A game of survival, exploration, and discovery, No Man's Sky is one of the fastest-growing phenomena in video game history, attracting and astounding players of all ages. The game's 18 quintillion planets are procedurally generated, meaning you could very well be the first person to ever set eyes on a planet that even the game developers never encountered—a true testament to the game's innovation. The very first unofficial guide, Limitless Sky: No Man's Sky Unofficial Discovery Guide will provide not only an introduction to the hottest video game, but it'll also teach you how to get more out of your valuable playtime—exploring vast areas, fighting pirates, upgrading your ship or spacesuit, avoiding Sentinels, and identifying new species and resources. This full-color book shares strategies, examines the creation of the impressive procedurally generated planets, and provides a glimpse at what's to come in this ever-expanding universe. Jeff Cork lives and writes in Minnesota, where he’s a senior editor at Game Informer magazine. When he’s not exploring the galaxy, he can be found at home with his wife and two boys. Limitless Sky No Man's Sky Unofficial Discovery Guide By Jeff Cork Triumph Books LLC Copyright © 2016 Jeff Cork All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-62937-327-0 Contents Introduction, The Origins of No Man's Sky, Procedural Generation, Getting Started, Going Offworld, Your Suit, Your Multi-Tool, Your Ship, Exploring the World Around You, The Elements, Intelligent Life, Journey to the Stars, Other Game Recommendations, CHAPTER 1 The Origins of No Man's Sky Looking at No Man's Sky, it's easy to assume that it's the creation of a massive team of developers, from a studio with a track record of producing massive open-world games. The reality is much different — and far more interesting. Before it wowed the world with the prospect of discovering an entirely new universe, Hello Games found success in a charming little game about a motorcycle stuntman. Hello Games was founded in 2009 in Guildford, England. The town, located a quick train ride away from London, is a hotbed of English game development; it has served as home to game studios that have created top-tier titles such as Burnout, LittleBigPlanet, Fable, and many others. After working at a variety of Guildford studios, four developers — Ryan Doyle, Grant Duncan, Sean Murray, and Dave Ream — decided to break away from larger companies and form their own indie studio. That studio became Hello Games, and its first title was the PlayStation 3 game Joe Danger. The side-scrolling action game, released in the summer of 2010, featured the titular stuntman in a series of escalating feats of derring-do. Players had to time their motorcycle's jumps and calculate their landings to score big — and avoid getting scorched by fiery hoops, devoured by ravenous sharks, or other career-ending failures. The game was a success, and the small team worked on bringing it to the Xbox 360. They also hired a few more employees and began work on its sequel, Joe Danger 2: The Movie. The follow-up added more variety to the formula, giving Joe more vehicles to choose from and dropping him into a variety of different movie-style action sequences. Audiences seemed to like Joe Danger and what Hello Games was doing, but Murray, programmer and studio co-founder, was growing restless. He had what he later described as a bit of a breakdown, and worried that the new studio, which he and his friends had founded to express their own creativity, was heading down an all-too familiar path. After Joe Danger 2, what would come next? Joe Danger 3? Joe Danger 4? As much as he loved the little guy, it wasn't a future he was thrilled about. Murray set up a private office within the studio, and for a year worked on a secret project once his work on Joe Danger 2 was finished. He created another new game engine, but this was far more advanced than the one he had worked on with Joe Danger. Joe Danger gave players the thrill of being a stuntman. This new project would possibly give players an entire universe. Eventually, Murray took Duncan and Doyle aside and explained what he was working on. Until then, it had been clouded in mystery. For years, Murray had been fascinated with games such as Elite, which let players explore space and forge their own paths. He'd wanted to be an astronaut for a time, and games turned out to be the next best thing. What if he could live that childhood fantasy through his own creation? The three of them expanded work on the project, which was called Project Skyscraper. Hello Games is a small studio, but that core team wanted to work on this exciting new game in isolation. They took what seems like an extreme measure and set up a studio within the studio — complete with its own locks and entrance. They decorated this new space with covers of old sci-fi paperbacks, filled with fantastical visions of far-flung planets and alien sh