Sentinel levels on planets in Survival Mode

[nannerpuss]

Is it possible to find Low/None Sentinel status on planets in Survival mode? I know in Normal mode I found a few Lush/Perfect planets that also had a Sentinel status of "Non-existent" or very rare patrol levels, but Survival feels like every planet is at least "frequent" or higher with Sentinels checking on you. Dunno how much more time I should waste looking for a better base planet.

[knighttemplar1960]

Yes it is. Survival, normal, custom, and creative are all the same mode since the Waypoint expansion. Only permadeath is a separate mode now (and they still exist in permadeath. I just found one yesterday).

[The Cog (O.T.H.G.)]

If you want a planet with little to rare Sentinel presence, you should be looking for Paradise planets. Lush and perfect planets aren't the same as Paradise planets.

[nannerpuss]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Yes it is. Survival, normal, custom, and creative are all the same mode since the Waypoint expansion. Only permadeath is a separate mode now (and they still exist in permadeath. I just found one yesterday).

Are you saying Survival is the same as Normal? Because if so, I can assure you that is incorrect. Survival makes Normal look like Story or Casual and has been absolutely wrecking me the first time I attempt anything against Sentinels or Pirates for the first time off Normal mode. And you lose everything when you die, so that was fun to learn too.

[nannerpuss]

Originally posted by OTH.Incognito:

If you want a planet with little to rare Sentinel presence, you should be looking for Paradise planets. Lush and perfect planets aren't the same as Paradise planets.

So Paradise planets do exist in Survival? I haven't found one yet, but I have found several No Weather bountiful type planets... only to have Aggressive Sentinels be the type. But I will keep looking.

[Felis_Exploria]

I have been playing survival mode (or custom with on foot combat cranked up) for over a year now and I have yet to see a Paradise planet with these settings. Plenty of lush, but sentinels are present on every planet. At the very start of Waypoint, I had started with a low on foot combat setting (testing to see which setting turned off pirates and raids). When I changed the on foot combat setting to a higher setting, my Paradise planet became populated with sentinels. So, if there are actual Paradise planets on survival settings, they are very very very rare.

[UncreativelyNamed]

I have never played the "official" survival mode, preferring the custom mode with almost all of the settings set to the hardest possible, and I still find plenty of sentinel-free planets of all types. Maybe try adjusting your settings so it's a custom game instead of the survival preset?

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by nannerpuss:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Yes it is. Survival, normal, custom, and creative are all the same mode since the Waypoint expansion. Only permadeath is a separate mode now (and they still exist in permadeath. I just found one yesterday).

Are you saying Survival is the same as Normal? Because if so, I can assure you that is incorrect. Survival makes Normal look like Story or Casual and has been absolutely wrecking me the first time I attempt anything against Sentinels or Pirates for the first time off Normal mode. And you lose everything when you die, so that was fun to learn too.

No, its not the same. Each player experiences the game with the difficulty level they have set but players that are in multiplayer all play in the same instance no matter their difficulty settings, except for permadeath.

So a Survival player can be in the Anomaly with a Creative player and the Creative player can have made or bought what ever they want for free and drop it on the Survival player in the anomaly with no consuquences.

Before Waypoint all difficult settings played exclusively with other players with the same difficulty levels and each difficulty level had its own discovery service that was separate from all the other difficulty settings. Creative, Normal, and Survival were all merged into the same database (now known as Custom) with the Waypoint expansion. Only permadeath retained its unique discovery service and exclusive play with other permadeath players.

Edit: I've been playing exclusively permadeath for several years now. Its no different than survival except instead of losing your inventory your entire save gets wiped.

[The Cog (O.T.H.G.)]

Originally posted by nannerpuss:

Originally posted by OTH.Incognito:

If you want a planet with little to rare Sentinel presence, you should be looking for Paradise planets. Lush and perfect planets aren't the same as Paradise planets.

So Paradise planets do exist in Survival? I haven't found one yet, but I have found several No Weather bountiful type planets... only to have Aggressive Sentinels be the type. But I will keep looking.

Unless Survival (one stage below Permadeath) was made to be difficult for some reason (again, one step below Permadeath) then I don't know. I am playing a Permadeath save as a Pirate right now. I built my base on a Paradise planet in an "E" outlaw system after I found the planet, and deleted my base I had built in an unpopulated "M" system where I also found a paradise planet. "E" is an Emeril system, and "M" is a Cadmium system. I didn't make any adjustments to my difficulty settings when I made the save, so maybe that is why? I just left them as the default Permadeath settings.

[FREEZED]

there is no much need to land after you get off from planet, you will land just for mission objectives and rest can be done just with ship, so you shoot all rocks and trees with ship to collect basic materials, then you can shoot freighter cargo pods and get some other materials. oxygen , hydrogen , iron from shooting with ship and cobolt from freighters, and when you find 1st outlaw system things gets really easy as you can make money and nanites and mods and materials there.
so avoiding doing something on planets makes sentinels invalid.

[The Cog (O.T.H.G.)]

Originally posted by FREEZED:

there is no much need to land after you get off from planet, you will land just for mission objectives and rest can be done just with ship, so you shoot all rocks and trees with ship to collect basic materials, then you can shoot freighter cargo pods and get some other materials. oxygen , hydrogen , iron from shooting with ship and cobolt from freighters, and when you find 1st outlaw system things gets really easy as you can make money and nanites and mods and materials there.
so avoiding doing something on planets makes sentinels invalid.

