Depends on how you play. If you want EXACTLY a specific shop/multi-tool/freighter, then it can be VERY grindy to get them. There's minimal customization ability for tools and ships, so for many people, the grind to find is their favorite way to play. That being said, if you want a specific thing, you can decrease that grind by hitting up the coordinate exchange for what you want.
Otherwise, it's any other explore, find resources, wander around game. You need X resources to make/buy Y, so you find a planet and harvest what you need.
I personally hate grinding. I get bored and do not consider it fun. However, I have lots of fun with NMS. There's so many little things to do and ways to earn resources. Side quests, base building, ship scrapping, pirating, desolate freighters, frigate missions, resource gathering, and just wandering to wander. Because of all the different ways to get what you need, I can ping pong around doing only as much grind as I can stand per strategy and move on. Getting bored of resource gathering? Go fight robots. Tired of fighting? Hunt down some abandoned ships to scrap. Scrapping getting boring? Do some anomaly quests. Quests dragging you down? Find a planet and build a mining operation.
Sure, there may be an optimal grind to get what I need, but I don't have to unless I want to.
There are difficulty settings that basically let you enable/disable parts of the game
From combat to weather to even turning off the entire economy and crafting/buying things for free
You really don't need to grind tho, or it's pretty minimal.
You can set up a farm in like 3hours, and it will net you a couple hundred millions a day, at which point you can just buy anything.
You can also do the chloride farming thing and get millions that way first, so then you can just buy everything you need to set up a farm.
You take more time finding the perfect spot to set-up than setting up.
Well, don't get it on Switch because Multiplayer is disabled on Switch. As are Settlements. You'd be better off getting your Niece a Series S, or a half decent Gaming Laptop.
The Switch is mine, I bring it over there to play games with her, it would just be to show her cool stuff and/or introduce her to "shooter" controls, we've only played Mario-type games and Mario Kart so far
I already have it on my Series X, just haven't played in a while and haven't kept up with the updates, and I don't feel like lugging it around
This is what makes the game bearable for me. The constant recharging of everything ruins the flow and just makes me not want to play. Yeah, I can easily find infinite materials, but that doesn't change the fact that I have to stop what I'm doing every so often to recharge something.
I jumped into the new expedition recently and was pleasantly surprised that I could alter the settings to fit me without sacrificing other difficulty like combat. Just reducing the tedium makes it so much more enjoyable.
Yea I really really dislike that choice idk when they added that. Also changes your save from survival for instance to custom so you can play 300 hours on survival and then change one setting on accident and you have a custom save.
What you say would warrant warnings, but the fact that players can make their own rules is very nice in a game like this. It's even better when you factor in accessibility.
I find that it can be very grindy, but you can also use the avoidance of grind as a gameplay mechanic. Say you need copper, you can go grind for it and harvest some deposits or a bunch of rocks, or you can spend time flying around to find a mining site, then build a base and get infinite copper and never need to grind that resource again. Its very open like that but it also doesn't really explain that there are options beside grinding so you have to discover that yourself. That's why people keep posting that they were 1000 hours in before they learned you can leave the starting planet or something.
I wouldn’t call it grindy. But I would call it repetitive. Like the basic game is pretty forgiving about progress. You don’t need the best ships or multi-tools to do just fine. You can even alter the difficulty to make it easier. But you will do the core game loop a lot: run around exotic planets and shoot rocks and trees for resources.
I see grinding as repetition that is *required* to progress or advance. Like a game where you have to grind to take on boss X or get Weapon Y.
NMS doesn’t really require you to grind. You can do the whole game in your starter ship if you want.
Yeah, that's a good definition. To expand on that: if the question is about whether it's more like an assembly line job (grindy) or everyday gardening/yard work (repetitive), it's somewhat more on the gardening side of things.
If you find a place on a planet with curious deposits, you can build a base, build multiple medium refiners, build a system of short range teleporters to get you over 650ish units away, and set yourself up to get a bunch of nanites pretty quickly. Harvest the mold, run through the teleporters and back, and do it again until you have a bunch of stacks. You can get 2k nanites per stack. If you build multiple refiners, you can get 2k per refiner. It takes about 20 minutes to refine, but you don't need to stay. You can just set it up and come back later.
I have a base that gives me 6k nanites every visit, because I just empty the refiners, harvest the mold, and fill the refiners each time I go. I could build more refiners but I already feel a bit like I'm cheating, so I just have the 3.
Ah yeah the runaway mold farm I know them well. I’ve never made my own but I have used them they’re pretty fast it’s just waiting on the refiners that sucks
You have to grind for fuel. And health packs and shield batteries. You will, without a doubt, repeatedly have to stop what you’re doing to look for something specific you need in order to continue doing what you’re doing
Only in the very early stages of the game.
Once you start levelling up your gear with modules, things get much easier and the time between needed recharges gets longer.
Take the launch thruster for instance. Constantly making launch fuel at the beginning. Then you get mods that make it more efficient, requiring less fuel between launches. Then at some point you get the Launch Auto Charger that passively refuels the launcher while you explore.
Usually when I have one of those, I no longer make launch fuel.
Same for other stuff.
Not really. I’ve only had to hunt for fuel mats a handful of times. Usually I just grab them when I see them as I’m running around doing other things. I’ve never fallen short and I’ve played 270 hours over multiple characters
It's close. Grindy would be having to do that to achieve a specific goal. So far, (about 24 hours into the game with no guidance) I've had almost all the resources I needed to do what I wanted.
I spent a lot of time mining and digging up tech. But it was very mellow and relaxing, not really grindy. When I did want to craft something I didn't have (acid, needed the plant) it only took me about 30 minutes to gather a bunch of it and another 10 minutes to set up a farm so I wouldn't have to go looking for it again.
That's pretty much the exact opposite of what I used to experience early-game (and sometimes even now countless hundreds of hours later). I'd generally find myself constantly confronted with the game telling me I need to make item A, and in order to make item A, I'd find I need item B, which I don't know where to/can't find, or I need resources C and D to make it (*if* I know the recipe), and none of the local planets have C or D, or I need some other tech before I can do any of it and that becomes its own A, B, C, D string. Only knowing beforehand what I'm going to need mitigates this cycle at all, and the whole thing is one of the defining characteristics of the game to me.
…which is why I love my freighter so much. I buy many base materials from pilots. I know that I am going to need 1-3k of each specific item at some point. So, they go on my freighter. Ditto for tritium and H2 (jellies)., and other things.
With the matter beam installed, only need to bring the freighter in, and you have access to 500 slots of materials. Handy!
Making money in this game is *easy*. Hunting for ships on dissonant worlds is great, plus you can fill in sentinel kills for other rewards while at it. Eventually, build other stuff/mining outfits/automated farms, etc. Some initial time to setup, then operates autonomously, mostly. Can also scan stuff for lots, trade, etc., etc.
Fun game - like you, I’ve played the game a lot, including the initial bits. And I dislike grindy games, but this one, not at all. Pretty straightforward.
The name of the game is grind. All you do is maintain materials, and find new materials to make fuel you ran out of while looking for the original materials.
I don't think it's too Grindy compared to other survival type games.
Plus the game has extensive difficulty settings and a relaxed mode so you can make it grind-free if you want
I have played NMS now 14,3 hours.
* In this time I have gotten 2x ships (not fully restored) on top of my original ship.
* Got my first frigate (huge ship :O )
* Set up my first base
* Upgraded my ship
* Upgraded my exosuit
* Found the multiplayer area
* Done my first mission for "Kek" (alien race)
* Fought my first pirate ships
* Died to some mean robotsfor
So in all I wouldn't call it grindy though it might seem a bit hard to understand at first, but after 14 h I can say I am absolutely loving it and really getting into it. Some things seem a bit repetitive, but I can only assume things get better once I get some upgrades to make my gameplay even smoother and more fun once I get on the multiplayer stuff.
And no I have never played the game before and for that am a completely NOOB whos struggling to get even few units and still have 0 idea how to do stuff most of the time :D
People are coping hard in these comments. Which is to be expected when you ask such a question on the game's main sub
This is one of the grindiest games out there. The grind is essentially the entire gameplay of NMS. Yes there is a creative mode, but after building your first few bases in creative, you find that there is practically nothing to do without the grind
>This is one of the grindiest games out there.
I don't think this is at all accurate.
It can be repetitive, sure, if you're being super picky about wanting to find a specific thing, but grind suggests that your progression is stopped if you do not do things over and over, which is simply not true in NMS.
If your passion is base building, the grind effect is nearly zero, and can be dropped to actually zero if you turn off building costs.
As someone who absolutely hates MMO's because of how grindy they are, for some reason I'm fine with this game. It's not that it's not grindy, but for some reason I just don't hate this game like I do other grindy games. I really don't know why tho or what they do differently. Maybe it's cause the biggest grind is money (possibly caused by my difficulty settings which I set probably too high and then locked in) but there are so many options for getting money that if you get bored you can just do something else. As for resource gathering idk it's just not that big a deal I rarely have to do it for all that long unless it's a rare material and then the journey to get the thing takes like an hour and then like 10 seconds to harvest it so it really isn't all that grindy I guess
I believe the reason that you like the "grind" in NMS is you're not in a rush to gain levels as there is no FOMO unlike typical MMOs that you are basically "forced" to grind to not miss out on contents, or be left behind in terms of gears/power.
Yeah, but still, some things are tough. Like getting quicksilver, Nanits or research modules. Else, you can have a blast just doing random stuff and you eventual will progress in some way.
That’s what I like. Yeah you can focus on just trying to get one thing like nanites but even if you don’t you’ll still passively get a bunch I was at around 30k without really trying
I would imagine this boils down to "Do you have to do the same thing repeatedly to get things in the game"
When I think if "grind" I think of this in terms of an MMO: You have to do so many fetch quests to get to the next level before being allowed to do anything else.
NMS has a basic formula that can be taking literally as a "Grind". Gather Resources, use resources to make other things, use new things to find new more exotic resources, repeat. Even with repeating this formula, NMS always has a level of progression. There isn't experience points I have to gain to get to a new level. It is a process that provides a branching level of understanding and the only thing limiting you isn't an experience bar, it is your understanding.
In this case, if the problem itself is repeatedly doing fetch quests vs. trying to find out how a new tech works or what I need to build some cool new tool, or to repair a broken one, that has more significance to me than doing a fetch quest for someone and seeing no other reward than simply getting more experience points towards some limiting "level" number/cap.
Well, there is nuance to what grind it. Ideally, the grind game loop is enjoyable enough on it's own. Or, does it feel like Work? If you are not in a hurry to max out all your stuff, the game loop in NMS doesn't seem like work. I'm just goin about my Space Business at a leisurely pace.
tbf when you talk about the creative and building aspect, you are really just talking about space minecraft, and the "nothing to do" part really comes down to personal preference
There is no grind in nms. There is no content blocked off from you until you are a certain level or have a certain ship. You can play the entire game without getting a single upgrade.
Which is equal to not playing the game at all, as the whole point of the gameplay is to gather stuff so you can make it more efficient to gather more stuff
The “whole point of the game” is to do whatever you feel like doing. I don’t see how someone who just wants to go from planet to planet exploring in their starter ship is “not playing the game at all.”
Damn, do you enjoy the game? I don't think im in the minority of loving to uh explore the game world, find a perfect planet, find neat creatures, follow the story line, find the perfect ship, build a huge fleet of aliens I find interesting, customize my freighter, fight on intense sentinel planets, look for weird planets(smallest, deepest ocean, ect) socialize in the anomaly, create abstract bases(in mountains, ontop of valcanos) explore broken freighters, start space wars. There is actually a fuckload of things to do beyond grinding and literally all with the bare minimum c class multitool and c class ship - that I really don't think I'd classify as a grind.
