I had still most of my adventure in The Cursed expedition ahead of me. Things would start to get downright insane. I’d even find myself hiding underground for a bit of the remainder of the adventure!

Every time I'd jump through the portal to the next region of space the first view of the planet, I was arriving at was always insane looking. I somewhat hated having to wait about thirty seconds before I could move wondering what kind of insanity I would be walking into next.

I ended up finishing off a couple of milestones on my next planet before heading back into space to head to the station to pick up another inventory slot along with the gate to it. I then did a scan of the planets in the system looking for any of them that had bones I could get from burial sites.

I had no idea at the time the planet I was about to land on was going to be a total nightmare. As the barrier between reality started to get beat down on this planet things were just rather strange. Not only was I constantly getting spammed with incoming extreme storms. Every couple of steps it would either be day or night time.

That ended up making this plant quite challenging from a visual standpoint to move around on. My screen was just flicking back and forth between all of these things. Along with that usual haze, the screen starts getting what might as well be called the sanity bar and gets lower and lower.

At one point I just started digging and staying underground as much as possible. I knew there was a milestone that required you to travel underground for a certain length. When I first noticed that milestone, I thought it was kind of funny. I had no idea I'd be earning it as a strategy for survival on the insane planet I found myself now on.

You could say I was tunneling underground like some kind of mole rat looking for bones and you would be right. I’m just glad I was able to keep recharging my terrain manipulator to keep tunneling. Sometimes I'd get hit with rays of sunlight as I popped out on the side of a hill to readjust my tunneling tool before digging down into another hole. Leaving tunnels everywhere I went.

While I could have made things a little easier on myself by drinking another elixir to try and stabilize reality. I found myself yet again quite low on crafting supplies. I felt no matter how strange it was to work on a few milestones like this at once it was. It was well worth it.

There however came a point where I needed to go back into the light. The same planet I had been fighting for survival on also had storm crystals that would spawn during extreme storms.

Despite how annoying this planet was and getting killed twice. I managed to do quite a few things on it. At one point I just needed a massive break from the contract of my screen changing so quickly. I jumped into my ship and blasted into space to enjoy things being a bit more peaceful up there before jumping back into the madness once again.

Then it was time for me to craft more elixirs and find the next portal. It was kind of nice not having to spend a bunch of time warping between a bunch of solar systems to get to the next point. I just had to step into a portal and see what my new insanity of reality would be.

At first, it was nice not having to change to different planets in a solar system to get milestones done. This time around I was more or less on every planet the next area had. I was scanning looking for rare creatures on some. While on other planets I was doing battles with Hungering Tendrils.

There would also be some peaceful moments as well during my adventure. One milestone had me looking right up at the sky for sixty seconds. Another one wanted me to float over a deep ocean. Both of these times things were rather peaceful.

I even got to go fishing again. I’ve found this activity to be rather relaxing in this game. Thankfully I was able to catch the fish after making some basic bait that was needed. The fish however did not sell for much.

Usually having enough money is not something I care much about on these expeditions. I however made a bit of a mistake. While traveling in space I got a signal that might have been an explorable derelict freighter and ignored it.

I’d end up paying the price on that one. As I had a milestone that wanted to explore. I also had another milestone that required me to get 400 tainted metals. To buy the location of one costs 5 million. I ended up pulling from the materials I had sent from my main save to this one to cover the cost as I had some high-priced items just in case, I needed to make some money for such an instance as this.

At the very least I love exploring derelict freighters. I also made sure to loot all the living slime I could as that can be refined into runaway mold and then nanites. That stuff ended up being the only reason I even finished off the 4k nanite milestone this time around.

Perhaps the milestone I ended up struggling the most with was killing two corrupted quads. I found a planet that had corrupted sentinels. On it. My biggest issue was my gun just sucked for dealing damage. This is when I wish I had packed some gun mods to send myself for this expedition.

I ended up attempting this one more than once to get the two kills. Mostly due to getting myself killed. I found it interesting that I only ever found them around these resonators which also happened to be the only screenshots I got as I was just too involved in the encounter afterward.

Up till this point any time I'd engage some sentinels for resources I'd just use my cloak to escape. This time around however I kept having to kill the waves till what I needed to spawn would show up.

Like in the past when I knew I was going to deal with a hard encounter. I had dug out a tunnel I could go hide in to recover my shield. That trip did not work this time around. They flat-out shot through the ground killing me.

Needless to say, once I got the two kills I needed on my second attempt. I put up my cloak and started running towards my ship that was parked away. This was one of the milestones I was not sure I'd be finishing or not. With it checked off the rest of the expedition was going to be a cakewalk.

I went through the last portals I needed and even met I guess an “end” boss. It was rather easy to kill. I ended up ignoring till it was dead all the horror adds that were running around me.

Final Thoughts

The Cursed was the final of the redux expeditions from last year. I had a blast running them all. I have no idea what No Man’s Sky has in store for players this year. If they do end up having more expeditions, I might hold off hoping they do short versions of them towards the end of the year again. As it was a rather enjoyable experience.

It’s a shame you can’t just pick and choose to do one whenever you want. I’d love to go run the other ones I've missed over the years at some point. At least I was able to earn some of the rewards from these which were mostly skins, weapons, ships, and things like nanites.

As far as the big reward from The Cursed it ended up being this ship. It’s loaded to the teeth with weapon mods as well. It might end up being my daily driver ship if I ever choose to play on the new main save that I've been using to send and collect resources from these expeditions.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about No Man’s Sky.