No Man’s Sky 4.0, entitled “Waypoint,” has just been released, and while it’s not quite as groundbreaking as the game’s 2.0 or 3.0 updates, Hello Games has still packed a lot of new features and quality-of-life improvements into the game. These include a new Relaxed mode for folks who don’t like the grind, the ability to set up custom games, dynamic difficulty, FSR 2.0 support, and much more. Of course, the game is also coming to Nintendo Switch for the first time. You can check out a trailer for No Man’s Sky Waypoint, and a rundown of all the update’s new features, below.
- AMD FidelityFX 2.0 – AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR 2) is a cutting edge open source temporal upscaling solution, providing high image quality and improved framerates. Learn more on the AMD site. All PC players, including those running integrated graphics, can enjoy the increased performance from this new technology regardless of their graphics card.
- Relaxed Game Mode – The new relaxed preset provides an accessible, laid-back experience of No Man’s Sky. Perfect for players who want to experience all facets of gameplay, from story to survival to combat, with reduced danger and minimal grind.
- Custom Game Modes – Tailor every aspect of the game to your unique playstyle with custom game modes. Launch into the action quickly with an existing difficulty preset, or tinker with everything from economy to combat challenge to survival difficulty to perfect your experience.
- Dynamic Difficulty – Nearly all difficulty settings can be tweaked and adjusted at any time, so you can continue to refine your play experience during the journey. Players with existing saves can adjust their settings to take advantage of new survival challenges or the simplicity of relaxed mode, and continue to change back and forth as they wish.
- Seamless Auto-Saves – A new continual auto-saving system allows you to fully immerse yourself in the journey without ever needing to think about saving your progress. Manual saves remain, giving you full control when needed.
- Trade Rocket – Load and launch a personal trade rocket to automatically sell items on the Galactic Trade Network. Summon the device from anywhere on a planetary surface, then fire it off to the local Space Station for profit!
- Inventory Visuals – The inventory has been visually overhauled, with new slot designs, backgrounds, icons, and more. Item management has been streamlined, with technology and cargo slots now accessible from a single view.
- Nintendo Switch – Begin your journey from anywhere on Nintendo Switch! Play while on the go in handheld mode, or dock the system to play in TV mode. The portable experience is further enhanced with responsive touch controls, and all modes support Joy‑Con and Pro controllers.
- Space Anomaly Atmospherics – The bustling Space Anomaly feels deeper and more atmospheric, with a total overhaul of visual effects throughout the Anomaly.
- Drop Pods – Interacting with damaged Drop Pods on planetary surfaces will generate a marker and guide mission to assist the repair process, allowing players to find their way back if they need to gather materials. Drop Pods can now be found directly with Exosuit Upgrade Charts, rather than having to feed data into the signal booster.
- Inventory Redesign – Inventory specialisation has been clarified. Upgrades are now confined to technology slots, allowing more space for items and creating more interesting decisions about which upgrades to use. To accompany this, inventory capacity has been dramatically expanded, with storage increased across all inventories from Exosuits to Freighters.
- Planetary Visual Effects – Ancient alien structures and beacons have been visually enhanced, with brand new effects materialising upon activation.
- Story Records – Piece together ancient stories and record a log of your journey with the new Collected Knowledge section of the Catalogue & Guide. Historical fragments, alien lore, crucial story choices and more will be collated and recorded as you uncover the many secrets hidden throughout the universe.
- Inventory Filters – Categories of inventory items can now be highlighted and quickly located using a set of filters, making it easier to organise your belongings.
- Crafting Trees – The detailed steps for crafting complex products can now be visualised as a tree, allowing explorers to collect and prepare sub-components in advance.
- Rare Asteroids – Asteroid fields now contain a range of new rare and exotic variants.
- Milestone Guidance – Journey Milestones may now be pinned from the Catalogue & Guide, providing helpful hints and tips to the Mission Log.
- Survival Challenges – Hardcore explorers can test their mettle in a new ramped-up Survival Mode, featuring a greater depth of challenges to overcome. In addition to quantitative balance settings such as fuel consumption and hazard intensity, explorers must take care to repair their technology from damage, and rely on their own harvesting capabilities, rather than shops, to acquire key survival resources.
- Space Visual Effects – Holograms, teleporters, and space station tractor beams have all been given a fresh breath of life with new visual effects.
- Refreshed Catalogue & Guide – The Catalogue, Guide and Milestone pages have been completely reorganised for clarity and ease of use, decluttering the navigational tabs at the top of the pause menu, and with all information now accessible from a centralised hub.
- Medals – The celebratory rank medals for progression through Faction and Journey Milestones have been made clearer and more visually diverse.
- Refiner and Cooking Recipes – Recipes discovered through experimentation with the Refiner and Nutrient Processor are now recorded for future reference.
- New Faction Milestones – The alien race and guild factions have issued a new set of challenges to explorers, encouraging a broader and deeper play experience.
- Technology Packaging – Installed technologies may now be disassembled into convenient, transferable packages. Stash them away in your inventory to install in a freshly-acquired Starship or Multi-Tool, or trade with friends to collect your dream loadout.
- Dramatic Atlas Interfaces – The Atlas are now even more awe-inspiring, with new visual effects.
- Save Renaming – Save data can now be more easily differentiated with an automatic record of the save’s location, and the option to give the save a custom name.
Of course, No Man’s Sky 4.0 also includes a long list of bug fixes and other minor tweaks. If you need to know about those, you can check out the full, unabridged patch notes here.
No Man’s Sky can be played on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and Switch. The 4.0 update is available to download now.
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