No Man’s Sky update 5.5 now available, adds lots of water planet updates and more

No Man's Sky update 5.5

Hello Games has announced and released No Man’s Sky update 5.5, adding a host of waterworld-themed updates and lots of other content entirely free.

Here’s a rundown on the new update, plus a new trailer and a gameplay deep dive with game director Sean Murray:

Worlds Part II: Introducing Update 5.5

Update 5.50, WORLDS PART II, transforms the universe with new stars, new story, and new planets. Explore ancient ruins, gas giants and water worlds, and discover strange creatures, varied biomes and dramatic terrain. Featuring new gameplay, huge improvements in lighting and water rendering, and much more.

Features

  • Spectacular New Landscapes – Traverse wilder, stranger, more alien terrain than ever before. The algorithm of the universe has evolved to generate beautiful new mountains, deep valleys, and sprawling plains on untouched planets, waiting to be discovered.
  • The Universe Expands – A new class of star has manifested in the universe. Purple-class solar systems feature countless new worlds, ready for discovery. Weave space and time for the Autophage in an epic new story to reveal these mysterious hidden shards of reality…
  • Deep Oceans – Plunge miles below the surface into incredibly deep oceans. Far removed from the light of any sun, illuminated only by the glow of corals, these shadowy ocean floors harbour many otherworldly landscapes and secretive aquatic lifeforms.
  • Inventory Sorting – Organise your inventory with a single button press. Automatically sort your items by name, type, value or colour. Discrete stacks of the same item will also be consolidated.
  • Gas Giants – Huge gas worlds have formed across the galaxy, bringing their own unique environments and materials. These giant planets are characterised by immense atmospheric pressure, tremendous gravity and volatile atmospheres, and each is orbited by a collection of moons.
  • In Stellar Multitudes – A new narrative-driven mission deepens the lore of the universe and expands upon the story of Atlas, Atlantid, and the robotic Autophage lifeforms. Meet new friends and reconnect with old ones in an epic adventure to recover lost star systems.
  • Deepwater Guardian – Dredging the seas for fish will sometimes provoke a deepwater guardian to emerge from the depths and defend its watery children. Travellers who defeat this vengeful creature will earn the unique Child of Aquarius title in commemoration of their victory.
  • Fishing Milestones – Display the evidence of your fishing achievements with a selection of new tank-themed helmets! These unusual appearance overrides will replace a traditional head with a special cranium/aquarium interchange, and can be earned through reaching milestones in fishing.
  • Dense Jungles – Delve into the thick vegetation and dense undergrowth of lush jungles. Every jungle is unique, and can feature different colours and dominant species of tree.
  • Environmental Hazards – Planets now feature local hazards in addition to the survival challenges posed by the weather. Explorers should be on the lookout for drifting clouds of toxic spores, small-scale radioactive fallout, volcanic eruptions, and geothermal geysers.
  • Abandoned Mode – New custom-mode games can set the universe’s population to abandoned. Abandoned mode removes all alien lifeforms from the game, creating a lonelier and more challenging survival experience.
  • Seahorses – The diversity of marine life has increased with shoals of seahorses now swimming through the oceans.
  • Enhanced Water – The surface of water is now much higher-fidelity. Clouds, nebulae, and other planets are now reflected, and terrain reflections have been improved with accurate lighting and fogging. Subsurface scattering has been enhanced, creating spectacular glows when the sun’s light grazes the crest of a wave. The diversity of foam has also increased, with some planets featuring glowing foam.
  • Anomalous Creatures – Curious geometric lifeforms can be found floating around some planetary surfaces, their inner lives unknowable to more conventional creatures.
  • Enter The Abyss – Explorers who brave the ultra-deep waters found on some worlds will face a range of increased hazards as they plunge into the dark. Equip the new Pressure Membrane and go on the hunt for rich mineral seams, exotic sea glass, and colossal creatures…
  • Smoother Modding Experience – Player-created game modifications (mods) are now handled more robustly, greatly improving compatibility across game updates. Mod authors can now create their mods more precisely, reducing the frequency of conflicts and improving conflict handling. Mod users have more control over the behaviour of their mods with the addition of a Mod Settings file, which allows installed mods to be prioritised or disabled.
  • Frozen Diversity – Explore a dramatic new range of icy planets, with increased diversity of flora, minerals and other terrestrial curios on sub-zero worlds.
  • Colossus Refiner – The sturdy Colossus Exocraft can now support a 3-slot mineral processing rig, allowing Travellers to process complex recipes while driving across planets.
