Hello Games has released the “Living Ship” update for No Man’s Sky, which introduces a new style of airship to the game defined as “strange and beautiful creatures with lives of their own.”
Here is an overview of the update, via its official website:
Living Ship: Introducing Update 2.3
Explore space from a different perspective with the Living Ship update. Introducing a new class of biological ship, a new story mission, mysterious space encounters, space NPCs, and more.
- The Living Ship – Living Ships are a new class of rare, sentient starships to add to your fleet, growing in dozens of procedurally-generated variations.
- Organic Technologies – These biological ships have their own set of unique organic technologies, all procedurally generated for a customized, evolved loadout.
- Origin Story Mission – A new series of missions, Starbirth, will take players through the ancient Korvax experiments that led to the birth of these sentient starships. Players who wish to incubate, grow and ultimately fly their own living ship should visit the Space Anomaly and follow the call of the Void Egg…
- Organic Cockpit – Pilot your sentient ship from its strange, organic cockpit. Grasp vein-covered tendrils to suggest directions to the living craft, and examine the unsettling details in full 360° in VR.
- Space Encounters – Experience rare encounters with mysterious space objects and strange new lifeforms while pulsing through a star system. Investigating these may often yield rewards—or more dangerous encounters!
- Space NPCs – NPCs now have the potential to hail your communicator in space. These alien lifeforms often stock specialty items for sale—but some may need assistance, or approach with more questionable intentions…
- Quality of Life – Managing items in the inventory has become easier with a new shortcut to instantly divide a stack in half. Multiplayer exploration has been streamlined with the ability to warp as a group. Team up with friends and strangers on the Space Anomaly, then choose your exit destination to continue your journey together. Game performance is improved across the board, with a focus on runtime optimizations for terrain, cloud and water shaders for PlayStation VR and PlayStation 4.
And here are the full patch notes:
Living Ship
- Introduced a new style of starship, the Living Ship.
- These ships have their own exclusive range of organic technologies and cannot be upgraded by conventional means.
- Adjust your playstyle to the restrictions and benefits of these organic techs, or hatch and evolve new procedural upgrades to grow your own custom ship.
Missions
- Incubate your Void Egg and learn about the origin of the Living Ships with a new mission chain, Starbirth.
- Completing these missions will hatch the Void Egg into your own procedurally generated Living Ship.
- Additional ships may be hatched from subsequently incubated eggs.
Space Encounters
- While using the Pulse Engine to fly between planets, there is a chance of encountering strange objects in local space.
- Drop out of pulse-flight to begin the encounter.
- A large range of strange objects and exotic rewards await…
- Different encounters have different chances of occurring based on the characteristics of the solar system.
Trader Hails
- As well as strange objects, players may also encounter passing trader ships.
- These will hail the player while using the Pulse Engine and may need assistance, offer to trade, and more…
Quality of Life
- If players are in a group but do not have a Nexus mission active, then when taking off from the Space Anomaly they can now choose to exit directly to the system of any other player in their group.
- Fixed a number of issues that caused planetary charts and others scans to pick from too narrow a range of buildings. Players should no longer be sent repeatedly to the same building when using multiple charts.
- Fixed an issue that caused distress signals to occasionally lead to a crashed ship site with no crashed ship.
- Added an instant split button to allow players to quickly divide stacks of items in half.
- Players can now hold down buttons to increase or decrease stack sizes, rather than having to press repeatedly.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the Exocraft Summoning Station from working if placed within a base.
- Improved the range of the Exocraft Summoning Station, so that it allows Exocraft to be summoned from anywhere in the system.
- Planets that you have discovered no longer need to be repeatedly rescanned to see their resources from space.
- Fixed an issue that caused the planetary resources popup to flicker while pulsing towards a planet.
- Fixed an issue that made it difficult to enter Space Stations from tight angles.
- Allowed starships to reverse during atmospheric flight if stuck in other geometry.
- The automatic Launch System Recharger now functions while the player is sitting in the cockpit, if the ship is landed.
- Improved VR swimming controls for VR devices that use thumb sticks.
