First of all - oh wow. Has it actually been FIVE YEARS since I last posted anything in here?! Oof.
The release of Worlds II has reignited the thrill of discovery in NMS for me. I decided to start a new playthrough on the hardest difficulty settings (except for permadeath) and to really take my time in discovering new things. So far I have finished the Artemis questline, now I’m working on the Autophages one.
Upon discovering a portal on my world I decided to settle on, I wondered how the planets I’ve been on have changed since Foundation / Atlas Rises. Digging out my old screenshots of old times, I decided to check the portal coordinates I’ve wisely documented back then when (working) portals have first been introduced, to see the change after all these years - and mostly after the NEXT universe reset.
So, without further ado - here they are:
01 - From deserts to anomalies
The first world we are rediscovering is one that has changed from a bright desert world into a otherworldy anomalous planet apparently devoid of any life.
02 - From radiation to fire
In the same system, the second planet I decided to survey back then, it turned from a colorful irradiated one to a scorched and barren world.
03 - From forests to nuclear wasteland
This world has been turned from lush forests of red leaf trees on white foliage to an absolutely blasted nuclear hellscape.
04 - From flickering embers to uranium spires
Just as in the 2nd world, but the other way around. This one has molten down to a surface filled with spikes of radiated iron.
05 - A relatively unchanged world
Astonishingly, this planet hasn’t changed its biome, instead the irradiated plants have seemed to been petrified, turned into hard stone after having mutated beyond recognition.
06 - From ice to fire
This world has been turned absolutely upside down, from a cold and relatively barren ice desert into a planet littered with smaller forests of heat-resistant spires of leaf trees.
07 - Deserts spring to fragile life
A pleasant surprise was to find this planet where its dusty wasteland was able to grow fields of grass, littered with small foliage among big boulders.
08 - From fields of grass to pillars of glass
Quite a shock it was to see this world of orange grass with occasional single trees to be replaced by an eerie dead planet littered with pillars of - kzzt - glass.
09 - A relic, preserved by the Galactic Atlas
A submission of mine towards the now distant release of NEXT, where I found two almost identical sculptures of resources, was almost ironically lost to me, since I never took a screenshot of its glyphs. Fortunately for me, the Galactic Atlas preserved its location for many to visit the location.
Unfortunately, it has been lost to the unpredictable fits of the Atlas. Molten the snow, replaced by nuclear dust.
A single traveller visited this location, leaving a message of their visit, no doubt disappointed by the unexpected loss of this marvel of procedural generation.
And there you have it. Nine locations of old, revisited after almost 8 years. A return to the roots, if you will.
Strangely enough, on my old savefiles some systems from the Foundations-era are marked as “discovered 10 years ago by sgfan206”. Which is a pretty strange thing, unless I do have a warped perception of time. The ones from Atlas Rises on the other hand are appropriately marked as “discovered eight years ago by sgfan206”, as documented in this last screenshot.
On the new savefile however they are marked as “undiscovered”. There seems to be a discrepancy between different people’s savefiles in terms of discoveries that were made long ago.
Whew. Almost five years since my last post, and now I go and plaster this giant pillar of a thread opening post. Which leads me to the question - do many of you have documented their planet’s glyphs from the era of Atlas Rises or even prior to that? If so, I’d really like to see how your worlds have changed in all these years.
Oh, and … it’s good to be back after years of lurking. I’ll definitely keep you posted (in other existing threads) on my new discoveries in this new age of post-Worlds II.
Best wishes to all of you.
Edit: Sorry for the night screenshots where you cannot see much. I completely forgot that changing the time of day was a thing to get day-screenshots.