I have been playing NMS for two weeks now, for probably half an hour - one hour per day. Here are some initial observations and nitpicks. I have done all the "mandatory" missions and am at the point where I have a warp drive and can now choose to freely explore, follow the Atlas path, find out about Apollo, locate the black hole or try to make it to the center of the universe. I haven't tried multiplayer yet nor pursued major upgrades (no new ship, freighter, etc).

First, I love the concept. It offers so much: planet exploration, various story lines, flying through space, even combat if you are into that sort of thing. And if, like me, you're not, you can just dodge the bad guys and avoid all fighting.

However, there are a few things that bug me .

I am increasingly bored with the VERY repetitive task of collecting materials just to be able to take off from a planet and worse, fuel the warp drive. Why do I have to collect copper etc EACH and EVERY time I wish to make a warp jump? Just allow me to either buy the darn thing, or make it super easy to collect the needed materials. It should be possible, once you have done the hard labor about 5 or 6 times, to get a ship upgrade that just processes whatever resources you have available at the time, or allow you to harvest and process the copper straight from orbit.

Honestly I try to limit warping as much as possible, just to avoid this dreadful feeling of "been there, done that, bored me the previous 20 times too..." I'd explore much more if it were just easier to get the darn fuel!

I love meeting aliens and learning new words, but this "Warrior Xomioso looks at me with beady eyes, he smells like a petunia that blossoms only in the dark" (you actually have to wait 5 seconds for that sentence to finish because it appears letter by letter)... then you ask him to teach you a word and once again you have to wait for the standard sentence to appear painstakingly slowly "He seems honored that you would show an interest in his language, so he whips out a path and shows you a list of symbols to choose from..." THEN you have to select a category and finally you get your word!

So far I have learned about 60 words but honestly I am about to give up on this, it takes WAY too long and it quickly become repetitive, pointless and BORING.

Those are my two biggest niggles. As I said, I really like the game and will continue to play, but if by any chance the developers read this, please, PLEASE consider making things less tedious in a future upgrade. This is supposed to be a game, not something akin to a very boring assembly line day job...

The trick is to buy upgrades for your starship (every space station sells upgrades) to reduce warp costs. If you put two high value upgrades next to each other, like two A or S class warp drive upgrades, you can warp about 20 times with a full warp drive. This will help a lot.

For takeoff fuel, you can also buy an upgrade which helps a little bit. Then you find any nuclear planet and deplete a few uranium deposits, or even better, "metal fingers" if you happen to find these. About 40 uranium can refuel the launch trusters from zero to hundred. So with a few stacks of uranium you can take off for the next 10 hours or more. Also, try to land on the green circles around some buildings, this will give you a free launch!

Oh thank you, those things are good to know - and nobody tells you these in the game ^_^ Twenty warps with one charge sounds a lot more like it... guess what my next goal is :D

I've been playing for about 2 weeks as well, but a slightly different path (less of doing the missions and more wandering & collecting ships).

I can say that setting up a minimal base can cut out a lot of the basic resource gathering. Once you have a medium refiner, you can start using the unbalanced refining and start creating resources out of nothing (but time).
Refining recipes

For example, refining 1 copper and 1 chromatic metal yields 4 copper--one more than it would take to make what you put in. Eventually, you have as much chomatic metal as you need. Since carbon, oxygen, and ferrite dust are everywhere, that's all you need to keep the hyperdrive charged.

AIUI, some of the lack of information is intentional by HG. Part of it is for the story line -- wake up alone on an unknown planet with no knowledge of how you got there -- and part of it is to force the community to pool knowledge.

Also, in addition to uranium for the launch thrusters, gather pyrite when it's available. Works in the pulse engine and much more efficient than tritium.

Version 2.11 of the game has a new feature, you can hold left mouse button and speed up the text display speed so you can get through the dialogue quicker.

Got to admit though even with the click through speed up, the new 4 steps to get the word from NPCs is a bit of a PITA.

You can also learn words from Artifact stones, the ones that look like a dustbin with a circle on planet surfaces, and monuments teach you words too. Words learned from these are usually in the language of the dominant race for the system you are in, but you also get an additional Atlas word from monuments.

Those Translator upgrades for your suit are worth getting imho :)

There is certainly a repetitiveness that becomes grating after a while. Shooting ingredients to make more ingredients to shoot more...

I think this was a criticism originally levelled at the game.

