No Man’s Sky Waypoint Patch Notes Released

No Man’s Sky is now available on Nintendo Switch, but fans of all versions of the game have reason to celebrate thanks to the Waypoint update. Prior to the release of version 4.0, developer Hello Games revealed some of the new options fans could expect to see, but now a full list of patch notes is available. The update adds a new Relaxed mode, allowsplayers a lot more freedom to tailor the difficulty, and adds several changes to inventory management, to name just a few improvements. Full patch notes from the game’s official website can be found below:

INFORMATION PORTAL

• The Guide, Catalogue and Milestones UI pages have been merged into one unified information portal and given a visual overhaul.

• The catalogue has been divided into more fine-grained categories, allowing quicker access to information.
• A dedicated catalogue has been added for gathering stories andinformation from planetary sites, such as monoliths, plaques, abandonedbuildings and more.
• A dedicated catalogue has been added that records the story of your own journey across the galaxy as you complete missions.
• Specific catalogue pages have been added to record language information gathered from various aliens met on your journey.
• Specific catalogue pages have been added to record refiner recipeslearned via experimenting with the various sized refiners available.
• A specific catalogue page has been added to record any cooking recipes learning from experimenting with the Nutrient Processor.
• Procedurally generated technology is now listed in the catalogue.
• Guide pages can now be manually scrolled.

• New Guide entries are now previewed on the main information portal.
• Key milestones are now previewed on the main information portal.
• The milestones page has been given a visual overhaul.
• The factions page has been given a visual overhaul.
• The medals awarded for faction and milestone progress have been improved.
• Milestones and medals can now be pinned as a mission, giving guidance on how to progress.
• A new range of faction medals have been added.
• The Extreme Survival journey milestone has been reworked so that itcounts cumulative time spent in extreme environments, rather than thelongest continual time spent in an extreme environment without dying.

NEW DIFFICULTY FRAMEWORK

• All the core difficulty and other differences between the game modeshave been reworked into a new framework that players can adjust as theysee fit.

• All existing game modes have been retained as quick and easy presets, and can be selected as before when starting a new game.
• Alternatively, players can now choose to create a Custom game where all settings are fully customisable.
• Expedition and Permadeath games will remain in their own pool forthe purposes of matchmaking and base sharing. All other game modes havebeen unified so that players can explore together, whatever theirdifficulty preferences.

• An additional game mode has been added to this list, Relaxed mode.Relaxed is the full Normal mode experience, but with significantlyreduced need to manage survival systems and maintain technology andresources.

• Players wishing to make their existing games more challenging, ortake advantage of the new Relaxed mode settings, can customisedifficulty options from the pause menu at any time. The vast majority ofdifficulty settings can be tweaked at any time, in any mode.
• Some limited restrictions are imposed when wishing to play Permadeath.

• Customisable difficulty options include:
  • The ability to disable life support and / or hazard protection management.
  • The ability to customise the speed at which life support and hazard protection are depleted.
  • The amount of material yielded when mining and harvested.
  • If sprinting is limited by life support drain and/or stamina.
  • How fast the scanner recharges.
  • How much damage players take from combat or the environment.
  • If technology takes damage when taking damage from combat or the environment.
  • What consequences there are for death, from none to permadeath.
  • How much fuel various pieces of technology use, including in Relaxedmode the ability to have free use of ammo, the mining laser and theterrain editor while still retaining general fueling mechanics.
  • If crafting items is free.
  • If the game is started with most recipes and blueprints already known, or if they must be earned.
  • How much items and upgrades cost to buy or learn.
  • The range of items available in shops.
  • How large item stack sizes can be within the inventory.
  • How much health hostile ships / Sentinels / creatures have.
  • How frequently, if at all, ground combat takes place.
  • How frequently, if at all, space combat takes place.
  • How hostile various planetary creatures are in their behaviour.
  • If the tutorial missions take place or not.
  • If other inventories (such as the ship and freighter) are always in range or not.
  • If specialised warp drive upgrades are required to enter specific systems.
  • If bases and base equipment require power.
  • How fast standing is gained with various factions.
  • If the game starts with all squadron or companion slots pre-unlocked.

SAVING

• The autosave system has been reworked. Instead of saving whengetting out the ship, the game now autosaves silently and automaticallyduring regular play. A full save is still made at all times a save wasmade before, including getting out of the ship.
• Players may now rename their saves. The option is found in the main menu once the save has been loaded.
• The most recent player location is now displayed in the save summary.

