Less than two months after Fractal, Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky has received the new Interceptor update. It revamps Sentinel Interceptors, allowing players to salvage and pilot them. They’re procedurally generated with lots of variation in shape and style. There are also Corrupted Planets, which feature crystals altering the Sentinels.
The Aeron Turbojet is a new equipment type discovered on Corrupted Planets, and players will need to harvest the crystals to power their new Sentinel ships. You’ll also encounter improved Sentinel Quads, which benefit from “intelligent” pathfinding. Space combat fans will also be happy to learn that Sentinel Capital Ships are destroyable for some nice rewards.
Crashed Sentinel ships can also be found on the surface of different planets, as you undertake a quest to bond with them. There’s also a new Corrupted World Nexus Mission, where the Space Anomaly tasks players with taking out corrupted Sentinels. If that weren’t enough, there are two new Sentinel Multi-Tools. Check out the patch notes below for more details.
4.2 Patch Notes
SENTINEL INTERCEPTORS
- Hostile Sentinel interceptor starships are now procedurally generated from a wide variety of parts.
- Players are now able to track down and repair a crashed Sentinel interceptor in order to repair it and claim it for their own fleet.
- A unique repair mission has been added to guide players through the salvage process.
- There are a variety of ways to locate a downed interceptor, including destroying a Sentinel capital ship; completing a bespoke story encounter; defeating new corrupted Sentinel planetary forces; and via mysterious new abandoned encampments.
- Player-owned interceptors use their own unique array of core technologies, though they still benefit from the installation of general starship upgrades.
- Player-owned interceptors have a unique cockpit.
- Player-owned interceptors have a unique planetary flight model, with the ability to hover.
COMBAT
- A number of improvements have been made to the locomotion system for Sentinel Quadrupeds, reducing visual glitches and jittering.
- Sentinel Quadrupeds are now more mobile in combat, moving frequently and making better use of their pounce and jump attacks.
- Sentinel Quadrupeds now have a wider range of targeting, allowing them to track players without having to reposition.
- Sentinel Quadrupeds can now use active camouflage to cloak themselves while evading player attacks.
- Corrupted Sentinel drones have been reworked visually.
- Corrupted Sentinel drones can now heal each other.
- Corrupted drones now make better use of cover.
- Corrupted drones now choose from a range of weaponry, including rapid fire projectiles; a close-range blaster; long-distance grenades; and a flamethrower.
- A large, ground-based corrupted Sentinel unit has been added.
- This heavily-armoured semi-arachnid machine benefits from its own stealth mode and long-distance pounce attack, as well as a flamethrower and grenade based weapons.
- Their highly mobile body and leg setup allows rapid sideways movement and continual player tracking.
- These enemies come in both large single varieties, and a smaller, swarming variety. The swarm variant is more aggressive in melee range, and will self-destruct at low health levels…
- A new unique resource has been added as collectable loot from these corrupted quadrupeds.
CORRUPTED WORLDS
- Some planets that previously generated extreme sentinels have now become corrupted worlds.
- Corrupted worlds have their own unique array of planetary Sentinel forces.
- Corrupted worlds are also home to dissonance resonators, strange extraction machines guarded by corrupted Sentinels.
- Corrupted Sentinel planets have their own unique resources and objects.
- New refiner recipes have been added for corrupted Sentinel resources.
- Corrupted worlds have a new unique lighting/visual effect.
- Newly corrupted worlds that previously had superheated rainstorms have new and stranger storms.
- A new building type, the Harmonic Camp, has been added exclusively to corrupted worlds. These mysterious abandoned encampments are home to many secrets…
- A new mission is available at the Nexus, requiring players to work together to destroy the new machinery found on corrupted worlds.
- New player titles have been added for those brave enough to battle corrupted Sentinels.
RENDERING AND OPTIMISATION
- Dynamic Resolution Scaling has been added for all Xbox platforms. This technology allows the game to maintain a consistent framerate across all scenarios, and results in a significantly improved image quality in some situations, such as during spaceflight.
- All Xbox platforms now support AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 technology, providing high image quality and improved framerates.
- Introduced a significant improvement to image quality in PSVR2.
- Fixed an issue that caused visual glitches in particle rendering in VR.
- Fixed an issue that caused a drop in image quality when rendering distant stars.
- Introduced a loading/warp time optimisation for PlayStation 5, Xbox One X, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
- Introduced a number of rendering and memory optimisations for PC and PlayStation VR.
- Introduced a number of rendering and memory optimisations for PlayStation 5.
- Introduced a significant memory optimisation for PlayStation 4.
- Introduced a memory optimisation for Xbox Series S and X that reduces hitching.
- Introduced a number of significant memory and rendering optimisations for all Xbox platforms.
VR
- VR players can now customise the position of their wrist and Multi-Tool projector menus. Simply grab the menu while it is being projected and drag it to a new position.
- An option has been added to allow VR players to choose between base building holograms being shown based on where they are looking or where they are pointing.
- An option has been added for VR players to change the behaviour of the flight stick, so that the yaw/roll axes are switched, and moving the virtual stick to the left/right will roll the ship rather than turn it.
