It is usually a good plan to wait a day or three when Hello Games drops a big update and then launches a brand new expedition for players. I am not saying you have to wait until the Switch finally gets the updates, but the first night out is like any special event. Do you want to be caught up in the initial rush? Anyway, the expedition accompanying the Cosmos update arrived last week and I have hopped right in.
No Man’s Sky – Cosmos
Not that I need yet another title to play, but No Man’s Sky expeditions usually have some good rewards and, unless they company artificially gates phase advancement… looking at you The Swarm expedition… you can generally jet through if you keep your eye on the ball.
Or there is the inevitable guide on Reddit… I’ll put the link at the end of the post… which this time says you can wrap things up in as little as four hours.
Unlike some past expeditions, this one is there to show off the new stuff that came out with the Cosmos update. Instead, this one is a bit of an expedition down memory lane, as Hello Games gives us a look at where the game has been over the last decade. From their announcement:
As a team, we tend to have our heads down, and don’t often take time to reflect – but we’ve now released 41 named updates for No Man’s Sky! So it was lovely to take the time to look back over that long journey.
We don’t want to spoil too much, but we had a lot of fun resurrecting elements from previous versions of the game, and hiding easter eggs for long-term players to discover. We hope that Travellers who have been with us for a long time will enjoy remembering some of these updates, and newer Travellers will find it interesting to glimpse back in time!
So off we go. I had already parked in the anomaly in anticipation of the upcoming expedition, so I logged right in, sat right down, and wrote myself a letter… wait, no… I signed up for the expedition.
Welcome to the Expedition
Before that, however, I turned off multiplayer in the settings, because while I love my fellow travelers, you can be a bit much and also the game does not love it when there are more than a dozen of us within a set space. Or I can claim that I am adhering to the original versions of the game, when it was a solo venture in a shared universe. I can still see all the stuff people left behind, just not the people themselves.
I took a minute to throw a few items into the basket to take with me, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to collect them until I reached a point in the expedition where I could get back to the anomaly. But that usually happens pretty quickly.
Some stuff for the trip
I did this well before the post linked below about how to finish the expedition in four hours had shown up. That came with a shopping list of things to pack, and I failed on most of it. But an expedition is doable even with items you find along the way. Also, we have six weeks to finish this.
Then I hit the button and went through the usual opening montage. You are on a strange planet, bits and pieces of your gear are announced as being online, and then you get the expedition splash.
When the expedition officially starts for you
Then it is time for the usual first step of any expedition, finding your broken ass space ship and fixing it. Seriously, this is the number one No Man’s Sky trope, the broken down spaceship scenario, tied with the amnesia trope, which goes hand in hand with it.
Another broken expedition ship
This meant the usual local scavenger hunt for materials, made easier by the fact that I was alone. There is also something to be said for being able to focus. Though, again, I was able to tell I was not the first person here.
I’ll call him Rocky
You get to name stuff when you discover it first, and even with multiplayer off, the universe remembers and sends it to you.
I also noticed a new material as I was burning down the local flora.
Pray tell, what is Thanium9?
Thanium9 was a new one on me. Later, when I reached the anomaly, I figured out that this mapped to oxygen because my stack of O2 in the basket was now a stack of Thanium9.
This must be an old school name for it. I am sure it must be, because once I got the ship going I had finished the first milestone and was told to get back in the ship to receive a message. The message was about the
Tales from 2016
This, as the quote above implies, is the start, the kick off, the beginning of the ride through all of the named updates, starting with launch, each of which is a milestone on the journey.
The milestones of the first phase
So if you want to know, for example, when the first steps towards multiplayer were introduced, you will find that is was with the Atlas Rises update, which also introduced the first really big narrative quest line.
Atlas Rises makes us floating orbs
The phases also gate what features of the game you have access to. Sort of. Some later features are still there, like the solar system map view that arrived with Cosmos.
But others you have to unlock. For example, Atlas Rises also introduced the third person character models, which are required for the over the shoulder view perspective to the game.
Atlas Rises unlocks
However, you don’t get that view until you finish the next milestone, for the Next update, because they saved it until then.
Third-person mode arrives
Up until then you are always in first person mode, but as soon as that is unlocked you are in third person view.
I had a bit of a problem getting that far because Atlas Rises needs 120 cadmium to finish and I wasn’t finding any. But the previous milestone gave me the cadmium drive, which I had installed in my ship. I parted that out, which gave me 125 cadmium, 120 to finish the milestone and then 5 more to play the “double your cadmium” game once I had a freighter and the large refiner that came with it.
And so it goes. There are 43 milestones broken up across five phases, which all add up to the expedition.
The Five Expedition Phases
As always, you don’t have to do all the phases in order… unless you want to have the game unwind in historical order. (I read the guide and found out how to jump ahead and get access to the anomaly so I could collect my semi-useful supplies. I have been staying the course otherwise.)
I am now through the first phase, which gave me the in-game artwork package, which was what I really wanted from the expedition. But there are five weeks left so I am sure I will find the time to finish it all up.
Related:
- Hello Games – Expedition 23: Our Journey Continues
- Reddit – NMS Our Journey Continues Expedition 23 In 4 HOURS