Game mode

[Cmdo.Delta]

Hello there,
Having a few questions about the game...

When it was first released, tried it with a friend who bought it and it was like missions only and we were losing everything on extraction and missions were real time based.

I read that now, it's ingame time and there is a persistent world which sounds awesome. What I'm confused about is: can i use the same character on both missions and persistent world? And if yes, what kind of rewards do we get from missions that carry to persistent world? Cuz most people seemed to say there were 2 separate game modes and some others seemed to say both were connected so I'm incredibly confused ahha.

Thanks folk for help!

[william_es]

Yes, you can use the same character. Even at the _same_ time. The experience gained, talents and tech recipes unlocked carry over.

You could have your character standing in an open world, and then choose return to character select. This puts you back at the character select screen. There you could start a timed mod mission if you wanted.

If you get bored with the timed missions, use return to character selection to go back to the orbital screen. You could then go back to your open world. You would resume where you left off, directly where your character was standing.

It's literally possible to bounce back and forth as you want. As I said at the top, your exp levels, talents, and tech carry over from session to session.

I know this sounds confusing, but once you understand it, you aren't forced in to completing missions. You can take breaks, helps prevent burnout.

As for rewards from missions, those include mainly exotics. Any exotics you manage to find can be sent back up to orbit. You can also ship up tamed creatures, and then bring them down to another map. I plan to go to styx soon to tame a few tuskers, and bring them back to another map. Just for giggles.

NOTHING you make in a missions can be survive being sent to orbit. Gets automatically deleted with the exception of workshop purchased items (only unopened packs of things like seeds or arrows).

Also some missions give you special recipe unlocks. Once you complete the mission, they can be unlocked in the tech menu. Some of these alternate recipes are pretty good, in my opinion, like the poison weaponry you can make from caveworm body parts. Other recipes include target dummies, and the ability to make traps and spiked defenses from scorpion body parts. There are others. Just look through the mission tree. There's a special icon for any mission with recipe unlocks.

[Remedial Tester]

Some of confusion also comes from how synonyms they can be at times. Open world formally doesn't have missions, it has operations. What are operations? Missions done in open world, so they don't have the return to your drop-ship objective at the end to complete it, they just end then and there, freeing the player to do another one. And completing one completes the other, so they are somewhat connected.

[william_es]

Yeah, the game has changed greatly from what existed at launch. There's a lot of outdated information out there too. Stuff that has changed, mutated, been outdated, updated, upgraded, etc.

[Cmdo.Delta]

Oh nice! Thanks for the big in depth explanation william. Found out about operations vs missions a hour after making this post but the information I gathered was never as complete as yours. Hopefully, this will help others to figure out better how the game evolved during all this time.

I also spotted they are selling a companion pack. I read that we can tame animals. Are companions from the pack like tamed animals but with different species that cannot be found in the wild? And what happens if a companion dies in open world? And what if he dies during a mission? Can you get it back or is it dead forever? And what's the use of companions? Can they carry stuff, fight or be used as mount like in many other games? Can we equip them with armors or level them up?

Again, thanks for taking time to reply. The game seems to have grown so much greater and more casual friendly with the permanent base in open world and everything. Glad devs worked so hard on it.

[william_es]

Originally posted by Cmdo.Delta:

I also spotted they are selling a companion pack. I read that we can tame animals. Are companions from the pack like tamed animals but with different species that cannot be found in the wild?

Yes, there are earth dogs, cats, chicken, cows, etc. Currently they do not spawn anywhere on the maps. They come exclusively from the workshop.

They come frozen in pods, and you can ship them down via pod. You place them on the ground, activate them, and out pops a baby animal. Then they grow up normally.

Originally posted by Cmdo.Delta:

And what happens if a companion dies in open world? And what if he dies during a mission? Can you get it back or is it dead forever? And what's the use of companions? Can they carry stuff, fight or be used as mount like in many other games? Can we equip them with armors or level them up?

They can die. And once dead, they're gone. Guard your mounts. I try not to leave them unattended. I carry enough parts to build a small house (1 X 1 or 1 X 2) and I park mounts inside them.

The pets, I have mixed feelings on. There really isn't a sophisticated method for controlling them. I consider them mostly decorations. Though I read posts about people taming packs of wolves and hyenas. I just don't see the point.

Mounts have saddles, not sure the pets have anything like armor. I haven't seen any blueprints for things like that.

I haven't ordered any of the dogs or cats, but I assume they have skill trees like all the other animals do. The cows and chickens I have ordered do in fact have skill trees.

Originally posted by Cmdo.Delta:

Again, thanks for taking time to reply. The game seems to have grown so much greater and more casual friendly with the permanent base in open world and everything. Glad devs worked so hard on it.

You're very welcome.

Yeah, the dev team behind this game are crazy busy. I've worked with dev teams before, and the punch list of stuff they knock out is crazy every week. The patch notes they put out seem to be literal output from some kind of project management software. Everything in the patch notes from each update is a list of things assigned to specific people and finished on that update. They break up huge chunks of work into specific steps. And they just keep slogging forward week and week after week.

[Cmdo.Delta]

Really appreciate time you took answering. Will try to figure out if my computer can run it and then decide if I buy and which packs. Happy holidays to you and all best for new year to you and your family! :)
And Good to see this game as such nice people in its community!

[Cmdo.Delta]

Just bought the base game.. Will seek for DLCs later if I enjoy the game. Thanks again very very much for your time sir William :) have a great one!