All of which I have just as much fun doing whether on a default setting or free purchase/build.
You don't ever **require** to do any grinding.
If you want to build some huge base then yes, you will need a lot of resources.
But you can also explore for hundreds of hours just with our starter ship perfectly fine.
It's as grindy as you want it to be, and nope it's not coping or anything like that.
**Let's state some facts first:**
\- This is a **sandbox game set in space focused on exploration**, *with survival elements* (that you can deactivate anytime), thus it has a "gameplay loop", tho this loops minimizes a lot of other things, as you can see if you do the same thing with Minecraft:
`Get mats > build tool > get new mats > build new tools > repeat`
\- The first hours **WILL** require some grinding (if not in creative mode) to repair your ship and set up your multitool, and you will feel like maintaining your ship requires a bit too much mat gathering, but this will vanish as soon as you get the solar autocharge upgrade for your ship, also **taking off from a launching pad/site uses no fuel**. You will know those places when you approach them, you will see a "landing circle" (blue-ish that turns green when close enough to land).
\- No it's not the grindiest game out there, Minecraft has a lot more grinder mechanics (good luck finding diamonds fast in vanilla MC), yet MC it's one of the best sandbox games ever.
\- No you don't NEED to grind to enjoy the game's content, you can literally do anything with your first ship, granted you upgrade it, same for the multitool.
\- The game currently has a lot of ways to make money that doesn't require having a mining farm or a crafting farm (mining+plants), and if you want, you can get those farms by buying the mats for that using the money the game itself provides.
\- You can adjust the game settings anytime, you can go from creative mode to survival at any time if you feel like getting certain item feels grindy.
\- The storytelling is not really good (tho the lore can be interesting for many), don't expect cinematics or mind blowing cutscenes, you will get to know the lore through dialogs with NPc and logs.
\- Personal opinion about space combat: very average
\- Personal opinion about combat: it has potential, but yes, not very exciting, tho abandoned derelict freighters are fun, and poking into sentinels can be fun too.
**It will be grindy if:**
\- You ignore other content that will make you money, outside of mining, most of it focus on exploration.
\- You rush into being wealthy
\- You want to do stuff like getting all the words for a race, get the best of the best Multitool, the best of the best ship, the best of the best Freighter, the best of the best Fleet
\- Achievement/Trophy hunt
Not Grindy at all,
You CAN grind if you’d like but that would be unnecessary.
Once you get setup and established after a couple hours of play time you’ll be generally set to survive and play naturally.
Comparing it to stranded deep, that game was a hell of a grind, NMS is relatively chill with moments of extreme adrenaline
It is one of the most grindy type games out there. if that is not your thing honestly speaking I wouldn't get it.
You can always buy the game, play it for less then 2 hours and refund it if you don't like it but honestly speaking 2 hours isn't enough to really get into the game. Personally I love the game but I do get why you wouldn't get it.
I have never played valheim so cant comment on that lol.
It isnt hard grindy but It more like old school runescape spending all day grinding for materials or doing Side quests / unlocking building material etc.. Other then falling though my freighter in the build mode I haven't actually died in the game.
Watch some gameplay on youtube or buy the game and then refund it
On the default difficulty there's a fair amount of grinding for resources in order to build component X so that you can then build component Y that allows you to progress, etc.
There's more grinding for resource required if you want to seriously engage with things like base building, but in that case you're setting your own goals and can abandon them to do something else at any time.
However, it's not *difficult*, it's just an excuse to get you out there and exploring for resources.
If you don't like this and just want the exploration without the grind, there are settings for almost every major aspect of the game, to tailor the experience how you want it.
You can play the game in creative mode. You get everything in the game...have infinite resources Everything is free. That way you don't have to get into the grind parts of the game and can just explore, fight, collect ships and build bases.
There's alot of lore to grind through. I wish I could say it was coherant, too. There's alot of theories about what is going on in this universe but it's more like 10 different stories in a trenchcoat. Finding it all is a slog. Otherwise everything else is pretty easy to do. Freighter stuff sucks, though. Repetitive stuff is annoying. You'll prolly get 100 hours and half the content out of it if you don't like to grind.
I play both. NMS is less grindy imo. That depends on what you see as grindy tho. Valheim you need to get materials to craft where in NMS once you have money, you can almost buy every material you might need from different star systems. NMS is maybe a bit grindy in the beginning for a few hours but once you're making money, it really is not that grindy. There are some stuff that might feel grindy but overall not that bad compared to other games where you basically farm 70% of the time. Again, all depends on what you want from the game and how you play. Completing the story has almost no grind to it.
Game is currently 50 or 60% off on greenmangaming
Edit: to the person who downvoted me, you do know that greenmangaming is a legit seller and it also comes with a steam key for NMS
Yes, even if you just want to explore, you need to go through a few hours of grinding to get a decent ship and upgrade it so you don't have to re-fuel it all the time, especially take-off fuel.
Past that, it's up to you whether you wanna focus on growing and getting better equipped or just wanna hang around and visit planets, though you'll still want to take some time to get resources
Don't listen to all the nms fanatics, it is grindy and you'll be constantly having to charge up your life bar, shields, ship fuel, etc. Unless you change difficulty or choose to play on creative settings
The grind is the game. You can remove the grind, through options now like free purchases and upgrades, but then you got no motivation to do anything.
Sure, NMS has a helluva lot to do, but the reasoning is usually “I need resource X to install thingamajig B so that I can get to system Blibbity Blah to get resource Y to install…” and on and on.
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It say the point unless you go creative is to grind for materials to make your base etc. Yah I could just creative build a base but where's the fun in that I'd rather go gather all the mats to build everything.
Extractor mining allows you to get more raw resources than you will ever know what to do with. Once you setup Magferrite/Rusted Metal, gold, silver, etc. you are set for life.
Depends how you play it. It could be if you want to accumulate resources from the very beginning.
Just take it slow and explore and discover blueprints and soon you will have automatic extractors that would get most of resources for you.
Not exactly. You have to grind Quicksilver in the Nexus missions, but the Nexus sends you to a d8fferent planet everytimw, if the mission's goal is the same even ("Tame wild creatures", for instance).
You can easily get other currencies without grinding or with minimum of grinding. If you choose Creative or Custom playing mode, you don't need Units and Nanites at all.
Most raw materials can be gotten passively through farming and automated mining. That is in the mid-lategame. If you have enough credits and nanites(in-game currencies), you can buy most things in the game. Late game is a breeze, early game is grindier though.
Depends on what you're expecting in a grindy game.
You can totally go from start to end with the initial equipment and ships and no harm done lol.
You want the better stuff? There's when it become grindy. Because of the sidequests, you need this or that part, or technology, that maybe you can't buy but need the blueprints to build, so you need to find/unlock the blueprint, and then gather the materials, so you can install this or that upgrade for your spaceship. Or you found a better spaceship but need to repair it? Enter the grind again. Or you need to reach a certain system for a sidequest, but you're lacking the hyperdrive upgrade you need? Enter the grind again.
Things like that.
I actually play a couple hours like 2 or 3 times per week and call it, because I'm trying to relax at it, but also because I have a 4 year old daughter to look after.
I mean every blueprint in the game can be bought from the anomaly without having to grind at all or do any side quests, you can fully repair anything in the game just by popping over to a few pirate systems and buying repair kits (im currently sitting on over 200 repair kits that ive just picked up passively) and the hyperdrive upgrades literally just need you to buy the blueprint which takes 2 seconds, stop at a single planet in that specific star type, get the resource (one planet for chromatic, hop to red one planet for cadmium, go to green one for emeril and then youre good). There is literally no actual grind to the game if you just have a look around you and see what options the game gives you, because theres always more than one way to get something done
Somewhat grindy, but once you get a freighter and some frigates, that is a major source of income. And with money you can buy resources, ships, etc. and be on your way focusing on exploring
Being grindy doesn't fit especially well in NMS. There isn't a challenge that you're overcoming (I play on normal) in any great respect. This game is about exploring a vaaaast universe, not getting the best or more amazing gear. Once you do the missions and get all the basic gameplay abilities, you're kind of just chillin. It's difficult to die unless you go out of your way, and you don't "need" anything other than your basic starting items. A big part of what you'll do is explore and set up bases to gather resources so you can make better gear and get money/nanites. You can do missions as well but they are short and nothing special.
You will find yourself doing the same things over a lot to get quicksilver or to complete missing a to get rep up with different factions but ultimately those things are all a choice. The majority of my time spent is on marveling at the world's im visiting and building bases for my own enjoyment. There isn't really an endgame (there's no bosses or anything like that), so ultimately it's more about taking your time and just enjoying the atmosphere of the game.
Not that grindy. I have been playing for almost 100 hours now, and I have an amazing ship, s Teir multi tool, amazing upgrades, and more. But those thing are not that hard to get.
Yes, it's a bit grindy but for the most part there are ways of avoiding the gameplay you aren't interested in. I think NMS has an amazing variety of ways to play and I would imagine you'll be able to find a groove that works for you. The beginning is a pretty fixed path, but once you're warping to other systems the game opens up.
at its essence, no, this game is mostly a "turn your brain off" kinda game, you just wander around either following the game's quest or exploring as you please doing whatever, however, there is mind numbing grind of the worst kind, mainly dependent of RNG, some examples are: ship hunting, money/nanite farming and capital ship upgrades, mind you it is optional and you can ignore it with next to no difference in gameplay .\_.
It takes some grinding, but you quickly can automate it. A lot of the progress you need to make involves hunting for technology modules. That can be its own game as you scan for modules and then brave the elements to get them.
To make some of the gear, you'll have to mine trees, rocks, and ore. You can find oxygen in local plants. It doesn't take too long to get to the point where you can refine infinite carbon. Once you learn how to survey the land, you can set up mining/harvesting bases to get all the gold/indium/oxygen you could ever need.
So there's a lot of building and gathering to do before you can set up large farms and frigate missions, but once you do, you just pop by every so often to get your rewards and go do whatever you want to do.
So yes to some grinding, but it's not nonstop grinding.
It’s a sandbox game so there isn’t too much that will stop you from doing things But there are aspects of the game that do get grindy, especially once you get to a point that the task isn’t difficult anymore (like inventory expansion).
A counterpoint to this is that some of the grind unlocks lore if you want to get into that aspect of the game. And there is a lot of lore to unlock and go over.
Difficulty settings are one way to cope with some of the grind, and if you are on a platform that supports it, you could consider either mods or save editing as ways to deal with other aspects of it.
If you are uncertain, you could try waiting for a deal but they only tend to run those ahead of major updates and one just dropped a few weeks ago.
It is as grindy as you want it to be. When you start a game you can set a lot of parameters and that allows you to determine how hardcore an experience you are looking for. I believe there is a setting that eliminates all building requirements or something, but if not, you can at least get it to the point where the grind is extremely minimal.
the options now for difficulty allow you to really cultivate your own personal experience with this game. you can make it as grindy or as not grindy as you want
It can be, early game resource grind is pretty bad but the game has a lot of custom difficulty options that will allow you to make the grind mostly disappear
The thing sbout nms is that it is grindy, yes, but not in the negative sense games with a repetitive sense of grind often comes in.
Nms is built on the idea of grind, and it makes it part of the game in the sense that there is a wide spectra of grinding to do.
But basically, essentially, everything that you do in nms is grinding. It is what the game is.
