No Man’s Sky Tips: How to land on a hostile planet and survive

 1. Make your first landing on a landing pad.

For your first landing on a new planet, I always suggest landing on a landing pad, either at a shelter or at a full-on trading post. Trading posts have the benefit of being on top of raised platforms, which are almost always out of the reach of hostile creatures and sentinels.

The second benefit is that landing pads give you a free re-launch. If your ship lifts off a landing pad, you will not have to charge your launch thrusters. So, if you’re on a planet where resources are limited or you cannot get near them, you’re golden. This gives you time to assess your situation, and whether or not you want to continue exploring the planet.

Landing pads also almost always mean that you’ll have access to that robot-eye looking vendor. That means you can quickly dump your old cargo and restock on things you need.

2. Have everything fully charged up before leaving, and bring some extra plutonium.

When leaving a planet, make your life easier and charge all your systems up before moving on. You never know how challenging your next planet will be, so reload your multitool and life support before heading out. Also, it helps to have a little plutonium to start, since that charges everything.

3. Purchase the shield upgrades.

There are upgrades that can give your exosuit resistance to cold, heat, radioactivity, toxicity, and even allow you to breathe underwater. The cheapest versions require very common minerals, so they’re good for using / deleting as you arrive and depart from planets.

The better versions require gravitino balls. Some planets have gravitino balls littering the ground, however, you should be weary as sentinels walkers are instantly deployed upon gathering them. However, I’ve found that you can park your ship near these rare substances, gather them, and jump in and fly off before being attacked quite easily.

4. Learn how to jetpack-run-melee jump.

I wrote a tip about this, here. However, I’ll just say if you run, do a melee attack, and then immediately jump into your jetpack, you will fly REALLY FAST across the terrain. This is an important thing to learn how to do, especially if you’re on a planet with storms and other extreme conditions. This will save you time and from getting damaged. Also, it allows you to run away from sentinels and hostile creatures.

No Man’s Sky Tips: How to increase your speed across land

This is the best tip ever! I use it constantly!

To move really quickly across terrain, get a running start, do a melee attack, and immediately jetpack-boosted-jump.

You’ll see what I mean.

WARNING: Make sure you save enough jetpack fuel to slow your landing, otherwise you will take fall damage.

Detailed explanation: Your jetpack’s speed is changed by your character’s speed. Naturally, your character does not run very quickly. However, running while melee attacking makes your character run extremely quickly for a short period. If you jetpack-boost-jump immediately after a running melee attack, you will fly incredibly fast.

It’s really fun to do this! However, this may be a glitch, so the developer may patch it out. Let’s hope not!

 

No Man’s Sky Tips: How to get more inventory slots on your exosuit quickly.

There are two ways to max out your suit’s inventory slots fast, but both require a ton of money.

 

Step 1: Gather money.

Slots are purchased, and the more slots you have, the higher the cost for the next one.

Step 2: If you have an Atlas Pass V1, then you can find a Slot Pod in any Space Station. Simply walk through the door on the left.

or

Step 2: Go to a barren planet.

One without much plant or animal life. The more bland looking, the better. 

Step 3: Use your eyes. 

Slot Upgrade Pods are REALLY easy to see on barren planets and moons. You’ll find a bunch quickly. Just use your eyes and not your scanner. Forget the scanner, just fly slowly and you’ll find the pods ASAP.

a barren planet in No Man's Sky

Revamping my Blog, Random Facts About Me, and the Liebster Hipster

Aspiring writers are told over and over, "Build a platform." Create a web presence as soon as possible, because that will increase your value as an author. The more networked you are, the more books you can sell. That's what they say.

In that spirit, my personal writing update has a lot to do with my recently reworked websites. I am currently working on 4 different blogs, and a huge goal I had for June was to streamline the look and functionality. I figured my experience might make for a fun useful blogpost, reciting three tips I picked up along the way.

Use a blog post instead of a page for your welcome site.

