No Man's Sky's next major update adds new ships and spooky corrupted planets

No Man's Sky is getting a new update, a mere month and a bit after it got its last one. The 4.2 Interceptor patch, which releases today, brings new enemies, new resources, and a new starship class, which Hello Games says is No Man's Sky's "most varied starship to date". It also makes a few performance and visual tweaks, especially for users in VR.

The update introduces new "corrupted planets," which have fallen prey to "a darkness" that is spreading through the Sentinel horde. "Many fortified worlds have succumbed to corruption, with strange crystals sprouting from the earth and their robot guardians twisted into bizarre new forms," reads the Interceptor update's announcement, inviting you to "explore these purple-hazed worlds to find new buildings, crashed interceptors, secret equipment and more".

Those planets are home to some of the new "huge spider-like enemies" or—and this is not a phrase I was thrilled to read—"their small crab-like children". The patch also introduces plain old corrupted drones, too, who are neither spider- nor crab-like, but are armed with "stealth tech, flamethrower and explosive weaponry".

You'll need to harvest the shards that grow on corrupted planets to fuel your salvaged Sentinel tech. That includes that new starship class—a range of Sentinel Interceptors you'll be able to salvage for your own use—which you pilot from the security of its "unusual vestigial cockpit," another combo of words that makes me slightly uncomfortable.

If you're feeling particularly foolhardy, you could try using one to take on a Sentinel capital ship, which can now be damaged and destroyed. If you manage to pull it off, you'll clear your wanted status and net yourself some high-value rewards. If you don't, you'll be dead and it won't really matter that you didn't get a reward, so it's a win either way.

There are plenty of other little additions, which you read about over at the official page for the No Man's Sky Interceptor update, plus a whole bunch of tweaks and bugfixes. The update goes live today, free on whatever storefront or platform you happen to have No Man's Sky on.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.