For offline players the Quicksilver store is missing a lot of items. There are some mods and excellent tutorials from our own forum member AlpakaDream (huge thanks!).

But before I change my unmodded game, are there long-term problems when using the save editor? I'd rather not loose my 100+ hour save file after another 100 hours because of some obscure bug manifests itself when using the save editor.

Hi! I am playing mostly online, and began with save-editing when certain aspects of the game started feeling like grind. (NMS isn't a competitive game after all.)

That's a few hundred hours ago. No time bomb detected so far. But I never touched any quests. Only bases and inventories.

Once I got into trouble when save-editing a base a bit further away from another player's neighbouring base that had already extended into mine. By, again, save-editing my files, I was able to set things right in the end. So, this thing has its dangers if one isn't careful.

The first suggestion is to try to maintain a periodic independent back up of your save game files just in case something goes wrong or you have to reinstall or move, etc.

GoatFungus' editor makes a back up zip file of the save that you are editing just in case.

I did not look to see how prominently this is displayed anymore but GoatFungus' editor strongly urged caution if editing something that was not yet active in the game.

Editing the JSON files requires diligence as those errors can cause major problems.

I have been using the editor by GoatFungus for a while without any problems although I have not used it for much other than to decrease the amount of space bucks on hand when they approach 4.2 billion and sometimes to fill stacks of Fuel Oxidizer to keep frigate missions below 24 hours.

The save editor by Goatfungus has not been updated for 4 months now, I think that was around where Origins was introduced, but since then there have been 3 origins patches, halloween update, next generation and a couple more patches for next generation. Amongst those more content has been added which is not recognised such as a new currency ..

.. Have a look at the issues tab on github. I dont use it personally but I do know it has been a good editor for those that do, I would give it a while to catch up.

Thanks everyone, reading this it seems safe enough for me

Hi,

I wanted to give you (and anyone else reading this) a little info (or two):
As others have already written, it's always a good idea to make a backup of the savegame before you edit it. The easiest way to do this is to copy the folder "NMS" under Appdata\Roaming\HelloGames\. Then you have a direct copy of all game saves.

If you start a new game since the "NextGen" update, you don't need to edit the save files anymore to change the "ShpTier" and "ShopNumber" values. Since NextGen HelloGames have finally reacted and introduced the changes "ShopTier" and "ShopNumber", so that you can also buy items like the "Living Egg" etc. as an offline player.
If you play an older version, you can use my mod "OfflineShop", which automatically changes the "ShopTier" and "ShopNumber" entries to a newer version when you create a new game state.
https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/1782

The only problem is to get "Quicksilver". The safest variant is my mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/1814
This mod adds a 20% chance to normal Nexus missions to give Quicksilver as a reward. In addition, you can collect Quicksilver in every DerelictFreigher, just like at the time of the "Halloween" update.

If you want to play the daily quests from the Nexus, you can't avoid editing the saves. These cannot be made available via mod (so far).

I will always prefer the Quicksilver mod and update it as soon as possible if there is a new No Man's Sky update. At least until HelloGames itself has built a solution for us offline players ;)

See you in space!
~AlpakaDream

Thanks AlpakaDream, you seem to have a solid knowledge on the offline part of this game.

If I read your statement correctly, I can install the latest NMS 3.13, start a new game and buy a void egg without mods. This is great news. I've read somewhere that quicksilver is available in derelict freighters and some ice (or something) from space. So it seems everything (except daily quests, but we got simliar quests from the Nexus) is now possible in an unmodded and completely offline game.

Well yes. But its a bit harder:
When you start a game with 3.13 the values for "ShopNumber" and "ShopTier" are set to a relatively current value, even without mods.
This theoretically allows you to buy a void egg, but the problem is getting the necessary Quicksilver. The thing that you get quicksilver from derelict freighters was only available during the "Halloween" Update (v.3.05). Since "NextGen" (v. 3.10), this got removed again.
Thats why i made that mod (https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/1814), that adds Quicksilver to derelict freighters in the same amount like it was during the Halloween Update.

