurs for animals. It appears the Korvax deem this planet to be of some value, as I was immediately greeted by a large landing pad with ships coming and going. I plan on a more thorough expedition my next play session.

I also tried zooming out on the galactic map once to get a sense of scale. I eventually gave up after five minutes of watching literally thousands of stars zip past with no end in sight...and that was zooming in just one direction. Looks like the whole "18 quintillion planets" marketing blurb is a reasonable claim after all.

snip

The game's open-endedness is certainly a draw for me. I really does feel like I'm crafting my own story in the cosmos. I'll be the first to say the game's not for everyone, though. If you're looking for more structure or depth you're probably going to be disappointed. I'm also starting to notice the chinks in the procedural generation's armor, from similar looking animals to the occasional off-kilter terrain and wonky collision detection.

Oh crap there's a massive dinosaur thing with a bulbous head and it's attacking me! Ruuun!

Ah, so there ARE aggressive creatures. I was starting to wonder about that, as every animal I've encountered so far tries to run away. I did have a dinosaur take a swipe at me once, but only because I cornered it against some dense vegetation.

 

[Lightspeaker]

If you're looking for more structure or depth you're probably going to be disappointed.

The problem I have is I kinda feel an open-world game needs either depth of possible things to do/create (e.g. Minecraft) or depth of world building (e.g. Skyrim or Fallout) to sustain itself. Ideally both but that's rare. Based on the way the game has been presented and the various videos and reviews of it I've seen...No Man's Sky appears to have neither.

Either way for me its a game I'll be buying at a discount or not at all. I'm not paying full price for it.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

My first planet was actually a toxic, Venus-like planet with a surprising amount of plant life.

Like everyone else, finding heridium was a pain in the ass, but once that was done and my ship was repaired enough to fly, I farmed up some plutonium and took that opportunity to explore. My first stop was a derelict building with meat moss all over the walls and nothing trying to kill me. Disappointed, I flew around to various points of interest before finally making my way off-world.

That being said, in the course of my travels I ran into a rather annoying bug. If I park with a large enough mountain directly in front of me, I get shot straight into orbit when I try to take off. Of course, that means missing out on the gold deposit that was just far enough away that I didn't want to walk there.

Some people harp on the launch thrusters eating 25% of your fuel every time you take off, but you can find plutonium literally everywhere, so running out of fuel should never be a problem.

We also need more items, more starship weapons, and an easier way to repair your ship. If I suffer battle damage, I have to scrounge up a racial item that probably isn't for sale on the market, and use that for repairs. Why can't I just pay units?

10/10 will keep playing into the forseeable future.

 

[Catfood220]

So, what was my first planet? We will never know as the game crashed as it was just about to load the planet.

I restarted the game and this time it actually loaded and wouldn't you believe my luck, I woke up on a radioactive planet made up of differing shades of green, a landscape of hills and valleys, a sky that differs between green and pink/purple and a lot of mushrooms. Awesome, the first thing I start doing is mining the fuck out of everything I can see, which quickly draws the attention of the fuzz. So now, I have to destroy these little droids as they won't leave me alone. Ok, lesson learnt I keep my mining to little bursts which still upsets the local law enforcement, but this time they just scan me and leave me alone. Going to have to keep an eye on that. I also find a sort of robot thing that offers to guide me through the game, ummmm, no thanks you wannabe Dinkle-bot, this is my adventure. I don't need you looking over my shoulder like a fussy mum.

With the planet radioactive, I am initially not keen on straying to far from my ship because I keep needing to replenish the protective shield, but with time I get a bit braver, finding out that my character doesn't like falling from high heights after flying up in the air with my jetpack. Ok, I'm learning. So I wander around, gathering stuff to fix the ship and my gear up. Fixing the launch engines is easy as all I need is to craft sheets out of the iron I have mined, but to fix the other engines I need another mineral and at this point I get the feeling the game is trolling me as the destination always seems to be over the next hill. But I get there eventually, on the way finding caves that act as shelter as well as a couple of points of interest. As well as some creatures, some of which I can't describe and others that look like huge Armadillos with Stegasaurus plates on their backs, all of the are very scared of me until I feed them.

I have a question, these planets are apparently unexplored, but I see ships flying through the atmosphere, there are the flying drones everywhere and there are little settlements knocking about the place. So are we going around renaming planets that people have already named and tamed? Or are these people in these ships just flying around in space with absolutely no curiosity about the planets they are passing? Anyway, I named the planet Rainshine, the first planet in a system of planets that will no doubt be named after Bran Van 3000 songs.

So I fix the engines on my ship and go for a fly about, I find that there are beacons that give directions to other places. So following the map icon, I go to the monolith and activate that and it immediately starts torturing a bird for some reason. Using the few words of Gek (who I'm assuming live in this system) I have managed to find, I figured out that I was supposed to put the bird out of its misery and I am rewarded for doing so.

And that's where I got up to last night. So far I'm enjoying it, you can probably tell I haven't got too far into it but I can see though that sooner or later the appeal is going to wear off, but I can see it being a nice game to just chill out with when nothing else takes my fancy. I mean what else are you going to do in a nearly limitless universe?

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Oh crap there's a massive dinosaur thing with a bulbous head and it's attacking me! Ruuun!

Ah, so there ARE aggressive creatures. I was starting to wonder about that, as every animal I've encountered so far tries to run away. I did have a dinosaur take a swipe at me once, but only because I cornered it against some dense vegetation.

There are, in fact I have had no end of aggressive critters attack my buttocks during a pleasant mining trip. Only recently realised some less angry types can be fed, though what for, I do not know. It seems to make them happy, which may not be enough reason for some...the bastards. Also I started with the Gek species first, then the V'... whatevers.