VISUALS

• No Man’s Sky on PC now supports AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution 2, acutting edge open source temporal upscaling solution, providing highimage quality and improved framerates.

• The visual variety of NPCs found aboard freighters has been increased.
• The smoothness of third person player movement on slopes has been significantly improved.

• The Fleet Command Room freighter component has been visually overhauled and given new visual effects.
• New rare asteroid variations have been added to systems across the galaxy.

• The freighter hangar entrance effects have been significantly improved.
• The space station docking bay entrance effects have been significantly improved.

• Atmospheric effects across the entire Space Anomaly have had a visual overhaul.
• Visual atmospherics throughout the Atlas Station have been significantly improved.

• The visual effects used when harvesting sodium, oxygen and other small plants have been improved.
• The cave drip visual effects have been improved.
• The landing and ground hover effects for the living ship have been improved.
• The visual effects for plaques and word stones have been significantly improved.

INVENTORY

• Inventory pages have been given a visual overhaul, including new backgrounds and new item slot styles and backgrounds.

• Inventories such as the ship, exosuit, freighter, etc, are no longersubdivided into multiple pages. Technology and Cargo inventories aredisplayed together on one page.
• General inventories have been removed. Items and technology are nowseparated into their own inventories. All existing saves have beenupgraded to combine their slots accordingly, so that no items orunlocked slots have been lost.
• The maximum number of slots per inventory has been significantlyincreased, with 120 item slots and 60 technology slots now available.
• Inventory sections are now able to scroll, to accommodate these increased sizes.
• Exocraft now make use of the technology inventory. Exocraft inventories have been generally expanded.
• Storage Container and Ingredient Storage inventories have been significantly increased, up to 50 slots each.

• The cost of purchasing new slots has been generally reduced.
• Players can now choose exactly which slot to unlock when purchasing new slots.
• Item inventories can now be filtered to highlight specific item types.
• Players can now adjust stack sizes and manually choose slots when arranging items inside storage or ingredient containers.

• When transferring items to another inventory via quick transfer,free space is now represented as the number of slots rather than itemcounts.
• When transferring items to storage containers via quick transfer,the item will be placed in a container that already contains other itemsof that type, rather than into the first available slot.

• Refunded items (such as fuel from refiners or frigate upgrades fromcancelled expeditions) can now be refunded into inventory with space,rather than only into specific inventories.

• Oxygen and Pure Ferrite have had their icons updated.
• Salvaged Data has had its icon updated.
• Log Encryption Keys, Factory Override Units and Salvaged Frigate Modules have had their icons updated.
• Starship Storage Augmentations, Cargo Bulkheads, Multi-ToolExpansion Slots and Exosuit Expansion Units have had their iconsupdated.

• Drop-Pod Coordinate Data has been replaced with an Exosuit UpgradeChart that leads players directly to Drop Pods without having to use thesignal booster. The charts can be found while exploring or purchasedfrom a cartographer aboard the space station.

USER INTERFACE AND QUALITY OF LIFE

• All menu and options screens have received a visual overhaul.
• The mode select and save select screens have received a visual overhaul.
• Players may now construct a Trade Rocket upgrade for their Exosuit.This allows the deployment of a personal rocket via the Quick Menu.Items loaded into the rocket and launched will be automatically sold.

• Players may now package up any installed technology into adeployable item, which can be archived in storage or redeployed to a newlocation.
• When crafting complex items, players can now view detailedinteractive crafting steps, which will take them step-by-step throughthe entire tree of requirements and sub-requirements.

• The number of Communication Station icons displayed is now capped in areas that are dense with many messages.

• Interaction targeting has been improved, so that nearby objects are highlighted without the need to aim at them precisely.
• Cursor control in menus has been improved for pad users, making it easier to select small buttons.
• Crafting products and installing technologies now both use the same button.

• Repairing interactions, such as clearing out substances from blockedterminals in abandoned buildings, now have more bespoke text andinstructions that more closely match that specific interaction.
• A number of instances where inventory animations would snap rather than flow smoothly have been fixed.

• Players can now disable first-person head bob effects from the main menu.
• A number of instances where the cursor was being reset to the centre of the screen during an interaction have been fixed.

