Hello Games has officially deployed Update 6.4 for No Man’s Sky, titled The Swarm.
The massive update introduces a brand-new, time-limited community expedition, a terrifying interstellar threat, and a sweeping series of quality-of-life and performance upgrades targeted directly at space combat.
Every single time one of these updates comes out, we get dragged right back in. And it looks like we’ve even missed a few. So it seems highly likely that The Swarm is the next catalyst to going back to get another 100 screenshots and to visit my home base etc.
The Swarm & The Hive of Glass
The core of Update 6.4 revolves around a fragmented Traveller soul and a menacing new presence looming in the sky. Players will face off against “Swarmers”, fast-flying, agile alien ships that attack in massive numbers both in the vacuum of space and on planetary surfaces.
The ultimate threat arrives in the form of The Hive of Glass, a monstrous alien starship lurking just outside planetary atmospheres. Taking down this massive mothership requires pilot precision and tactical strategy as players navigate a deadly wheel of lasers to strike at its vulnerable, critical core.
A PvE space dogfight update? Let’s go! The Swarm certainly feels ideal for us, on paper.
Expedition 22: Fractured Community Teams
Running for approximately eight weeks, Expedition Twenty-Two: The Swarm introduces a unique community mechanic.
Players will be fragmented into three distinct teams, each representing a different aspect of the Traveller soul:
- The Royal
- The Sage
- The Weaver
Every player is assigned uniform and ship colours matching their group. To unlock the final battle against the Hive, all three teams must work together to help Specialist Polo construct the Prismatic Core in the Space Anomaly.
Progress is driven by three mission categories: Purge (dogfighting space swarms), Restoration (cleansing planetary ecosystems of swarmer decay), and Sabotage (disrupting the swarm network from the Space Anomaly).
The most valuable team will be permanently glorified and celebrated inside the Space Anomaly.
We love this. Could this help fill the void that Destiny 2 is going to leave? The Swarm feels like a community update that’s adding a new layer to the game that was always about exploration and building in the first instance.
Exclusive Swarm-Alloy Rewards
Participating in the expedition allows players to earn a highly specialised set of “Direwasp” gear forged from salvaged swarmer metals:
Direwasp Customisation Set: A heavy-duty, six-piece combat armour set including a helm, chestpiece, plating, gloves, cuisses, and boots.
Direwasp Flightpack: An exclusive jetpack that hums and vibrates like a swarm of metal insects.
Direwasp Disintegrator: A powerful, precisely balanced rifle Multi-Tool calibrated for high-fatigue, anti-swarm combat.
Team Cosmetics: Exclusive posters, decals, titles, and team-specific flags.
Beyond the expedition, players in all game modes can now hunt down crashed swarmer ships and buried swarmer debris on dissonant planets—though these sites are actively guarded by vicious ground-based planetary swarmers.
Time to freefall onto a planet ODST-style and clear-out some swarmers?
Space Combat Overhaul & Performance Tuning
Update 6.4 heavily tunes No Man’s Sky’s ship-to-ship dogfighting mechanics.
Space combat now features:
- Targeting & Flight Improvements: Better enemy ship navigation, improved player targeting visibility in third-person view, and updated auto-follow flight patterns that allow the ship to boost automatically.
- Weak Point Crits: Hitting a designated enemy weak point will now always result in a critical hit, while hitting other armoured areas will never crit, rewarding precise aim.
- UI Refresh: Cleaned up speedlines visual effects and corrected pulse engine notification timers post-combat.
On the technical side, Hello Games has rolled out significant memory and CPU optimization passes.
Players can expect smoother performance during massive freighter battles, better object visibility handling in complex scenes, and major performance boosts when piloting wheeled Exocrafts on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
No Man’s Sky
This is one of our favourites that’s been in regular rotation for literal years now. Having purchased it on PS4, XBOX, Nintendo Switch and Steam, it’s fair to say we’ve done our best to support it.
Yes, there was a rough launch, but Hello Games have made up for it ten-fold. The game today is a million miles away from what we initially got, and it’s one of the best games available in modern gaming. So much variety and opportunity to really lose yourself.
The Swarm is just another example of the commitment to making No Man’s Sky exceptional. We should probably do a 2026 review now we’re on the new site, actually!