- The wrist projector menus now instantly disappear so that players can use their Multi-Tool immediately after changing weapon mode.
- Fixed a rare issue that could occasionally block interactions when they should be available.
- Fixed an issue that could occasionally cause player hands to immediately disconnect from Exocraft controls.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the customiser tooltip to use the wrong text in VR.
- Fixed an issue that caused the option to allow the switching of the sprint and scan buttons to fail to work in PSVR2.
CUSTOM WONDERS
- A new section has been added to the Wonders catalogue, “Personal Records”.
- This section allows players to assign any planet, creature, flora or mineral discovery to its own custom wonder category.
- Personal records are all assigned their own player-chosen name.
- Personal records can be assigned from within the catalogue, or directly from any of the discovery pages.
- Personal records can be overwritten with other discoveries, or discarded entirely to create space for new categories.
SENTINEL MULTI-TOOLS
- A new class of salvaged Multi-Tool has been added.
- These hybrid Sentinel/salvaged tools are found at mysterious harmonic encampments on corrupted Sentinel worlds.
- These Multi-Tools come in a range of classes, C to S, and are unlocked by defeating the harmonic lockdown at the encampment.
- Salvaged Multi-Tools are acquired for free but will require custom repairs to fully unlock all available inventory slots.
CUSTOMISATION OPTIONS
- A new style of jetpack customisation has been added, the Aeron Turbojet.
- Unlock this new Sentinel-themed jetpack by following clues found at mysterious encampments on corrupted Sentinel worlds.
- A number of new customisation options have been added to the forthcoming items for the Quicksilver shop, including cloth-based hoods for Geks and a new cape design. These items will appear for unlock via community research in the near future.
UI
- The various maintenance and repair UI screens now use a more informative error message when unable to repair the selected item.
- Technologies that are ready to repair are now highlighted with an inventory slot animation on the various maintenance and repair UI screens.
- Extreme or corrupted Sentinels are now highlighted when looking at planetary information through the Analysis Visor.
- The mission notification now has a darker backing when piloting a starship in first person, to make mission text more readable when displayed over cockpit details.
- The “Switch Multi-Tool” option has been repositioned in the Quick Menu for easier access.
- The “Change Secondary Weapon Mode” icon in the Quick Menu has been redesigned for clarity.
SENTINEL CAPITAL SHIP BATTLES
- The Sentinel capital ship deployed at a 5-star wanted level in space is now destructible.
- Defeating the capital ship will clear the wanted level back to 0, and will award players a unique item to help them track down their own crashed Sentinel interceptor.
- Fixed an issue that caused Sentinel capital ships to use an incorrect warp-in effect.
- Fixed an issue that prevented Sentinel capital ships from launching additional interceptors when their current complement was defeated.
- The starship’s final usable weapon will no longer be damaged by enemy fire.
BUG FIXES
- Fixed a significant number of memory-related crashes on consoles.
- Fixed a rare hang during loading.
- Fixed a Nintendo-Switch specific hang during combat with Sentinel drones.
- Fixed an issue that caused first-person Exocraft cameras to be pointed at the ceiling.
- Fixed an issue that caused randomised options (such as player customisations or Multi-Tool appearance) to remain fixed for some players when starting a new expedition.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the third-person starship camera from wandering during pulse-engine driven flight.
- Fixed an issue that could cause errors in creature navigation after the terrain was damaged by the manipulator or by grenade fire.
- Fixed a Nintendo Switch-specific issue that could result in players getting stuck in a loop of visiting graves in the A Trace of Metal mission.
- Fixed an issue that could prevent the living ship from contacting the player at the appropriate mission stage if key mission items were stored in the inventory of a starship that was not your current primary ship.
- Fixed a mission flow error in the hand-in stage of the Nexus mission to cleanse an infested planet.
- Improved the name of the current objective used in the UI when using the Analysis Visor’s target sweep mode to hunt specific resources that are currently too distant for a signal lock.
- Fixed an issue that caused the wrong building name to be used when looking at buildings through the Analysis Visor.
- Fixed an issue that could cause some core Exosuit technologies to be duplicated within the inventory.
- Fixed a number of visual glitches with the jumping animation of the Exotic Wingpack.
- Significantly improved the quality of the active/inactive particle and lighting effects for Gravitino Balls.
- Fixed a number of networking issues with the player cloaking device.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Sentinel drones to attack the player while they were using an interaction or otherwise in a situation where they did not have camera control.
- Fixed a number of issues that could result in the wrong controller button icon being used in various pieces of in-game text.
- Fixed an issue that caused an empty “Button Preferences” section to appear within the options menu in certain configurations.
- The message displayed when unable to interact with something because of its cost has been improved.
- Fixed an issue that would cause the number of free slots required when the inventory is full to be overestimated by 1.
- Fixed a number of issues where in-game text would not use the correct names for various starship technologies when using a living ship.
- Fixed an issue that prevented players from engaging the pulse engine within 5 seconds of loading a save in space.