No Man’s Sky – Unlock Missed Rewards Guide

TL;DR

All credit goes to Techpriest!

• Open <No Mans Sky Folder>/Binaries/SETTINGS/GCUSERSETTINGSDATA.MXML in an XML editor.
• Edit XML data with what is provided below.
• Either make the file read-only or launch the game in offline mode.
• Claim rewards.

If you need a more complex explanation, follow on below.

Basic How-To

Okay, so maybe the previous steps weren’t clear enough (they’re more for a reference for the ppl who already read the guide so… yeah i hear you and get you).

So here’s a complete, step by step guide.

Requirements

• No Man’s Sky – You need the game ya dummy!
• Windows 10 – I only have tested this guide on Windows 10. This probably will work on Linux with proton, but your paths might differ. This guide will also outright NOT work on the console versions; don’t bother asking, we can’t even mod these systems to begin with; it’s beyond the scope of this guide and the Steam TOS (I’m pretty sure) to do it on consoles. PC release only kids!
• Some sort of text editor. While I’m sure notepad.exe will work just fine for this, I highly recommend installing a better text editor. Notepad++ is a decent free one.
• If you plan on doing further programming, editing, game modding or any other sort of thing that may see you editing tons of text files, consider Visual Studio Code instead.
• This guide is pretty much editor agnostic, so pick what you like. There are many possible editors. The only thing that won’t work are editors like MS Word or WordPad. You’re looking for plain text editors, not document formatters.

A bit of time.

The Process

Right click No Man’s Sky in your Steam Library. Go to Manage -> Browse Local Files. Go to the Binaries directory.

Right click the GCUSERSETTINGSDATA.MXML file and click on “Open With…”. If you’ve done this before, this will be a popout menu instead. Just select your text editor. If you haven’t done this before, you’ll now get a nice pop up. From this popup, choose your preferred text editor.

You are now looking at an XML file. XML is a file format that a program (like No Man’s Sky) can read and understand things about. A lot of games save information about themselves in XML files, and NMS is no different. In the file, look for the lines:

• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards”/>

And

• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards”/>

Do note that if you have unlocked any rewards before, the ending / will be missing. This is normal, you don’t have to be concerned. It just means the process will differ slightly.

Depending on what you want to unlock (Twitch rewards are for the most part either ships or Quicksilver rewards you can get normally so less useful; Expeditions meanwhile is exclusive stuff), reference the other chapters here on what you want to get.

If you’ve never unlocked anything before, you’ll want to remove the / at the end and add a new line below the line in question with the following contents:

• </Property>

Otherwise/if you’ve already done this, you can just add the content you need/missed in between the two Property tags.

Next, No Mans Sky when you start it up tries to synchronize the contents of the expeditions/twitch rewards with it’s own servers. There are two documented ways around this:

Either save the file, and then launch the game in Steam’s offline mode (if you go this route, make sure to launch the game before you start editing or make sure you played the game recently, so you can work around the DRM.)

Or: Save the file, right click the file and go to Properties. Then tick the read-only box. This will prevent No Mans Sky from updating the file in question when it tries to synchronize the contents. If you go this route, make sure to uncheck the box afterwards. The file in question contains a number of other settings, so if you don’t make the file writable (same thing as before, just untick the box), you can end up losing some settings you tried to save.

Now, go forth and claim your Expedition/Twitch rewards.

Do note that when you launch the game in either Online mode or with the file writable again, you will lose the opportunity to unlock or add certain items/elements to your character again and you’ll have to redo this guide. The only way to reliably keep these items is to get them yourself in-game. The Expeditions so far are loads of fun so I highly encourage you to check them out. This is just for those rewards that you might really want to get (like the golden starting ship) but can’t get otherwise. You may also be able to acquire these by using a Save Editor instead, but this is the most “natural” approach with the fewest risks for missteps.

Expedition Rewards

Expedition rewards are applied at the following property tag:

• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards”>

Expedition 1 – Pioneers

• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_FIREPACK01″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”BLD_EXPD_BASE01″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_DECAL01″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_HELMET01″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_BACKPACK01″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_TITLE01″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_SHIP01″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_BANNER01″ />

Expedition 2 – Beachhead

• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_DECAL02″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_BANNER02″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_SPEC02″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_TITLE02A” />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”EXPD_TITLE02B” />
• <Property name=”UnlockedSeasonRewards” value=”MYSTERY_TRACKER” />

Note: For those looking for the Andromeda crossover content, that is here, in the Beachhead expedition rewards.

More will be added as we uncover and find other items in future expeditions.

Twitch Rewards

Twitch rewards are applied at the following property tag:

• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards”>

All of these are bundled together. They have their own menu at the companion.

• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_001″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_002″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_003″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_004″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_005″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_006″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_007″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_008″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_009″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_010″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_011″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_012″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_013″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_014″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_015″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_016″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_017″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_018″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_019″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_020″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_021″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_022″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_023″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_024″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_025″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_026″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_027″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_028″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_029″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_030″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_031″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_032″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_033″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_034″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_035″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_036″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_037″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_038″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_039″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_040″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_041″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_042″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_043″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_044″ />
• <Property name=”UnlockedTwitchRewards” value=”TWITCH_045″ />

Ban Risk

Because I’m sure you’ll find people complaining about this; I should just go ahead and say it beforehand:

Nobody has been banned for doing this.

Okay good.

The long reason is this: No Man’s Sky is primarily a solo game; you can easily experience the universe without ever having to encounter other people. There’s not even a “shared universe” thing like Elite has; it’s all solo.

The main thing your accomplishments are are your own. You get to see the universe, you get to unlock things. People have been playing and save editing this game for years now. There is no difference between you doing this for the game and unlocking it legitimately. In fact, you can do this with a save editor on a per-save file basis. This method simply lets you do it across every save file with a small drawback (which I mentioned before). That’s all!