With the No Man’s Sky Beyond update, a plethora of new features have been added into this ever-expanding game. Multiplayer was introduced a year ago and has been expanded to include 32 concurrent players on PC. Sadly, console players can only have 8 players on at any time. While we covered this back in 2018, there have been a few new alterations that switch up how you play with others.
To start out, if you want to play with your friends online you can go to the main menu and select “Join Game.” From here you can enter a friend or random explorer’s game if you don’t feel like participating in your own server. Alternatively, you can load up your game and then head to the menu section.
From here go to Options and then click on Network & Voice to bring up the multiplayer menu for No Man’s Sky. In this tab, you can alter your online settings as well as invite your friends and random players near you. However, unless you’re in the Nexus – we’ll get to that in a moment – you won’t have people around you. It’s a big universe and finding other players is still tricky.
Players can also run into each other in the world, which is always a nice treat. This is again rare, but if you see another space explorer running around that’s another person. Where you have a better chance of seeing users is on the Nexus. This floating space station acts as a massive social hub for up to 16 players. While you have to jump through a few hoops to unlock it, I’ve had more success finding others in this base.
Finally, you can always visit other player’s bases via a portal in the Nexus. This lets you warp to someone’s creation and explore what they’ve made. It’s a nice way to feel more connected to the world. With all these new multiplayer features we definitely suggest exploring the universe with others. It can get pretty lonely out there, especially when you can barely understand the aliens.