Storyline (Atlas)

The subject of this article is from the Atlas Rises update.
The information from this article is up-to-date as of 23 July, 2018.

This article is about the Atlas Rises version of the Storyline. For the current version, see Storyline.

The Storyline provides a basic framework for No Man's Sky.

Summary

The main storyline of No Man's Sky, also known as the Artemis Path, was added as a part of the Atlas Rises update, and involves the Player character uncovering the mysteries of Artemis and the Fourth Race, as well as the true nature of the Atlas, the portal, and the universe of the game as a whole.

The Waking Titan ARG was a prequel to the storyline.

Characters

• Artemis
• Apollo
• -null-
• Nada
• Polo

Walkthrough

Alone Amidst the Stars

This questline is triggered early in the game, once you have managed to fix your starting ship and leave your first planet.

While in space, you will receive a message from Artemis, asking for help. They will request you to build three Signal Boosters in different locations in order to triangulate your position. This will reveal the location of a Holo-Terminus where you can contact Artemis. Artemis will ask you to communicate with the local dominant race using a translator, but first you will need to learn four different words from that race to calibrate it. At this point you will also receive the blueprint for Suspension Fluid.

Ghosts in the Machine

As the previous mission ends, you lose contact with Artemis but not before they provide you a frequency for another person named Apollo. Shortly thereafter you seek out a Holo-Terminus by which to contact them, and inform them of Artemis' situation. Apollo is cold at first, and depending on how you identify yourself, as a friend of Artemis or as a Traveller, they will briefly partake in discussions of one's notions of friendship and the nature of Travellers. However, once you cut to the chase and explain that Artemis is in trouble, they will request you upload your logs to them. Once you do so, Apollo observes that the noises in the logs sound similar to the echoes of Sentinel events, albeit inverted.

Upon this observation, they suspect that this may be a lead into the mysterious source of the Sentinels, and an opportunity to profit from selling this information to the Vy'keen...As well as a means to save Artemis, of course! As you agree to work with Apollo on this, they then guide you to one of their contacts to settle into a habitable base and from here the missions briefly trail off into guiding you on staffing your base and gathering Nanite Clusters from Abandoned Buildings to purchase tech upgrades from Blueprint Traders, preparing you for the road ahead.

Once you've sufficiently developed your base and gathered Nanites, Apollo will contact you again, telling you that you'll be raiding a Korvax factory to draw out the Sentinels, should you feel prepared. If you happen upon information about the Sentinels from the Factory's terminal, all the better, but either way, drawing out the Sentinels will provide the information desired.

A Leap in the Dark

After attacking the Korvax Factory and drawing out the Sentinels, Apollo notes countless signal flares occurred as the Sentinels arrived. These flares are then linked to energy streams that moved from monolith to monolith, leading Apollo to tell you to go and visit three monoliths.

As you visit each monolith, you begin to learn more about the portals and the means to activate them, meanwhile the Sentinels appear to be tracking your activity, which may in turn lead to a brief skirmish with them. After visiting three monoliths, you are guided to a portal, upon which you will take your first steps between realities, and into an ever deepening mystery.

As you find yourself back in a stable reality, you will note that you have arrived on a strange new world apart from your ship. You are then guided to return to your ship and repair some light damage to it. As you enter your cockpit once more, you reflect on what led you to step through the portal to begin with, only to notice a signal coming from the very planet you're on...With an eerily familiar message. Once you reach the signal's source, you come to an unsettling discovery...

The First Traveller

-null- will recommend that you craft a Mind Arc to help Artemis. In order to do that, you will need to complete the Scientist quests to learn the recipes for Living Glass and Circuit Board. (Getting the recipes for Harvestable Plants from your Farmer (NPC) can help you get the required resources for this quest.) After using the Mind Arc on Artemis, you will be contacted by Polo while in space to come aboard the Space Anomaly. There, you will need to decide whether to upload Artemis' conscience to a subsimulation or to kill them as an act of mercy. If you choose to kill Artemis, they will thank you before disappearing and Nada and Polo will assure you that you did the right thing.