No offence intended partner, but the question wasn't "how do you avoid Sentinel activity on planets", they wanted to know if there were Sentinel free planets.

Still, advice is advice I suppose.

Just wanted to point that out, since it seems apparent to me that some in the community like to give game play advice a lot of the time and completely ignore the point of the thread.

Again, no offence intended, just wanted to speak my piece. Your opinion and comment are appreciated though!

[Felis_Exploria]

Originally posted by OTH.Incognito:

Originally posted by nannerpuss:

So Paradise planets do exist in Survival? I haven't found one yet, but I have found several No Weather bountiful type planets... only to have Aggressive Sentinels be the type. But I will keep looking.

Unless Survival (one stage below Permadeath) was made to be difficult for some reason (again, one step below Permadeath) then I don't know. I am playing a Permadeath save as a Pirate right now. I built my base on a Paradise planet in an "E" outlaw system after I found the planet, and deleted my base I had built in an unpopulated "M" system where I also found a paradise planet. "E" is an Emeril system, and "M" is a Cadmium system. I didn't make any adjustments to my difficulty settings when I made the save, so maybe that is why? I just left them as the default Permadeath settings.

With the start of waypoint, any difficulty can be used with permadeath settings. The default on a custom build is normal difficulty. When you choose permadeath, some of the easiest settings are no longer available, but difficulty levels are not increased. So, if you chose custom and only changed the permadeath settings, it is less difficult than survival. They way around this is to choose survival, then choose permadeath in the settings or use custom and adjust difficulty settings in addition to permadeath.

[The Cog (O.T.H.G.)]

I was not aware of that. I will have to check that out. Thanks for the heads up, imma go start a new PD game lol.

[The Cog (O.T.H.G.)]

Okay so I did some checking online and found a bit of information in an article. Apparently in Survival mode, Paradise planets are not actually named Paradise planets. They are the rainy, temperate, flourishing, etc. planets. So you need to be looking for those planets in "F" and "G" systems with numbers between 4 and 6 (don't quote me please) as 0 is hot systems and 10 is cold systems. It has been my experience though, that every planet will have some form of sentinel activity regardless of what they say. Some will be hostile, some will ignore you as long as you behave, some of them have infrequent and rare patrols; those are usually planets where sentinels are mostly found guarding their facilities.

And with that, I have deleted my survival pd save (sorry, I am just not that extreme >.<) and am going back to my custom game of pd.

I do hope you find a planet that you like though. Good luck!

[nannerpuss]

Originally posted by OTH.Incognito:

Okay so I did some checking online and found a bit of information in an article. Apparently in Survival mode, Paradise planets are not actually named Paradise planets. They are the rainy, temperate, flourishing, etc. planets. So you need to be looking for those planets in "F" and "G" systems with numbers between 4 and 6 (don't quote me please) as 0 is hot systems and 10 is cold systems. It has been my experience though, that every planet will have some form of sentinel activity regardless of what they say. Some will be hostile, some will ignore you as long as you behave, some of them have infrequent and rare patrols; those are usually planets where sentinels are mostly found guarding their facilities.

And with that, I have deleted my survival pd save (sorry, I am just not that extreme >.<) and am going back to my custom game of pd.

I do hope you find a planet that you like though. Good luck!

This makes sense and jives with what I've seen and spent most of the weekend testing. However, the Sentinel activity seems to never go below "Regular" and actually seems to change/increase AFTER your initial discover/first visit to a planet. Example: if you find a rare No Weather planet in Rainy/Flourishing/Temperate/Etc., your first landing/exit from ship will not spawn a Sentinel on top of you even if the planet has a "Frequent" or "Attentive" patrol policy. However, the next time you load in the planet (leave system or teleport and return and land/load environment) the Sentinels will behave as they are intended, which is always Regular Patrols or higher on Survival. I don't know if this is intended in the design of the game as a way to ensure Survival Mode is that much harder and unpredictable or what. I have only noticed this on the "best" planets, so it feels like it's a difficulty modifier but might just be completely random and coincidence over my small sample size (about 10 occurrences).

Basically, the sparse "best" planets that get a really good RNG roll for the player seem to turn up the difficulty if a player returns to a system or does some indication of base making. Just a theory though.

Also, one thing that is a fact: there's an in-game achievement for "Most Perfect Planet" discovery and that popped after I landed and knew the planet was the best I'll find after an hour of hopping and scanning. So if you get that achievement after landing and wondering if this is the spot - yeah, it is. Sadly it only pops once, of course.

[The Cog (O.T.H.G.)]

Those notifications are actually always going to change. The perfect planet notification means it is the most perfect you have found, so far. I have had that hit a few times from my system scans on the freighter. If you check your discoveries you will find those. They do change often though. Heaviest flying life form for example changes from time to time when you find something "heavier" then the last. So don't give up, you will probably encounter another "perfect" planet.

Sorry, forgot something. As far as sentinels, I don't know what to say. I only played a survival version of the game before they changed the game options, back then it was just normal, survival and permadeath. I only did that pd to finish out my game achievements then never looked back. So honestly I really have no experience in that particular subject area. Sorry, I wish I could have been more helpful.