The reason for this is statistical. Blogger tracks the number of pageviews you get on blog posts. My "welcome" site is actually just a normal post. (see it here) I've linked my URL to it, http://www.harrisonaye.com, and it directs to that page. This allows me to keep statistics such as how many people have ventured to my site, and also how. In the statistic page, you can see what the sources for the clickthrough are. If you do other things on the web to promote yourself (like me), you'll be able to see the size of the benefit you're getting for the work you put into it. For instance, my Tumblr page brought me 20 clicks yesterday. Making Tumblr posts is easy, since I'm using it to host sketches I make. 20 clicks is worth making a new post on Tumblr. Whatever you do besides blogging online, it's always good to know what kind of redirection you're scoring while aiming at your homepage.

Streamline the look of everything at once

This was a TON of work for me. Check this out:

http://www.oxyborb.blogspot.com/
http://www.poetsrevolver.blogspot.com/
http://oxyborb.blogspot.com/
http://unravelatlas.blogspot.com/
http://oxyborb.tumblr.com/

http://unravelreads.blogspot.com/

All of these sites are mine, and I've done a great deal of work to make them look uniform. The backgrounds for the non-writing sites are colored differently, yet you can see my picture and sidebar setup is all the same. The Unraveler Blog, this blog, is my most important space, so I have more links at the side. However, the rest of my sites have links that transfer over to The Unraveler Blog.

Create a name-brand that is uniquely you and differs from your name (unless you gave a weird name)

Unraveler is a weird word that is my book.


Oxyborb is a word that I created. It's pretty unforgettable because it sounds so strange, as if it means weirdness.

Oxyborb especially has been a useful brand name for me because I can get oxyborb as a login on any site I want. I made the word up (while trying to say "shock absorber" backwards on a trampoline)! Therefore I own it in ways nobody else has ever. If you're creative, try making up a word that is uniquely you.

I'm not trying to make this a huge post, but if you want to know more of my thoughts on setting up a social media presence, check out this other post I wrote.

In other news, a blogger nominated me for a Liebster award, which is a just-for-fun gold star for bloggers without too many followers yet. It's sort of to get you talking about yourself, and to encourage others to talk about themselves. A little recognition for the little guy. It seemed fun, so I thought I'd participate.

The blogger who nominated me is Nhi Le @ The Literary Bystander. Her voice for reviewing books is hilarious, honest, and right-on-the-money, so you should definitely check out her blog! Mad props (and my thanks!) to her for even noticing my tiny (tiny) blog!


RULES

1. List 11 facts about yourself.

2. Answer the 11 questions asked by whoever nominated you.

3. Nominate 9 bloggers with less than 300 followers and leave them a comment saying they've been nominated.

4. Ask 11 new questions for your chosen nominees.

5. You cannot re-nominate the blog that nominated you.

11 Facts About Me

1. I didn't think The Hunger Games needed a sequel.

I loved the Hunger Games, as much as anyone, but I was hesitant to begin reading the second and third books because I didn't feel like I needed more than the first. After a few years, I did end up reading them, and they were good, but I still think The Hunger Games would have been perfectly fine as a one-off. The first movie was my favorite movie of the year when it came out.

Bonus fact: I once made a Hunger Games cake


2. I hate nuts and spicy stuff

3. I can recite the original PokeRap

4. I reread the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings series every other year. I made it all the way through the Silmarillion, a very tough read, and I'm proud of that.

5. I own a goldfish that is 9 years old. His name is Ludwig, not after the composer but after Ludwig von Koopa, a Super Mario character. I got him my freshmen year of college. Holy cow that was 9 years ago.

6. I play as the Ice Climbers in Super Smash Brothers.

7. I have a clay sculpture of my own head in my room that someone made for me.

8. I consider myself a Ravenclaw (and proud of it!).

9. I have been to a convention for people who love the James Cameron movie, Avatar. Yes, there were people in full blue-Navi costume. I met the one of the producers, Jon Landau. He was really a cool, hilarious guy. OK, I'm not like one of those crazy Avatar people, but I like the movie and this event was near my home. It was entertaining and random.


10. I make music. I've made 3 CDs worth of music, and a ton of random other stuff. Here's my latest:




11. I played Snowbell the Cat in a staged play of Stewart Little. In the play I got shot by an arrow, and the children who came to see the show sent me drawings of myself in a full bodied cat costume getting shot. It was so funny.

Questions made up by Nhi Le!

1.  Who is an author you love so much, that you will buy any and every one of their books, regardless if you have any interest in the plot or not?