It is missing a certain something. I think they tried to fill that by giving you a base with stuff to do there. But people like me don`t get off on a base.

I wish they had focused more on creating even more different planets with unusual flora and fauna, and especially the giant worms and huge brontosaur type aliens they never delivered so far.

Also maybe something as simple as an ingame Diary might make everything we do feel a little more worthwhile.

Brontosaurus sized beastie ..

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/d11baa/100s_of_hours_over_various_saves_and_this_is_the/

The giant worms are apparently in the game, cant remember where I saw Sean mention it, but those flying worms are the same creatures scaled down. They didn't put them in as sandworms because of the massive amounts of damage they could cause not only to the player but bases / vehicles / ships

( 2 weeks in the game, but abandoned the main quests early on, like, pretending they never happened. )

To me warping is so cheap that I don't even think of it. But then, chromatic metal (for antimatter) is often dropped by defeated space fighters, so it _is_ sort of collectible in space. The rest would be carbon, more carbon, ferrite dust, and oxygen, and then some carbon.

What really bugs me are the dialogues. It's not the lines themselves, they're fine, and fun, and well done, really. And critters conciously, even with artistic pride, communicating by pheromones: that's cool.
But I do not want to have all of this --KZZZT-- s-p-o-o-n-f-e-d-t-y-p-e-w-r-i-t-e-r-w-r-i-t-t-e-n-o-u-t-a-l-i-k-e-e-v-e-r-y-t-i-m-e-I-c-o-m-e-a-c-r ... oh, come on, this is ridiculous. After the first read we get it by barely glancing at it. Or we know how the "conversation" will go even before it begisńs. Because we've had it once or twice or literally A HUNDRED TIMES before, letter by letter.
Please, dear devs, please do make these things OPTIONAL, as you do with motion blur, or music, or whatnot. They start to annoy, we disable them, all are happy.
That would be most apprecciated.

For Takeoff, ahem, I use a mod from nexusmods as I do to get some relieve from the inventory origami.
Those are the measures I take to minimise time spent in the assembly line.

Did I mention that I actually enjoy this game? All those funny animals: Aren't they glorious? (Plus, they don't try and talk.)

I`m really iffy about this without more evidence (a Save perhaps). Because I`ve seen this done before and the posters just used a mod without admitting it. Seen people do it several times. I`ve played this game a while. I have jumped from planet to planet to planet and seen not a sight of any huge dinosaur type alien. Nobody has been able to give REAL evidence. It`s usually a one-off screenshot and that`s it, every time it`s been debunked as a mod. And the person who posted it just vanishes, doesn`t defend himself- ergo, he tried to deceive. I heard of that. Have the worms on specialised planets with a WARNING to players. Advise them to build only on rocks that the worms can`t go through. Or even just have the planet off limits to building. have the worms only appear in the distance, never near the Player.

Or even have a special DEADLY mode where the worm can indeed kill the Player and smash up his base if he insists on landing in a worm area.

There are SO many ways to have these giant worms and for them to cop out with that exciuse is in my opinion a big fail. Not good enough from Murray to ADVERTISE and SELL this to people then say, "Ooopsie! We can`t actually do it!" AFTERWARDS. Oh and to put the blame on the Player too! That`s rich.

So they decided FOR the Player that we wouldn`t like it so didn`t bother? How about doing it and see whether we really mind, eh? Maybe let US decide that?

You telling me they never thought about the possibilities until afterwards? I suspect the real reason is their software coding ability was lacking. they could fake it in a Trailer, but not the game.

Not acceptable.

There is a planet I landed on, a toxic one, that had large brontosaur like creatures with mushroom shaped heads, so they do exist.

There is an S-mod upgrade available for the ship that recharges your launch thrusters automatically via solar power. No need for launch fuel if you spend a few minutes wandering around before launching again.

Modding your ship via those upgrades is the way to go to make things less painful. However, there is a trade-off since you have to take up space in your technology and cargo bay to install these upgrades. So, many people have specialized ships - the Explorer class has better warp capabilities, the cargo hauler has more space, and the fighter better weapons... Me, I just wind up using one ship for everything - but that's just my style of play. It's expensive in nanites and materials to get all those upgrades.

Thanks for all your thoughts and insights - very helpful indeed. I have to look into ship/suit upgrades a little more, I guess!

