It’s the day after Christmas, PTU is humming along, and Luminalia’s 12 days of gifts are done, They were pretty amazing.

If you missed it, go get them! If you don’t have an account, use this link to get a referral bonus (I’ve already got my referral bonus Argo Cargo so no pressure)! You have till January 10th to grab them all. They’ll sit in your hangar forever and if you hop in one day for a free fly or get nuts and buy a starter package, they’ll be there wand waiting in your inventory.

PTU and the Christmas break

The week before Christmas, the PTU (Persistent Test Universe where we’re testing/playing 3.18) was in some rough shape stability wise. It’s gotten a decent bit better since my last post but there are still, in my opinion, some pretty big issues. CIG is on break, I think, until after the first of the year. But I’m not 100% sure. They worked super hard that week to get it more reliable though. I’m hopeful they’re getting some much needed time off.

I’m more reliably able to log into the PTU and get into a sever. That was a big barrier for a lot of folx. Once I’m in though here are some of my biggest issues:

  • Ship resetting to default on claim
    • Anything you equipped (paints, QT drive, etc) vanishes
  • Ship storing is hit or miss
  • Equipped armor/items greyed out as if they’re not really there
  • Falling through elevator floors
  • Can’t change key components on my Cutter
  • Can’t get mercenary missions to spawn

The biggest issues out of those to me are inventory, ship claim and storing. Elevator floors somehow are fixed on an account reset. I’m not sure what that’s about. There are bunch of other little bits of polish but those are the things I’d like to see fixed before they even consider a live release. But we’re still in Wave 1.

Despite those things, I’ve been able to try out a few of the new content still.

I learned that I am terrible at cart racing. I might need to hook up a controller or something.

It’s got sick jumps!
Spent a lot of time like this

Continuing with races, I tried (but didn’t finish) one of the ship races. PRO-TIP: Don’t try and do this in an MSR.

Bonus to that, though… I was able to try out body retrieval and got to see the new soft death mechanic first hand. When I re-spawned after slamming into that wall, I came back in my cutter to get my gear and found the husk of the MSR there still.

You can even go inside it! It’s a little dark, but in that first screenshot you can see components that I’m betting you’ll be able to salvage at some point in the future. The salvage game loop is just hull scraping right now.

Even though I haven’t had any luck getting and unlocking mercenary missions, I was able to do one of the new Orison mission when a friend shared it with me. Got real big siege memories from it. Only now, you can fly out to where the mission is located instead of taking a half hour tram right. Which is good because the trespassing timer, even at 15 minutes, on those platforms would make you a criminal because you couldn’t get out in time.

I’ve done a good bit more salvage. It’s a super chill loop for me. I got curious with the addition of Cargo Grids, if the Mule had the ability to haul a box and it does! I didn’t read in any patch notes that this was part of the cargo refactor so it was a pleasant surprise. I even got a fair bit of karma on the subreddit for it. The front forks don’t do anything still. I bet that’s going to come with the addition of ship based tractors maybe?

And if you were curious, the Mule fits in the back of the Vulture. But that’s about all you’re going to get in there.

Hope your Christmas was good! And if you don’t celebrate, I hope your weekend was good! We’re entering this weird juncture of the week between Christmas and the New Year that seems to take forever but also passes in a blink of an eye. I hope it’s chill. And I hope your new year is better than the last. Thanks for reading!

XOXOXO and Fly safe,
NotAnNPC