Botched bonus: ‘No Man’s Sky’ pre-order starship leaves PC players stranded

Affected players report that redeeming the Horizon Omega ship in the PC version of No Man’s Sky leads to game-breaking issues after several hours of campaign play, with little hope of recovery. Making matters worse, No Man’s Sky actively pesters players into activating their unredeemed pre-order bonuses throughout the initial tutorial missions, making it very likely that pre-order customers on PC will encounter late-game glitches.

The Horizon Omega ship — offered exclusively as a pre-order bonus for the digital PC version of No Man’s Sky — comes with a pre-installed Hyperdrive, essentially allowing players to skip much of the game’s tutorial sequence. The No Man’s Sky‘s campaign normally requires players to track down a Hyperdrive blueprint before they’re given access to the bulk of the game’s sprawling universe.

While the Horizon Omega ship is initially promising, players will eventually want to upgrade to a different starship for greater storage capacity and upgrade potential. This is where pre-order customers will encounter game-breaking glitches, as purchased ships do not include Hyperdrives and are thus limited in their ability to traverse the stars.

After buying a new ship in No Man’s Sky, players normally have the option of constructing a Hyperdrive using a blueprint found during the game’s tutorial missions. Pre-order customers who pilot the Horizon Omega ship are likely to have missed their opportunity to pick up the blueprint, however, leaving them stranded with a ship that’s incapable of carrying them through the rest of the game.

While necessary blueprints are randomly distributed across the game’s millions of planets, many prerelease players report unsuccessful attempts to track down the Hyperdrive blueprint after encountering the Horizon Omega bug. Developer Hello Games has not commented on the bug, and will likely issue a patch in the coming weeks to address the issue. Until then, affected players advise against redeeming the Horizon Omega ship until after discovering a Hyperdrive blueprint.