Here’s how to avoid it
No Man’s Sky is finally getting widespread acclaim. Almost two years after launching, Hello Games has eventually shaped No Man’s Sky into the game that most everyone originally wanted. It has been quite the redemption story.
It’s not all smooth sailing, though. The No Man’s Sky: Next update has a nasty bug that’s erasing save files. When affected players load the game, the correct number of hours played will display but they’ll just be dumped on a new planet with an “Initializing” screen. All progress will be wiped and it looks as if a new game is starting.
It stems from a feature that’s new to No Man’s Sky. Previously, repairing broken technology would require all materials to be used at once. Now, you can use what you have, go out to get more, and then come back to finish the job. However, people who make use of this new function are the ones who are getting hit with the erased saves.
Hello Games was quick to identify the problem and come up with a solution. It’s in the process of deploying a hotfix on PC. The patch is live on the game’s experimental branch on Steam right now; once it’s proven to be stable, it’ll be implemented on all active servers. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One support is on the way but it’ll take a little while since those patches need to pass each platform’s certification process.
In the meantime, here’s what you should do if you find yourself victim to this bug: Do not save your game. Even though your progress appears to be gone, all the data is still retained in your save file. The only way that will get erased is if you overwrite it by saving. Additionally, it’s not a terrible idea to make a copy of your save file on an external USB. You can’t depend on cloud saves because they’ll update automatically. It takes a long time and a lot of dedication to make notable progress through No Man’s Sky. This is definitely a “better safe than sorry” type of situation.
Here are the full patch notes No Man’s Sky Patch 1.51:
Latest changes on Experimental (July 26):
- Fixed an issue where players who saved after partially repairing some items of technology would be unable to load that savegame. Please note that if the game has not been resaved, then progress has not been lost and will be recovered.
- Fixed a crash caused by memory corruption
- Fixed a crash in the animation system
- Fixed a crash when saving on a freighter
- Fixed a crash when fleet expeditions end without their capital ship present
- Fixed a number of memory leaks
- Fixed an issue where warping in multiplayer could cause players to spawn on a planet rather than in space
- Fixed an issue where freighter bases would be in the wrong position
- Fixed an issue where the build menu could crash if there was nothing available to build
- Fixed an issue where players would be unable to warp during the antimatter stage of the tutorial
- Fixed an issue where the mission destination would be incorrectly reported as in another system at the Hermetic Seal phase of the tutorial
- Fixed an issue where upgrade modules installed in the main Exosuit inventory would not be saved correctly.
- Fixed an issue where portable refiners placed near each other would share inventories
- Fixed an issue where the cockpit of some ships would continually open and close
- Fixed an issue where new controls were missing from the controls page
This is an addition to the fixes already deployed to the Experimental branch on July 25:
- Fixed a crash in creature routines
- Fixed a crash when multiple players put ammunition into a refiner
- Fix for occasional crash when receiving mission rewards
- Fix for crash when adjusting anisotropic filtering settings in the graphics options menu
- Fix for potential crash in geometry streaming
- Improvements to texture caching for AMD GPUs
- Fixed an issue where some players still had physical nanites in their inventory that could not be spent at vendors
- Granted players nanites when they dismantle their Obsolete Technology – spend nanites on new upgrades in Space Stations
- Added a tutorial mission to guide players through the restoration of their old base
- Fixed an issue where players were unable to build Frigate Terminals in Creative Mode
- Fixed an issue where S-Class ships changed appearance
- Fixed an issue where players were unable to build the Base Cache on their freighter to retrieve compensation for the loss of their freighter base
- Fixed an issue where some Exosuit technology was not converted to Obsolete Technology. Please note this does not apply retroactively to save games that have already been upgraded.
- Improved the mapping of old substances to new substances during the save upgrade. Please note this does not apply retroactively to save games that have already been upgraded.