I'm super cautious with money, so I probably wouldn't buy every book from anyone (although I did buy the Casual Vacancy, which I never finished). But I will say that I purchase Stephen King books on mad whims every once and a while. Honestly, even the worst SK book is usually better than 99% of what's out there. SK isn't really a financial risk! It may be stereotypical to say I love his work, but he's so highly esteemed for a reason!

2. Do you think that printed books will ever become obsolete and we will live in an e-book only society one day?

One day, yes. Soon? No. Tablets are good, Kindles work better, but I feel like they don't quite make books obsolete yet. I believe that there will be a technology that ends print forever, but I don't think we've seen it yet. 

3. Are there books that you think are overrated or you just avoid just to it being over-hyped?

Not really. I don't particularly enjoy the same things as everyone else, but I feel like that's just my taste. I think it's great when a book is hyped up, even if I don't particularly like that book, simply for the fact that it means more people are reading. I think the world would be better if more people read. Movies get hyped. Sports events get hyped. Video games. Phones. It's weird how rare it is for a book to get hyped up, and they usually only do once there's a movie anyway. I say the more hype for books, the better (even if it's not my cup of tea). 

4. Does your opinion of an author affect whether or nor you will read and like their book (e.g. you hear an author is attacking people who leave negative reviews on their books)?
Yes. For a positive example, I had never read anything by Maggie Stiefvater before I came to love her personality on social media and on YouTube. Just seeing the way that she handles herself online made me want to buy her books. I actually recently finished The Scorpio Races. On the other end of the spectrum, there was one author who recently said a bunch of anti-gay stuff, and it tarnished my memory of one of the books I had read from him. I might have seen his new movie/read the sequels but not now.

5. Name 5 books you will pay with your soul to see adapted either as a movie or television series.

It by Stephen King. I know there was a movie, but it doesn't hold up anymore. I mean, Tim Curry was amazing in it, but the rest of the movie fell to pieces simply for the fact that there were too many parts cut out to fit it in the time slot. I feel like a modernized version could rock. I would say TV show, since there's so much to it. A good three-season show on HBO or something.

The Unwanteds Series by Lisa McMann. Such a great Middle Grade book series. Very fun and whimsical. I would love to see this.

SK's The Dark Tower. Just make it happen already!

A proper movie version of I, Robot. The Will Smith movie had NOTHING to do with the books, and it made the lead female protagonist seem like a helpless dimwit. I want a proper telling that actually stays true to the book. Perhaps it could be a TV show.

Finally, I have to say The Unraveler. My book. Is that cheating? My book was born for the movies because it's a collection of insane visuals. My creatures are weird enough to be done by Jim Henson Studio. I would give anything to see it, but I suppose any author would feel the same. My book has clown pirates, armies of clockwork men, and monsters with hooks for hands and twin-beaks.

6. Do you prefer standalone or books in a series?

Series, usually. I like longer stuff. I like a good standalone in between series binges.

7. Have you ever read the reviews for a book before you've read it, spoilers and all?

 Not really. Most people don't really feel the same way I do about books, so I can really only trust my own reading. Also, spoilers are the bane of my existence, even small spoilers.

8. Name a character you hate that everyone else seems to love?

 Haymitch Abernathy. I grew up with an alcoholic, and it was unpleasant. Reading Haymitch was also unpleasant for this reason.

9. Name a character you love that everyone else seems to hate? (Aren't I so original with my questions?)

 Joffrey Baratheon. Oh I love hating him so much. His scenes are the best.

10. What compels you more into a story - the plot or the characters?

 Plot. I know this is probably the unpopular answer. I would rather have a book that goes where I want than have a book with the characters I want, I guess. If I want a fantasy, then I will read a fantasy book. Horror for horror. I never usually feel like I'm in the mood for a certain type of character, lol.

11. Do you prefer happy or tragic endings? Or even cliffhangers?
A mix. Some things should be sad, but there should always be a glimmer of happiness. 

Now, onto my nominees. 

Generally, for this you're supposed to look for other blogs that are smaller than you to nominate. Smaller blogs that need the ego viewership boost they deserve for all of their hard work. The problem with this I have is that my (tiny) blog is the smallest blog ever, and I'd feel weird/too shy/embarrassed nominating a bunch of blogs that are bigger than me (I'll do this Liebster thing again after I've gained more followers, so that this actually helps others).

