There are already plenty of reasons why you might want to get out your Terrain Manipulator and dig a big ol’ hole on one of No Man’s Sky’s quintillions of planets. Maybe you’ve scanned and located a buried tech module. Maybe you’re mining some resources. Or maybe you’re just seeing if you can tunnel your way to the other side of whatever world you’re on (spoiler: you can’t). With today’s new No Man’s Sky update, titled Relics, there’s now an even more compelling reason to get digging, because you can now unearth fossils.
That’s right, if seeing No Man’s Sky’s countless alien creatures alive and roaming the space game isn’t enough for you, you can now find skeletal remains of ancient beings. A host of brand new creatures, and their fossils, have also been added. Relics focuses on bringing the palaeontologist fantasy to NMS, and boy does it deliver.
“Fossils out there to be discovered vary hugely in rarity, so you never quite know what you’re going to unearth,” Hello Games says. However, if you do track down some super rare remains, be prepared for a fight. “Dangerous creatures” that look like ancient stone golems may be awoken if the most precious remains are disturbed, so if you want to keep them for your collection, you’ll need to either fight off these new threats, or run real fast.
So, what to do with all these craniums and ribcages that you’ve dug up on your travels? Well, you could become the ultimate collector and display them in your base. A new feature lets you piece together the fossils in your collection to create what you believe to be the true skeleton of a long-lost beast, or just a complete freak of nature. You can stitch together any combination of skulls, torsos, upper limbs, lower limbs, and tails to make bizarre-looking creatures.
There’s also a new vendor arriving in the Space Station who you can barter with to flog fossils and acquire any rare bones that you might need to complete a set – or that would be a cursed fit for that mish-mashed, disturbing-looking dino you’re currently assembling.
The Relics update for No Man’s Sky is live right now, so get digging. To coincide with Relics, a new community expedition will begin soon that tasks players with finding the rarest fossils possible, so keep an eye out for that as well.
For more remarkable experiences like No Man’s Sky, check out our list of the best sandbox games. For a look ahead at what else is dropping this year, head to our upcoming PC games guide.
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