With all the recent (valid!) chat about Elite Dangerous getting better, let’s not forget the ongoing effort being put into NMS too.
Launching today is The Companions Update which will let players “tame, breed, train and even speak to the creatures they encounter.”
So pretty much your own personal pokemon collection 
All the details on the Companions Update (aka 3.2 Patch) on the No Man’s Sky site:
OMG Tamagochi update! Do want.
Update 3.3, Expeditions , introduces a brand new way to play No Man’s Sky. Start a fresh journey in a brand new game mode , master a unique set of challenges with revitalised mission mechanics , earn exclusive new rewards , visit bustling hub worlds , and much more!
The game that keeps on giving!
It’s just keeps on going…
Get the Normandy added to your NMS fleet! You have just one week to do it
The legendary SSV Normandy SR1 from Mass Effect has appeared in the No Man’s Sky galaxy! Players have until the 31st May to undertake an expedition and add the Normandy SR-1 to their frigate fleet for good.
nope screw that, you have to start a new expedition from scratch, meaning no resources or anything, sure it can be done, but that is way to much effort for that type of game just for one ship.
If I had the game, I would…
This seems like a pretty cool way to get into the game
And you can’t transfer the ship afterwards?
I kinda don’t mind restarting, there has been so many updates since I last played.
So all I’m hearing something something MEW NMS expedition before the 31st of May? And the 30th is Edurance day so somewhere this needs to be wiggled in.
How long does an expedition take? NMS noob here
Honestly not sure, as I have not played any expeditions, but I doubt it, I don’t believe there is any way to transfer a ship to another character, even normally(i.e non expedition characters), never seen such an option. NOW I have not played this game in years, there could have been changes, but as soon as I logged in and saw I had to start from the beginning I noped outa there.
Honestly not sure at all, but the comments on this Steam Discussion suggest a range of anywhere between 5 and 15 hours depending on your level of experience with the game’s mechanics and systems.
The mega-thread on the NMS sub reddit suggests similar times:
I’ve just noticed on the Activity page for the game that @SIGSTART has been playing recently - maybe he has some insights into expeditions for us?
And perhaps at what point you can get the ship
Oooh! I didn’t realise there was interest… Thanks for the prod, guys 
.
Yeah, when Ani let me know that the latest expedition rewards you with the Normandy as a freighter I had to have it.
The fact that you had to start a brand new game was a turn-off, but it turned out not to be as bad as I thought it might be.
As best I can tell, the rewards from expeditions aren’t rolled into your “main” save, but will exist in a separate save. There is still some disagreement among my adventuring party about what exactly will happen when the expedition ends this weekend 
Starting from scratch wasn’t nearly as painful as I thought it would be because the expedition milestone rewards help bootstrap you quickly with stacks of resources and money, inventory space, upgrade modules, and a freighter and exocraft.
Some stuff I learned from my experience with Expedition 2 that you might find useful:
Some objectives may be a little less tedious if you have multiple people working on something, but there is nothing really ultra hard or time-consuming. Gaming with my wife has been fun, though 
Regarding how long it will take, I completely understand where this huge variance @GregRedd found comes from—
While I’m not a complete noob, I haven’t been keeping abreast of all the new mechanics added to No Man’s Sky in the past year or two.
That said, as best I can tell there is a slow way and a fast way to unlock the Normandy.
The Normandy is the reward for completing Phase 5 of the expedition. However, I don’t think you have to complete every phase in sequence. You can rush to phase 5, work through it to get the Normandy, then finish the other phases.
If you rush to Phase 5 without completing the rest, I can understand how you might be able to get the Normandy in 5 hours.
There are trade-offs to trying to rush for the Normandy, though. Chiefly, you will not be getting all the suit and ship upgrades, inventory space, etc. that you would be getting by tackling the phases in sequence.
If you want to rush to phase 5, here’s how: Each phase has a rendezvous point. Go into your quest log / expedition screen after reaching the rendezvous point, select the next phase and start tracking the next rendezvous point as your quest objective.
For what it’s worth, I am well over 13 hours in and I’m only starting the second milestone of Phase 5 of the expedition now. Each phase has five milestones, if I recall correctly. To unlock the Normandy you will need to complete all five milestones of Phase 5.
To unlock the full expedition reward (NB: Normandy seems to be a phase reward, not the full expedition reward), you will need to complete all the phases by the end of the weekend.
Get started now! Let me know if you need help and I’ll try and enlist my wife and friend(s) playing to help you out as soon as we’ve finished our expedition!
You will not have to figure everything out from scratch, or even scrounge around for rare resources if you don’t want to.
The players who came before you in this expedition have built bases and set down markers at important points of interest.
For example, one base on a radiation planet in a rendezvous system has been set up to extract large quantities of Uranium and has planters set up for easy access to Carbon so you don’t have to deal with sentinels scanning you when you mine plant life and such.
Another base I recently visited has a gas extractor set up to allow you to harvest 7500 Radon whenever it fills up.
This is probably the best part of expeditions and likely the reason Hello Games implemented them — it allows for new ways of community interaction that the “base” No Man’s Sky experience wasn’t meant for.
If memory serves, we spawned on a planet with Indium deposits. You’ll also get rare(r) resources like Indium as mission / milestone rewards.
Feel free to sell rare fossils and other such stuff you are given to help bootstrap your cash, but keep rare resources as I’ve found you sometimes need it to complete milestones like unlocking a rendezvous point.
/cc: @Dragonic @DarthMol @TechThief
Don’t make me but this game, again!
I think if I don’t spend time tonight with Eduro prep, then I might start this.
This week is already tight for gaming time as it is so I don’t think I’ll do the expedition this time
