Hello Games has released the “Xeno Arena” (version 6.3) update for No Man’s Sky.
Here is an overview of the update, via its official website:
Xeno Arena: Introducing Update 6.3
“Xeno Arena” introduces turn-based creature battles! Explore the universe to assemble a team of creature companions, perfect their genetic makeup, and test their mettle at simulated combat arenas. Discover hundreds of unique battle abilities, challenge new alien characters, share your strategies for daily challenges, and more!
- Creature Battles – Adopt the wild fauna roaming planetary landscapes, and assemble them into battle teams to fight in simulated combat. Each creature has a unique set of battle moves, ranging from straightforward attacks to powerful status effects, and will perform differently based on their personality, battle traits, and physical characteristics.
- Hundreds of Battle Abilities – The species and native climate of a creature will shape its catalogue of battle abilities. Deal devastating attacks, heal away injuries, cripple your opponents or morph them into vulnerable forms, augment your combat effectiveness and more!
- Morphogenetics – Earn experience through battle to unlock genetic mutations for your creatures. Veteran battlers have the opportunity to enhance their likelihood of moving first and dodging incoming attacks, to increase their durability in battle, and to upgrade the overall effectiveness of all their combat abilities.
- Challenge Other Players – Visit the station between realities—the Space Anomaly—to meet other Travellers and face off in a creature battle. Knock out their entire team to win!
- Holo-Arena Tables – Beloved creature companions can engage in safe holographic combat against other creatures at Holo-Arena tables, now found at planetary buildings, space stations, some planetary settlements, and aboard the Space Anomaly.
- A New Traveller Arrives – Iteration: Oceanus, the collector, has made the Space Anomaly their new home. They eagerly await the company of fellow creature collectors, hoping to share their enthusiasm for games and strategy.
- Refine Your Tactics – Amass a broad array of creatures to form battle teams for any tactical situation. Inspect the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing team, and deploy your creatures wisely. Fire-based companions may excel against frozen creatures, but find themselves vulnerable to radioactive attacks. There are 8 affinities to learn; experiment to discover your favorite synergies!
- Breed Prize Battlers – Create a legacy of champions. Enhance and modify the offspring of your creatures using the Egg Sequencer aboard the Space Anomaly. Their personalities will influence their behavior in battle, while physical characteristics such as size may influence their durability and how easy they are to target.
- Arena League Medals – A new faction has been added to the Catalogue & Guide: The Arena League. Achieve excellence in battle and breeding to rise through the ranks.
- Expanded Companion Register – The maximum number of tamed creatures has been increased from 18 to 30. Collect a wider range of fauna as you explore the universe, for both companionship and battle!
- Battle Alien Lifeforms – Gek, Vy’keen and Korvax Arena League players can be found at planetary buildings all across the galaxies – and more challenging system champions will play at space stations. Alien players will form their battle teams from locally-sourced fauna. Discover local creatures to help inform your strategy!
- Creature Survey Mode – Hunt for new companions with the specialized creature survey mode in the Analysis Visor. In addition to species information, this mode displays the potential battle traits of wild animals.
- Daily Challenges – Each day, Oceanus challenges Travellers to a unique daily battle, the same battle for Travellers the world over. Oceanus is a formidable opponent, so be prepared to discuss strategies and lineups with other players.
- Guidance Missions – As you work your way through the Arena League ranks, pin medals to access step-by-step guidance from the Mission Log.
- Play and Ascend – Claim victory in Creature Battles, and be invited to play against a range of challenging opponents. Earn nanites to accelerate your journey, and gene-altering retroviral pellets to more efficiently upgrade the battle traits of creature companions.
- Titles For Battle Achievements – Exceptional players in the Arena League can display their status with an all-new set of titles.
- Unique Companion Prizes – Impress Iteration: Oceanus with accomplishments in the Arena League to qualify for their collection of strange creatures. Included in their eccentric menagerie are the Corrupted Quadruped, Geno-Prawn, Wandering Shrimp Tank, Boundary Horror, and Aeron Crab.
And here are the full patch notes:
The Holo-Arena and Creature Battles
- Added turn-based tactical Creature Battles, with all-new music, visual effects, cinematic cameras, and combat log.
- Players with adopted creatures can now assemble their companions into battle teams, and participate in simulated fights against creatures owned by alien lifeforms or other players.
- Each creature has a unique set of battle moves, influenced by their species and native climate. Battle moves include attacks, heals, stuns, shields, status effects, and more.
- Creatures in battle may sometimes dodge incoming attacks, perform bonus moves, or perform critical hits.
- Companions participating in battles will earn experience, gradually improving their combat prowess.