  • Giant Squids – New species of tentacled mollusc now inhabit the waters of the universe. These haunting cephalopods range from the small to the truly colossal…
  • Relic Worlds – Explore the crumbling ruins of ancient civilisations. Excavate architectural blueprints and harvest polished stone to learn the secrets of their construction.
  • Dynamic Water Simulation – Starships, creatures, Travellers and other moving objects will now dynamically generate waves and wakes, making water more responsive and interactive.
  • Feed The Universe – Iteration Cronus now maintains a food market aboard the Space Anomaly, allowing Travellers to mass-donate different food items each day. Cooking also benefits from a large range of quality of life improvements, including an overhauled recipe catalogue, more accessible nutrient processors, and a smoother UI experience.
  • Manta Rays – Gentle manta rays can be discovered drifting serenely through the oceans and seas, their wings slowly beating as they follow the currents.
  • Towering Waves – Tides and waves now more realistically impact objects floating on the ocean’s surface. Travellers, Exocraft and Starships will gently bob with the swell of the water – or find themselves tossed about by violent waves during a storm!
  • Enriched Seas – The biodiversity of underwater biomes has been significantly increased. The seas have been enriched with a range of new plant species and mineral formations, and burst to life with bubbles, algae blooms, bioluminescent organisms, strange floating flora, and much more.
  • Titan Expedition – Coming soon is Expedition Seventeen: Titan. Awake with other Travellers upon a mighty gas giant, and embark upon a voyage to chart a dazzling array of new stars and new worlds. Complete milestones to earn exclusive rewards, including the stone-hewn Pillar of Titan staff and imposing Wraith, a unique living starship.
  • Lighting Overhaul – Lighting throughout the game has been deeply reworked, increasing the precision of light sources, and how light is reflected and absorbed by surfaces. Specular highlights are now more pronounced and dramatic – especially noticeable on distant terrain and metallic objects – and the hue of ambient lighting more accurately reflects nearby surfaces.
  • Floating Nautilon Platform – The Nautilon submarine exocraft can now be summoned from a floating bay, deployable upon the surface of any deep body of water. Directly descend to the depths from the centre of a vast ocean!
  • Deep-Sea Atmospherics – Explore the seabed to discover beautiful underwater landscapes with a unique ambience. Sound is muted in these abyssal depths; light is scattered and vision obscured by murk and particles. Find your way along the glowing corals, guided by the few crepuscular rays of light that penetrate the dark.
  • Fishing Missions – Visit the mission agent at a space station to undertake solo fishing challenges, or head to the Space Anomaly to sign up for multiplayer fishing missions at the Nexus. Earn valuable rewards for your angling achievements!
  • Starship Cold Storage
    Travellers with a capital ship can now make use of long-term storage for their starships, freeing up space to acquire new ships. Up to eighteen additional ships can be stored, each of which retain their technology loadout ready for redeployment when needed.
  • Spore-Filled Worlds – New varieties of toxic planet can be found across the universe, their atmospheres thick with spores from oversized polyps.
  • Interior Lighting Overhaul – The brightness and colour of lighting in enclosed spaces such as caves, bases, space stations and planetary buildings is more precisely localised. External lighting conditions are more accurately occluded by opaque surfaces, creating cosier interior atmospheres.
  • Water On Moons – Lakes, seas, and oceans can now sometimes be found on the moons that orbit larger planets.
  • Faster Loading – Cutting-edge compression technology reduces game file size by more than 10%, allowing for larger content updates without increasing download size or storage space consumption, and making all future patches smaller. Load times are up to 4x faster, and improved data caching reduces hitches during transitions, such as when flying from planetary atmosphere into space.
  • Hermit Crabs – Shy hermit crabs can be found scuttling across underwater terrains, improvising their mobile homes from a range of different shells and shell-like objects.
  • Floating Islands – Free-floating islands of terrain can now be discovered across a much broader range of planetary environments. Explore and build upon gravity-defying icy, toxic, radioactive, molten, and marshy islands.
  • Waterworlds – These rare planetary bodies have been entirely consumed by the waves, their surface one endless ocean. These worlds are home to the deepest of water, stretching miles beneath the surface…
  • Prawns – Underwater explorers can now happen upon aquatic shrimp-like crustaceans as they scuttle and swim in both lakes and open seas.
  • Bizarre Lifeforms – Rare, whimsical, and mind-bogglingly strange new species of creature can be discovered dancing across some worlds.
  • Richer Shadows – Through an extension to ambient occlusion technology, microshadow detail has been added to the game, increasing contrast on everything in the universe – from lifeforms to ships to potted plants.
