No Man’s Sky celebrated its 10 year anniversary just last month, and now the team at Hello Games are giving back to their long-standing community. The No Man’s Sky COSMOS update launches today across all platforms, giving players access to new content focused on space itself.
Rocketing through space is a staple part of Hello Games’ world, but it’s the layers of content and mechanically-rich planets that have been the stars of the show for the past 10 years. COSMOS aims to fix that. Instead of travelling through the nothingness on the way to the next planet, space itself will be filled with new events, mechanics and subsystems to explore. Here’s what to expect while you wait for the download.
1. How to find the new content: Scanning and the star map
Upon arriving in a new system, you can now perform a scan to add space-related exploration points and events to your star map. This is Hello Games’ way of getting us right into the new content as smoothly as possible, and already the idea that I could arrive in a system, zig-zag through it and blast off to the next without feeling obligated to circle every planet is appealing.
2. Reap rewards from salvaging and space hulks
Some of these points of interest may be the new space hulks. These are derelict ships and stations that are good for nothing but slicing up and towing for scrap. In a Hardspace: Shipbreaker kind of way you can use the physics gun to divide up these hulks, and fit a tractor beam to your ship for the long haul back to cash-in. Just like in Shipbreaker, there’s crucial elements inside each space hulk that can either be worth substantially more…or be substantially more dangerous…
It’s not just abandoned hunks of metal out there in the ‘verse though, as you can also encounter Bio-wrecks. These are ships, stations and outposts that are over-run with “biological hazards”, the details of which I’ll leave to you to discover on your first tentative steps into one.
If hostile plant life isn’t your idea of a good time, you can secure bounties from the newly added asteroid belts. These dangerous but beautiful collections of ice and rock are strung throughout the universe to be mined, gawked at or even settled on! Find an asteroid belt and you could follow it to a new system just as well as make it your new home (with no chance of “biological hazards”).
3. “Seek out new life, and new civilisations” with outposts and orbital bases
Newly added Outposts provide quick opportunities to meet new aliens, accept local system quests without needing to locate the space-station, and buy maps to go gallivanting off on your own. These promise to make systems feel less same-y, as you aren’t running through the checklist in a system of “planet, space-station, out”. Instead, Outposts can be convenient or even unplanned bonuses to your route, and help you explore space in a new way.
If you like how these aliens live and want a slice of the free real estate that an infinite universe offers, then take advantage of the new orbital building system! I can already see my socials being filled with giant space bases that people have built to orbit suns and look like teapots…but the more roleplay-inclined can use the new freeform space building to make anything from a pit-stop cafe to a planetary observation post.
If a little building project wasn’t enough, the biggest news is yet to come:
4. You can own a space station in No Man’s Sky COSMOS
All hands on deck, because you read that correctly. No Man’s Sky COSMOS lets you buy the space station of your dreams. Well, it lets you buy a space station and work to turn it into the one of your dreams through interior and exterior customisation. If you’ve spent time hopping on fences in Minecraft chatting to your mates instead of playing the game, or running the jumping circuit on the Destiny tower (R.I.P Destiny), then I can only imagine the hours you’ll be able to whittle away hanging out on your very own space station, with a whole universe around you waiting to be explored.
Of course, your friends might want their own space station, in which case you can form an alliance. An alliance in No Man’s Sky COSMOS allows you to join with invited players to collectively own multiple space stations and pool resources. Your alliance can span the entire universe or be focused on one single solar system, but the grandest and most profitable alliances will get a spot on the alliance leaderboards.
A trip down memory lane for new and returning players
Finally, before you go shooting off into the nearest star, remember to look for the new series of quests called “Our Journey Continues!”. These are a string of little expedition objectives that relate to every single major update No Man’s Sky has had since launch. That means there’s 40, for anyone who lost count during the last decade.
Hello Games’ commitment to this celebration and the amount of soul that has gone into making this 10-year retrospective expedition is a showcase of exactly why this game has the community it does.
The No Man’s Sky COSMOS update is available for free to all owners of the game across all systems: PC, PS4, PS5, XBOX One, XBOX Series X/S, Switch 1, Switch 2, Mac, PSVR 1&2, PC VR and XBOX Game Pass
