3 days ago - Hello Games - Direct link
Hello Everyone,

First of all, thanks so much to everyone who has already spent time playing No Man's Sky and letting us know about any issues you've experienced.

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 03/01
  • Updated the file loading system.
  • Updated mod loading to allow for mods to be more forward compatible in the future. Note that mods are not created or officially supported by Hello Games, and are used at your own risk.
  • The game will now detect mods placed in subfolders inside the GAMEDATA\MODS directory.
  • A new file called GCMODSETTINGS.MXML allows mod users to set the priority order of their mods. If files between two installed mods are in conflict, the mod with the lower ModPriority number (starting at 0) will take precedence.
  • If the game crashes on boot with mods installed, mods will automatically be disabled on the next launch.
  • Mods can now directly load mbin and exml format files. pak format files will not be loaded.

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 on PC: %appdata%\HelloGames\NMS\ and here on mac: ~/Library/Application Support/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.