My First Exotic Ship In No Man’s Sky!

As you can tell from the title, this blog entry is about No Man’s Sky again.  If you have no interest in my love of this game, or how I’ve come to bond with my four-year-old son over it, you should stop reading now.

Still with me?  Then let me tell you how I found my first Exotic spaceship yesterday.

There are four quality ratings for spaceships in No Man’s Sky: C, B, A, and S in ascending order.  S-class ships are the top of the line.  Best stats, most storage space, greatest damage potential.  There are also four classes of ships: Shuttle (okay at everything), Explorer (best hyperdrive), Hauler (most storage space), and Fighter (big damage).  In my travels I’ve bought, sold, and salvaged a number of spaceships, all the while saving up for big upgrades.  My two prize ships are my S-class Hauler and my S-class Fighter.  My most reliable ship is my A-class Explorer, sending me across the galaxy with its amazing hyperdrive engine.  But one ship had eluded me.  The  elusive and rare S-class Exotic ships.

Exotic ships are the most outlandish spaceships in No Man’s Sky, with unique designs that seem to honor the old-school approach to science fiction vessels: just make them as weird as possible.  Exotic ships are only S-class, so not only are they hard to find, but they’re expensive as hell.  So I made it my mission to find one.  I fought corrupted robots as I unearthed buried treasure, and I survived extreme firestorms on blazing-hot planets to harvest storm crystals, all in an effort to save enough money.  Once I felt I had enough saved up, it was time to find one.  This was the hard part.

I like to play No Man’s Sky as “naturally” as possible.  “Naturally” meaning without the internet’s aid, and finding things by simple exploration.  But No Man’s Sky is massive and my playtime is limited, so I turned to the internet for help.   I learned to find star systems with wealthy economies and check their space stations, or trading posts on that system’s planets.  The chance to find Exotic ships are better there, but not guaranteed.  That is, until the internet told me there was a “guaranteed method.”  It involved slightly exploiting how the game spawns ships in trading posts and space stations.  So, I decided to give it a try.  I felt guilty, it felt antithetical to a game built on exploration, and most of all waiting around for the exploit to work bored me.  So I abandoned it and went about my search the hard way: seeking out wealthy systems, checking the stations and posts, and if I didn’t find what I was looking for, I’d move on to the next one.

My son loves watching me play No Man’s Sky.  He loves seeing spaceships come and go in the trading posts and space stations.  He loves watching me drive exocraft across alien terrain in search of treasure.  So he became my “helper” in looking for exotic ships.  We turned the search into a game for ourselves.  “Daddy, what ships do you see?”  “I see an Explorer, two Haulers, and a Shuttle.”  Once we realized we weren’t going to see an Exotic ship, he would guide me to another planet and we’d try again.

Yesterday, we found one.  The hard way.  The old-fashioned way.  It felt so goddamn satisfying that I almost yelled in celebration.  My son joined me in my happy cheering.  The new spaceship looked so different and wild, so naturally he fell in love with it.  “Daddy, did we find the spaceship and win?”  “Yes, buddy.  We won!”

I loved sharing that moment with my boy.  I loved showing him that honest work and effort (albeit in a video game) not only pays off, but feels like a celebration when a goal is accomplished.  On top of that, now we have a cool new spaceship to fly around in.

Have I mentioned I love No Man’s Sky?