Previously: I’ve started playing No Man’s Sky again with the hope of actually getting past the tutorial and putting in more than 15 minutes of time before giving up. Last time, I’d repaired my spaceship and left the starting planet. I was basically killed by drones I accidentally antagonized. I finally got into space and found a signal calling me to a nearby planet, on which I’ve now landed.
Well, I’ve landed on a red planet of some sort. Blue at night, too. It’s better than the green planet, which seemed to be green the whole time. On one hand, the landscape feels more desolate. On the other, it’s packed with lovely dinosaur-like animals that don’t seem to be aggressive. Let’s not fuck with them, shall we?
According to my suit’s computer (or ship’s computer?) there’s some salvageable tech parts down here. Specifically the parts I need to start building a base to get out of all the toxic rain and away from the dinosaurs if they decide I ain’t the fun type. The example image my computer shows me is something akin to a futuristic mansion. What I’m capable of building at the moment are four wooden walls, a wooden floor, and a futuristic wooden door.
This takes me about thirty minutes of figuring out how to place these objects so they both connect to one another and don't look like the aftermath of a disaster. After much struggling and nearly giving up, I have a hovel. It might not look like much, but when I go inside, my suit stops yelling at me about toxic rain. I even placed a little flag nearby. Why not?
I’ve now got a cabin with no furniture except for a plant in a bottle. Also, I guess I could move all my scientific equipment inside the cabin, but I didn’t think ahead to make the cabin big - this is all bullshit we can save for another day, folks. Mama’s tired. She just mined a whole lot of ferrite and she needs her rest. I’ll try to craft a bucket to use as a bathroom, I suppose.
With that out of the way, it seems that every nearby computer on this planet wants me to start searching for the spare / lost / crashed technology of previous visitors. What a comfort to know that those who came before me to this world also died in horrible ways. Lovely. This tech also appears to be deep, deep within the ground. Thus, I need to power up my mining gun into a terrain-destroying cannon.
I don’t mean to do this, but I fuck up the ground, leaving pockmarks everywhere. Humanity t its best. My suit tells me I can fill in holes using the reverse function - actually adding elements, but that just creates bulbous hills adjacent to the holes rather than filling them. I’m going to eventually get better at making this whole thing work. After looking around my local area, I begin to jetpack along until I dig up a couple old artifacts.
And good news! Now with these artifacts in tow, I can build a teleporter. Now we’re cooking! I throw together some metal sheets and some nanotubes or whatever and throw together the teleporter according to my computer’s plans. It looks like a Stargate more than a teleporter, but beggars lost in space can’t be choosers lost in space. I think I can get to a space station from here. It’ll turn this crappy Three Little Pigs house into a hub of activity!
Despite having nowhere to go, I was psyched to try it out.
It has no power.
And I’ve got no idea how to give it power.
I considered this for a few minutes. There was a slight element of “fuck it” in the back of my head. I could probably just screw around in my spaceship for a while longer and be fine. Maybe find a planet less masked in mystery and more masked in good times.
Before I can make a decision either way, the ground shakes beneath my feet and a fucking sandworm flies by overhead, almost hitting a ship passing by. I play it cool, yelling, “Jesus fucking Christ!” at nobody while running into my wooden outhouse of a space base.
I don’t want to be on this planet for very long.