No Man’s Sky Foundation Update adds base building, new gameplay modes

As promised, Hello Games has released a major new update for its ambitious space exploration game No Man’s Sky. The new update was promised late last week, but arrived early on Sunday, giving game owners a bunch of new ways to play, including two brand new game modes and a base building system.

Base building allows players to craft buildings and storage capacity either on a planet’s surface, or in space as a huge frigate which is mobile between star systems so that you can take all your additional resources with you as you progress through the game. These not only add useful things like the ability to “hire” alien helpers and grow resources, but also give players who’ve maxed out their spaceship, space suit and multitool upgrades somewhere to devote their time and attention.

But the base building features are just the most immediately obvious of the updates brought by the patch; there are also two new gameplay modes, including a “Creative” mode which dials down health impacts, resource costs and other limiting factors to zero to let you explore free-form; as well as a “Survival” mode which, as you might expect, makes everything a lot harder.

You can also now build your own save points in the field using resources, access inventory more easily, stack product pick-ups that previously weren’t able to stack, mark waypoints on your HUD for easy return navigation, and do lots more besides. It actually sounds a lot like a brand new game and the developers clearly put a lot of work into addressing player complaints.