I Just Completed All the Steam Achievements in No Man's Sky - A Review, with Tips and *SPOILERS*

NMS is one of my infinite replayables, which should make the team at Hello Games happy to hear, since that was part of the...unrealized...concept when the game was launched.

It does not appear that the team was simply putting on, though early players found the lack of reducible objectives oddly, almost gallingly limiting, though the game generates, what?...likely billions of planets now, over the four-plus years of it's existence, across dozens of galaxies. It uses, obviously (though I barely code), certain programing parameters and generates new star systems according to the wanderings of its players (I can only assume that the star maps exist, but the systems no player has previously visited get generated only upon arrival, because otherwise it all seems like a lot of data).

These planets have a variety of four prime metals, with valuable metals, minerals and organic resources distributed alongside them, randomly, across a variety of climate and landscape types and zones. These resources are available for harvest at the tip of a magical laser beam that both decomposes whatever it touches and tractor-beams it into your backpack—if you have a cargo slot available (expanding your cargo capacity is one of the epic struggles of the early game that eventually fades away as a game diversion when you reach 'full' cap).

I'm sure that the team, which my metagame reading has informed me is quite small, less than a dozen employees as of about a year ago, legitimately felt they had constructed an expansive world with endless pursuits, diversions and novelties to engage their expectant buyers. The market did...not quite agree. I won't get into the psychology of it all, particularly because its more fashionable to pretend Freud is disused and despised than to take on such obvious pathologies head on, which is quite...amusant, to say the least, if it is not an apt subject for a psych dissertation in it's own right.

At all rates, the team have hustled admirably to make up the deficit, which was more one of providing some gentle direction before sending players off into one or another game economy or pastime to bounce endlessly across their multiverse than any question of whether they'd misjudged the wonder of their own creation.

For my part, I purchased the game soon after it came out (I'm a PC gamer, prefer builder games to shooters), this was a pretty rare leisure outlay for me, since I've been quite...um, at some ends in last few years, so it was even stranger that I then did not install it for many months thereafter.

Whatever the reason, by the time I did run the program I'd already spent all of whatever small surplus I'd calculated for myself out of my probably wishfully optimistic budgeting, so there was very little I could do for some time when it turned out that the sturdy old sailfish of a 19"-screen laptop I was using could not run the game.

<<Workin' for the Weekend montage>>

Cut to: I was working for a landscape designer in Topanga, CA, that's a real place, by Malibu, which is where the actress who played the eponymous character grew up, its a little artist colony up in a canyon that reaches all the way to The Valley and so its lately becoming an unwilling convert from exurb to suburb. At any rate, I was able to delude myself I could afford to buy a new computer and, eventually, I circled back to NMS.

So I came to the game, effectively, as it was intended to be in its 'basic' state, I was not burdened with the excessively lonely start that early buyers experienced and I've since played the new elements that have been added in two (or three?) updates since. Steam tells me that I've played 1,350+ hours, most of that actually active and not AFK because the game has an unfortunate habit of killing unattended players left in unwise places but also because the lovely new desktop I bought, my first custom-build since I left for college nearly two decades ago, turned out crap.

IDK, maybe it needs water cooling, I know shit-all about cooling, it was not a major concern the last time I put a machine together; it def needs a different sound card, the sound just randomly cuts out, no apparent reason, not tied to a single program or a volume or type of sound; but the whole system also just straight up crashes, again, for no apparent reason. Not floor vibrations, power, impact, software demands or a particular program script, unless its a common script everyone uses.

Rough life, but we soldier on.

I promised tips and *spoilers* and I have some for players, but, as a game review, I also want to suggest a few more tweaks for Hello Games to continue the endless work of completing this game.

1. I'll start with one that's goose- and gander-approved: Cooking is a really engaging, satisfying way to generate one of the game's more scarce and valuable currencies (there are three primary ones, but players can only barter). Turning in the hundreds of cooked items it is easily possible produce within a few hours of gameplay, itself, takes nearly an hour, spent mostly waiting for text to scroll out and clicking obsessively in hopes it will speed that scroll up once for each click instead of once per dialogue screen.

1a. What if the Chronus iteration had a son who did catering and offered to buy lots of 50 or 100 at a 20% discount from what Chronus gives? hashtagJustSayin

2. While I'm on the subject, I'd like to illustrate the importance of building a refinery/cook shack underground within 100u of your automatic livestock feeder:

2 (Cont.): Common metawisdom is that you have to babysit this machine to get it to work right, but if you're indoors, underground and nearby you can just be running half a dozen nutrient processors (ovens), which you feed from this machine and from a hundred or so farm plants in four-crop planters. Make sure to check on the supply of creature pellets in the feeder or the animals you've collected will disperse and your production will drop.