So, instead I'll just say that I nominate whoever is reading this. If you have a blog and you'd like to participate, leave a comment and I'll totally pimp out your blog in a followup post to this. All you've got to do is post 11 facts about yourself and answer my 11 questions, which are listed as follows:

oxyborb's questions:
1. You can only choose one: The power of flight or the ability to turn invisible. Why did you choose what you did?
2. You're a Dark Wizard! What object would you use to make yourself a horcrux (Harry Potter)?
3. Nintendo Entertainment System or Sega Genesis? Why did you choose the NES system you did?
4. Of the original Power Rangers, which Dinosaur Zord would you drive?
5. What is your favorite type of tea/coffee?
6. What is your favorite Pixar film?
7. What scares you as an adult? As a kid?
8. If you could make a big-budget movie, what would it be?
9. What classical fantasy race/creature would you be?
10. What classic horror monster would you choose to fight on your side (barring any of the giant-sized ones like Godzilla)?
11. How many times a year do you check to see if the Force works for you yet?

***
Thanks for reading! Hit me up on twitter! @Oxyborb

♫

LB: http://theliterarybystander.blogspot.com/2014/06/liebster-award.html

Writer's block, taking breaks, skipping over parts, working on something else, and other methods to run away when faced by a challenge

I am not a professional writer yet, so maybe my advice is not the first place to stop on your research. That said, I want to talk about what happens when the going gets tough, and how I see other writers handle challenges in writing and editing. I like to join writer discussion groups on facebook. I like to participate in sharing thoughts about how a writer can act to be successful.

Lately, the topic has been what to do when you’ve hit writer’s block or what to do when editing has you hung up.

I always see the same responses to these problems. They go something like this:

Take a break from it.
Skip over it and come back.
Work on something else.

I just want to say that I think that this is all awful advice. When you’re faced with a challenge, your first instinct should not be to run away from it.

so many writers

…never finish their manuscripts. So many would-be writers never even finish chapter one. They claim that they have writer’s block. They claim that they just cannot think it through, when I believe the truth is usually that they just don’t want to think it through. They don’t want to put in the work, the effort.

There’s a difference between planning a break between large projects and taking a break because you’ve hit a giant challenge. I always take breaks between finishing, drafts, and major goal points like that. Usually my breaks are about a week-long. But, when I have a major challenge in front of me, that is NO time for a break. That is a time to work.

time doesn’t heal plot

They say a couple should never go to bed angry, well I say don’t let your biggest challenges sleep. Challenges do not suddenly get easier over time. However, they will make you more reluctant to return if you try and hide from them. Facing your challenges doesn’t necessarily mean working on your keyboard, either. Get in bed, turn off the lights, and just think. Thinking about how to confront a challenge is working on that challenge. It feels like a break, because thinking is peaceful, but it will get you through it before running away from it will.

Truly, though, taking a break usually just gives you an excuse not to work. You’ll push it back, push it back, until your novel is just another thing on your bucket list that you’ll never complete.

skip it, skip it

Some say to skip over it and work on the next part. While I agree that this is better than running away from it, I still think that this is problematic. When you don’t face the challenge before you, it will keep on haunting you as you go. This is the snowball effect. Sometimes an issue left alone will only cause you to create more issues down the line… which will give you more to have to go back and fix… which will only make the work more overwhelming… which will only make you more reluctant to finishing your project.

Think about your job. Say your boss gives you what feels like an impossible task to do in an impossible time, don’t you usually find a way to make it work anyway? That’s why bosses do that: You’ll make it work somehow. Make your challenge work. Don’t give yourself excuses.

Chapter one is easy

Some say work on a different project, but I say that this only leads to a great deal of unfinished projects. Most writers have a stack of chapter ones from a billion different book ideas they have, but the difference is that professional writers actually finish stuff. If you start a project that you fully intend to finish, then finish it. Don’t start a million other projects, because then you’ll never get one finished. Chapter one is easy; Chapter eighteen is hard because it requires you have to completed chapters 1-17. Most people who wish that they were writers never get past the first few chapters. Most writers who wish that they were published never get through editing. Be one of the few.

Haha! Sorry I don’t sugarcoat this stuff, I’m just not a believer in writer’s block. I feel like writer’s block is an excuse to quit working through the hard parts.