Archaeogaming

This planet used to be called “Red Death”, but you wouldn’t see any evidence now as to why. Tragedyfish settled here in April 2017 almost as a challenge to the landscape, and constructed arguably the Galactic Hub’s most challenging racetrack. The track is no longer visible although communication stations remain, which record finishing times and a nod to its difficulty.

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Far to the north, tragedyfish built his base, a modest affair. But again, if one visited today without No Man’s Sky‘s increasingly flaky “Online Services” activated, all one would see is a generic base unit and maybe two comm balls marking where the base used to be sited. This now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t method of archaeology has become increasingly frustrating and more frequent the closer we get to the release of v1.4, NEXT. The archaeologist must be vigilant about the status of the Online Services so as not to corrupt or bias findings on various worlds in the Legacy Hub. This uncertainty is tied to player agency, meaning that one cannot know about the state of Online Services in a new system, or if a previously recorded base will appear in a system scan. If it does not, the player can reload from a previous save and try again. More often than not, this works, but there remains the very real problem of relocating buried bases during the save-restoration process. If an original heritage base is fully visible, built on level ground (after the v1.3 universal reset), restoring from save does not appear to relocate a base. However, if a base is buried thanks to a changing topography, then the base will be moved to level ground, sometimes hours away from its original site.

This is a “Schrödinger’s Base” problem that can only be observed by a player on arrival in a Legacy system with an old, undisturbed heritage structure. The odd behavior of Online Services makes it impossible to know if one will find a base or not. You must open the box to see.

Anatomy of Kakinghie Regem

Planet: Kakinghie Regem (once Red Death)
Base Name: Radar Rat Race
Discovered/Built by: Planet discovered by tragedyfish. Base built by tragedyfish.
Legacy Hub (formerly Galactic Hub)
System: [HUB-G-11B] Radar Rat Race

Type: “Glacial” planet
Weather: Powder Snow
Sentinels: Low Security
Flora: Full. According to the Discoveries log, 1 specie of plant was recorded.
Fauna: Fair. Also based on the Discoveries log, 7 of 7 species have been discovered.

Economy: Fuel Generation // Failing
Dominant Lifeform: Vy’keen
Conflict Level: Stable

Planet Base Coordinates: 046A:0080:0D6D:011B
Portal Coordinates: pie bird bird whale pie bird balloon ship tree tent ship whale

Resources (according to the log): Solanium, Gold, Iridium, Heridium

Exterior Temp: Range between -60.2 F, 0.8 Rad, 11.4 Tox (day) and -72.7 F, 0.3 Rad, 8.9 Tox (night)
Storms: none
Length of Day: 1 real-time minute = 45 minutes on Kakinghie Regem. 32 real-time minutes = 1 day on Kakinghie Regem.
Sunrise: 0400
Sunset: 2000

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Waypoints: 19 Waypoints discovered between April 16, 2017 and April 21, 2017, all by Merimacdwarf-orc:

9 on April 16, 2017
8 on April 17, 2017
2 on April 21, 2017

The dates indicate when they were uploaded to the Online Services (Atlas server).

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Communication Stations

There are 12 communication stations, 8 of which are clustered under a a copse of trees about 40 seconds away from a habitable base. Most of these comms indicate the presence of a race track, and some even include finishing times. One comm ball mentions a garden. Neither the garden nor the race track can be seen. Eleven hours to the north are two comm stations adjacent to another habitable base unit that used to be the original site of the tragedyfish’s base, which is no longer visible (at least on May 30, 2018) even though one of the markers indicates it as a Galactic Heritage Site. A final comm ball is placed under a trading post that maintained its position after Atlas Rises, which is rare from my observations on other worlds where structures are missing, but the comm stations state their prior location.

Landscape

Rolling, gentle mountains are punctured by occasional caves and topped by arches of rock. Some mountains are split by canyons. The planet is ice-covered and cold. I observed no animals, but there are rare islands of trees. Originally the planet Red Death was classed as “fiery”, subject to extreme heat. The current planet is exactly the opposite.

Base Description

Generic Base Unit seen on first arrival with comm stations to the left and right. The one on the left is a Galactic Heritage marker.

Base arrival after restoring from an earlier save. Not that the base now appears, but NMS things I discovered the system/planet.

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When I visited on May 30, 2018, there was no longer a player base here, although the site is marked with two comm balls. Syn1134 noted when placing his heritage marker that, “Small base, mostly storage modules and empty interior space. Core base module present, and exocraft geobay. No racetrack.” I saw no exocraft geobay during my first visit.

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Returning on May 31, 2018, once Online Services had been restored, the base did appear at its forecast location (and as described by Syn1134), although the communication stations had disappeared. The base is a modest, one-level build of two rectangular rooms opening off of the central base unit. Entering the unit from the southeast, the base ID has changed to “Neviati-Izca Outpost” from “Radar Rat Race.” A Vy’keen vendor sits across from it. Note that the base ID and the vendor’s name remained unchanged even though the player base reappeared. Walking straight ahead, one enters a bare room with exits outside to the southeast and northwest. Returning to the base unit, a short hall leads northwest to a rectangular room walled with 10 decorative Trade Terminals and two central hydroponic trays with mature coprite flowers. An exit leads outside to the northwest and an orange player-beacon. To the right of the beacon is a Nomad geobay.

—Andrew Reinhard, Archaeogaming