I played No Man's Sky for the first time yesterday. If this is what the game's like after three major updates, I can certainly understand why a lot of people were very angry when it first came out.
-I'm constantly managing my backpack and ship inventory. Despite getting a lot more backpack slots, it's always full. My ship cargo is also always full. Also, vendor trash items take up way too much space.
-I need certain minerals to do stuff but it's so hard to find them.
-Flying my ship to a new location on a planet is such a chore. Exploring on foot takes forever and the environment is constantly trying to kill me.
-At least 50% of my time is managing resource meters.
-Controls are so floaty and awful. Ship-to-ship combat is nice to have, but the garbage controls make it not fun.
-There's no easy way to mark a particular location so I can come back to it.
-Warp cells take so much resources to make, and you have to go through like three steps to make one.
This game is half "This is fun, I love exploring and the mystery of the main quest" and half "Why did they design this game like this?!"
You should find and build a base ASAP. It will make your life a million times easier. Also, base building can be pretty fun so it's worth doing regardless.
This is all assuming you're on PS4 but the concepts are the same on PC, i just don't know the button layout. While on a planet, press up on the D-pad to pull up the tech menu . Build a Signal Booster, it only requires Iron and Plutonium, which are the two more widely available elements in the game. Hold square on it and pick "Habitable Base", it should give you marker somewhere on the planet with a base location. At the base, there will be a terminal on the wall inside. Go to it and claim the base as your own. Once it is yours, you can create more rooms and add on to the basic structure. Most of the construction parts for a base only require Iron, which is widely available, (especially in caves) so it wouldn't be a problem getting started. Complete some of the base missions to unlock more plant types and crafting recipes (you'll need to find alien technicians to join your base, but they're widely available at most Space Stations). Building some basic farms now will get you started on making credits. You'll also be able to build land vehicles which obviously make exploring your home planet much more manageable. Also keep in mind you can teleport back to your base from any space station so you can freely travel out into the cosmos and never be stuck without a way home.
Once you get the proper resources,
you can also create 10 storage containers at your base with 5 slots each, 1000 resources per slot (so 50k overall) which gives you a TON more inventory room. You can send resources back to those containers from anywhere. Once you have some storage containers created, go to your Exosuit inventory, press triangle to move things between inventories and scroll down to ""Storage Container Inventory and press X to send it over. This makes exploring and hoarding of new resources much, much easier and frees up space on your person.
After you have some money saved up, look for Drop pods. These also can be found by using Signal Boosters as well. They are super important and allow you do increase your Exosuit inventory, including cargo slots on you backpack which hold twice as many resources. There are also Tech Slots on your Exosuit for Heat/Cold/Toxic/Radiation protection. You'll need to find those blueprints by exploring or buying them from space stations with Nanite Clusters.
The ultimate goal will be to buy bigger and better ship with more slots and better stats. Learning new blueprints makes everything easier as well and will allow you to survive in harsh environments and run/jetpack further. Eventually you'll be able to buy Freighters which allows you to build a second mobile base and has even more inventory space.
Exploring on foot takes forever
Are you using the boost trick? While you're running, push R1 to melee and quickly press X. This will propel you forward much faster than just running. Especially useful jumping from the top of a hill for maximum distance.
https://www.vg247.com/2016/08/10/wanna-go-fast-use-this-nifty-trick-in-no-mans-sky-called-the-jetpack-dash/It becomes much more effective after you get the running and jetpack upgrades. I can glide over canyons with maxed jetpack modifications.