Perhaps the answer would be an additional player mode in between and "Creative" and "Normal", such as "Trader". To me, "Creative" is a silly mode which doesn't offer any challenge at all, but "Normal" tends to be a little boring for the reasons I mentioned.

I wish it were possible to have a "Trader" mode, where you can buy or trade in just about anything for anything. If you enjoy finding new plants, spend your time with that and then trade the profits for ship fuel or later. Or if you don't want to talk to 300 aliens just to learn words, trade some beautiful rare relic for a 300 word dictionary. Or, you know, if you don't enjoy fighting but you still want to rescue that poor freighter ship, hire some mercenaries to do the job for you in exchange for a cargo full of gold. Possibilities are endless and you get to do the things you enjoy, in exchange for the things you want (but don't want to do the repetitive labor for).

But yes, the very slow and repetitive dialogs are really bugging me the most. As well as a certain repetitiveness in the worlds you visit, the plants, animals, atmosphere etc.

I still think it has lots of potential though and I realize I'm only scratching the surface still, so don't think I'm about to give up ^_^

Later on you will have more than enough of everything. And if you need stuff, you will buy it on a space station or trade it with aliens (or collect it very fast). You will jump around the galaxy/-ies without worrying about fuel.

There are tons of things to do for hours or weeks (if you are bored of discovering, you build a gigantic base, build up a whole industry, visit civilzed space with real monuments from other players ... meet other players... search a new ship (your 6th, because you need this one, too!) ... a new frighter... a new frigate... or back to planet for riding on creatures ... or why not spend some time with cooking exotic meals...?)

To speed up the dialogs you click and hold while alien is speaking, eh?

I agree with you on getting a very comfortable lead on allmost any resource I'd ever need right after the first let's say 5 hours (depending on playstyle) in any game mode, with Normal in Beyond now providing exceptionally accessible ways for generating Units.

I beg to differ on the 'things to do for hours or weeks ...':

- Gigantic bases
'Invalid Position', 'Limit Reached' with only a handful (literally five) Cuboid Rooms. I know I can leave the beaten path by flipping a switch in some file. I'd rather that would be fixed or even better explained to me. And I'd very much HG would clearly communicate, that base building is an area they're currently working on.

- Industry
I really like the added challenge of needing to power equipment. 'Industrial' generation of Units doesn't add to the gameplay for me, since there's no Unit sink once I've hit the limit

- Civilized space
That's a thing. Alas, we're on GoG, and I am not interessted in the petty roleplay nitpicks exposed on Reddit. So, yes, joining someones game and having a look can be a thing. So, where's your base you'd like to show off ? Or are you worried, that I'd unpack my Terrain Manipulator, and have a go at it, since HG seems to be undecided about how to prevent from that ?

- New Ships
Exotic, Fighter, Hauler, Shuttle and Explorer in C,B, A and S-Class varieties. Since HG decidced to drop the display of class bonus percentages, it's about the looks more than ever (it allways was for me, anyway :) ). I am undecided on this one.

- Freighters
Freighters in any size or shape since Next are blatantly easy to obtain (play, jump, refuse, jump to wealthy, ...). HG, without need, took away yet another sense of progression. Far worse, freighters are no longer full citizens of base building.

- Taming
That's a let-down, since it currently does not offer any improvements in the gameplay-loop other than a one-time mount. You mount and hobble around, you unmount, and ... well, gone.

- Cooking
I didn't try that for now. My guess is, that the results with the gourmet in the Anomaly are just as pseudo-RNG as with installing Modules.

That is all not helped by HG not providing documentation about expected behaviour, which further adds to confusion.

So, here's a few tipps for OP:
- The main quest will hand you the Blueprint for the Terrrain Manipulator. You will need that to unearth Salvaged Technology Modules, which will yield Salvaged Data
- Call in the Anomaly, once you can. You'll be able to buy Blueprints for allmost anything you ever need in exchange for Salvaged Data in there
- With Beyond, the first Blueprints I tend to get are the ones for the Exocrafts. Get the Pilgrim and the Colossus. The Pilgrim is the fastest Exo, and the Colossus provides obscence amounts of storage

If you play Normal and not Survival:
- In the Anomaly, check for how to get the Medium or Large Refinery
- Gather Data until you're able to get either
- Collect Oxygen (easy to buy)
- Put Ionized Cobalt and Oxygend into the Refinery
- Refine
- Refine again and again, don't sell until your inventory is full
- Now go sell
- You should be free of any Unit worries