3. My little ranch is on a hilltop in rough country (so they can't wander far) in a place where three herd animals spawn close together and a number of other spawn sites are on ground the animals are able traverse back to the machine if you wanna do a little laser-herding. Turning in 50 copies of a high-value food can bring between 4-6 thousand nanite clusters (the most expensive weapon and spaceship upgrades cost 75k nanites) and I can easily produce 300 Delicious Vegetable Stews worth perhaps 3,500-5,500 nanites in just a few hours of gameplay. I would definitely trade them in faster for a discount.

4. Maybe its me, but I find the dogfighting maybe just a little too easy. I have played Star Wars X-Wing and...a market competitor MMO with similar warp and in-system flying dynamics on the other side of the Goldilocks scale, with improbably feeble shielding (and an easily exploited autopilot system). Still, I don't think I'm just way better at it than I feel like I am, I think it's just easy. Maybe a longer delay before the shield recharge kicks in?

5. I'm a very indifferent Multiplayer, however, I think it would be nice if there were a few different mechanics built up to encourage the in-game economy. Perhaps certain rare random drops could be set as the objective for some semi-optional mission paths, maybe just making certain necessary products more rare would encourage player to trade more. Certainly a trade board of some sort is in order, with offers to sell and buy left on some kind of timer? Something is tickling my mind about player classes and exclusive sets of crafting products, too, but I'll not develop it, for fear of closing copyright pathways.

6. There is one mission that already exists, I'd honestly be surprised if the devs weren't already aware of it and just tolerating it, but technically, its an exploit. Now, I don't have any fundamental problem with exploits. If the rules allow it, it's part of the game. Now, if it gives an undue advantage, then that's a bug, but if its just some way to optimize a currency grind then that's just working smart.

7. In the case of this exploit, it is so neat and elegant, with one newer player paying it forward to a somewhat more experienced player while learning the method to run the exploit for themselves thirty game-hours down the road, that I think the developers should legitimize it with secondary mission dialogues as a way of introducing players to the game economy. I'm referring to the cargo expansion exploit for living ships, which requires one player to purchase a ship in the same space station as a multiplay partner, then to summon it somewhere else in-system, either their freighter or a planet's surface.

7 (Cont.): If the other player is still in the space station, the ship left in-station by the first player becomes a glitch-ghost. It allows the second player to climb in to it, but not to claim it. This glitches the living ship the second player is flying in a manner that allows the player to upgrade it as they would normally do with a mechanical ship. Once the second player leaves that space station platform the glitch will clear, so be sure you have all the cargo expander modules beforehand that you need to fill out sixty-some cargo slots (cargo and technology tabs), which usually requires about thirty-five modules, based on how many cargo spaces the LS start with.

(Back to) 6 (Cont.): I am, as noted, a mostly solo player, but I went into the Nexus (multiplayer forum), recruited a partner on the public comms system and gave some less-experienced player a good deal of good game advice while he accompanied me on this little errand. In the end, I paid them with a fresh void egg, maybe two-days before he'd have been able to buy his first one himself.

8. On that subject of exploits, there is a common method for earning Units (both the basic game currency and distance are labeled in 'units,' its only confusing when you explain it) that I never learned because it seems just a bit too much against-the-point of playing a game. I mean, no one actually cares if you win or not, why not actually do some gaming while you slash your way from incredibly modest achievement to incredibly modest achievement. (feel free to look this method up for yourself, though, it should not be difficult to find)

After all, you're not really reading this post because it says "I Won It" at the top. You may be reading it because it says "Here's How You Can, Too!" but that's my point, no one cares but you and HG (you are, after all, ultimately supposed to win the game you paid for, I'm lookin' at you Paradox Games...).

9. Instead, use the currency grind I think the devs fully intended (or at least approve of, b/c they've made economies compliment one another in a circular series), which is to tour space stations, you can do it reasonably quickly via teleporter to every station you've visited. I make it an early focus of my gameplay to get the plans for building the component 'economy scanner' in my starship, then I only warp to 3-star economies (even when I'm going to the Center) unless a secondary mission automatically chooses the target system. Once you get up to even just five wealthy systems you can basically just tour from one to another, buying the top five items, which are manufactured items, not the raw resources you find planetside, and you sell them on at the next station.

