How to Restart the Game in ‘No Man’s Sky’

No Man's Sky

(Hello Games)

One of the most interesting aspects of No Man’s Sky is that the game has a lot of random elements that can drastically affect how to play. Since No Man’s Sky randomly drops you onto a planet at the very beginning, this could determine how difficult your early sessions with play out. There’s a lot of dangerous elements to exploring the various planets, which means you have a chance to start out on one that could be difficult for new players. These elements include the air being toxic, high levels of radiation, extreme weather, hostile alien life forms, or just difficult terrain to navigate with your early equipment.

If you are on PC and using Steam it will take a few more steps than if you are playing on PS4. The biggest problem with deleting save files on Steam is that they are uploaded to the Steam Cloud, so you will need to go in and disable that first. Just scroll down to your game, right click on it, and go all the way down to “Properties.” Move to the update tab and uncheck the box marked “Enable Steam Cloud Sync for No Man’s Sky.”

What we are looking for is something called “Sync Conflict,” as that will make it so you can start your game over fresh without the files being automatically downloaded from Cloud once the game starts. Exit completely out of Steam and go to your Steam folder in your applications section. From here you will need to find No Man’s Sky and delete all of the files labeled C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames\NMS.

You will then need to delete the remotecache.vd in the No Man’s Sky section. From here, open up Steam and enable Steam Cloud on No Man’s Sky. You should get a message stating “Sync Conflict,” which means the Cloud service cannot locate any save files and thus cannot back them up. This should allow you to restart your game and the error will go away once you have an in-game save.

Now there is no way to directly restart No Man’s Sky through the game itself on PS4, so you will need to exit out of the title and go to your home screen. I If you are on Sony’s console, there are a few more steps if you want to start over in No Man’s Sky. Once you are on the home screen go all the way over to the right until you hit Settings and hit select. From here go to Application Saved Data Management and hit the first option labeled “Saved Data in System Storage.”

You will then be presented with three options to choose from, upload, copy, and delete. Selected delete and you will be brought over to your system’s saved date storage, which will allow you to look through the various saved data from all your games and applications. Scroll all the way down to No Man’s Sky and delete the files there, then exit back to the home menu. Make sure to be careful when deleting your saved data, as the last thing you want to do is erase your history on the wrong game.

After this, you will be good to restart No Man’s Sky and embark on a fresh adventure. Deleting the saved data will not require you to reinstall No Man’s Sky or any of the updates, so you can jump into the action right after you’re done. If you start out on a hostile planet and are really struggling to leave, this can be a great way to ease the burden of space travel. In a game full of terrifying aliens and ruthless space pirates, having an early game advantage over your enemies is critical.