Have reached some interesting points lately. Some hint of progress is occurring, certain...species have been made contact with and the planets are definitely less homogeneous. Am exploring the system "What is love?" currently....on planet "Baby don't hurt me" before moving onto "don't hurt me" then finishing on "no more" (am really that committed to the cause) before taking a newfound black hole somebody pointed me towards. Floating mountains! Though am not so great at space combat, but it has a dark souls mechanic where you pick up your last loot at least.

 

[DeadProxy]

I think I can safely say that the RNG screwed me over a bit on my first planet compared to some of these stories I've read and what I've seen on streams/youtube. Tons of people get a great, establishing pan shot of their planet for the first minute of the game after you start, showing off any potential flora and fauna and all in all, just letting you see what your first planet has to offer. What did I get? A minute long pan shot of my character staring at a wall 3 feet away because my ship crashed into a freaking crater.

So there I was, stuck in a stupid hole, on a freezing planet that was -55C during the day, and -100 during the night, so whenever I decided to actually venture out of my hole, I'd have to return 2 minutes later just to recharge my shields. Thankfully my home-crater was connected to a fairly large cave system that protected me from the cold, and was nearly overflowing with Plutonium, so that was a nice find. It wasn't until I went on the hunt for Heridium that I got lost in my stupid caves for almost 2 hours, while slaughtering all the tiny wildlife cause I thought that was going to be my main source of heridium, but that was quickly remedied the instant I left my damn crater, cause that stuff is eeeevvverywhere. The rest of the planet was fairly boring though. Just a rocky planet, with some uninteresting plants and wildlife sadly, not some super pretty lush grass planet that I've only come across once so far.

Once my ship was all fixed up though, I decided to explore my planet pretty extensively, because I didn't want to run out of stuff in some unfortunate space accident that I was convinced would happen to me, so I flew around exploring, learning Gek words, upgrading my backpack and deciphering those outpost terminal things for about 6 hours or something like that. I just knew I'd find something worthwhile, and the first real Monolith thing was it, (even though everyone seems to get the bird one first) opening up my mind to the point where I had my first, and primary goal; I want to know. There's so much information out there, and I want to know it. But at what cost? *dun dun duuuun*

My final goal for my planet though was to not leave until I had some good tech blueprints and enough credits, (or what I thought was enough...ships are pricey) or just something worthwhile, and one of the outposts directed me to a Distress Signal, which I initially thought was "Woah, is someone gonna crash here soon?" because I didn't quite understand the time=distance way point thing. So I followed the source of the signal and found a crashed ship and immediately said to myself, "I can just FIND ships? Well I'm not leaving this place till I replace this piece of crap." and went on searching my home planet until I found a better looking replacement with a few more inventory slots, and then after like another HOUR repairing that new ship, I blasted off the planet really began my journey.



Jumping ahead a bit here, but once I saw the Galactic map, I really, really wanted to visit a Green star, since my start point was surprisingly close to a couple, and then I learned I needed a stronger warp engine, a level Tau one, and that stupid goal more or less had me exploring only the systems directly nearby instead of progressing in any direction really. It took a really, really long time before I actually got the blueprint for that though, and I love how I got it. I came across one of the Korvex (the robospecies) and he was about to fail some kind of exam, and I could give him a Bypass chip for him to cheat/skip the test, so I did, and the dude gives me the Warp drive spec for helping him not be sent to the recycle bin lol. I went to my green star, screwed around a bit, and then wondered, "How far can I warp now?" and holy crap...I can probably follow the Galactic Core path skipping 10+ systems at a time, but for now, I need actual credits cause I bought a beautiful Blue ship for 1.7 million creds, only for most of it to be taken up by weapons.

 

[sXeth]

My first planet was apparently literal hell and I should smack my travel agent until he gives me money back. I got this lovely somewhat red tinged rock, with some yellowish mists (probably explaining the background radiation), and fortunately (see below on weather) cave systems, unfortunately populated by what seemed like the Half Life head-crabs bigger spacefaring brother. Topped off with -70 degree normal temperatures that flipped into +110 degree heat storms on occasion. Being outside was basically draining the hazard meter in about two minutes. Needless to say, I didn't hang out there long after gathering the starting essentials together.




My most interesting world thus far, was a fairly lush rainforest like world. Dropping down to it to avoid an attack of space pirates a bit too numerous for my current ability to fight. This lovely yellow and green planet, with its indigo-blue waters, seemed pretty paradisical, if a bit chilly at a standard -7 degrees (Although the water was for some reason a balmy +22, perhaps hinting at some undersea volcanic activity). Then the 5 meter insect-eating dinosaurs showed up. While I'm unable to view myself, I must look like the giant insects these majestic beasts (looking rather like velociraptors with head-feather crests and small wing-feathers along their forearms) apparently consume. Some chasing ensued, before I felled the pair of them with my shotgun after a softening-up plasma grenade.

This attracted the attention of the planet's Aggressive-level Sentinels, and a running chase ensued, Returning to my ship and fending off more sentinels and their spider-bot combat unit, I realized I'd accidentally sold my plutonium before coming here, and could not lift off. Vegetative planets in general, it should be noted, are lacking in plutonium in general. Adding to the tension, violent windstorms that lowered the temperature over a hundred degrees kept popping up. Forcing me to either delve into the warmer water, constantly repatch my suit with sentinel scrap, or hollow out shelters into chunks of Heuridium and hold out until they passed

An expedition therefore occurred, scouring the world for either plutonium or some sort of friendly habitation, while dodging space=raptors and murderous robots in the jungles. The world mostly seemed to be Korvax ruins and monoliths however. I eventually found a crashed ship some hour plus walk from my original ship. While heavily damaged, I was able to repair it, and scavenge some plutonium from nearby cargo crates to get off the planet again.