- Significantly increased the distance players are able to move the camera in Photo Mode.
Optimizations
- Introduced a number of significant GPU optimizations sations to terrain rendering.
- Introduced a number of significant optimizations to terrain generation.
- Introduced a number of significant memory optimizations.
- Introduced some minor load time optimizations.
- Introduced some smaller optimizations and visual fixes to cloud rendering.
- Introduced a number of water rendering optimizations for PlayStation VR.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that caused Proximity Switches to be activated by empty Exocraft.
- Fixed an issue that prevented decals from working when customizing Exocraft appearances.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Analysis Visor UI to judder in VR.
- Fixed a number of issues that made it difficult to warp to the center of the galaxy.
- Fixed an issue that caused the kill count to reset in the final mission for the Armorer if players entered a building during combat.
- Fixed an issue that caused Carbon Planters to be unavailable for purchase.
- Construction-style missions from the Nexus will properly mark the desired construction site if players leave the planet mid-mission.
- Fixed a number of issues that prevented items from being taken out of or put into Storage Containers.
- Fixed an issue where pirates would occasionally ask for wildly incorrect amounts when bargaining for peace.
- Fixed an issue that could prevent special mission Portals on the Artemis path from functioning correctly if they were left while in an active state.
- Fixed an issue that could cause a ship docked at a Trade Outpost to be placed underneath the landing pad when loading into the game.
- Fixed an issue that caused the filter icons to be incorrectly aligned in the Galaxy Map.
- Fixed a rare crash that could occur when warping to a base after having used a Portal.
- Fixed a bug that allowed Nexus missions to be restarted from the mission log.
- Fixed a number of issues that could cause Nexus missions to select inappropriate star systems.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Nexus missions to send players to the wrong building.
- Fixed an issue that could occasionally cause visual elements of the Personal Refiner to render in first person.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Personal Refiner not to stop animating when refining was complete.
- Fixed an issue that caused the names of unknown planets to be revealed by their moons.
- Improved the position of HUD markers in the Analysis Visor UI.
- Improved the positioning of the ship repair UI in VR.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the ship crosshair to judder.
- Fixed some minor text issues in missions objectives and the Guide.
- Fixed an issue that could cause filters to apply incorrectly on the Space Station, Space Anomaly, frigates and freighters.
- Fixed an issue that made the Space Anomaly too green when using HDR.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the VR eject handles in ship cockpits from lighting up when the player first enters the ship.
- Fixed a rare issue that allowed players to equip weapons in the Space Anomaly.
- Fixed an issue that prevented Solar Panels from playing their audio.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the torchlight to flicker while moving.
- Fixed an issue that could cause recently used interactions to be reset shortly after loading.
- Fixed an issue that caused an empty black dialogue box to appear when leaving a planetary Technology Merchant.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Nutrient Processor’s inventory to be incorrectly labelled.
- Updated the visuals of the Bytebeat Cable so it is distinct from the Teleport Cable.
- Fixed an issue with the Bytebeat Switch that caused the On Arpeggio Note output to fire when not playing an arpeggio.
- Fixed an issue with the Bytebeat Switch that caused note colours to be reversed.
- Fixed an issue with the Bytebeat Switch that caused triggers to be sent for parts that are not active in the Synchronizer.
- Fixed an issue in the Bytebeat that caused visuals to go out of sync when editing tempo.
- Fixed a number of minor glitches when scrubbing in the Bytebeat UI.
- Fixed an issue that caused pirate probes to always fail when the Pulse Engine was active.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Pulse Engine tutorial to incorrectly appear in the middle of combat.
- Fixed a text mismatch in the standing rewards, where Mercenary and Explorers Guild standing rewards were mislabeled.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the Surveying Tutorial to move on before the player had actually learned the Survey Device.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the Show HUD binding from working on PC keyboard controls when piloting a ship.
- Fixed an issue that caused a number of building parts to be unknown when starting a Creative Mode game, including industrial Silos.
- Fixed an issue that caused Black Holes not to warp players if they were somehow approached on foot.
No Man’s Sky is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Watch a trailer below.