So I started playing the NEXT update for No Man's Sky and if you've been playing since launch there are some significant changes. I'd like to collate a list of changes people have found, since I feel like they have not really messaged a lot of significant changes to inventory and resources. Please add things you've discovered that were not messaged in the patch notes or marketing material. Here are some things I noticed right away:

• All your previously crafted ship, exo suit, and weapon perks are disabled - As soon as you try to get into combat you'll notice all the upgrades and enhancements for for ship and mutli-tool are have been converted into "obsolete technology" and you receive none of the benefits. Apparently Obsolete tech can be used in crafting later... but I haven't found out exactly how.
• Grenades are different and now hurt you - I'm fairly certain that in the base game, you could stand on top of a grenade and blow a big hole in the ground beneath you. Not so anymore. Your default grenade has no effect on terrain and if you're too close to it when it explodes you will take damage. There are now multiple grenade types
• Sentinels behave differently. - The mechanic that allows you to kill Drones before they call for reinforcements seems to be removes or severely shortened. Sentinel drones also have the ability to cover themselves in armor plating during combat.
• Random players can and will join your game without permission. You can group up with them, voice chat with them, or kick them. And you can choose to go into offline mode at any time in the options menu.
• Textures are far more detailed. Your ship will have a much more weathered and used look.
  I'll add more as I find it and I invite you all to do the same.
• Ground based Sentinels can now damage your ship while it's parked.
• You can now use your ship's weapons to attack things on the planet surfaces.

- The space stations are more streamlined as the merchants and everything are right above where you park your ship which makes it look livelier at least. You can also buy upgrade components from the same guys that sell you upgrade blueprints, which I'm pretty sure is new.

- I also REALLY like how your visor now shows you where resource deposits and broken machinery are on the map and you can "tag" a spot to give you a waypoint on your display.

- You can build your base anywhere now, not just at habitable spots.

- You can have up to 50 freighters in your fleet, which can be sent on their own missions in real time.

- The graphics have improved. It's not 'night and day', but the textures are better and the ambient effects improve the atmosphere.

- 'Points of interest' now pop up on your compass (top of your screen) as you fly close to the surface of a planet.

- 3rd person view is a huge improvement for me. It seems to increase the field of view, plus you can look at your sexy ship as you fly around.

- Flying physics seem to be improved. As you fly towards the surface of a planet and slow down to land, you can kind of drift in the air. You can also see the dust on the ground getting kicked up as you approach. Very nice touch.

-There's actually a new enemy type tied to missions.

As someone who started a new game and deleted my old 18 hours playthrough i am pretty surprised to what they added over the years. It's a pleasant surprise to see something so monotone become a bit grandioser. Is the hardcore mode new ?

Can you play with friends but opt out of pvp?

Hardcore mode is months old I believe.

I think your only options are online and offline. There's really no Dark Souls style PVP per se. Up to 3 other people can join your game for co op. You can either invite friends or get matched with randoms. Friendly fire is always on regardless. So you can group up with the randoms or blow up your friends. You are always told when anyone joins your game and you can kick anyone at any time.

@soulcake: All of the game modes that are on the main menu came out last year, so did base building (in dedicated locations) and being able to have one freighter. Other than that, pretty much everything you see that is different came out as part of the NEXT update.

- The Boltcaster now requires crafted ammo. The ingredients are incredibly common though.

- Potted plants no longer seem to be a source of carbon.

-There has been a huge overhaul to elements and components. A ton were added. A bunch were cut. As far as I can tell, plutonium just doesn't exist anymore...

Question: Anyone know where to find Chromatic Metal?

@the_ruiner: I like the changes to materials. The elemtents you mine from planet surfaces seem more in-depth.

Some of it has become a little more convoluted though. As you mentioned with needing to craft ammo for the boltcaster, instead of just charging it with an element. It's the same with powering up your thrusters - before, you just charged them up with Plutonium or Thamium9, now you have to craft a little power pack out of a metal sheet and something else (can't remember what it was off the top of my head), both of which are easy enough to gather resources for. It just adds another step.

