over 5 years ago - Hello Games - Direct link
Hello everyone,

First of all, thanks so much to everyone who has already spent time playing BEYOND and letting us know about any issues you’ve experienced. It’s overwhelming to watch thousands of players begin or continue their journey across the universe.

Steam users are able to opt-in to the Experimental Branch, where we have pushed a rapid patch to fix a number of crashes and other problems seen since release. We’ll be rolling out these fixes to other platforms as soon as possible.

To play in Experimental, right-click on No Man’s Sky from the Steam library page and select “Properties”. Among the available tabs will be the “BETAS” tab. Enter “3xperimental” in the textbox and press “CHECK CODE”, then select it from the dropdown menu.

The patch notes are as follows:

Experimental Branch 23/08
  • Fixed an issue where transferring valuable treasures (such as ancient bones) to other players would result in an invalid product.
  • Fixed an issue where Shutter Doors had incorrect icons in the build menu.
  • Introduced a number of PC-specific VR optimisations (not yet available for Oculus).
  • Reduced graphics memory usage to improve stability.
  • Fixed an issue where control pads did not rumble on PC.
  • Fixed an issue where Gek players would float when sitting on the ground.
  • Added a resource message when dismantling base parts.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause an infinite number of creature pellets to spawn in Creative Mode.
  • Fixed a memory leak related to starships and Exocraft.

Experimental Branch Update 26/08
  • Further adjustments to PC VR optimisations.
  • Improved VR-specific anti-aliasing.

Experimental Branch Update 27/08
  • Fixed a rendering crash.

Experimental Branch Additional Update 27/08
  • Broadened the PC VR optimisations to include Oculus.
  • When in VR, removed a number of settings that have no effect in VR.

As always, thank you to all players who use Experimental and take the time to report any issues you encounter.

Please note there is the possibility that experimental builds may introduce new issues that haven't been caught in test. We'd like to recommend that all players back up their save files, by making a local copy of the st_[userid] folder found here: %appdata%\HelloGames\NMS\

Note that we don't anticipate any issues here. However, performing your own backups could mean the difference between resuming play immediately, or waiting for the next patch.

If you decide to opt out of experimental and return to the main branch, we strongly recommend resuming from a backed-up save from the main branch, rather than taking an experimental branch save back to main, which may cause unexpected behaviour.

Feedback and reports of new bugs/issues being found on Experimental are welcome, so please reply to this thread or submit a ticket to https://hellogames.zendesk.com/ with the phrase "Steam Experimental" in the ticket title. If you are running any mods for the game, please list them along with your bug report.