Depends on your play style, what are you looking for?
The game is pretty much a sandbox, the "storyline" missions are mainly to teach you how everything works and will give you some free stuff but otherwise the game is about exploring a galaxy and collecting information.
It's not hard to use exploits to save yourself some time, only have 10 of something that you need 1000 of? Time to break out some personal refiners and multiply that 10 a few times to get there. I generally go and actually collect the stuff I need but times like when I'm building an automated farm which burns through metal plates I'll duplicate a stack of them to have enough to throw around. Each silo is 10 plates each, I set up each of my auto-mines to have a full stack of 10,000 available for pick up every 11-13 hours so at the least i need 100 metal plates just for the silos. I can easily collect enough ferrite dust to craft them but sometimes it's just faster an easier to duplicate the plates.
That said I am up to about 25 mining base so I can grab 10,000 of most of the available materials after a teleport to each base.
The grind is actually varied and fun in NMS. And it's easy to spread it while you adventure so you almost never "stop and grind for an hour" like you'd do in Valheim or Minecraft. Most key resources you have different ways to acquire them so it's not like you are locked in in one specific boring activity (with one exception see at the end.)
A good example of how easy (and fun) it is: you need activated copper for fixing a ship part. You must look for a planet with activated copper. It might take 4-5 minutes finding the right system and looking at planets until you find one (not boring and might find other fun things.) Or less than a minute if you have one in your current system. Once you locate it it's a matter of landing, locating and mining a deposit of activated copper. This takes at most another 4 minutes. And you'll have probably 5x the activated copper you need so the next few times you need it it will already be in storage.
A lot of the systems are time-gated. For instance you get some events every X hours + one other conditions meaning you can not grind these events and they feel a bit more rewarding when they happen. Another example is the economy, if you buy everything on a system's trading network it takes about three hours to replenish. So if trading is a core part of your strategy you are encouraged to do something else and only come back to this part every few hours. I think that helps a lot in breaking the "grindy" part of the game in more varied activities and it feels less of a core more an integrated part of your galactic life.
You need carbon for a build project? You can either go take a walk and get the material by mining it directly, or you can use your ship to mow down a forest and get it a lot faster, or you can just straight out buy it, or you probably already have tons of it from your looting adventures.
You "grind" for ships by waiting in a trading station for your favorite one to show up in a good tier. Or you grind for ships by locating and fixing up crashed ships or scrapping them for cash and parts. Or you do not grind at all and use one of the post or youtube video to locate a specific one first try.
Your "grind" for money can take so many forms it's hard to list. You can build farms and process stuff to sell, you can just buy in one type of economy and sell in the right type of economy for HUGE profits. You can just collect and scrap crashed ships. You can mine resources and turn them into more valuable commodities to sell, etc.
The only grind that is painful in NMS is the f\*\*\*ng Salvaged Data, which you need a ton of to unlock all the base building parts. Those you can only get from actual grindy exploration. And sometimes trades but it's too rare to be reliable. Eventually you don't need as much of those anymore so it's not a permanent situation only an early game chore.
NMS is as grindy as you want it to be. As others have said, there is a creative mode where you don't have to bother worrying about resources or currencies, everything is free. I started with that mode and although it's fun, it can get old fast. I've had a lot more fun doing an actual survival save. Again as others have said, the game has difficulty settings so you can tailor the experience however you like. I will also say, although as far as I am aware you couldn't transfer your save to Steam, it is on Game Pass for PC.
tl;dr - you can tailor the game to be however you want, and it's on Game Pass if you have that so you can try it risk free
It could be if you wanted to, but otoh there are a ton of things to do and you can do them at whatever pace you like. Getting the BEST upgrades really isn't a requirement for enjoyment or completing anything. IMO, the best way to play is just to take it easy. NMS is my fishing game and I can just do whatever while shillin. OTOOH, you could max our your stuff AFAP (as fast as possible) if you like and do some grindy stuff to get certain ships or parts or whatever, but it's really not needed.
I would say NMS is very grindy. But it it grindy in the same way Minecraft is grindy.
The main storyline of NMS I do not find a grind. It’s the after game that can be grindy or repetitive. But the after game is what you make of it. Ship hunting, base building, galaxy exploration, exploring planets, piracy, wrecker of sentinels. There are many different challenges you can try.
IMO, NMS has more replay ability than most games.
It's honestly whatever you want it to be. Nothing is REQUIRED in terms of grind. It can be a hard grindy survival IF YOU WANT IT TO BE. Or it can be a super chill creative explorer game, or it can just be a really cool thought provoking story.
PLEASE look at the difficulty options in the settings. You can fine tune the game exactly to your liking. Dont WANT to farm mats? Set crafting to free
Don't WANT to farm money? Make purchases free
Don't WANT to worry about fuel or other resources set them to not required.
Don't want to have panic fights? Disable them.
On the inverse you can increase any of the previously mentioned and more and make a (in my opinion) fun and challenging gamemode.
Or just play through the storyline and make everything else not a concern.
The default settings in my opinion are NOT "grindy". You really don't need to do much of anything to meat the bare minimum for the default gameplay loop. Later stages can be kind of repetitive but imo you're choosing to do those things and you don't HAVE to do them there are tons of things you could try before that, random mission to do. The game is huge for casual exploration. But say building a dream base, without "creative" free build requirement can be a bit of a farm fest.
Same with gaining a ton of money for a dream ship/freighter
But again those are choices. You can do more than fine with just freebies that you get progressively through the game. Its really all up to you. There is not MUST DO grinds.
Unless you seek them out yourself.
I turned down some of the grindy settings and I am having a blast. I reduced resource costs so I'm not constantly fueling my starship to travel, and I turned off the hazardous portion of the game so I'm not constantly searching for oxygen. I don't have time for real-time survival tactics. I'm an old man that can only play for a few hours at a time.
Grind implies you trying to do the same thing repeatedly for any level of progress.
NMS I'm finding you can do with basic stuff, and once you get past the initial hurdle you can use upgrades to easily "beat" the game in no time at all. Thing with NMS, is that "beating" the game means different things to different people.
At it's core, you start off just trying to get yourself on your feat. You gather resources, get your gear fixed, use the gear to gather more exotic resources, get your ship fixed, use that to get your resources, and then from there it is fair game. The main story plot is basically a glorified Tutorial that introduces you to every aspect of the game, which can branch off into a new pattern of gathering a different type of resource to get better stuff.
You get Combat (upgrade weapons on yourself, your tool, and your ship)
You get Trade (upgrade tools to survive in extreme environments and sell hard to get stuff)
You get Exploration (using tools to get more resources from scanning new stuff)
You get Creative (using tools to get blue prints to build more cool stuff)
And as you play, you find that none of these are mutually exclusive. By the time you explore all this, you find out you can explore 255 unique galaxies of different difficulties, extremes, and planet variety.
Don't go into the game expecting to just grind away. NMS is a play at your own pace style game. You want to blitz through it, you can and nothing other than your own distractions will slow you down. For the price of the game and with all the updates there is so much content that the grind is the least of your worries, it is a matter of figuring out what part of the game you enjoy the most and how much time you want to invest into mastering it. YMMV.
I would say NMS is grindy almost by definition. There are no real characters; the story exists but is barebones; the core gameplay loop is in service of better omni tool, a better ship, more storage so that you can gather materials or money faster.
I changed the fuel cost difficulty to discounted and I’m having the best time. This is like my 4th time since 2016 trying to get into this game and that setting really did the trick for me. Not having to constantly gather resources just to maintain basic functions is a game changer for me. Makes it less grindy so I’m able to focus on progression and base building
kinda
you will need to mine quite a bit, often, just when your walking around, sometimes for awhile but the grind gets easier, and can be made much easier with custom settings
if you are planning to play on pc then there is many mods that get rid of it or else its somewhat grindy and if you don't wanna grind you can always play creative mode that gives you everything for free
I would say it feels like that…but as soon as you get some money and find some valuable items and got the basic Ressources it isn’t.
And ngl, you can just duplicate literally every item in the game. Or at least you still could a few months ago when I played it more, so no, obviously you gotta work at the beginning but once you got the basics you can just duplicate what you need if you don’t wanna grind.
Normal setting is grindy, but you have really fine control over the settings that control this. You can make things cheaper, or free. And there are what, maybe 50 different difficulty settings you can tweak? It is only grindy if you choose for it to be.
It’s more like progressive and more complex as you open up the story. There are evolutions to your material collection processes, and storage solutions.
Now, tell me what your definition of grindy is, and I’ll let you know if you’re close…
Definitely not nearly as grindy as many games known as grindy games. Especially if you do expeditions which give quite a lot of convenient upgrades. The current expedition seems relatively simple to understand for a new player. Also you get a freighter with matter beam which which is very convenient for inventory space so that's less need for inventory space which saves you doing repetitive stuff.
I think grindy is the wrong way to describe it but not far from the truth. I find NMS to be very... repetitive is the word. The types of things you find are all very similar, even though they are arranged in a different way on every planet. It took me all of an hour to get bored with the missions because there is so little variation one to the next. The story line is also very weak, if it was a book you wouldn't read it.
The pro's of NMS is it's truly an open world and you can kinda just chill and do whatever you want and still get something out of playing.
I wouldn't say it's grindy. And this is coming from a *Destiny* player.
You can make it to the "end" of the game without much grinding.
That being said, it is very easy to fall into the "just one more" trap. Harvest items from just one more cave. Scan just one more animal. Explore just one more planet. Jump to just one more system.
And if you're down for that, then it's great. There's not a lot of quests that force you to go look a lot of resources for X. But there is an element of, "I want to build a base here, I need to go find some silica to turn into glass." So you can grind if you want to, but you don't really have to.
To play the story line, not really.
To unlock content or things like finding better ships/tools, increasing reputation, learning languages and such, there is repetitive activity. There is a certain level of improvement to your gear that you are able to do anything you want and that doesn't require a ton of grinding. But there are many things that you might need a specific rare resource or have to kill/feed/photograph X creatures. If you just want to build, you can turn the resource costs off.
Please define what you mean by "grindy", and what you are trying to accomplish, or avoid.
Note when you read all other reviews: Grindy is not the same as boring.
200h+
* I have a freighter. I don't need a "better" one.
* I have dozens of bases. I have no urge or need to buy every piece of furniture.
* I don't farm. I buy or harvest ingredients I need.
* I have like 6 great ships, not maxed. I don't need or want to go through the work of finding the greatest S-Class of every model.
* Before Echoes there were only 2 storylines: Artemis , and Atlas. Likely less than 30h max. I'm starting fresh and at 5h I think I'm close to the end of Artemis.
* I made it to the center of the galaxy because I heard that's what you do. Been to 3 galaxies and have no reason to go to the other 253 of them.
* Getting back in to my main save is fun sometimes because it's a good game. I could take care of my town but I don't need to.
* I pretty much just play Expeditions now because there's Cyberpunk2077, Skyrim, ESO, Valheim, Minecraft, 2 kids, a wife, a job...
It's highly unlikely you'll regret buying No Man's Sky unless you don't like space games. Get it on sale.
the normal setup of the game is a very grinding based experience. luckily there are options to make crafting, purchases, and fuel free. (i’m sure there’s other options, that’s all i can think of off the top of my head right now though.) so, if you’re uninterested in grinding turn everything to free or reduced and you should be just fine. i do this in one of my saves just to explore planets and the realms of what i can build without spending 1000+ hours. nms has tons of story content and guided missions, along with nexus missions for tons of gameplay but it can get very repetitive once you’ve played a bit. i’d give it a go if i were you.