• Item highlighting has improved during missions and pinnedinstructions, making it more clear which items need to be built,repaired or installed.
• Pinned technology instructions will now correctly guide players to learn the relevant blueprint if they do not already know it.
• Item highlighting hints have been extended to the repair screen and craftable item lists.
• Button prompts are now highlighted when a usable item (such as achart, geode, or procedural technology package) is ready to use.
• The Quicksilver Companion Robot will now give advice on how to earn quicksilver.
• The signal booster now uses a fast-style interaction, making it quicker to find nearby buildings.

MISSIONS

• The Base Computer Archives mission chain has been reworked to removetimers. The archives are now unlocked by decrypting its variouspasswords, achieved via learning new pieces of alien language.
• The rewards for the Base Computer Archive mission chain have been improved.

• Missions involving the player’s base now respond dynamically to theconstruction of new bases. When moving to a new system or building a newbase, the mission system will attempt to locate the mission at thenearest appropriate base, rather than whichever was closest at the timethe mission began.
• New Creative Mode games start with a short and non-mandatory guidance mission, to help orientate new players.
• Mission details in the log page can now be manually scrolled.

• A procedurally generated mission is now activated when encountering adrop pod. This mission will mark the site and allow players to easilyfind their way back if they need to leave to gather repair materials.
• The auto-generated crashed freighter digsite mission now marks individual sites so they can be returned to with ease.

• The Vile Spawn dropped from the vessels spawned at Titan Worm burrows can now be collected.
• Collecting Vile Spawn may yield the secrets of the worm cult who worship them.
• Vile Spawn physics have been improved so they no longer roll away at high speeds.
• Vile Spawn are now highlighted by the Scanner and Analysis Visor.

• Building waypoint beacons are now shown in the Analysis Visor.
• Text tips when changing your active mission or when new missions become available have been improved for clarity.
• The mission restart button that becomes available when mission targets are very distant has been improved for clarity.

• Mission board rewards have been generally improved, so they are of higher value.
• Mission board rewards now more strongly correlate to the player’sstanding with the commissioning faction, with higher ranks earningbetter rewards.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent mission boards from quicklypresenting the mission hand-in page on their first interaction, if theplayer had missions to hand-in from another system.

• Fixed a number of rare blockers in the Armourer and Overseer mission chains.
• Fixed a number of instances where mission markers could be lost for core story objectives.
• Fixed a number of mission issues that could cause the target sweep to fail to locate a building correctly.
• The mission icons for the Living Ship missions have been improved.
• Fixed an icon inconsistency in the Armourer missions.
• Fixed a number of text formatting inconsistencies across base NPC missions generally.
• Improved the message box that appears when interacting with an NPC terminal that has no specialist working available.

BALANCE

• The Analysis Visor’s base scanning speed has been significantlyincreased, making it faster to discover creatures, plants and minerals.
• Damaged objects encountered in the world (such as cargo crates inthe wrecks of freighters) are now far more likely to require a repairthat can be resolved in place, rather than necessitating gatheringadditional materials.

• The amount of Quicksilver rewarded by standard Nexus missions, aswell as special weekend event Nexus missions, has been increased.
• In addition to nanites and portal rune knowledge, the grave sites offallen Travellers now offer Memory Fragments, containing valuabletechnology.
• Interactions with Travellers now generally give higher quality rewards and items.

• The list of additional substances that can be gathered fromplanetary rocks and flora after successfully analysing them has beenstreamlined, to avoid polluting inventories with small numbers of a widerange of items.
• The range of items awarded as scrap when salvaging a starship hasbeen decreased, to avoid unnecessarily polluting inventories and to makethe salvaging process more streamlined.
• Deployable technology products of the same type now stack, reducingthe inventory slots required while waiting for the right time to usethem.

• The amount of oxygen harvested from plants has been slightly increased.
• The amount of sodium harvested from plants has been slightlydecreased, but sodium plants are now distributed more densely acrossplanets.
• The sell price of storm crystals has been increased.
• The sell price of various raw materials gathered on planets has beendecreased, to reward the creation of more complex trade items viacrafting.
• The purchase price of key survival materials in space station trade terminals has been increased.
• Extremely large mineral extractor arrays are now affected bydiminishing returns, reducing the effectiveness of each additional unitover the cap.

• The potency of the Oxygen Recycler has been increased.
• The amount of time that fuel asteroids stay marked after a space scan has been adjusted.
• Teleporters can no longer be used to avoid danger while smuggling illegal goods.

