about 4 years 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.

Steam users are able to opt-in to the Experimental Branch, where we have pushed a patch to address some problems. 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 Update 26/02
  • Fixed an issue that caused Cuboid Roof Caps to snap to the floor, rather than the roof, of Cuboid Rooms.
  • Added a chance to find cargo pods at derelict freighter space encounters.
  • Fixed an issue that caused extra, incorrect inventory tabs to appear when comparing ships or freighters.
  • Fixed an issue that caused frigates not to award cargo.
  • Water reflections have been removed in PC VR (matching PS VR) to improve visual quality.
  • A toggle has been added to the General Options menu to disable Auto Torch.
  • Fixed a number of issues that prevented Atlas words from being learned correctly.

Experimental Branch Update 25/02
  • Slightly reduced the time taken for Living Ship components to mature, so that they do not exceed 24 hours.
  • Implemented a recovery fix for players whose Starbirth missions failed to locate an appropriate planet or building at the coordinates steps.
  • Fixed an issue which duplicated the default filter in photo mode.
  • Fixed an issue that caused pinned instructions involving Atlas Stones to suggest that Atlas Stones could be collected from factories.
  • Fixed an issue which affected the portable refiner when picking it up with one too few inventory slots available.

Experimental Branch Update 21/02
  • Fixed an issue that caused too much warp fuel to be consumed when warping in VR.
  • Fixed an issue that caused HUD elements to be incorrectly displayed during warp.
  • Fixed an issue that caused ships to judder and disappear when landing in multiplayer.
  • Fixed an issue that caused players to miss the landing pads when landing at an outpost.
  • Expedition holograms now turn green when the expedition is complete.
  • Fixed an issue that caused 'Hostile Ships Defeated' audio to play when combat frigates arrive to assist in a fight.
  • Fixed a rare crash when collecting cargo from a frigate.
  • Fixed a rare crash that could occur when streaming in the Space Anomaly.
  • Added the ability to use nanites to evolve upgrades that have been installed inside Living Ships.
  • Fixed a small visual glitch that could occur when exiting mission dialogue interactions.
  • Fixed an issue that allowed re-interaction with a living ship that was flying away.
  • Fixed an issue that caused stats to be named incorrectly in the descriptions of upgrade modules.
  • Prevented the Starbirth mission from starting in the middle of a multiplayer Nexus mission.

Experimental Branch 21/02
  • Fixed a number of minor visual issues with the Living Ship c*ckpits.
  • Fixed a visual issue with the contrails from the Living Ship.
  • Fixed an issue that caused shuttle-class starships to change appearance.
  • Fixed a rare crash that could occur when handing in a Nexus mission.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when pinning directions for Frost Crystals.
  • Fixed a number of small mission flow problems in the directions for various substances.
  • Fixed an issue that allowed two living ships to spawn at the same location.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause portal warps to fail, resulting in players being returned to their previous system or pushed under the terrain.

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.