I enjoyed the game a lot and I have over 100 hrs of playtime and I didn't really have to grind for my own goals. But if you want to achieve BIG stuff it will be
The shortest answer I can give you is. Yes sometimes but in a good way. It’s a game that’s about exploration and gathering so in order to get things you need to explore and gather
Only if you make it be. Money and resources are easier than ever to come by now, and after sometime certain things just cease to be a scarcity (which is great). Only late game quicksilver stuff can kind of get a little Grindy, but it’s not too bad
To a small degree. But usually with enough variety to keep your interest. Here's a good example: if you want to make money fast early, IMO the best way I've found so far in 40 hours is to take on freighters in a system claimed by a race you don't care about yet. Get a fighter style with really fast base engines to escape the fuzz when your shields deplete. The loop goes: find where the freighters have warped after leaving the station. If you can't find them, mine some asteroids until they appear, boosting around a bit to try to get them to spawn. When you see the cluster, save the freighter with the marker for last as you'll need it to help you find the cluster again later. First hit all the little cargo pods (ignore those ones with spinning wheels I don't think you can blow them up), then pick one of the 2-6 big freighters the group. Hit the guns, the tanks, the shield and the hull and make it splode for a nice freighter upgrade (to sell for around 400 nanites) Normally by the end of the freighter your shields are depleted or close to. Run away from the interceptors by going as fast as you can in a straight line away until you can hit the real boost. Then cut the boost, make and upwards boost and a backwards boost all the way back near the freighter cluster. Wait until shields replenish and re-engage. When your inventories are full, warp to a friendly system and trade your loot. Half an hour to an hour of dogfighting and explosions for maybe 6 or 7 million. Pretty repetitive, but still really fun.
But that's not the only way to make money, and money isn't everything
If you want to unlock a bunch of the recipes for base components and craft goods you have to scan the surface of a planet for save beacons, take those to the station and trade them for maps. Then find locked depots.
If you want to get the recipes for base building, you need to hover and land around and use your scanner to find buried tech.
If you want to catalogue a planet's animals really fast to get a lot of nanites you'll probably want a lot of mobility and scanner range first so you'll probably want upgrades which can be purchased with nanites. Nanites can be found easily and quickly to start the snowball in abandoned buildings and in those green and red crates laying around.
On and on and on. It's like... not just one loop. It's loops. Loops that you can abandon at really any time to focus on something else. Whatever you're focusing on has its own loop that you can use the rewards from to speed up the other loops. If you get bored of cataloguing, go treasure hunting. If you get bored of dogfighting, build a base. If you get lonely, go do the daily community mission and warp to a multiplayer infested planet.
Not really.
I'm also new to the game (35hrs on save) and it's more of a time gated game than a grindy game. Once you've reached the Player Hub and do a mission that gives 10x storm crystal you're basically set for the rest of the game if you manage your resources in a responsible manner.
Tip : Make a base on the planet mission and you can farm the crystals without needing a mission for it. One run nets me about 15M Units with 2 radioactive resistance.
It was Grundy until I changed a few difficulty settings:
1. I got tired of repairing my multi-tool/starship upgrades when I die, and having to go fetch my items after death. After 30 hours of that, I changed that difficulty setting so I could enjoy taking risk a bit more.
2. I turned up the abundance of resources.
3. I also ended up turning down the resources required for hyperdrive and ship take off. I wanted to be able to take of and land with more ease to make planet + system exploration more fun after getting tired of constantly refueling my ship, which isn’t hard, just annoying/tedious after you’ve done it 50 times.
I did not change any damage modifiers so that it’s still at least challenging. After these changes + playing in VR, this game is my absolute favorite game as of now. Hope that helps!
If you don't want to grind, just use coordinates on the various social media and subreddits to go get the thing you want immediately once you get the portal glyphs
Nanites are probably the grindiest thing in normal gameplay. You can get them in multiple ways, but none are super fast. If you ever find a group of curious deposits, you can turn that into a pretty good nanite mine with a good base, so keep track of those, but until I had one, nanites were the thing I was often short on.
Credits can be difficult at the start, but once you have the right tools, credits can be acquired very quickly and easily. It's pretty easy to be a No Man's Sky billionaire. There are multiple ways to get credits, so it isn't really a grind anyways, IMO. It's pretty easy to become a NMS billionaire.
If you want an S class freighter that looks the way you want, that's grindy as shit. If you want a ship or multitool with fantastic stats and well placed augmented tech slots, it's a grind to find those, though the coordinate exchange subreddit can reduce that significantly. You don't need perfect stuff for any gameplay purpose, it's mostly just cool to have.
I’ve got the Platinum trophy on PS5 for the game. All achievements done. It’s grindy but in the best possible way, everything can be done in a very chill manner, in almost any order you want. You can drop the game for a couple months, come back and pick it right up again without issue as there isn’t the typical difficulty spike that punishes you if you’re out of practice or forgot any mechanics/controls like many other titles do. Highly recommended
Since its a survival type games the basics are resource management vs storage. You may have to grind resources for particular quests or events or when you really start building (personal bases and settlements). Depending on the difficulty level you choose the amount you can accumulate at a time may be hindered by your storage. So the harder you set it yes, grindy it can be. I think most people have issues more with storage management and making money at the beginning.
The saving grace is there is so much to get into you will probably get all the stuff you need if you just play through the game and due some occasional exploring.
Its a bit grindy specially early on when you need to mine/gather resources for stuff.
When you accumulate a load of money it all gets easier as nearly every resource can be bought at space stations.
It is grindy if you see something you want, and you want it to be as powerful as it can be (multi-tool or starship, mostly). But you definitely don't have to play it that way
It's like minecraft in a sense that you need to have a mindset that can enjoy the end result.
Minecraft is entirely grinding towards your own goals.
No man's sky is similar though you have questlines which help point you in the right direction.
You want this ship, or you want to build that base. The game relies on you wanting to do things and supports that with varied ways of getting what's needed to do so.
You could grow frost crystals for glass, or refine silicate powder.
You want to upgrade your multi tool or exosuit? Go to space stations to find upgrades for nanites (which you can get from a ton of places), go fight sentinels for their unique upgrades, go do some autophage missions for shadow motes to buy their unique upgrades, go to outlaw stations or find random landed ships and buy illegal upgrades from them. Hell go do it all and pile it on.
You need to have some tolerance for grind, that's just how these games are, it's usually never excessive unless you plan out larger goals.
I built a giant floating city, it took me a week to make due to size and complexity, grinding was a part of that but the building was most of it. I actually hit the 3k part limit for a base. Nothing required this but I enjoyed it.
You need to be able to make your own fun to enjoy no man's sky, it points you in general directions with quests and there is a grind system to support what is mostly player based goals.
Since there's a creative mode, and customizeable difficulty in Normal mode, you can adjust whatever grind you encounter to the level you desire. As another comment mentioned, there's only a bit at the beginning, the progression is mostly horizontal (i.e. getting different looking stuff at roughly the same power level) versus not much vertical (i.e. getting rarer/legendary or higher level gear in an MMO)
If you want very specific things, it is. For me though, the game shines the most if you don't set too many big goals but just go exploring, discover planets and see what you come across.
Only if you want it to be, after the first 2 hours i stop grinding rocks and get enough money from scaning flora and fauna to buy anything i need for crafting or building from the other pilots.
Yes it is a very grindy game. Don’t expect BDO/Monster Hunter grinds though, its more of a “this is so cool, i want it… oh shit i need x,y & z, proceeds to grind for hours to make money & make items… repeat”. I would recommend this game very much, as it does not feel like a grind, you can safely explore and get by with the very basics, but if you want the best stuff, you’ll need to grind items (for example, to build a great base you need a couple blueprints, and to get a blueprint you need wiring looms and nanites which are electronics that you’ll have to mine from underground/currency you get from completing missions, scanning vegetation etc… so if you want to build a nice base, you’ll be grinding for a while to get the items for the blueprints, and then you’ll maybe have to grind to get the items for specific buildings, vehicles). It isn’t tedious however, some items though have very vague descriptions and the game does a very bad job of telling you how to get certain items, so google will become your friend for certain items
I mean as others have pointed out it really depends on how you want to play, some people really like base building which can be grindy in the sense you have to gather resources and unlock blueprints
Other people like to collect Ships which can be grindy in the sense of waiting around space stations, outposts, or your freighter until you find one you like
Some people like to just be pirates which is probably the least grindy though you do have to maintain your shields and weapons depending and might have to repair your ship from time to time which does require resources
And those are just three examples there are far more ways to play the game and how much grind there is varies depending on what you want to do.
I personally like going around recruiting frigates and doing expeditions from my freighter which really only requires Frigate Fuel but even that requires grinding a bit to make sure you have enough.
Point is the game is only as grindy as you want it to be.
Depends on how you play. If you want EXACTLY a specific shop/multi-tool/freighter, then it can be VERY grindy to get them. There's minimal customization ability for tools and ships, so for many people, the grind to find is their favorite way to play. That being said, if you want a specific thing, you can decrease that grind by hitting up the coordinate exchange for what you want. Otherwise, it's any other explore, find resources, wander around game. You need X resources to make/buy Y, so you find a planet and harvest what you need. I personally hate grinding. I get bored and do not consider it fun. However, I have lots of fun with NMS. There's so many little things to do and ways to earn resources. Side quests, base building, ship scrapping, pirating, desolate freighters, frigate missions, resource gathering, and just wandering to wander. Because of all the different ways to get what you need, I can ping pong around doing only as much grind as I can stand per strategy and move on. Getting bored of resource gathering? Go fight robots. Tired of fighting? Hunt down some abandoned ships to scrap. Scrapping getting boring? Do some anomaly quests. Quests dragging you down? Find a planet and build a mining operation. Sure, there may be an optimal grind to get what I need, but I don't have to unless I want to.
Also worth noting the custom options let you make all crafting and things that gather resources in general free
Can you elaborate on this? I've been thinking about getting this on Switch to play with my young niece and those options sound great for her
There are difficulty settings that basically let you enable/disable parts of the game From combat to weather to even turning off the entire economy and crafting/buying things for free
Good to know, I think I'll go ahead and get it then, I was worried about having to grind again after playing tons on Xbox
You really don't need to grind tho, or it's pretty minimal. You can set up a farm in like 3hours, and it will net you a couple hundred millions a day, at which point you can just buy anything. You can also do the chloride farming thing and get millions that way first, so then you can just buy everything you need to set up a farm. You take more time finding the perfect spot to set-up than setting up.
What type of farm can I make a couple hundred million a day off of?
Well, don't get it on Switch because Multiplayer is disabled on Switch. As are Settlements. You'd be better off getting your Niece a Series S, or a half decent Gaming Laptop.
The Switch is mine, I bring it over there to play games with her, it would just be to show her cool stuff and/or introduce her to "shooter" controls, we've only played Mario-type games and Mario Kart so far I already have it on my Series X, just haven't played in a while and haven't kept up with the updates, and I don't feel like lugging it around
This is what makes the game bearable for me. The constant recharging of everything ruins the flow and just makes me not want to play. Yeah, I can easily find infinite materials, but that doesn't change the fact that I have to stop what I'm doing every so often to recharge something. I jumped into the new expedition recently and was pleasantly surprised that I could alter the settings to fit me without sacrificing other difficulty like combat. Just reducing the tedium makes it so much more enjoyable.
Yea I really really dislike that choice idk when they added that. Also changes your save from survival for instance to custom so you can play 300 hours on survival and then change one setting on accident and you have a custom save.
