No Man’s Sky latest Update is Xeno Arena, adding in battles with alien creatures

Update: The official patch notes is live now along with a trailer.

No Man’s Sky is back with the latest update, titled the Xeno Arena. After several days of Sean posting coliseum emojis, we finally got some early update posts on the game showing what the update entails.

What to expect with Xeno Arena Update in No Man’s Sky

At the time of writing, the patch notes are not online yet. But thanks to the opening game screenshot, we do know what the content update features. The Xeno Arena update for No Man’s Sky features simulated creature battles, aka like Pokémon. Players will want to explore the universe and find inhabited planets to find the creatures on the worlds. You can then assemble companions from those planets and worlds, and get them in turn-based tactical combat at Holo-Arena tables.

Players can expect the following from the feature:

• Challenge other players or aliens they encounter to turn-based creature battles
• Learn strengths and weaknesses of different creature species, how size affects them, climates, and other features to adapt strategies for alien cockfighting
• Each creature has its own attacks, and there are several attacks, defence, healing, and strategies available to come across
• Each creature can be evolved too, with genetic modifications to enhance their skills and experiences

The full patch notes will be available at some point later today on the No Man’s Sky website. Typically, Sean posts about the full update with a bullet list and a link to the patch notes when the update is officially released, typically around 3 pm – 8 pm BST from previous updates.

Given the amount of alien lifeforms around, the planets, the proc-gen, chances are this could be a very in-depth system, especially when it comes to evolving creatures and progressing them quite far. Expect a lot of star system travelling to learn what is possible, find new creatures, and learn all the movesets in the game.

If you’re intrigued by it, there’s holo tableson space stations. Atleast from the Spanish communty that seems to have the update earlier than everyone else for some strange reason. When you approach a table, you’l the see the pets you have for battling, with stat and move windows, and you can selet up to three ‘pokemon’ from the looks of things. Not sure how you cpature them yet but I can imagine its similar to feeding and befriending them via the taming update many years ago.

But considering it’s Pokémon-esque in a space sim game, maybe this is an update players might skip. Certainly a change of pace from land vehicles and huge automated factories in the last Remnants update patch.