Patterns in Time

-null- will ask you to speak to a Mercenaries Guild representative in a Vy'keen system in order to learn more about the Atlas, the Sentinels and the Travelers. The guild rep will ask you to complete three guild missions before answering your question. After talking to them, you will need to travel to a Korvax system in order to talk to an Explorers Guild representative, and after that, to a Gek system to meet a Merchants Guild representative, again requiring three guild missions each

(NOTE 1: if you get stuck on this part, make sure to look at the guide and to have patterns in time selected as your quest so you know what system to view the mission board)

(NOTE 2: the missions must be turned in while you are in the required system; it is possible to accept and complete the missions in other systems and still have them count toward the three mission total if they are associated with the appropriate Guild).

Talking to the Merchants' rep will reveal the truth behind the end of the First Spawn Gek. You will be contacted by -null- to tell them what you learned.

16/16

After talking to -null-, Apollo will contact you in the same Holo-Terminus. They will say that they are in the same location as you, but can't see you. You will be asked to travel to a nearby crashed ship, which gives you a set of portal glyphs and reveal a portal location. After finding, activating and entering a portal, you will be teleported to outer space for a few seconds, and then to an Atlas Interface. The Atlas will tell you the truth: that the universe is a simulation and there are 16 minutes left before the Atlas is deactivated and dies. After some interactions, you will be teleported back to a space station, and your exosuit AI will say "Atlas Suit activated". A dialogue with your exosuit is triggered once you enter your spaceship.

The Purge

You tell Nada and Polo what you discovered in the Atlas Interface, and then you will activate a Holo-Terminus to communicate with the other Travellers, but they won't respond. Then, the Atlas will ask you to travel to the centre of the Galaxy. After warping to another system, Nada will contact you and warp the Space Anomaly to your system. Upon leaving the anomaly, you will be presented with options to finish this storyline, to complete the Atlas Path, or go back to exploring freely.

Provided that you choose to complete the story, you will need to warp to 16 different systems (note: the game will tell you to travel to the centre, but warping in any direction will count towards the mission). While travelling, you may receive messages from Apollo and -null-. Then, a Portal location will be revealed. Activating and entering the portal will take you to an Exotic planet and, after a 16 second countdown, you will be teleported to an Atlas Interface. The Atlas gives the choice to reboot the simulation or remain.

• If you reboot the galaxy, you can choose between a new Lush, Empty, Norm or Harsh galaxy.
• If you choose to stay, you will be reborn in a random planet in your current galaxy, next to a beacon, and your ship will spawn next to Damaged Machinery.

You will also receive the recipe for Remembrance, regardless of your choice.

This is the end of the mission.

Faction Standing

As part of the storyline, you will end up talking to the local dominant race on a planet. To improve this experience, you will need to increase your "standing" with that race. In order to do that, you need to go to the nearest Space Station and go to the Mission hub area. When at the mission hub, you will be given a variety of missions. Some you may need to be of a higher rank to do. There are missions that will have the symbol of the local race and those are the missions you need to do. Complete four Missions to progress in the game.

When you are required to improve your standing with a race rather than a guild, any normal method of gaining Faction reputation for that race will work.

Known Bugs

• In the "Talk to the Guild Representative" quest in "Patterns in Time", if you deliver the guild missions in a different system from the one where you received the quest, your quest log will incorrectly state that you need to talk to the Mission Board NPC in the original system. In this case, you need to open the Galactic Map in the system where you delivered the required missions in order to properly see your next waypoint.
• Because the Atlas Rises update reworked the story by adding the Artemis Path and intertwining it with the entire storyline, players who had already completed the Atlas Path have to do it again. This issue is unaddressed since 2017, and also has gameplay-related consequences because new rewards such as the Star Seed blueprint won't be awarded until player completed the Atlas Path once again.