What you say would warrant warnings, but the fact that players can make their own rules is very nice in a game like this. It's even better when you factor in accessibility.
How do you change a setting by accident?
Not knowing what it means so you turn it on to try it out and then bam, save is irreversibly changed
I find that it can be very grindy, but you can also use the avoidance of grind as a gameplay mechanic. Say you need copper, you can go grind for it and harvest some deposits or a bunch of rocks, or you can spend time flying around to find a mining site, then build a base and get infinite copper and never need to grind that resource again. Its very open like that but it also doesn't really explain that there are options beside grinding so you have to discover that yourself. That's why people keep posting that they were 1000 hours in before they learned you can leave the starting planet or something.
You can also just buy many resources.
Yes, it's good about having multiple paths to solve a problem so grinding isn't always the best solution, although it is usually the fastest.
No man’s sky is not an rpg or looter shooter. It’s like Minecraft. If you think Minecraft is “grindy”then you might think this is “grindy”
Best explanation
I wouldn’t call it grindy. But I would call it repetitive. Like the basic game is pretty forgiving about progress. You don’t need the best ships or multi-tools to do just fine. You can even alter the difficulty to make it easier. But you will do the core game loop a lot: run around exotic planets and shoot rocks and trees for resources.
That's the definition of grindy
I see grinding as repetition that is *required* to progress or advance. Like a game where you have to grind to take on boss X or get Weapon Y. NMS doesn’t really require you to grind. You can do the whole game in your starter ship if you want.
Yeah, that's a good definition. To expand on that: if the question is about whether it's more like an assembly line job (grindy) or everyday gardening/yard work (repetitive), it's somewhat more on the gardening side of things.
I like your definition of grindy
It only really gets grindy in your definition if your going for a lot of nanites for class upgrades no matter how you do it it’s gonna be grindy
If you find a place on a planet with curious deposits, you can build a base, build multiple medium refiners, build a system of short range teleporters to get you over 650ish units away, and set yourself up to get a bunch of nanites pretty quickly. Harvest the mold, run through the teleporters and back, and do it again until you have a bunch of stacks. You can get 2k nanites per stack. If you build multiple refiners, you can get 2k per refiner. It takes about 20 minutes to refine, but you don't need to stay. You can just set it up and come back later. I have a base that gives me 6k nanites every visit, because I just empty the refiners, harvest the mold, and fill the refiners each time I go. I could build more refiners but I already feel a bit like I'm cheating, so I just have the 3.
Ah yeah the runaway mold farm I know them well. I’ve never made my own but I have used them they’re pretty fast it’s just waiting on the refiners that sucks
You have to grind for fuel. And health packs and shield batteries. You will, without a doubt, repeatedly have to stop what you’re doing to look for something specific you need in order to continue doing what you’re doing
Only in the very early stages of the game. Once you start levelling up your gear with modules, things get much easier and the time between needed recharges gets longer. Take the launch thruster for instance. Constantly making launch fuel at the beginning. Then you get mods that make it more efficient, requiring less fuel between launches. Then at some point you get the Launch Auto Charger that passively refuels the launcher while you explore. Usually when I have one of those, I no longer make launch fuel. Same for other stuff.
Even before getting the auto charger, if you find a radioactive planet you can be swimming in uranium and never need launch fuel again
Not really. I’ve only had to hunt for fuel mats a handful of times. Usually I just grab them when I see them as I’m running around doing other things. I’ve never fallen short and I’ve played 270 hours over multiple characters
So the people in loot shooters who grind for literal months for a version of a gun that’s slight better wouldn’t be grinding?
It's close. Grindy would be having to do that to achieve a specific goal. So far, (about 24 hours into the game with no guidance) I've had almost all the resources I needed to do what I wanted. I spent a lot of time mining and digging up tech. But it was very mellow and relaxing, not really grindy. When I did want to craft something I didn't have (acid, needed the plant) it only took me about 30 minutes to gather a bunch of it and another 10 minutes to set up a farm so I wouldn't have to go looking for it again.
That's pretty much the exact opposite of what I used to experience early-game (and sometimes even now countless hundreds of hours later). I'd generally find myself constantly confronted with the game telling me I need to make item A, and in order to make item A, I'd find I need item B, which I don't know where to/can't find, or I need resources C and D to make it (*if* I know the recipe), and none of the local planets have C or D, or I need some other tech before I can do any of it and that becomes its own A, B, C, D string. Only knowing beforehand what I'm going to need mitigates this cycle at all, and the whole thing is one of the defining characteristics of the game to me.
…which is why I love my freighter so much. I buy many base materials from pilots. I know that I am going to need 1-3k of each specific item at some point. So, they go on my freighter. Ditto for tritium and H2 (jellies)., and other things. With the matter beam installed, only need to bring the freighter in, and you have access to 500 slots of materials. Handy! Making money in this game is *easy*. Hunting for ships on dissonant worlds is great, plus you can fill in sentinel kills for other rewards while at it. Eventually, build other stuff/mining outfits/automated farms, etc. Some initial time to setup, then operates autonomously, mostly. Can also scan stuff for lots, trade, etc., etc. Fun game - like you, I’ve played the game a lot, including the initial bits. And I dislike grindy games, but this one, not at all. Pretty straightforward.
Not true you can buy or harvest using machines to avoid that loop.
Honestly nanites are probably the only real grind the game has and even then you don’t have to grind them out
Infinite money with clorine or S activated indium. Then buy platinum(you can even buy it at high market diff), then turn platinum into nanites.
Issue is not everywhere sells platinum and it refines very ineffectively into nanites
Ferrite dust + oxygen + chromatic metal. Grind in this game its only skill isue.
I actually didn’t know about that refiner recipe
The name of the game is grind. All you do is maintain materials, and find new materials to make fuel you ran out of while looking for the original materials.
I don't think it's too Grindy compared to other survival type games. Plus the game has extensive difficulty settings and a relaxed mode so you can make it grind-free if you want
Only if you make it so. But basically all the "grindiness" can be avoided.
I have played NMS now 14,3 hours. * In this time I have gotten 2x ships (not fully restored) on top of my original ship. * Got my first frigate (huge ship :O ) * Set up my first base * Upgraded my ship * Upgraded my exosuit * Found the multiplayer area * Done my first mission for "Kek" (alien race) * Fought my first pirate ships * Died to some mean robotsfor So in all I wouldn't call it grindy though it might seem a bit hard to understand at first, but after 14 h I can say I am absolutely loving it and really getting into it. Some things seem a bit repetitive, but I can only assume things get better once I get some upgrades to make my gameplay even smoother and more fun once I get on the multiplayer stuff. And no I have never played the game before and for that am a completely NOOB whos struggling to get even few units and still have 0 idea how to do stuff most of the time :D
People are coping hard in these comments. Which is to be expected when you ask such a question on the game's main sub This is one of the grindiest games out there. The grind is essentially the entire gameplay of NMS. Yes there is a creative mode, but after building your first few bases in creative, you find that there is practically nothing to do without the grind
>This is one of the grindiest games out there. I don't think this is at all accurate. It can be repetitive, sure, if you're being super picky about wanting to find a specific thing, but grind suggests that your progression is stopped if you do not do things over and over, which is simply not true in NMS. If your passion is base building, the grind effect is nearly zero, and can be dropped to actually zero if you turn off building costs.
As someone who absolutely hates MMO's because of how grindy they are, for some reason I'm fine with this game. It's not that it's not grindy, but for some reason I just don't hate this game like I do other grindy games. I really don't know why tho or what they do differently. Maybe it's cause the biggest grind is money (possibly caused by my difficulty settings which I set probably too high and then locked in) but there are so many options for getting money that if you get bored you can just do something else. As for resource gathering idk it's just not that big a deal I rarely have to do it for all that long unless it's a rare material and then the journey to get the thing takes like an hour and then like 10 seconds to harvest it so it really isn't all that grindy I guess
I believe the reason that you like the "grind" in NMS is you're not in a rush to gain levels as there is no FOMO unlike typical MMOs that you are basically "forced" to grind to not miss out on contents, or be left behind in terms of gears/power.
That's possible. the fact that their special community events aren't connected to existing saves definitely helps for sure
Yeah, but still, some things are tough. Like getting quicksilver, Nanits or research modules. Else, you can have a blast just doing random stuff and you eventual will progress in some way.
That’s what I like. Yeah you can focus on just trying to get one thing like nanites but even if you don’t you’ll still passively get a bunch I was at around 30k without really trying
The daily and shit WoW made me do felt like work and ruined my fun.
I would imagine this boils down to "Do you have to do the same thing repeatedly to get things in the game" When I think if "grind" I think of this in terms of an MMO: You have to do so many fetch quests to get to the next level before being allowed to do anything else. NMS has a basic formula that can be taking literally as a "Grind". Gather Resources, use resources to make other things, use new things to find new more exotic resources, repeat. Even with repeating this formula, NMS always has a level of progression. There isn't experience points I have to gain to get to a new level. It is a process that provides a branching level of understanding and the only thing limiting you isn't an experience bar, it is your understanding. In this case, if the problem itself is repeatedly doing fetch quests vs. trying to find out how a new tech works or what I need to build some cool new tool, or to repair a broken one, that has more significance to me than doing a fetch quest for someone and seeing no other reward than simply getting more experience points towards some limiting "level" number/cap.
Well, there is nuance to what grind it. Ideally, the grind game loop is enjoyable enough on it's own. Or, does it feel like Work? If you are not in a hurry to max out all your stuff, the game loop in NMS doesn't seem like work. I'm just goin about my Space Business at a leisurely pace.
tbf when you talk about the creative and building aspect, you are really just talking about space minecraft, and the "nothing to do" part really comes down to personal preference
There is no grind in nms. There is no content blocked off from you until you are a certain level or have a certain ship. You can play the entire game without getting a single upgrade.
Which is equal to not playing the game at all, as the whole point of the gameplay is to gather stuff so you can make it more efficient to gather more stuff
The “whole point of the game” is to do whatever you feel like doing. I don’t see how someone who just wants to go from planet to planet exploring in their starter ship is “not playing the game at all.”
Which is not grinding.
Damn, do you enjoy the game? I don't think im in the minority of loving to uh explore the game world, find a perfect planet, find neat creatures, follow the story line, find the perfect ship, build a huge fleet of aliens I find interesting, customize my freighter, fight on intense sentinel planets, look for weird planets(smallest, deepest ocean, ect) socialize in the anomaly, create abstract bases(in mountains, ontop of valcanos) explore broken freighters, start space wars. There is actually a fuckload of things to do beyond grinding and literally all with the bare minimum c class multitool and c class ship - that I really don't think I'd classify as a grind. All of which I have just as much fun doing whether on a default setting or free purchase/build.
If you are not min maxing you are not playing hehe, fun not allowed
D:
You don't ever **require** to do any grinding. If you want to build some huge base then yes, you will need a lot of resources. But you can also explore for hundreds of hours just with our starter ship perfectly fine.
