'No Man's Sky' Foundation Update: Base Building, New Gameplay Modes And More

The ambitious and promising game No Man’s Sky failed to live up to the expectations when it launched earlier this year but a new update to the title, first reported on by TechCrunch, hopes to push it closer to the title gamers were hoping for.

The update, dubbed the Foundation update, allows players to create buildings that will act as bases and safe areas for explorers. Placing an outpost on a particular planet will turn that location into a player’s home planet. The bases act as storage for resources and rare products garnered from across the galaxy.

Players will be able to teleport to and from the base at-will to explore the rest of the universe and use the bases as save points when exploring particularly difficult terrain. Base building also gives players the ability to recruit alien lifeforms to help research new technology.

Two new game modes also make an appearance in the update: a Creative mode that emphasizes exploration with fewer limitations, and a Survival mode cranks up the difficulty and challenges players to see how long they can endure.

The addition of base building and new game modes are the most immediate changes present in the update, though dedicated players will be sure to notice differences throughout the game. Tweaks have been made to the farming system and general user interface.

The developers also added new resources, technologies and tools to be accessed, along with performing the typical glitch fixes to make the overall experience more enjoyable and less burdened by bugs.

Hello Games dropped the update late Sunday evening—just three days after it was announced.

Players seem to be responding positively to the update. “I'll be goddamned if this patch didn't legitimately make the game better,” one user posted in the No Man’s Sky subreddit on Reddit. “I am quite impressed with this patch,” another commented.

Base building is the most prominent addition that players will be able to make use of immediately but Hello Games, the developer behind No Man’s Sky , noted the update is more about setting the stage for future improvements—hence calling the patch “Foundation.”

In a post about the update, the developer team said, “it won’t be our biggest update, but it is the start of something."