Hello Games shows no signs of slowing down when it comes to No Man’s Sky. The studio just released the 20th major update, which is called Endurance. The previous big update, titled Outlaws, dropped in April. The focus this time is on fleets and freighters.
With Endurance, Hello Games has overhauled freighters. There’s a new bridge with a quick-access teleporter that will take players to and from the new-look hangar in a jiffy. There’s the option to teleport between the capital ship and a fleet to carry out repairs on frigates too.
You’ll be able to quickly put together a space base with new parts and customizable themed rooms. Cultivate crops in a dedicated chamber, or add a catwalk, observation deck or glass corridor to gaze out at the cosmos. Using the Planetary Probe freighter module, you can remotely discover all celestial bodies in a given solar system.
Players can hire captains and pilots, and they may see engineers, biologists and technicians walking around their freighter. Hello Games upgraded freighters’ exterior visuals as well. Additionally, there are new effects for black holes and visual enhancements for nebulae — a perfectly timed update after NASA released the first batch of full-color images from James Webb Space Telescope last week.
Asteroids have been improved too. They’re more varied in shape and size and you may see thousands of them on screen simultaneously. Some may even nest creatures. Also new are procedurally generated organic frigates, which you can add to your fleet and deploy on missions. The game already had living starships, which can now leech energy from enemy vessels.
Elsewhere, a new expedition called Polestar will start soon. You’ll be tasked with taking your capital ship across the galaxy on a cruise. Rewards include new base parts (such as a flaming barrel), a jellyfish companion and a unique cape design. The update introduces new multiplayer missions too.
In the coming months, No Man’s Sky will arrive on yet more platforms. It’s coming to Nintendo Switch on October 7th and macOS sometime this year. A PlayStation VR 2 version is in the works as well.