10 (kinda). When your cargo is sufficient to carry all the production from those first five groups, you can turn about three to five million units of profit per teleport jump. I have not taken the trouble to learn or use the economy compliment system, because this income is plenty, particularly once you get as far as 20 wealthy systems, at which point you can just keep jumping in cycle and the system productivity will regenerate in sufficient quantities to continue producing until you reach whatever unit level you seek. 300 million units is sufficient for any single purchase in the game, and you can do that in perhaps six or eight hours of game play (though it would be a boring day).

11. There are a number of ways to produce raw minerals using refiners. These are intentional exploits (they're noted in game documentation), and they allow you to produce a lot of your basic necessities without leaving the safety of a roofed-in building. For the early game, the most important of these is the condensed carbon loop. A basic outpost with the full configuration of teleporter, ten storage cubes, trade outlet, and other powered objects will be pretty stable with five solar generators and five storage batteries (it all might lose power by the end of the night phase, in which case, I stick with a 1:1 generator to battery ratio to expand). Five gens and batteries will require 300 magnetized steel units and 500 condensed carbon units, which is equivalent to 1,000 units of the elemental carbon you harvest from trees, bushes and succulents.

12. The iron will probably be in your cargo waiting to be refined from rusted metal by the time you find a place for your permanent outpost. I almost always set the actual base computer up inside one of the isolated outposts you can find (in the early game, before the economy scanner will pinpoint them for you) randomly about the landscape once you get your ship airborne. Atmospheric flight, for no good reason, costs no fuel (and airborne, inside the atmospheric shell of a stellar object is one of the few mostly safe places to leave your character AFK), so feel free to just bounce around the planet you choose (it doesn't have to be the one you start on) until you find one of these, you can recognize them from a distance because they have a powered landing pad and a round building (not the rectangle-prism shelter-trailers that usually show up in pairs).

13. In addition to the powered landing pad, which launches you without any fuel cost any time you land at the base manually (teleporting in won't generate the ship on the landing pad), the outpost has two merchants, one with a supply of rarer component parts, and the other a normal trade outlet selection. The importance of these merchants is not just in the items they offer for sale, their purchase prices are different, so there are two chances, every time you arrive at home, to get a better than average sale price on your surplus, opening up more cargo slots, faster. Not having to build much to get four walls and a roof over your head doesn't hurt, but you'll still have to build a little four-wall shack outside to advance the mission checklist.

14. The carbon exploit is done by setting up a portable refiner (I build at least two, sometimes a third in the first ten minutes of every game, that way you can get the steel polished up while you also generate the carbon, or you can do the carbon faster) fueling the refiner, though if you have less than a full tank you don't need much fuel. If, for instance, you found a few condensed carbon crystals on the surface somewhere (the red crystals) and you've got only ten of them, about 1/3 of a tank, use that, then fill the hopper with the elemental carbon.

14 (Cont.): Refine the elemental carbon into condensed carbon, then use your middle mouse button (IDK the Playstation & XBox equivalents, sry) to retrieve the refiner from the ground into your pack. This requires three open cargo slots, because the condensed carbon you put into the fuel slot will come out as twice as much elemental carbon, minus whatever was burned to make the new condensed carbon which is in the tray. Now 'build' the refiner again, you'll notice there's an icon of the refiner with a green check mark instead of the metal plate and oxygen requirements, this shows you've got a built refiner in your cargo. Now fuel the refiner but don't refine anything! You've put 34 condensed carbon in and now, when you exit the refiner screen and retrieve the refiner again, it will give you...100 elemental carbon. Tadaaa....you've just created 32 elemental carbon.

More 14. If there are more condensed carbon left in your inventory, keep building, fueling and retrieving the refiner until you're adding the last of it (which you'll usually know because there won't be a full 34 condensed carbon left to add). No need to make certain the fuel gauge is full before you start refining the elemental carbon back into condensed again, and if you have an odd number of elemental carbon (and a very minor case of OCD completionism) you can leave three pieces unrefined (the last would be wasted by the game) and you might even match up odd numbers of carbon units returned out of the fuel tank when you get back to all condensed carbon in your pack again.

15. My next 'tip' is another one for Hello Games, it would be nice if the archeological trade thingies would reset eventually, and if those extraneous two above the useful one on the archive platform would also be made available. Its just annoying, and it doesn't make meta-game sense when so many other shop resources do reset.

16. I really hope they eventually add economy and combat scanner correlates for the living ships, I think they'd make highly motivating quest items (personally, I'd make the economy scanner last...)

17. I'm gonna end by reiterating the desire for an in-game economy that stimulates player-to-player trade. Does that require a fourth currency? Can quicksilver be adapted? IDK

Obviously, a great game and still great potential for expansion and updates, highly recommended.