THE NERF FILES
As I progress through my latest new game, I’m noticing the absence of items and resources that were plentiful when NEXT was first released. Well,if I’m honest, they’re not entirely absent. They’ve just become so rare that they might as well be absent. Resources you can’t find and can’t rely on might as well not exist. While we wait for Mulder and Scully to discover the truth, here’s my current list. Feel free to add to it:
- Crashed Ships
When NEXT first launched, you could find lots of these, and quite often they would be high-value ones, with lots of slots. Most of the slots were broken, but you could repair them, or just trade the ship in for a lower value one in good condition.
Now they’re much harder to find. There are far fewer of them, and the really high value ones (Class A, 46 - 48 slots) are almost impossible to find. It’s really not worth setting out to hunt crashed ships now. They’re so rare, you could look for months for a good one. It’s far easier to earn the money, and buy one.
Trouble is, I used to enjoy hunting for them, and repairing them. Now a lot of the fun has gone.
- Drop Pods
These are really handy in the early stages of the game, when you haven’t got any money. They will give you upgrades to your exosuit in exchange for some materials. No cash needed. They used to be really common. If you flew over any planet for 10 minutes or so, you could guarantee to see a dozen. Not now. I just spent four hours carefully searching three well populated planets - I found two drop pods. Finding hen’s teeth would be easier. They’ve been nerfed with extreme prejudice.
- Ancient Data Structures
To be honest with you, I’m not even sure these still exist in the game. I’ve played 129 hours in my latest playthrough, and I haven’t seen one yet. They’re so rare, I had to use an old picture, from an earlier version of the game.
They were, again, very handy in the early stages of the game - they gave you navgation data, which enabled you to find things with the signal booster. If they do still exist, they’re now so vanishingly rare that you’re wasting your time looking for them.
- Class S Anything
You can get class S ships, freighters, and multitools. They’re the best there is. Now these were never common - you always had to search around for them - but now, they’re ridiculously rare. In 129 hours of my latest playthrough, I haven’t seen a class S model of anything. Not one - I had to use an old picture for the illustration.
All in all, it seems No Man’s Sky has been raided by the Fun Police. Anything amusing or entertaining has been ruthlessly removed. It seems HG really don’t want players repairing, salvaging, or making stuff - if you don’t have to buy it for cash, out it goes. That’s a real shame. The game was very grindy in the first place - but there were areas of relief. Now they’ve gone. The grind is all that’s left.