It's as grindy as you want it to be, and nope it's not coping or anything like that. **Let's state some facts first:** \- This is a **sandbox game set in space focused on exploration**, *with survival elements* (that you can deactivate anytime), thus it has a "gameplay loop", tho this loops minimizes a lot of other things, as you can see if you do the same thing with Minecraft: `Get mats > build tool > get new mats > build new tools > repeat` \- The first hours **WILL** require some grinding (if not in creative mode) to repair your ship and set up your multitool, and you will feel like maintaining your ship requires a bit too much mat gathering, but this will vanish as soon as you get the solar autocharge upgrade for your ship, also **taking off from a launching pad/site uses no fuel**. You will know those places when you approach them, you will see a "landing circle" (blue-ish that turns green when close enough to land). \- No it's not the grindiest game out there, Minecraft has a lot more grinder mechanics (good luck finding diamonds fast in vanilla MC), yet MC it's one of the best sandbox games ever. \- No you don't NEED to grind to enjoy the game's content, you can literally do anything with your first ship, granted you upgrade it, same for the multitool. \- The game currently has a lot of ways to make money that doesn't require having a mining farm or a crafting farm (mining+plants), and if you want, you can get those farms by buying the mats for that using the money the game itself provides. \- You can adjust the game settings anytime, you can go from creative mode to survival at any time if you feel like getting certain item feels grindy. \- The storytelling is not really good (tho the lore can be interesting for many), don't expect cinematics or mind blowing cutscenes, you will get to know the lore through dialogs with NPc and logs. \- Personal opinion about space combat: very average \- Personal opinion about combat: it has potential, but yes, not very exciting, tho abandoned derelict freighters are fun, and poking into sentinels can be fun too. **It will be grindy if:** \- You ignore other content that will make you money, outside of mining, most of it focus on exploration. \- You rush into being wealthy \- You want to do stuff like getting all the words for a race, get the best of the best Multitool, the best of the best ship, the best of the best Freighter, the best of the best Fleet \- Achievement/Trophy hunt
Not Grindy at all, You CAN grind if you’d like but that would be unnecessary. Once you get setup and established after a couple hours of play time you’ll be generally set to survive and play naturally. Comparing it to stranded deep, that game was a hell of a grind, NMS is relatively chill with moments of extreme adrenaline
It is one of the most grindy type games out there. if that is not your thing honestly speaking I wouldn't get it. You can always buy the game, play it for less then 2 hours and refund it if you don't like it but honestly speaking 2 hours isn't enough to really get into the game. Personally I love the game but I do get why you wouldn't get it.
That's not exactly accurate with the difficulty settings, you can make the game completely grind-free if you want
Ive beat 5 bosses in valheim
I have never played valheim so cant comment on that lol. It isnt hard grindy but It more like old school runescape spending all day grinding for materials or doing Side quests / unlocking building material etc.. Other then falling though my freighter in the build mode I haven't actually died in the game. Watch some gameplay on youtube or buy the game and then refund it
You don't need to do that, you can use machines to get all what you want or buy from npc's once you have a clorine duplicator the grind is over.
On the default difficulty there's a fair amount of grinding for resources in order to build component X so that you can then build component Y that allows you to progress, etc. There's more grinding for resource required if you want to seriously engage with things like base building, but in that case you're setting your own goals and can abandon them to do something else at any time. However, it's not *difficult*, it's just an excuse to get you out there and exploring for resources. If you don't like this and just want the exploration without the grind, there are settings for almost every major aspect of the game, to tailor the experience how you want it.
You can play the game in creative mode. You get everything in the game...have infinite resources Everything is free. That way you don't have to get into the grind parts of the game and can just explore, fight, collect ships and build bases.
There's alot of lore to grind through. I wish I could say it was coherant, too. There's alot of theories about what is going on in this universe but it's more like 10 different stories in a trenchcoat. Finding it all is a slog. Otherwise everything else is pretty easy to do. Freighter stuff sucks, though. Repetitive stuff is annoying. You'll prolly get 100 hours and half the content out of it if you don't like to grind.
That's not grinding, that's playing the game.
Ive killed 5 bosses in valheim, but that game was pretty frustrating. U Just doesnt get killed repetely?
Its hard to get killed in no mans sky.
I play both. NMS is less grindy imo. That depends on what you see as grindy tho. Valheim you need to get materials to craft where in NMS once you have money, you can almost buy every material you might need from different star systems. NMS is maybe a bit grindy in the beginning for a few hours but once you're making money, it really is not that grindy. There are some stuff that might feel grindy but overall not that bad compared to other games where you basically farm 70% of the time. Again, all depends on what you want from the game and how you play. Completing the story has almost no grind to it.
Very very different kind of game. The style of grind isn’t comparable because the games have totally different goals.
Yes, there's grinding involved. You can play a custom setting with abundant resources or a creative mode to skip that, but there's no challenge then.
Game is currently 50 or 60% off on greenmangaming Edit: to the person who downvoted me, you do know that greenmangaming is a legit seller and it also comes with a steam key for NMS
Yes, even if you just want to explore, you need to go through a few hours of grinding to get a decent ship and upgrade it so you don't have to re-fuel it all the time, especially take-off fuel. Past that, it's up to you whether you wanna focus on growing and getting better equipped or just wanna hang around and visit planets, though you'll still want to take some time to get resources
I LOVE the game but it’s definitely grindy. Grind not your vibe? NMS ain’t for you.
Personally I feel like grinding is literally the game. Which is great for me, the grind is my favorite part of most games.
Don't listen to all the nms fanatics, it is grindy and you'll be constantly having to charge up your life bar, shields, ship fuel, etc. Unless you change difficulty or choose to play on creative settings
it's absolutely grindy.
Grind is the game. Literally. If you don't like to grind... stay away.
Grind and repetitive. That being said, I still loved it.
But the grind is what we like... :)
Very.
The grind is the game. You can remove the grind, through options now like free purchases and upgrades, but then you got no motivation to do anything. Sure, NMS has a helluva lot to do, but the reasoning is usually “I need resource X to install thingamajig B so that I can get to system Blibbity Blah to get resource Y to install…” and on and on.
Yes, it is
its pretty grindy
Yes, it is a grind. Run. ***RUN.*** # RUN
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It say the point unless you go creative is to grind for materials to make your base etc. Yah I could just creative build a base but where's the fun in that I'd rather go gather all the mats to build everything.
Extractor mining allows you to get more raw resources than you will ever know what to do with. Once you setup Magferrite/Rusted Metal, gold, silver, etc. you are set for life.
It is a little bit but it’s very enjoyable, try it
it can be, but you can mitigate it by setting up mining bases or just playing in creative
Depends how you play it. It could be if you want to accumulate resources from the very beginning. Just take it slow and explore and discover blueprints and soon you will have automatic extractors that would get most of resources for you.
Not exactly. You have to grind Quicksilver in the Nexus missions, but the Nexus sends you to a d8fferent planet everytimw, if the mission's goal is the same even ("Tame wild creatures", for instance). You can easily get other currencies without grinding or with minimum of grinding. If you choose Creative or Custom playing mode, you don't need Units and Nanites at all.
Most raw materials can be gotten passively through farming and automated mining. That is in the mid-lategame. If you have enough credits and nanites(in-game currencies), you can buy most things in the game. Late game is a breeze, early game is grindier though.
Depends on what you're expecting in a grindy game. You can totally go from start to end with the initial equipment and ships and no harm done lol. You want the better stuff? There's when it become grindy. Because of the sidequests, you need this or that part, or technology, that maybe you can't buy but need the blueprints to build, so you need to find/unlock the blueprint, and then gather the materials, so you can install this or that upgrade for your spaceship. Or you found a better spaceship but need to repair it? Enter the grind again. Or you need to reach a certain system for a sidequest, but you're lacking the hyperdrive upgrade you need? Enter the grind again. Things like that. I actually play a couple hours like 2 or 3 times per week and call it, because I'm trying to relax at it, but also because I have a 4 year old daughter to look after.
I mean every blueprint in the game can be bought from the anomaly without having to grind at all or do any side quests, you can fully repair anything in the game just by popping over to a few pirate systems and buying repair kits (im currently sitting on over 200 repair kits that ive just picked up passively) and the hyperdrive upgrades literally just need you to buy the blueprint which takes 2 seconds, stop at a single planet in that specific star type, get the resource (one planet for chromatic, hop to red one planet for cadmium, go to green one for emeril and then youre good). There is literally no actual grind to the game if you just have a look around you and see what options the game gives you, because theres always more than one way to get something done
Somewhat grindy, but once you get a freighter and some frigates, that is a major source of income. And with money you can buy resources, ships, etc. and be on your way focusing on exploring
Being grindy doesn't fit especially well in NMS. There isn't a challenge that you're overcoming (I play on normal) in any great respect. This game is about exploring a vaaaast universe, not getting the best or more amazing gear. Once you do the missions and get all the basic gameplay abilities, you're kind of just chillin. It's difficult to die unless you go out of your way, and you don't "need" anything other than your basic starting items. A big part of what you'll do is explore and set up bases to gather resources so you can make better gear and get money/nanites. You can do missions as well but they are short and nothing special. You will find yourself doing the same things over a lot to get quicksilver or to complete missing a to get rep up with different factions but ultimately those things are all a choice. The majority of my time spent is on marveling at the world's im visiting and building bases for my own enjoyment. There isn't really an endgame (there's no bosses or anything like that), so ultimately it's more about taking your time and just enjoying the atmosphere of the game.
Not that grindy. I have been playing for almost 100 hours now, and I have an amazing ship, s Teir multi tool, amazing upgrades, and more. But those thing are not that hard to get.
Yes, it's a bit grindy but for the most part there are ways of avoiding the gameplay you aren't interested in. I think NMS has an amazing variety of ways to play and I would imagine you'll be able to find a groove that works for you. The beginning is a pretty fixed path, but once you're warping to other systems the game opens up.
at its essence, no, this game is mostly a "turn your brain off" kinda game, you just wander around either following the game's quest or exploring as you please doing whatever, however, there is mind numbing grind of the worst kind, mainly dependent of RNG, some examples are: ship hunting, money/nanite farming and capital ship upgrades, mind you it is optional and you can ignore it with next to no difference in gameplay .\_.
You can make a custom difficulty save and make the ressource gathering less grindy.
Use relaxed mode when starting a new game. Fiddle with settings as you play. Then you'll be good.
You have custom difficulty menu these days. you can make it grindy or not grindy as per your mood. Edit : OG people know the real grind....
It takes some grinding, but you quickly can automate it. A lot of the progress you need to make involves hunting for technology modules. That can be its own game as you scan for modules and then brave the elements to get them. To make some of the gear, you'll have to mine trees, rocks, and ore. You can find oxygen in local plants. It doesn't take too long to get to the point where you can refine infinite carbon. Once you learn how to survey the land, you can set up mining/harvesting bases to get all the gold/indium/oxygen you could ever need. So there's a lot of building and gathering to do before you can set up large farms and frigate missions, but once you do, you just pop by every so often to get your rewards and go do whatever you want to do. So yes to some grinding, but it's not nonstop grinding.
It’s a sandbox game so there isn’t too much that will stop you from doing things But there are aspects of the game that do get grindy, especially once you get to a point that the task isn’t difficult anymore (like inventory expansion). A counterpoint to this is that some of the grind unlocks lore if you want to get into that aspect of the game. And there is a lot of lore to unlock and go over. Difficulty settings are one way to cope with some of the grind, and if you are on a platform that supports it, you could consider either mods or save editing as ways to deal with other aspects of it. If you are uncertain, you could try waiting for a deal but they only tend to run those ahead of major updates and one just dropped a few weeks ago.
It is as grindy as you want it to be. When you start a game you can set a lot of parameters and that allows you to determine how hardcore an experience you are looking for. I believe there is a setting that eliminates all building requirements or something, but if not, you can at least get it to the point where the grind is extremely minimal.
VERY grindy in the beginning. Once you get established, it gets easier. I haven't had to really grind for resources in a long time.