You need to refine stuff now. I believe (if I remember from my short playtime last night at 2am) you need to build a refinery, put in some fuel, and then drop in Copper (or any other type of metal, e.g. Cadmium, Emeril or Indium). It'll refine it into Chromatic Metal. You can also use the Portable Refiner to upgrade stuff (e.g. Carbon -> Refined Carbon). It's the first little gadget building I've built, and you can pick it up and carry it round like Minecraft. Luckily I had about 1k Copper in my Atlas Rising save (which was only 2 hours in, so I didn't bother restarting again).

Do I need blueprints for a portable refiner?

Can't you just hold onto the mission until you get what you need?

@cale: You can find blueprints for basic materials in abandoned bases, I believe. The game requires a lot of exploration and tinkering. You will get stuck at points, if you want to construct certain things. Best thing to do when this happens is to completely change your plan and head off into the galaxy or wander a planet. Make sure you use signal boosters and scan a lot.

http://www.gamersheroes.com/game-guides/how-to-make-chromatic-metal-in-no-mans-sky-next/

It wasn't until I fired up this portable refiner that I realized... "Ohhh right...This game is Minecraft..."

I saw a gun for sale in a space station that had the terrain manipulator already installed. You might try that.

Also it was just in my recipes.

Don't believe so no. You just select it from the building menu (Up on the D-Pad I think? Can't remember the keyboard shortcut).

@cale: I was never given a Terrain Manipulator, I was told to build it as a mod to your multitool during the tutorial.

I was never sold it or found it. It's just in my blueprints already. But I'm using an existing save.

Ran into an amazing but annoying bug:

When I try to collect a freighter mission.. The freighter vanishes and I just die in the vacuum of space...

@the_ruiner: Please capture footage of that. Sounds hilarious.

@the_ruiner: The Waypoint folks got that same bug a couple of times on a recent stream. Its wild that that made it into the release version!

A few things I've noticed:

• A lot of plants and minerals you can scan will have a "scan required" resource as part of them, which once scanned reveals a secondary resource you will get out of mining them from that point forward. How common these are depends on the planet itself, but can lead to finding some otherwise uncommon or rare resource to be very abundant.
• New animal behaviors, specifically herding.
• Your scanner has some new information in it such your current long/lat on the planet and the local time.
• The new terrain generator has created better cave systems that are far more interesting to explore and feel less like two intersecting planes that randomly close off.
• There are new ship types and designs that I had not seen before.

Can GOG people and Steam people play multiplayer together?

I bought it on GOG at launch, and my cousin just bought it on Steam because it's 50% off there. We haven't had a chance to play much yet though, otherwise I'm sure I could've answered my own question.

A couple of more specific questions about things that turned me off specifically:

1. Is the inventory limit still pathetically small and how easy is it to increase? Do you still feel like you are constantly running out of space for even common materials?

2. How is the framerate (played on PS4 originally and it was garbage in many places)?

3. Do planets feel appreciably different now, or does it still feel like a palette swap of the same planet over and over?

@bane: Apparently the multiplayer features don't hit the GOG version until later this year.

Here is an article on PC Gamer all about it.

@the_greg: Well, that sucks for me. I guess I'll have to get the Steam version too. Thanks for the info!

What exactly can a random player encountered in the universe do to you? I was making my way through the tutorial segments when someone showed up in-system. I quickly deactivated any Network Play for fear of being mauled or mugged.

Luckily, it seems you can turn on/off Network Play on a whim, making it pretty easy to switch between lonely and social experiences.

The performance seems terrible now

This is not the game I bought. And for that, I'm grateful to be living and playing games today.

That obsolete tech point has me thinking that I need to start over.

Also, the huge graphics overhaul they mentioned scares me a little. The game didn't run THAT great before on my PC.

