It’s finally here! Committed No Man’s Sky players have been on the edge of their seats eager to see what Hello Games might put out for its next major update. For the one year anniversary since its controversial release last year, the Atlas Rises 1.3 update is rolling out today with more features than ever before to renew your interest in the galactic exploration game.
During the lull between the Path Finder 1.2 and Atlas Rises 1.3, the No Man’s Sky community has been led through a series of mysterious events. The augmented reality game (ARG) called Waking Titan sent out cassette tapes, emitted broadcasts, and essentially teased the players with hints to the upcoming story in the next big update. With thanks to the community and Game Detectives with tireless dedication, the players that took part were announced to be a part of the No Man’s Sky origin story.
That same story is a major highlight of Atlas Rises in 1.3. With a heavy emphasis on new context, quest system, and branching narrative to discovering the truth of No Man’s Sky, there is nearly 30 hours of new story content.
The universe in No Man’s Sky is coming to life with more interactive play. Mission Agents at space stations will let you pick up a variety of ways to earn credits and compliment the new mission log UI. NPC guilds have been added with reputation standing, objective, and rewards.
The Galaxy Map has been overhauled with wealth, economy, and conflict levels to improve navigation. Galactic technology will improve how you interact with the galaxy with improved waypointing too. And if you wanted to be an interstellar tycoon, now star systems have their economic strengths and weaknesses. With the new trade goods being added in and a tiered crafting system, players could essentially supply and demand as they see fit across the stars.
Another major addition is the terrain manipulator that will let the player control how the world looks around them. This tool lets you transform the landscape by subtracting and adding, deciding the shape, size, material, and more. Now you can, indeed, have a moat around your interstellar castle. Huzzah!
The cherry on top of it all is multiplayer! Now, thanks to portals making traveling cross-galactic, players can be joined with small blue orbs of others to explore and play the game. Up to 16 players will be able to interact through Glitches and voice chat with others in proximity. While it is limited, currently, it looks like these are the first steps to adding in full multiplayer is in the works for No Man’s Sky.
Add all of this to the new exotic biomes, plants, crashed freighters, salvage missions, gas harvesters, maintenance interactions, improved Analysis Visor data, UI upgrade, visual improvements, new alien race, more kinds of ships, better space combat, low atmospheric flight, and more. Read the full changelog over at No Man’s Sky official page.