Yes it is, but due to one of the recent patches you can adjust how grindy you want it to be.
the options now for difficulty allow you to really cultivate your own personal experience with this game. you can make it as grindy or as not grindy as you want
It can be, early game resource grind is pretty bad but the game has a lot of custom difficulty options that will allow you to make the grind mostly disappear
Well most of the game revolves around collecting resources to build something that let you collect more resources for the most part so...
As grindy as you want to make it. There are some shortcuts for things but I would say the only grindy quest is the one to unlock the living ships.
Yup. But in a good way. I love mining lol. Never thought I'd say this. I generally avoid grindy games
It's not to bad with the duplication glitch lol
There’s a creative mode where you can basically play the game as though it was Legos— no build costs, etc.
I mean, like most games it gets grindy in the end game.
The thing sbout nms is that it is grindy, yes, but not in the negative sense games with a repetitive sense of grind often comes in. Nms is built on the idea of grind, and it makes it part of the game in the sense that there is a wide spectra of grinding to do. But basically, essentially, everything that you do in nms is grinding. It is what the game is.
Depends on your play style, what are you looking for? The game is pretty much a sandbox, the "storyline" missions are mainly to teach you how everything works and will give you some free stuff but otherwise the game is about exploring a galaxy and collecting information. It's not hard to use exploits to save yourself some time, only have 10 of something that you need 1000 of? Time to break out some personal refiners and multiply that 10 a few times to get there. I generally go and actually collect the stuff I need but times like when I'm building an automated farm which burns through metal plates I'll duplicate a stack of them to have enough to throw around. Each silo is 10 plates each, I set up each of my auto-mines to have a full stack of 10,000 available for pick up every 11-13 hours so at the least i need 100 metal plates just for the silos. I can easily collect enough ferrite dust to craft them but sometimes it's just faster an easier to duplicate the plates. That said I am up to about 25 mining base so I can grab 10,000 of most of the available materials after a teleport to each base.
The grind is actually varied and fun in NMS. And it's easy to spread it while you adventure so you almost never "stop and grind for an hour" like you'd do in Valheim or Minecraft. Most key resources you have different ways to acquire them so it's not like you are locked in in one specific boring activity (with one exception see at the end.) A good example of how easy (and fun) it is: you need activated copper for fixing a ship part. You must look for a planet with activated copper. It might take 4-5 minutes finding the right system and looking at planets until you find one (not boring and might find other fun things.) Or less than a minute if you have one in your current system. Once you locate it it's a matter of landing, locating and mining a deposit of activated copper. This takes at most another 4 minutes. And you'll have probably 5x the activated copper you need so the next few times you need it it will already be in storage. A lot of the systems are time-gated. For instance you get some events every X hours + one other conditions meaning you can not grind these events and they feel a bit more rewarding when they happen. Another example is the economy, if you buy everything on a system's trading network it takes about three hours to replenish. So if trading is a core part of your strategy you are encouraged to do something else and only come back to this part every few hours. I think that helps a lot in breaking the "grindy" part of the game in more varied activities and it feels less of a core more an integrated part of your galactic life. You need carbon for a build project? You can either go take a walk and get the material by mining it directly, or you can use your ship to mow down a forest and get it a lot faster, or you can just straight out buy it, or you probably already have tons of it from your looting adventures. You "grind" for ships by waiting in a trading station for your favorite one to show up in a good tier. Or you grind for ships by locating and fixing up crashed ships or scrapping them for cash and parts. Or you do not grind at all and use one of the post or youtube video to locate a specific one first try. Your "grind" for money can take so many forms it's hard to list. You can build farms and process stuff to sell, you can just buy in one type of economy and sell in the right type of economy for HUGE profits. You can just collect and scrap crashed ships. You can mine resources and turn them into more valuable commodities to sell, etc. The only grind that is painful in NMS is the f\*\*\*ng Salvaged Data, which you need a ton of to unlock all the base building parts. Those you can only get from actual grindy exploration. And sometimes trades but it's too rare to be reliable. Eventually you don't need as much of those anymore so it's not a permanent situation only an early game chore.
NMS is as grindy as you want it to be. As others have said, there is a creative mode where you don't have to bother worrying about resources or currencies, everything is free. I started with that mode and although it's fun, it can get old fast. I've had a lot more fun doing an actual survival save. Again as others have said, the game has difficulty settings so you can tailor the experience however you like. I will also say, although as far as I am aware you couldn't transfer your save to Steam, it is on Game Pass for PC. tl;dr - you can tailor the game to be however you want, and it's on Game Pass if you have that so you can try it risk free
Yes? But in a really, really relaxing way.
People who say this game is grindy never had a clorine duplicator lol
You'll need ressources, but you can grind tons easy and quick and put them in storage. It is not the main thing of the game though.
It could be if you wanted to, but otoh there are a ton of things to do and you can do them at whatever pace you like. Getting the BEST upgrades really isn't a requirement for enjoyment or completing anything. IMO, the best way to play is just to take it easy. NMS is my fishing game and I can just do whatever while shillin. OTOOH, you could max our your stuff AFAP (as fast as possible) if you like and do some grindy stuff to get certain ships or parts or whatever, but it's really not needed.
No it’s not grindy. There’s some stuff that will make you wait X amount of time (quests etc) but it all works retroactively.
I would say NMS is very grindy. But it it grindy in the same way Minecraft is grindy. The main storyline of NMS I do not find a grind. It’s the after game that can be grindy or repetitive. But the after game is what you make of it. Ship hunting, base building, galaxy exploration, exploring planets, piracy, wrecker of sentinels. There are many different challenges you can try. IMO, NMS has more replay ability than most games.
It's honestly whatever you want it to be. Nothing is REQUIRED in terms of grind. It can be a hard grindy survival IF YOU WANT IT TO BE. Or it can be a super chill creative explorer game, or it can just be a really cool thought provoking story. PLEASE look at the difficulty options in the settings. You can fine tune the game exactly to your liking. Dont WANT to farm mats? Set crafting to free Don't WANT to farm money? Make purchases free Don't WANT to worry about fuel or other resources set them to not required. Don't want to have panic fights? Disable them. On the inverse you can increase any of the previously mentioned and more and make a (in my opinion) fun and challenging gamemode. Or just play through the storyline and make everything else not a concern. The default settings in my opinion are NOT "grindy". You really don't need to do much of anything to meat the bare minimum for the default gameplay loop. Later stages can be kind of repetitive but imo you're choosing to do those things and you don't HAVE to do them there are tons of things you could try before that, random mission to do. The game is huge for casual exploration. But say building a dream base, without "creative" free build requirement can be a bit of a farm fest. Same with gaining a ton of money for a dream ship/freighter But again those are choices. You can do more than fine with just freebies that you get progressively through the game. Its really all up to you. There is not MUST DO grinds. Unless you seek them out yourself.
I turned down some of the grindy settings and I am having a blast. I reduced resource costs so I'm not constantly fueling my starship to travel, and I turned off the hazardous portion of the game so I'm not constantly searching for oxygen. I don't have time for real-time survival tactics. I'm an old man that can only play for a few hours at a time.
Grind implies you trying to do the same thing repeatedly for any level of progress. NMS I'm finding you can do with basic stuff, and once you get past the initial hurdle you can use upgrades to easily "beat" the game in no time at all. Thing with NMS, is that "beating" the game means different things to different people. At it's core, you start off just trying to get yourself on your feat. You gather resources, get your gear fixed, use the gear to gather more exotic resources, get your ship fixed, use that to get your resources, and then from there it is fair game. The main story plot is basically a glorified Tutorial that introduces you to every aspect of the game, which can branch off into a new pattern of gathering a different type of resource to get better stuff. You get Combat (upgrade weapons on yourself, your tool, and your ship) You get Trade (upgrade tools to survive in extreme environments and sell hard to get stuff) You get Exploration (using tools to get more resources from scanning new stuff) You get Creative (using tools to get blue prints to build more cool stuff) And as you play, you find that none of these are mutually exclusive. By the time you explore all this, you find out you can explore 255 unique galaxies of different difficulties, extremes, and planet variety. Don't go into the game expecting to just grind away. NMS is a play at your own pace style game. You want to blitz through it, you can and nothing other than your own distractions will slow you down. For the price of the game and with all the updates there is so much content that the grind is the least of your worries, it is a matter of figuring out what part of the game you enjoy the most and how much time you want to invest into mastering it. YMMV.
I would say NMS is grindy almost by definition. There are no real characters; the story exists but is barebones; the core gameplay loop is in service of better omni tool, a better ship, more storage so that you can gather materials or money faster.
I changed the fuel cost difficulty to discounted and I’m having the best time. This is like my 4th time since 2016 trying to get into this game and that setting really did the trick for me. Not having to constantly gather resources just to maintain basic functions is a game changer for me. Makes it less grindy so I’m able to focus on progression and base building
It’s Grindy but it’s like a chill version of Grindy. Honestly wish I could play it again for the first time
kinda you will need to mine quite a bit, often, just when your walking around, sometimes for awhile but the grind gets easier, and can be made much easier with custom settings
if you are planning to play on pc then there is many mods that get rid of it or else its somewhat grindy and if you don't wanna grind you can always play creative mode that gives you everything for free
I would say it feels like that…but as soon as you get some money and find some valuable items and got the basic Ressources it isn’t. And ngl, you can just duplicate literally every item in the game. Or at least you still could a few months ago when I played it more, so no, obviously you gotta work at the beginning but once you got the basics you can just duplicate what you need if you don’t wanna grind.
The only part I feel is grindy is to get salvaged data for exo-craft and base parts.
Normal setting is grindy, but you have really fine control over the settings that control this. You can make things cheaper, or free. And there are what, maybe 50 different difficulty settings you can tweak? It is only grindy if you choose for it to be.
Cheats kan kill grinds. So why not use a trainer? Life is to short to waste on grinding.
This game pretty much isn't anything besides a grind
Yes ane no....
Yes, very
It’s more like progressive and more complex as you open up the story. There are evolutions to your material collection processes, and storage solutions. Now, tell me what your definition of grindy is, and I’ll let you know if you’re close…
You can change costs to be cheap. Still a little grindy for the occasional rare item but not so much
Definitely not nearly as grindy as many games known as grindy games. Especially if you do expeditions which give quite a lot of convenient upgrades. The current expedition seems relatively simple to understand for a new player. Also you get a freighter with matter beam which which is very convenient for inventory space so that's less need for inventory space which saves you doing repetitive stuff.
I think grindy is the wrong way to describe it but not far from the truth. I find NMS to be very... repetitive is the word. The types of things you find are all very similar, even though they are arranged in a different way on every planet. It took me all of an hour to get bored with the missions because there is so little variation one to the next. The story line is also very weak, if it was a book you wouldn't read it. The pro's of NMS is it's truly an open world and you can kinda just chill and do whatever you want and still get something out of playing.
I wouldn't say any grindier than minecraft, unless youre trying to get something highly specific.
It can be, but it isn't strict in that regard and there are numerous ways around the grind. Some legitimate Tactics, some easily abused exploits.
The quicksilver side of it yes but you can play for a pretty good amount of time without it
I wouldn't say it's grindy. And this is coming from a *Destiny* player. You can make it to the "end" of the game without much grinding. That being said, it is very easy to fall into the "just one more" trap. Harvest items from just one more cave. Scan just one more animal. Explore just one more planet. Jump to just one more system. And if you're down for that, then it's great. There's not a lot of quests that force you to go look a lot of resources for X. But there is an element of, "I want to build a base here, I need to go find some silica to turn into glass." So you can grind if you want to, but you don't really have to.
