In the Apollo/Artemis questline, when Apollo tasks you with finding a multitool trader in a Vy'keen system, I went to a green star system without realizing that it would be abandoned (my first time going to a green star system) and of course there is no trader in the system indicated in this quest since it's abandoned. Talking to any vykeen merchant in another system will not advance the quest, and I can't seem to get the quest to update to a different system.

I tried starting a new game, then went back to my stuck save game. I logged back into a normal vykeen station where I'd logged out, and for a hot minute it looked like it had fixed itself as the quest no longer showed as being in another system and the quest marker pointed me to one of the actual vykeen merchants in my current system (the exosuit one). I went and talked to him, paid the 60 nanites to buy the upgrade. However, as soon as I exited the conversation the quest updated back to its previous state and it again directed me to the abandoned system. I tried using the upgrade in my multitool to see if it would advance the quest, tried logging into my other game and back in several times, but I never got the quest to update to any actual inhabited vykeen system after that one time.

I checked in some other threads that some players have resolved this issue by logging into a multiplayer game, but of course the GOG version of No Man's Sky still doesn't have multiplayer so I can't use that fix. Of course this quest can't be abandoned like a normal quest. Does anyone know how to fix this?

The good news is that you can probably either reset the quest or mark it as complete by using the NMS Save Editor. The bad news is that I have no idea what specific steps would be necessary.

A thread over on Steam discusses a similar problem. The solution for their problem required editing the raw JSON file using the Save Editor to change the value associated with a specific key.

An alternative, safer way would be to try to force the game to change the target system. Try selecting a different mission in a system that is far away from the abandoned system. The usual ones from the space station guy to scan animals or destroy sentinels or something like that. Do a couple of those in systems that are outside of warp range from the green star system and then re-select Apollo's mission. Maybe the game will notice that the green star system is unreachable and give you the option of resetting it to a closer system.

If that doesn't work, try finding a Holo Teminal and talking to Apollo again while you're still out of range of that green star system.

Ok, well that's somewhere to start at least. I'll try that and let you know, thanks! Any easy way to find a Holo Terminal? Or do I just need to wander around the planet surface? I've noticed that the new planet surface navigation system leaves much to be desired. Previously you could much more easily re-find structures you'd already been to, including from the air, but now it's much harder.

I'm at more or less the same point as this in a recent restart. I'll fire it up and see if anything seems strange.

In the meantime, there is a good walk-thru for this portion of the quest over at the NMS Gamepedia wiki. That link might give some hints as to what is missing. Maybe you're just short of nanites?