• Creative Mode games now start with a hyperdrive pre-installed.
• The time that Sentinels will continue to hunt wanted players now scales with general combat difficulty.
• More challenging game modes and difficulty settings now restrict theavailability of key items at trade terminals, so that key survivalitems must be found or crafted instead of bought.
• When using higher difficulty settings, the starship is significantlymore expensive to summon than it is to launch while piloted, making thedecision to summon rather than walk a more complex equation.

• On higher difficulty settings, technology can be broken when takingdamage. The chance scales with shield strength, so that more fullyshielded Travellers are largely safe.
• On all but the harshest settings, the base probability of technology breaking is very low.
• The damaged technology is relevant to the type of damage received,so that (for example) extreme cold damage is more likely to breakthermal hazard protection.

BASE BUILDING

• Power cables and other wire placement has been improved so thatwires snap more easily, reducing fiddliness when building power grids.
• Power cables and other wires are now more easy to highlight when using delete to remove base building objects.
• Power cable visual effects have been improved.
• Fixed a number of visual issues with power cable snap points.
• Fixed an issue that prevented plug sockets from appearing at the end of power cables.

• The build menu UI now stays stable while placing power cables and other wires.
• In edit mode, the build menu now gives information about which part is currently being targeted.
• Hydroponic planters can now be placed freely without the need to snap to a structure.
• Fixed a snapping issue with the cuboid room frame.
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from picking up or editingalready placed parts that happened to be near a landed starship.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a number of crashes related to memory management.
• Fixed a rare crash related to frigate expeditions.

• Fixed a rare issue that could cause mission-critical objectives to become stuck inside volcanoes.
• Fixed a rare blocker that could occur when saving and reloadingimmediately after visiting the Atlas station in key story moments.
• Fixed an issue that caused the starship to judder when opening theinventory with the pulse drive active and the starship camera in thirdperson.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent teleporters on derelict freighters from working correctly.

• Fixed a number of network and matchmaking issues.
• Fixed a number of network synchronisation issues affecting Sentinel drones.
• Fixed an issue that could cause thousands of sentinels to spawn at a settlement during the Trace of Metal mission.
• Fixed an issue that could cause missions to incorrectly report theirtarget as being in another system, when their target was in fact theSpace Anomaly.
• NPC navigation systems have been optimised.

• Fixed an issue that could cause phantom item alerts about new upgrade modules appearing when the inventory was full.
• Fixed an issue that could cause conventional mission messages anddetailed mission message boxes to draw over the top of each other.
• Fixed an issue that caused ground collision in the starship to be incorrectly reported as Exosuit damage.
• Fixed an issue that caused the incorrect number of required slots tobe listed when attempting to salvage a starship without enoughinventory space.

• Fixed an issue that could cause starship inventories to becomecorrupted when getting a ship that was in the process of being salvaged.
• Fixed a rare issue that could prevent living frigates from making contact with the player.
• Fixed an issue that could cause freighter base NPCs to claim to be the captain of living frigates.

• Fixed an issue that caused the black market mining laser upgrades to have too few stat bonuses.
• Fixed an issue that caused the substance collection boost effect ofthe Optical Drill to affect all item collection, not just mining.
• Fixed an issue that caused substance collection across the game tobe drastically reduced when the Soul Laser is installed in your currentMulti-Tool.

• Fixed an issue affecting the first-person camera that could causethe Exosuit backpack to become invisible in the inventory after gettingin the starship.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Minotaur’s Icarus Fuel System todisplay an irrelevant fuel bar and not correctly report its upgradestats when viewed in the inventory.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the Space Anomaly interior to remainvisible and floating around the system after using its teleporter towarp to the space station in your current system.
• Fixed a number of instances where interactions would fail to correctly give rewards upon their successful completion.

All in all, this is looking like a substantial update! No Man’s Sky is quite a bit different from the game that first launched back in 2016, and all of these changes seem like they’ll make for an even better experience regardless of platform. Hello Games has made it clear that the developer plans on supporting the game for a long time to come, so there might be a lot more updates like this in the future!

No Man’s Sky is available now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Nintendo Switch. Readers can check out all of our previous coverage of the game right here.

Have you been enjoying all the free updates in No Man’s Sky? Have you checked out update 4.0 yet? Let us know inthe comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!