Every so often I like to create a new character and start "fresh" so to say. Since NMS Beyond all discovered recipes and items are "shared" among characters. So when you start a new playthrough, you're not bothered by litte popups reminding you that you've just discovered ferrite dust. But sometimes this is exactly what I want, to get the "new game" experience as closely as possible. Turns out you only need to delete Binaries\SETTINGS\GCUSERSETTINGSDATA.MXML

To test what happens I've done the following:
- Completely uninstalled NMS
- Cleared all hello games related files from the filesystem (i.e. AppData\Roaming\HelloGames)
- Reboot
- Installed NMS 3.02 from the offline installers
- Created a backup from the installed game

- Started the game for the first time
- Choose a survival playthrough
- Ran around a bit, collected some items until the character died from the environment
- Reload save and exit game

After this I calculated the SHA1 hash of each file in the backup directory (and subdirectories, 117 files total) and also from the installed game location (120 files). The following changes were made after playing the game once:

- The game creates %UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames
- The game creates the following new files in the game installation directory:
Binaries\SETTINGS\TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML
Binaries\SETTINGS\GCUSERSETTINGSDATA.MXML
GAMEDATA\FullLog.txt (empty file)
- The game changes one file:
Binaries\SETTINGS\TKGAMESETTINGS.MXML
The changes to this file are trivial: By default the following line ends with a space character: <Property name="LanguageSetting" value="english" />
This space is trimmed after running the game once.
In my case two empty XML tags were created after running the game once:
<Property name="KeyMapping" />
<Property name="KeyMapping2" />
- No relevant registry entries were added/changed

Conclusion / TLDR
To start anew delete (backup) the following files. These files don't exist after a fresh install:

Binaries\SETTINGS\GCUSERSETTINGSDATA.MXML

Deleting the following file resets your graphics settings:

Binaries\SETTINGS\TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML

The following file can be deleted without effect:
GAMEDATA\FullLog.txt

The savegames can be deleted from %UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames but make sure to backup your saves first.

Thanks for putting in the time to find this stuff out and do a clear write-up. My boys and me also like to start over at some point, so I'm keeping this one for later. Thanks!

Thank you. I'll keep this in mind :)

The statement, "all discovered recipes and items are "shared" among characters" is incorrect.

I have two survival mode characters, my original one from over a year ago, and a new one that I started a month or two ago. I had unlocked everything on my original character before making a new one. I can say with certainty that the new character does not have access to any of the recipes, items, glyphs, discovered locations, or anything else that was unlocked by the original survival mode character. In fact, neither character can see the other's bases - the bases simply don't exist for each other.

The only thing that appears to be shared is one's GOG account name that is attached to all discoveries. If you happen upon a place that you discovered when playing on a different character (even in a different mode) the location will be listed with the date when you originally discovered it. However, said discovery will not show up in your list on a new character if that character has not yet visited the system.

No, the statement is correct, it's your understanding that is flawed. The comment isn't regarding which recipes or items your character has learned, but which ones have been *discovered*.

So you're right that your new character doesn't know any of the blueprints that your old character learned... however, your new character is AWARE of them, and you can look up information about them in the "catalogue" portion of the options menu.

You'll notice there are three types of spaces (see attached image) - ones that are completely dark and listed as "???", ones that are displayed and correctly named AND have a crossed wrench/screwdriver, and ones that are displayed and named, but do NOT have the wrench/screwdriver icon at the bottom.

The ones that are filled in and named are blueprints, recipes, or materials that ANY of your characters have ever encountered. The blueprints that have the crossed wrench/screwdriver icon at the lower right are blueprints that your CURRENT character knows. This is the only aspect of the catalogue that is game-specific. The entries that are blank and unnamed are blueprints, recipes, or materials that none of your characters have encountered yet.

[edit] my mistake - Portal glyph discoveries are also game specific.

The OP was discussing how to reset the catalogue to all blank "???" spaces so that a new character could encounter them for the first time (and get the pop-ups that notify you that you've found something new). You can do this by deleting the file GCUSERSETTINGSDATA.MXML in your game SETTINGS folder, or if you have notepad ++ or some other editor better than notepad, you can edit the file and delete the following sections:

<Property name="SeenSubstances">
<Property name="SeenTechnologies">
<Property name="SeenProducts">
<Property name="SeenWikiTopics">
<Property name="UnlockedWikiTopics">

Editing the file is useful if you've blocked a lot of users or messages and don't want to go back and re-block them all. Otherwise, it's easier just to delete that file. The game recreates it if it's missing when you start up.

Fair enough.

A heads up to anyone else having trouble with this: It seems like Catalogue entries can sometimes recover themselves if only Binaries\SETTINGS\GCUSERSETTINGSDATA.MXML is deleted. Removing save files as well seems to solve this.