You can get quicksilver from "Stellar Ice" in space, even without mods. But the chance to find one is very low and it won't give you always quicksilver, so the chance to get quicksilver is even lower. But still present.

So if you don't want to play with mods you could theoretically get a living ship by just farming Stellar Ice. But it will take a very long time.

Use of Save Editor is safe for me. I use him daily for QS_REWARDS (Thanks on AlpakaDream for the fantastic (german) Youtube-Tutorial) for many weeks and have'nt problems with this. Take to minutes before play.

SPOILER ALERT (I Can't spoiler this properly because the forum does not allow spoiler tags)

Dont use the following if you are just starting the game, you can ruin a lot of the fun with the following :

You can edit the save game with just a text editor, Windows Notepad or Notepad++ etc

C:\Users\<Username>\appdata\roaming\hellogames\nms\defaultuser\save.hg

You might have to enable showing Hidden files and folders in Windows explorer
Also be sure you have the correct save you are editing, timestamp of the file is the best clue
Make a copy of it first somewhere before editing

Right click the file and choose Open With .. Notepad or whatever text editor you use

Do a find / search for however much Credits or Nanites you have in game currently ..

.. And you will find all three currencies are next to each other, Credits / Nanites / Quicksilver.

For example I found the following in my save after search for 758 nanites ..

"wGS":61188,"7QL":758,"kN;":0

Thats 61188 Credits, 758 Nanites and Quicksilver 0

If you wanted for example 3500 quicksilver ..

"wGS":61188,"7QL":758,"kN;":3500

.. edit in what you need. But be sure you are editing the correct part of the game save, depending on the number you search for you can randomly find the same number you search for in many locations in the save file and screw something else up.

Now you can speed things up towards the level of game you were at just by buying all the slots / resources you need etc

It's not as convenient as using the save editor, but then again you know that all you are changing is the currency in the save file and not messing anything else up with an out of date editor. And you dont need to install Java just for the save editor to work, notepad does not need any additional programming languages installed, so thats one less thing malware could take advantage of on your system.

Excellent information here. I've tried editing save.hg manually with Notepad++ and it works fine for chaning credits, nanites and quicksilver. It seems variables relating to ShopNumber and ShopTier have been removed.

Any idea how to enable daily quicksilver missions with manual editing? This is what I've got in the save file relating to QS_REWARDS, I don't see an ID like in the save editor examples:

{"b2n":"^QS_REWARDS_ON",">MX":{}}

I am pretty sure they should be in the save file somewhere

Reason I am sure is because many times in the last four years playing NMS I have installed and uninstalled GOG Galaxy. On the times I have installed it and then let the game update the Quicksilver shop with all current Exotic items, and then uninstalled GOG Galaxy, then continued my playthrough the Quicksilver shop has then kept the amount of items above the small default selection. So somewhere in the save file is a flag and value that tells the game the Exotic items / level the shop is enabled to show.

Its probably an obscure value though that is hard to find. I am looking through it just now, see if I can find anything with a bit of determination, though its a huuuge amount of scrolling :)

Nothing obvious so far though seems to be turning up anything with an associated editable value, QS, Quick, Exotic, Tier, Level, bot, shop .. plus a few more tried.

I have an idea how I might be able to determine exactly where to find it .. Just started a new game without GOG Galaxy, so its a completely offline game. Going to get to the stage where I can get on the Nexus, go see the QS Shop, so that the default items are listed .. Then make a save.
Once thats done, will relaunch the game with GOG Galaxy running, load that save and go to the QS Shop again, and make a new save .. Then will compare the differences of both saves.

see my tutorial for enabling quicksilver missions via editing the save file:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhbQaX9f8AM&amp;t=1s

Great idea, I can help with pretty printing the json if you want to make the comparison easier. It's an interesting idea because it shows exactly what will change when connecting to the NMS servers.

@AlpakaDream: already saw your tutorial. However, I'm manually editing the save file and the text is different from the example when using the save editor.