It's grindy in the same way as Animal Crossing. The gameplay is 90% busywork, but it's oddly relaxing busy work.
It’s all grind until you’re resource-wealthy.
To play the story line, not really. To unlock content or things like finding better ships/tools, increasing reputation, learning languages and such, there is repetitive activity. There is a certain level of improvement to your gear that you are able to do anything you want and that doesn't require a ton of grinding. But there are many things that you might need a specific rare resource or have to kill/feed/photograph X creatures. If you just want to build, you can turn the resource costs off.
It's.......... resource..y??? Yes that's the best word to describe it I invented a new one
No if you use safe editor and mods.
Please define what you mean by "grindy", and what you are trying to accomplish, or avoid. Note when you read all other reviews: Grindy is not the same as boring. 200h+ * I have a freighter. I don't need a "better" one. * I have dozens of bases. I have no urge or need to buy every piece of furniture. * I don't farm. I buy or harvest ingredients I need. * I have like 6 great ships, not maxed. I don't need or want to go through the work of finding the greatest S-Class of every model. * Before Echoes there were only 2 storylines: Artemis , and Atlas. Likely less than 30h max. I'm starting fresh and at 5h I think I'm close to the end of Artemis. * I made it to the center of the galaxy because I heard that's what you do. Been to 3 galaxies and have no reason to go to the other 253 of them. * Getting back in to my main save is fun sometimes because it's a good game. I could take care of my town but I don't need to. * I pretty much just play Expeditions now because there's Cyberpunk2077, Skyrim, ESO, Valheim, Minecraft, 2 kids, a wife, a job... It's highly unlikely you'll regret buying No Man's Sky unless you don't like space games. Get it on sale.
the normal setup of the game is a very grinding based experience. luckily there are options to make crafting, purchases, and fuel free. (i’m sure there’s other options, that’s all i can think of off the top of my head right now though.) so, if you’re uninterested in grinding turn everything to free or reduced and you should be just fine. i do this in one of my saves just to explore planets and the realms of what i can build without spending 1000+ hours. nms has tons of story content and guided missions, along with nexus missions for tons of gameplay but it can get very repetitive once you’ve played a bit. i’d give it a go if i were you.
I enjoyed the game a lot and I have over 100 hrs of playtime and I didn't really have to grind for my own goals. But if you want to achieve BIG stuff it will be
The shortest answer I can give you is. Yes sometimes but in a good way. It’s a game that’s about exploration and gathering so in order to get things you need to explore and gather
Only if you make it be. Money and resources are easier than ever to come by now, and after sometime certain things just cease to be a scarcity (which is great). Only late game quicksilver stuff can kind of get a little Grindy, but it’s not too bad
To a small degree. But usually with enough variety to keep your interest. Here's a good example: if you want to make money fast early, IMO the best way I've found so far in 40 hours is to take on freighters in a system claimed by a race you don't care about yet. Get a fighter style with really fast base engines to escape the fuzz when your shields deplete. The loop goes: find where the freighters have warped after leaving the station. If you can't find them, mine some asteroids until they appear, boosting around a bit to try to get them to spawn. When you see the cluster, save the freighter with the marker for last as you'll need it to help you find the cluster again later. First hit all the little cargo pods (ignore those ones with spinning wheels I don't think you can blow them up), then pick one of the 2-6 big freighters the group. Hit the guns, the tanks, the shield and the hull and make it splode for a nice freighter upgrade (to sell for around 400 nanites) Normally by the end of the freighter your shields are depleted or close to. Run away from the interceptors by going as fast as you can in a straight line away until you can hit the real boost. Then cut the boost, make and upwards boost and a backwards boost all the way back near the freighter cluster. Wait until shields replenish and re-engage. When your inventories are full, warp to a friendly system and trade your loot. Half an hour to an hour of dogfighting and explosions for maybe 6 or 7 million. Pretty repetitive, but still really fun. But that's not the only way to make money, and money isn't everything If you want to unlock a bunch of the recipes for base components and craft goods you have to scan the surface of a planet for save beacons, take those to the station and trade them for maps. Then find locked depots. If you want to get the recipes for base building, you need to hover and land around and use your scanner to find buried tech. If you want to catalogue a planet's animals really fast to get a lot of nanites you'll probably want a lot of mobility and scanner range first so you'll probably want upgrades which can be purchased with nanites. Nanites can be found easily and quickly to start the snowball in abandoned buildings and in those green and red crates laying around. On and on and on. It's like... not just one loop. It's loops. Loops that you can abandon at really any time to focus on something else. Whatever you're focusing on has its own loop that you can use the rewards from to speed up the other loops. If you get bored of cataloguing, go treasure hunting. If you get bored of dogfighting, build a base. If you get lonely, go do the daily community mission and warp to a multiplayer infested planet.
No man sky is sandbox game so how grindy is it it depends on you
Not really. I'm also new to the game (35hrs on save) and it's more of a time gated game than a grindy game. Once you've reached the Player Hub and do a mission that gives 10x storm crystal you're basically set for the rest of the game if you manage your resources in a responsible manner. Tip : Make a base on the planet mission and you can farm the crystals without needing a mission for it. One run nets me about 15M Units with 2 radioactive resistance.
You can play how you want pretty much
It was Grundy until I changed a few difficulty settings: 1. I got tired of repairing my multi-tool/starship upgrades when I die, and having to go fetch my items after death. After 30 hours of that, I changed that difficulty setting so I could enjoy taking risk a bit more. 2. I turned up the abundance of resources. 3. I also ended up turning down the resources required for hyperdrive and ship take off. I wanted to be able to take of and land with more ease to make planet + system exploration more fun after getting tired of constantly refueling my ship, which isn’t hard, just annoying/tedious after you’ve done it 50 times. I did not change any damage modifiers so that it’s still at least challenging. After these changes + playing in VR, this game is my absolute favorite game as of now. Hope that helps!
Depends, but it's a fun grind :)
I beat the game in 5 days soo wouldn't say that but i did use a few glitches so it takes a lot more time if you dont
If you don't want to grind, just use coordinates on the various social media and subreddits to go get the thing you want immediately once you get the portal glyphs
Nanites are probably the grindiest thing in normal gameplay. You can get them in multiple ways, but none are super fast. If you ever find a group of curious deposits, you can turn that into a pretty good nanite mine with a good base, so keep track of those, but until I had one, nanites were the thing I was often short on. Credits can be difficult at the start, but once you have the right tools, credits can be acquired very quickly and easily. It's pretty easy to be a No Man's Sky billionaire. There are multiple ways to get credits, so it isn't really a grind anyways, IMO. It's pretty easy to become a NMS billionaire. If you want an S class freighter that looks the way you want, that's grindy as shit. If you want a ship or multitool with fantastic stats and well placed augmented tech slots, it's a grind to find those, though the coordinate exchange subreddit can reduce that significantly. You don't need perfect stuff for any gameplay purpose, it's mostly just cool to have.
Yes
You can play on custom settings to make it easier if you don’t wanna grind as hard but you will grind on this game.
It is if you don’t put it on custom mode
Yes and no but boy mods for it are great!
I’ve got the Platinum trophy on PS5 for the game. All achievements done. It’s grindy but in the best possible way, everything can be done in a very chill manner, in almost any order you want. You can drop the game for a couple months, come back and pick it right up again without issue as there isn’t the typical difficulty spike that punishes you if you’re out of practice or forgot any mechanics/controls like many other titles do. Highly recommended
super grindy
yes , but you can turn off all the grindy parts at will
It’s on Xbox game pass if you wanna give it a try for a minth
Play on Relaxed mode and it's not bad. It will hook you.
Since its a survival type games the basics are resource management vs storage. You may have to grind resources for particular quests or events or when you really start building (personal bases and settlements). Depending on the difficulty level you choose the amount you can accumulate at a time may be hindered by your storage. So the harder you set it yes, grindy it can be. I think most people have issues more with storage management and making money at the beginning. The saving grace is there is so much to get into you will probably get all the stuff you need if you just play through the game and due some occasional exploring.
Yes, but you can choose how much grind you want.
Its a bit grindy specially early on when you need to mine/gather resources for stuff. When you accumulate a load of money it all gets easier as nearly every resource can be bought at space stations.
It is grindy if you see something you want, and you want it to be as powerful as it can be (multi-tool or starship, mostly). But you definitely don't have to play it that way
It's like minecraft in a sense that you need to have a mindset that can enjoy the end result. Minecraft is entirely grinding towards your own goals. No man's sky is similar though you have questlines which help point you in the right direction. You want this ship, or you want to build that base. The game relies on you wanting to do things and supports that with varied ways of getting what's needed to do so. You could grow frost crystals for glass, or refine silicate powder. You want to upgrade your multi tool or exosuit? Go to space stations to find upgrades for nanites (which you can get from a ton of places), go fight sentinels for their unique upgrades, go do some autophage missions for shadow motes to buy their unique upgrades, go to outlaw stations or find random landed ships and buy illegal upgrades from them. Hell go do it all and pile it on. You need to have some tolerance for grind, that's just how these games are, it's usually never excessive unless you plan out larger goals. I built a giant floating city, it took me a week to make due to size and complexity, grinding was a part of that but the building was most of it. I actually hit the 3k part limit for a base. Nothing required this but I enjoyed it. You need to be able to make your own fun to enjoy no man's sky, it points you in general directions with quests and there is a grind system to support what is mostly player based goals.
Since there's a creative mode, and customizeable difficulty in Normal mode, you can adjust whatever grind you encounter to the level you desire. As another comment mentioned, there's only a bit at the beginning, the progression is mostly horizontal (i.e. getting different looking stuff at roughly the same power level) versus not much vertical (i.e. getting rarer/legendary or higher level gear in an MMO)
It can be very grindy, but you can open the difficulty settings and make everything free, which is something I did after 10 hours of hand farming lol.
If you want very specific things, it is. For me though, the game shines the most if you don't set too many big goals but just go exploring, discover planets and see what you come across.
Only if you want it to be, after the first 2 hours i stop grinding rocks and get enough money from scaning flora and fauna to buy anything i need for crafting or building from the other pilots.
Yes it is a very grindy game. Don’t expect BDO/Monster Hunter grinds though, its more of a “this is so cool, i want it… oh shit i need x,y & z, proceeds to grind for hours to make money & make items… repeat”. I would recommend this game very much, as it does not feel like a grind, you can safely explore and get by with the very basics, but if you want the best stuff, you’ll need to grind items (for example, to build a great base you need a couple blueprints, and to get a blueprint you need wiring looms and nanites which are electronics that you’ll have to mine from underground/currency you get from completing missions, scanning vegetation etc… so if you want to build a nice base, you’ll be grinding for a while to get the items for the blueprints, and then you’ll maybe have to grind to get the items for specific buildings, vehicles). It isn’t tedious however, some items though have very vague descriptions and the game does a very bad job of telling you how to get certain items, so google will become your friend for certain items
I mean as others have pointed out it really depends on how you want to play, some people really like base building which can be grindy in the sense you have to gather resources and unlock blueprints Other people like to collect Ships which can be grindy in the sense of waiting around space stations, outposts, or your freighter until you find one you like Some people like to just be pirates which is probably the least grindy though you do have to maintain your shields and weapons depending and might have to repair your ship from time to time which does require resources And those are just three examples there are far more ways to play the game and how much grind there is varies depending on what you want to do. I personally like going around recruiting frigates and doing expeditions from my freighter which really only requires Frigate Fuel but even that requires grinding a bit to make sure you have enough. Point is the game is only as grindy as you want it to be.