  • Constructable Ruins – Bring ancient architectural secrets into planetary bases with a collection of buildable ruins, including slabs, statues, arches, totems and more. Explore relic worlds to learn the blueprints, and mine polished stone to construct your own replica pieces.
  • Multi-tool Archiving – The buildable Weapon Rack base part now allows Travellers to archive up to 18 Multi-Tools, freeing up space to earn new equipment. Archived Multi-Tools retain all installed technology and can be reactivated at any time.
  • Arid Wastelands – Skim across the sands and admire the imposing rock formations of new and diverse desert environments. Searching for delicate desert blossoms hidden amongst the dunes…
  • Bioluminescent Striders
    Discover exotic new bioluminescent creatures. These alien lifeforms pulsate and glow as they traverse their homeworlds, their beating hearts visible through translucent skin.
  • Nutrient Ingestor – A new Exosuit technology has been added, the Nutrient Ingestor, allowing players to input large amounts of edible items. These nutrient sources will be automatically consumed one at a time as necessary, providing powerful and long-lasting benefits.
  • Customisable Fishing Rigs – Create your own unique angling appearing by customising the Fishing Rig with a range of line colours and bespoke new floats.
  • Pillar of Titan Staff – Earn this unique staff during the Titan Expedition. Though hewn from polished stone, it floats in the hand as if it were no weight at all…
  • Exocraft Flamethrowers – All terrestrial Exocraft can now be fitted with a Mounted Flamethrower for devastating damage in short-range combat.
  • Hostile Flora – The range and diversity of hostile plantlife has been increased, with new species of hazardous flora taking root across the universe.
  • Colourful Marine Life – The diversity of aquatic life has been significantly increased, with a large number of colourful and radiant procedurally-generated new fish species.
  • Raindrops On Water – Individual droplets of rain falling upon water now create tiny ripples in the water’s surface.
  • Twitch Drops – Earn a generous assortment of in-game rewards – including Multi-Tools, ships, creature companions, character customisations, the rare opportunity to claim an Autophage staff, and more – by tuning into Twitch streams of Worlds Part II! Visit the Twitch Drops page to learn more and sign up. You can earn rewards even if you don’t own No Man’s Sky yet. Just connect on the website, tune into the campaign running from Thursday 30th January to Monday 3rd February, and claim your rewards later at any time.
  • Quality of Life – A significant number of UI and quality of life enhancements have been added, including: refined popup visuals; the ability to add favourite bases or space stations to the teleporter menu; east and west compass icons; improved first-person Exocraft handling; and the starship attempting to land at the best-possible pad in Space Stations.
  • Variable Refresh Rate – 120Hz display output and variable refresh rate (VRR) is now available on PlayStation 5 for supported displays, enabling ultra-smooth visuals, reduced latency, and higher framerates without introducing stuttering.
  • Titanic Planets – Find these colossal worlds in purple-class star systems. Terrestrial planets on a never-before-seen scale, these dominate their local area and warp the gravity on each of their many moons.
  • Exotic Worlds – Giant alien plants have taken root across the universe, bringing diversity as well as eerie beauty to each of the planets they infest.
  • Mutated Biomes – Radioactive planets are more varied and full of life. Isotopic trees form and grow in new patterns throughout the universe, distorted by the uranium-rich soil of their irradiated homeworlds.
  • Titan Stripes Ship Customisation
    Complete the Titan Expedition to earn the unique Titan Stripes paint style for fighter and hauler starships, evoking the aesthetic of 1970s science fiction book covers.
  • Deep Water Quality Of Life – Slice through underwater environs with a faster, more manoeuvrable, and more responsive Nautilon submersible exocraft. Boost, dive or re-surface with a single command, and excavate terrain with the new Dredging Laser technology.
  • The experience of swimming has also been significantly improved, with enhancements to agility, camera responsiveness, and underwater Multi-Tool accuracy.
  • Dramatic Re-Entry – The experience of re-entering the atmosphere from space has been refreshed with new visual effects.
  • Sun-soaked Variety – Burnt worlds have been revitalised, with new formations of heat-seeking foliage and ever-burning minerals spreading across the universe.
  • Localised Anomalies – Planets can now fall under the influence of strange weather anomalies, including dramatic electromagnetic events, enhanced storms and tornadoes, and even localised gravity inversion zones.
  • Wraith Starship – Survey new worlds in the Titan Expedition to claim The Wraith, a unique living ship dredged from the inky depths of a water world.

No Man’s Sky has been available for Windows PC (via Steam), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.

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