Hello Games has announced patch 6.4, its next update titled The Swarm, for No Man’s Sky, bringing more content to its 2016 space-faring game. At this point, few probably remember the rough state in which No Man’s Sky launched, and fewer still have kept track of the many, many updates its developers have provided since. Hello Games definitely deserves some kind of award for its ongoing effort to keep the game updated with modern features while also continuing to add more content and support to players. This latest update brings news of enemies where players can join together for a common goal against a new threat.
“Confront a new threat to the universe in update 6.4, The Swarm. The Traveller soul is fragmented, and something terrible hangs in the sky. Battle swarms of elite agile ships, face off against the huge, formidable Hive of Glass, and strategise with other players to construct the technology to defeat it.”
– Hello Games
Players can work together in a time-limited campaign to defend the universe against this new foe while uncovering the mystery of how it came to be here from another reality. The Swarm Expedition sees three new teams representing different aspects of the “Traveller Soul”. These are the royal, the sage, and the weaver. Only one of these three teams will survive to fight The Swarm. A new alien flagship, The Hive of Glass, has been introduced with its lethal array of weapons, and newly customizable armour is now available for players along with a new jetpack.
“The galaxy is overrun with droves of fast-flying, fast-shooting swarmers. Equip your favourite ship weapons and prepare to dogfight against overwhelming odds.”
– Hello Games
Players can gain info on The Swarm by dismantling the bodies of swarmers, but beware the corrupted ichor that escapes them. Planetary ground troops are also a threat, so be on the lookout for these denizens who will fiercely defend their fallen comrades. Players must help to restore planets that have been corrupted by swarmers and can choose teams to aid in this task.
Patch 6.4 notes:
The Swarm Expedition
- Expedition Twenty-Two, The Swarm, will begin shortly and run for approximately eight weeks.
- Players on the expedition will be assigned into one of three teams of Travellers, and allocated a ship and uniform in their team colours.
- All teams must work together to unlock the final battle. Progress is represented by the construction of the Prismatic Core in the Space Anomaly, as well as displayed in the Mission Log and on the Galactic Atlas website.
- Construction of the Prismatic Core is driven by completing three categories of missions to counteract the Swarm – Purge, Restoration, and Sabotage. Each category has a different impact on the rate and balance of construction.
- The most valuable team will be glorified in the Space Anomaly for all time.
- Rewards include new posters, decals and titles; flags representing your assigned soul fragment; the Direwasp rifle Multi-Tool; the Direwasp Flightpack; and the six-piece Direwasp customisation set.
Swarmer Enemies
- During the expedition, players will encounter two new enemy types: small, agile swarmer ships, and the huge, formidable Hive of Glass boss.
- In all game modes, crashed swarmer ships can now be found on dissonant planets. Crash sites are defended by small but deadly planetary swarmers.
- Buried debris from crashed swarmer ships can now be found on worlds which are both dissonant and contain salvageable scrap.
Stability and Optimisation
- Fixed a rare softlock where the Connecting banner could display indefinitely when viewing the initial frontend screens.
- Fixed a crash related to rendering thumbnails for multiple complex corvette-class starships.
- Implemented a number of memory and performance optimisations related to ship trails and speedlines.
- Improved performance when piloting wheeled Exocraft on Switch, Xbox One, and PS4.
- Implemented a significant optimisation in freighter battles.
- Improved performance of certain lighting calculations on CPU.
- Significantly improved performance when handling object visibility in complex scenes.
- Optimised memory usage when rendering UI in sub-4K resolutions on PS4 Pro.
- Fixed an issue that could cause a crash when playing in 4K on PS4 Pro.
- Fixed a number of rare crashes.
Space Combat
- Improved the visibility of targeted enemy ships in third person space combat.
- Improved weapon aiming of the starship in third person space combat.
- Improved the navigation of the starship when using auto-follow in space combat, and allowed auto-follow to boost the ship.
- Improved the navigation and flight patterns of enemy ships in space combat.
- In space combat, when battling enemies with weak points, hitting the weak point will now always crit, and hitting other areas of the enemy will never crit.
- Improved the appearance of speedlines in the starship.
- Fixed an issue that caused mission notifications counting the number of nearby enemy ships to delay updating until a destroyed enemy ship completed its death spin.
- Improved controls for the player ship while in space combat.
- Fixed an issue that could allow Sentinel interceptors to spawn when space combat was disabled in the difficulty settings.
- Fixed an issue that prevented Sentinel interceptors from detecting criminal activity in space if ground combat was disabled in the difficulty settings.
- Fixed an issue that could allow the countdown notification for the pulse engine enabling after combat to display a negative time.
- Improved the notifications for re-enabling the pulse engine after combat to display the correct pulse technology name for the current ship.
QOL and Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that caused teleporter endpoints from previous galaxies to be removed when progressing to the next galaxy through the galactic core.
- Fixed an issue that prevented teleporter endpoints from being added in galaxies outside the player’s “home” galaxy.
- Fixed an issue that caused In Stellar Multitudes to direct the player to the galaxy map when their first purple star system was actually in a different galaxy.
- Fixed an issue that prevented corvettes from landing in the Space Station and the Anomaly.
- Fixed an issue that caused the player’s backpack to disappear from the inventory screen when piloting a corvette after being in third person.
- When viewing a corvette through the Analysis Visor, the name of the specific module is now displayed on the HUD.
- Fixed an issue which caused the Analysis Visor to close when attempting to tag a marker whilst facing an interactable object.
- Fixed an issue that could cause markers to be displayed for non-existent resource deposits.
- Fixed an issue that prevented transferring inventory items when purchasing a ship.
- Fixed an issue that prevented inventory items from being deletable when transferring into a storage container.
- Fixed an issue that caused the camera to spin if the player quickly exited the ship after answering the ship communicator.
- Fixed a camera judder when first entering a ship after repairing it.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Corrupted Sentinels to flicker rapidly on Nintendo Switch 1 & 2.
- Fixed an issue that allowed retroviral pellets to be duplicated.
- Arena League Challenger’s Invitations are more likely to encourage you to battle on multiple planets before offering a Champion’s Invitation.
- Arena League Challenger’s Invitations are more likely to pick Holo-Arenas you have not previously visited.
- Arena League Champion’s Invitations will now function correctly when used in Outlaw systems.
- Improved the balance of experience awarded to companions when battling in the Holo-Arena against opponents of a much higher level.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the prompt to claim Twitch rewards to persist when all rewards had been claimed.
- Added support for viewing the Gamercards of each Xbox player in the host’s session when on the Join Game screen.
- Hid the Quick Menu keyboard hotkey prompts on PC and handheld devices when playing without mouse and keyboard.
- Fixed an issue that caused armour on display near the Exosuit Research merchant in the Space Station to disappear as you got closer.
- Hid the holographic representation of community mission progress above the Quicksilver Synthesis Bot when no blueprints are currently being generated.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the use of touch controls to claim expedition rewards.
- Fixed an issue that would prevent saving of gyro settings when applying changes from the front end menu.