New No Man's Sky Update Arrives, Focuses on Fixing Nagging Issues

There's been very little word from Hello Games as of late regarding what's happening with No Man's Sky. A surprise patch showed up today out of nowhere, resolving bugs and dealing with other issues.

After not tweeting in almost a month--its last message was on August 27--Hello Games today sent out a pair of messages. The first announced the release of update 1.09, which is now available on PC and PS4. Patch notes (below) were shared for the PS4 and PC versions individually. However, both sets of notes are identical, with platform-specific changes being listed in both.

With this update installed, No Man's Sky should be now be better about recovering corrupted saves; players shouldn't be able to miss out on Antimatter blueprints that leave them stranded; and performance improvements come in a number of places. The full list of changes follow at the bottom of this post.

The second tweet points back to a development update posted on September 2, which explained what Hello had spent its time doing in the weeks after launch (namely, improving its support team and releasing patches).

A backlash emerged after the game's release, as many players felt they had been misled about what No Man's Sky was. (Others still loved it; you can read GameSpot's review here.) Questions have been raised about things like disappearing discovery names and players' inability to see each other, and whether this is intended functionality or the result of glitches.

Hello still hasn't addressed those subjects. Founder Sean Murray hasn't tweeted since August 18, when he said, "We're totally focused on customer support right now. Then we'll move onto improving and adding features to the game." More recently, Sony's Shuhei Yoshida discussed the situation, saying he doesn't believe it has harmed the PlayStation brand.

We don't know many specifics about what kind of content will be added to No Man's Sky in the future, but Murray said previously it was working on "the ability to build bases and own giant space freighters."

No Man's Sky 1.09 Patch Notes

• The game is now much more robust at recovering corrupted save files.
• It was possible for players to circumnavigate obtaining the Antimatter blueprint using very specific steps, leaving some players stranded in their second system. This is no longer possible.
• PC and PS4 galaxy generation more robust during compiling.
• Exosuit messaging system no longer confuses "on planet" and "docked in station" visor notifications, removing all doubt as to the location of the player's Starship.
• Improved framerate when scanning colossal structures such as Space Stations or Outposts.
• Fix for some terrain resources being indestructible and therefore unmineable.
• Exosuit messaging system now able to correctly differentiate between resource types. Deposits discovered by scans will now display as the correct element.
• Gek Factory door manufacturing standards have been improved; they no longer take critical hits from Grenades.
• Drone vandalism detection improved. Wanted level now increases when destroying Factory doors however powerful the players Multitool may be.
• Pulsedrive systems now fully offline during warping.
• Players are no longer able to open crates of any type if their inventory is full, no matter the contents, preventing loss of resources.
• When interacting with a Terminal, it will print out the players Journey progression. Some strings in this print out where cut-off in Asian languages, these now display correctly in all supported languages.
• Fixed an occasional bug within the Exosuit system that caused controller prompts to display the wrong button.
• Changes to player Standing with the Gek, Vy'keen and Korvax now display correctly within the stats menu.
• Fix for loss of resources when transferring fully stacked items between the player's Starship and Exosuit in a specific order.
• Fix for stacking products exploit. Resources salvaged from dismantled technologies now fill inventory slots as expected.
• Exosuit and Starship messaging system now always displays the correct number of collected resources.
• Discovery menu improvements, including fixes for incorrectly displayed planet names and creatures displaying as their molecular structure.
• Discovery menu now supports planets with an abundance of life. Specifically, planets featuring 15 creature types can now reach 100% completion.
• Multitool Beam Coolant and Exosuit Aeration Membrane upgrades now increase their respective stat wheels as expected.
• The player can no longer buy multiple products when they do not have enough slots to do so, preventing loss of both the unit cost and the extra products.
• Japanese localization fixes. Including: scrolling text issues, overlapping prompts in the ship messaging system and Multitool names displaying incorrectly.
• Fixed clipped text on save game restore buttons in all supported languages.
• Fixed errant title bar on the menu screen.
• Player Standing now updates in real time when interacting with members of the Gek, Vy'keen and Korvax races.
• Minor fix for saves of a duration less than 2 minutes displaying as "1 minutes".
• Improvements to various settings within the options menu, including advancements in mouse smoothing and refined gamma settings allowing for increased tenebrosity.
• Fix for creature generation crash.
• Fixes to prevent FPS spikes when encountering momentary performance bumps on PS4.
• Fixed a rare issue where pressing and holding a button would cause the game to crash under specific circumstances.
• Creature footfall now audibly echos within caves.
• Fix for perpetual day time if the player updated in a specific order.
• Bump shader version numbers for patch 1.09
• Fix for a rare situation where a player's save could get stuck in a crash loop due to saving at very specific point in planet generation.
• Improved detection of available PC CPU cores and optimised settings for low-end CPUs with few CPU cores.