No Man’s Sky v1.03#

It appears that Steam stores every version that the developers upload. You can use SteamDB to find them and DepotDownloader to download them.

The first public version on Steam is 1.03; there is no 1.00.

Note

You can use this method to get any version.

  1. Log into Steam.

  2. (If you don’t own the game) Buy No Man’s Sky.

  3. (If you own the game) Back up saves in %appdata%\HelloGames and delete the folder.

    Note

    Steam Cloud Sync will upload 1.03 saves if you’re not in offline mode

  4. Open SteamDB. Sign in to see more info. Search for “No Man’s Sky” (app 275850). Click Depots. Find No Man’s Sky Content for Windows (275851). Find earliest manifest (4186508802612155038).

    Note

    Since we already know the app/depot/manifest information, we can skip to the next step. However, I’m including it so you know how to find other manifests.

    Note

    The manifests are unlabelled apart from upload time. For specific versions, you’ll need to match up the timestamp with the release announcement. I use the No Man’s Sky wiki for that.

  5. Use DepotDownloader to download that manifest. Move the files somewhere memorable (like C:\).
    depotdownloader -app 275850 -depot 275851 -manifest 4186508802612155038

  6. Launch Binaries\NMS.exe. First launch could take a while due to antivirus, shader compile, etc.

TODO:

  • Controller support? I swear that I got this working once.

Bugs:

  • Don’t alt-tab in fullscreen mode!

  • Before you land, there’s no indication about whether the game will use a launchpad or not (saving launch thruster fuel on take off). Oddly, you can see in 1.00 PS4 footage that there is an indicator…

Tricks:

  • Money: get Plasma Launcher, camp out minor settlements, destroy sentinels, sell Neutrino Modules.

  • Save scum to get desired outcomes.

  • Get upgraded Atlas Pass for free stuff: v1 from quests, v2 and v3 from manufacturing facilities.

    • Find manufacturing facilities with beacons.

Other Versions#

1.30:

  • Running the binary will launch the steam game, so you need to install over that .

  • Some shaders don’t compile on modern gpus so you’ll be left with black objects.

  • First launch takes 1-2 minutes to compiles shaders.