No Man’s Sky‘s first big content update is here, and it adds base building, farming, player owned freighters, new game modes and even more interesting things to discover. This patch is the first of many free updates, and it comes after months of silence from Hello Games, showing that the developers chose to keep working silently instead of abandoning the game as some people thought they would.

New features:

 

GAME MODES

• Normal mode is the original chilled exploration experience
• Creative mode allows players to explore the universe without limits, and build a huge base
• Survival mode really changes the game, creating a much more challenging endurance experience

BASE BUILDING

• Claim your home planet by finding an uninhabited base and creating your own, fully bespoke outpost.
• Construct your homestead for shelter, using modular structures and decorations, replicated from resources gathered while exploring
• Recruit alien lifeforms to help research new technology. Farming, engineer, weapons and science specialists are hirable from Space Stations
• Use Terminus Teleporters in Space Stations to teleport to and from your base at will
• Expand your base with storage containers to stockpile precious resources and rare products
• Find an even more beautiful location and you can simply dismantle your previous homestead to refund all of the spent resources

FARMING

• Cultivate biome dependent crops outdoors, or inside your base or Freighter using Hydroponic Labs
• Plants grow over time and offer a steady supply of resources to be harvested
• Hire a farming specialist to research and grow ten new plant types, and discover new resource elements

MAKING CAMP

• Players can now build essential equipment in the field on-planet
• Place save points anywhere in the world, crucial for Survival mode
• Automated Harvesters gather resources from mineral deposits in your absence
• Waypoints can be placed and colour-coded to allow explorers to return to discoveries
• Communications Terminals allow explorers to leave sub-space messages for others to find
• Discover nearby mineral deposits, uninhabited bases or suit upgrades with the use of a Signal Scanner

FREIGHTERS

• Purchase huge interstellar Freighters at great expense, and then summon them from anywhere in the galaxy
• Resources can be teleported to your Freighter while on-planet, ideal for stockpiling goods for trading
• Customise the inside of your Freighter within the Base Building section
• Create extended cargo holds to expand your vessel’s capacity, and grow crops of rare resources on board
• Transport your Freighter and its cargo to different, more economically favourable systems to maximise your earnings
• Use the new recruitment system to crew your Freighter with Engineer, Farmer, Weapons and Science specialists to help research new technologies

NEW RESOURCES & TECHNOLOGY

• Discover new biome and star specific resource types as you explore the universe
• Craft the new Advanced Mining Laser and Hazmat gauntlets through base building and use them to gather rare resources
• Research and discover dozens of new products, building components and technologies

USER INTERFACE

• The user interface has been improved to accommodate the stress of Survival Mode where a small inconvenience can be the difference between life and death.
• The intelligent Quick Access Menu streamlines Inventory access.
• Products can be stacked up to five times per inventory slot, resulting in increased starship, base container and freighter storage capacity
• New arrow indicators have been added to emphasise shield and life support changes more clearly, to aid decision making
• Scanned Primary resource elements have been given specific symbols to allow for easier differentiation
• View your current objective at any time quickly by pressing left on the D-Pad, or H on your keyboard
• The UI has been visually improved by removing colour tint and other artifacts
• Early warning indicators have been added to starship cockpits to notify explorers of inbound Pirate activity
• Red cockpit warnings indicate more clearly when Pulse Drive is unavailable

TAA & MOTION BLUR

• Motion blur has been added to accentuate the feeling of speed, particularly when in-flight. This can be switched on or off via the Options menu
• Temporal Anti Aliasing (TAA) removes jagged edges effectively and has been added as an option to improve visuals clarity
• Texture streaming can be enabled, allowing minimum spec PCs to run the game more smoothly (accessible from settings xml)
• Terrain generation and colourisation algorithms have been revised to produce more aesthetically interesting planets

The update weighs 1.3GB and it is available now on Steam and GOG.