@chummy8:You don't need to start again. You can dismantle the obsolete tech to get parts that you use to craft the new tech.

I've played a bit of a new save and a bit of an existing save. I'm definitely sticking with the existing save. All of the new content is presented to you in the same way for both, pretty much.

That being said, I think I'm going to buy the Xbox version, so I'll have to start again anyway.

@the_ruiner said:

Well, this is not 100% true, I used my ship to blow up the door of one of those buildings that you have to break in.

Also yeah I recommend everyone to start a new game, there are too many changes.

@therealturk:

1- You can upgrade it on space stations now for moneys..OR find a drop pod in the wild and repair it for free. Each one you find upgrades your slots by 1. You have a secondary item slot for cargo that had double capacity plus one for tech so it won't take up the other slots. You can upgrade both as well.

2-it's dropping each time you save. It maintains well enough, but you'll find some drop spikes here and there.

3- That's kinda subjective, but kind off. They did add more variables since the initial release. One particular thing that feels way different is animal behaviour. They move in packs and stuff like that...Before they just wandered randomly.

It's changed my mind on whether or not I'll make future game purchases through GOG that's for sure :(

Sorry if this is too off topic, but I always felt like this was going to be he kind of long supported game with stuff bolted on as time progresses. As has been discussed I'm sure there would have been a much better way to market/present the game and release initially that would have gone over in a more positive way (or preferrably it could have been delayed another year), but I'm glad they've stuck with it as hey have. Hoping future major updates when/if any skew away from base building and multiplayer stuff and concentrate more on alien/ai fleet interactions, more and better scripted events in the universe to add variety, and further improvement in lifeforms and maybe some more interesting ways to interact with them besides murder or run away from them. Maybe even capturing and raising them? Also maybe change solar systems to be more realistic with full orbits and rotation, but that may be too big of an ask (plus I'm pretty sure the whole planets looming in the sky a few hundred thousand kilometers away was an aesthetic choice). Wouldn't be surprised to see more major updates and changes in this vein along with the smaller weekly updates. Overall happy things are in a better place now.

How do you change from first to third-person camera? I'm on PS4 and it defaulted to third on foot and first in the ship and I can't find the option to toggle it (if there even is one). There's only an FOV slider in the options and there doesn't seem to be a button for it.

@kingpk: Press down on the d-pad then it's in utilities. Could also be up on the d-pad. Can't remember for sure lol.

D-pad down, then you go to the gear icon, then there'll be an option to change the camera.

Yeah I know, kinda hidden.

@kingpk: On PC version, you click down on d-pad, go over to utilities, and it's the last option in the utilities menu (next to toggle torch). I imagine it's the same across all the platforms.

Found a busted down ship via a distress beacon and was surprised that I could just "get it" (although there's a ton to repair). I was particularly surprised I didn't have to give up my old one. It also looks like "summoning" either ship is free too.

So is the game working fine for other PS4 Pro users? Or am I the only one with horrible framerates and crashes. Unless everyone else is just playing on PC.

@seikenfreak: I've got another hour or so of playing time in since I responded to your other post. I'm on PS4 Pro and haven't notice any major issues. There are some hitches and sound bugs that are annoying but not intrusive.This happens mostly in ships I think. The terrain manipulator seems to work more smoothly than it did before the patch but I still haven't used it to mine any nodes.

Other than that, it runs just about the same for me as it did before the patch. Frame rate is mostly 30-60 and I haven't seen any crashes.

I have motion blur set to 90 (half the max) and the FOV turned all the way up.

It changed my framerate to shit, I know that. I have a GTX1070 and an i7, I don't know why I'm having such issues. It was rough at launch but then it smoothed out for me.

It defaults to a 30 fps cap on pc btw turn that stuff of if you got a solid pc. It's running great for me around 100 fps on a GTX 1070 with a generation I7 4790k and 16gb ram. Also i am running a older driver maybe it's a new driver issue.