- Added a new interface for modifying the genetics of owned companion creatures, allowing upgrade of agility, health and combat battle traits.
- Added multiplayer Holo-Arena tables to the Space Anomaly, where players can challenge other Travellers to Creature Battles.
- Added Holo-Arena tables to planetary outposts, planetary archive buildings, space stations, and some settlement buildings, where players can challenge alien lifeforms to a Creature Battle.
- Alien lifeforms playing Creature Battles at space station Holo-Arenas are seasoned system champions. They will be more challenging to defeat than planetary lifeforms, but yield higher rewards.
- Winning Creature Battles will yield a number of rewards, including nanites, invitations to play against alien lifeforms, and retroviral pellets to more efficiently upgrade the battle traits of creature companions.
- A new Traveller NPC, Iteration: Oceanus, has arrived at the Space Anomaly.
- Oceanus is a creature-collecting enthusiast, and will introduce players to Creature Battles and the Arena League through a lightweight tutorial.
- Oceanus offers a fixed-seed daily challenge to all players.
The Arena League
- Added a new faction to the Catalogue & Guide: The Arena League.
- The Arena League offers 5 new varieties of ranked medal and accompanying guidance missions.
- A set of special titles are available for accomplishments in the Arena League.
- A set of unique companions are available as rewards for accomplishments in the Arena League.
Creature Survey Mode
- Added a Creature Survey mode to the Analysis Visor, displaying markers related to creatures, and revealing the battle traits as well as species information for targeted fauna.
Stability and Optimization
- Implemented a number of significant optimizations on Nintendo Switch 2, improving rendering performance by up to 15%.
- Implemented tiled lighting on PC, significantly improving GPU performance when rendering lighting, especially at higher resolutions.
- Implemented a number of CPU performance optimizations related to lighting.
- Implemented a significant optimization in player-built bases containing large farms of harvestable plants.
- Implemented a significant optimization in inventory handling, improving performance in all instances of querying the contents of inventories (for example, during missions, when calculating ship stats based on installed tech, or when accessing a shop).
- Implemented a significant performance optimization when viewing a Companion Register containing a large number of creatures.
- Implemented a significant performance optimization when displaying the UI notification for adopting a creature companion.
- Implemented a number of optimization related to the Analysis Visor and scanner technologies.
- Implemented a performance optimization related to the rendering of planetary objects.
- Fixed a number of crashes on Nintendo Switch platforms.
- Fixed a number of rare crashes.
Quality-of-Life and Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that could cause the camera to rotate when standing on a corvette.
- Fixed an issue that prevented interacting with modules on another player’s corvette.
- Fixed an issue that could cause asteroids to fade in and out erratically when first entering an asteroid field.
- Fixed an issue that could cause save game related issues for PC players with a Windows username containing non-ASCII characters.
- Fixed an issue that could cause an erroneous Cross-Save conflict dialog to appear after suspending and resuming the game on consoles.
- Fixed an issue that could cause missing interaction points in some planetary buildings.
- Fixed a dialogue issue in The Purge, where Artemis would make an inaccurate reference to a previous player choice.
- Improved the internal system used by missions to open the inventory to the most contextually relevant screen (for example, when being prompted to install a technology in a particular inventory).
- Fixed an issue that caused the Exploration Log on some planets to include extinct species in the count of total discoverable fauna and flora.
- Fixed an issue that caused some Twitch or Expedition rewards to display as “Available” at the Quicksilver Synthesis Bot when they had already been redeemed in another shop interface.
- Allowed the Egg Sequencer to access eggs stored in the Freighter inventory, providing the Freighter inventory is within range.
- Improved the visual clarity of which medal is selected in the Journey Milestones section of the Catalogue & Guide.
- Improved the appearance of a number of UI textures in 4K resolution.
- Fixed an issue that caused the labels for “Playfulness” and “Personality” to sometimes appear incorrectly at the Egg Sequencer.
- Fixed an issue that caused some rare crystal-based fauna to be invisible.
- Fixed an issue that caused companion accessory attachments to appear on some wild creatures on the Discoveries Page.
- Improved the appearance of some planetary trees on Nintendo Switch and in VR.
- Improved the lighting at Waste Processing Plants.
- Fixed a visual issue on the player model when equipping Autophage arms in combination with non-Autophage gloves.
- Fixed a visual clipping issue with corvette cockpits when flying into planetary atmosphere.
- Fixed an issue that caused companion eggs with regular shells to hatch into metal pieces.
- Fixed an audio issue with the Appearance Modifier on the Space Anomaly.
- Miscellaneous text fixes.
No Man’s Sky is available now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store.
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