Normal or Survival?

[Good Tooth]

I'm kinda new i started Survival like a week ago but i here there are more players on normal. so should i switch if i wanna see others more often?

[japp_02]

I think MP has nothing to do with your game mode, but staters are adviced to play Normal first. What's important is to set the right MP options.

[Suzaku]

For new players, I'd highly suggest going in on normal mode. Survival mode will increase the likelihood of landing on planets with hostile sentinels and hazardous conditions, and you'll be burning through your defenses and resources much quicker than on normal. Damage taken is apparently cranked up (the only damage I've taken so far was a 10-foot fall that nearly took out all of my shields), and your environmental protection and life support drains at a staggering rate. It's just too much for players that don't know what they're getting into.

Basically, since you don't know what you're doing since you're new, you should go with normal mode, and decide later if you want to make a second file on survival.

[PocketYoda]

Normal.. Survival is dumb..

[🐾]

If you want easy mode with no challenge or difficulty, then normal.

[Age]

I'd advise Tedium Helper for Permadeath and play Permadeath, which the former mod will make it less tedious, because you'll be forced to "RECHARGED! RECHARGED! RECHARGED!" over and over again much faster, right now I'm trying to suffer through this.

Survival mode sucks. Don't do it unmodded. Not worth it. Normal is simple, as if Combat ACTUALLY CHANGES between difficulties... (It doesnt, except slightly increased damage take) I doubt these 'survival mode' people barely compare and enjoy the torture of constant suit bickering about less resistance to weather conditions and life support.

[Mein Schweg]

normal = breeze thru the game with mortality being challenged only by sheer stupidity.

survival = sorta same stupidity, but every planet has some completely deniable environmental hazard, and small crabs so small that you can't even see them through the grass can 2 hit your ass

soo..... yea........... either way ur fked.

[The Faceless Man]

Always choose Survival.

Normal is basically a sandbox environment. Designed for anti-social casuals who are too soft and fragile to handle any kind of loss whatsoever. They're responsible for slowly degrading the "game" part of video games.

Permadeath is just a "Reach the galactic core before u die" game mode. Good to have as a separate save.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

If you made it through the finding and repairing your ship part, the really hard part is over. The only downside of survival is you can killed via some glitch and lose your inventory.

The first 30 minutes to an hour takes a lot of planning and staying calm, but after that it is very similar to the normal game. You do run into more conflict rich situations but once you figure out you can run- not really a problem.

[jonnin]

yea play survival throw-away game, see if you like it. Once you get hyperdrive, stop and go back to normal, because after that its just more resource costs. If you want to go back to hard, you can, /shrug...

[redbeard]

ignore MP as it is a waste of time for NMS, practice on normal mode and once you are comfortable in what you are doing, then switch it up to permadeath!!! survival mode is also just as worthless as MP

[DedZedNub]

By now, after all these varied answers you are probably wondering why you asked. I think I'd check the No Man's Sky Wiki for the descriptions of the different Game Modes and decide for myself if I were you.

https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/Game_mode

In Survival or Permadeath, which are supposedly the same difficulty except for whether or not you can continue after death or not, you will not only find that you take more damage, EVEN FROM FALLING, but that on average, more of the planetary environments are hostile.

By Hostile, I mean the Storms, the Sentinels, the fauna and flora.

But then you also will have more of a grind. Resources, on average, are less plentiful on Survival versus Normal. Plus the DEATH PENALTY is much more severe. In Normal, you can get your backpack inventory back by going to your grave marker and picking it up. But, in Survival, you lose everything that was in your inventory. You even lose the inventory on your ship if you die on your ship, and the ship now needs major repairs, just as if you were starting up a new game in Normal.

Here's the difficult decision:

1) Survival not only increases difficulty, it increases grind. Resources harder to find, death penalty makes you lose all inventory.

2) You will have to be sure you can do well in all modes of fighting. See, the risk isn't only with the animals, it is with the planetary atmospheres which are more likely in a similar galaxy to be on average more hostile, and the Pirates will be more likely, hit you harder if they hit you, and you'll have to worry about losing your ship and thus inventory and crash landing on a planet with a damaged ship. See the grind. On Normal, your ship is basically okay and not requiring repair, and you have your inventory intact.

So, you have more grind, more risk, loss of inventory possible in all modes, more hostile worlds, more damage, worse death penalty, more likely that Sentinels on each planet will be automatically hostile even when you do nothing.

Now Normal has most of these risks on a more hostile planet or system. But Survival increases the percentage and likelihood of this being the case, so a more hostile galaxy.

Therefore, the problem isn't just one of increasing difficulty and so challenge. It also increases the things you don't really care so much to increase, the basic grind loop, the average hostility loop, the death penalty, and these then intertwine as a consequence.

-----

So you can see that knowing basically how Normal works, at least until you have experienced Pirates, a Hostile Planet with Hostile Storms and Automatically Hostile Sentinels, had a freighter, and seen all types of vehicle battles -- really might be a good idea.

If you want to try Survival, cool. But I'd wait on Permadeath, until you have at least taken Survival thru a good 15-13 hours.

I mean some YouTubers got killed in Permadeath from a 10 foot fall. Now, they might have also not seen some flora and got 1-2 shotted as they fell. But the point is, all damage and all risk is up. Not just Pirates, not just fewer resources, not just harder environments. Higher Death Penalty, which then needs repair to ship, needs to figure out your new crash landed planet, needs to get resources. So that's a lot like temporarily at square one again, like at start of Normal.

Not saying don't do it. I have not yet tried it. But, if so, have some experience of the game systems, and start off with Survival (which is just Permadeath difficulty with some back-up saves, with still a tougher death penalty, and game.

IMHO and all that.

Personally, I"m going to start up a parallel game in Survival, once I get my freighter and the starting quest line done. Probably another 20 hours more for me, for a total of about 45, but I am very cautious and explore a lot.

But I'll keep my normal save also, and just play the campaign I'm in the mood for. You can have, it seems, a Normal Campaign and a separate Survivor Campaign going, so why not.

[DarkEternal]

Survival and Permadeath are basically for the achievements. Or that added challenge after getting to the center of the galaxy in Normal mode.
Just starting out? Play Normal. It's a much better experience for beginners and gives you the opportunity to learn the game. On Survival, you're going nuts just trying to survive the added difficulty, so you tend to overlook certain things that could be beneficial.

[PocketYoda]

There is a serious divide in gaming these days.. It went from Console vs PC morons to Casual vs tryhard morons..

Its like humans just cannot get on, time for them to be wiped out imo.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by DanteYoda:

There is a serious divide in gaming these days.. It went from Console vs PC morons to Casual vs tryhard morons..

Its like humans just cannot get on, time for them to be wiped out imo.

"As long as there are two people on this Earth, somebody is gonna want somebody dead."

[PocketYoda]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Originally posted by DanteYoda:

There is a serious divide in gaming these days.. It went from Console vs PC morons to Casual vs tryhard morons..

Its like humans just cannot get on, time for them to be wiped out imo.

"As long as there are two people on this Earth, somebody is gonna want somebody dead."

Yep lets hope we all go the way of the dino.