No Man's Sky Patch 7.04 Reaches Steam First, and the Version Labels Don't Agree
Hello Games' official release log lists "Cosmos – 7.04" under PC only and says patch 7.04 contains gameplay and stability fixes. The matching patch-notes page is dated September 21, 2026. The No Man's Sky community wiki and All Things How agree on the date. The wiki records that 7.04 was released on September 21, 2026 on PC and Mac. All Things How adds that Hello Games has said the same fixes are headed to the other platforms as soon as they are ready, but no date has been confirmed for those builds yet.
The official page contradicts itself on the version number. It is titled "Cosmos 7.04", but its opening paragraph says these fixes are included in patch 7.03, which is now live on Steam, and will be coming to other platforms as soon as possible. The wiki's copy of the same notes says patch 7.04, which is now live on Steam. The release log also lists 7.03 and 7.03.1 as separate earlier builds, so the "7.03" line is most likely a copy-over mistake. Either way, the official page currently shows both numbers.
Console numbering is less clear. MP1st reports that current-gen console gamers will see this as No Man's Sky update 7.004 and gives September 22 as the availability date. The official release log doesn't confirm that. When this was checked, it still listed 7.04 as a PC-only entry. Console players should look for their fixes in their platform's own update listing and not assume they arrived with the Steam build.
The Our Journey Continues Expedition Gets the Largest Share of Patch 7.04's Repairs
Cosmos is the 7.0 update. It added space station directorship, galactic alliances, space bases and new deep-space points of interest, according to Nintendo Everything's coverage of the launch. The same update brought the anniversary expedition. This special event celebrates 10 years of No Man's Sky, and journeys through the history of its evolution since launch. Because the expedition is organised as milestones that each recreate a past era of the game, one broken milestone can halt a player's whole run.
Patch 7.04 fixes several bugs of that kind. The most serious hit players who traded away their Multi-Tool before reaching the Beyond milestone, which could leave them unable to continue. Hello Games fixed it by making the Terrain Manipulator blueprint known by default. A rarer bug could make the portal in the Waking Titan milestone send the player to the wrong destination. In the Voyagers milestone, a Corvette Workshop was missing its map marker, so players had no guide to the location.
Rewards were also affected. The new reward ships were charging nanites (one of the game's currencies) when players claimed them, and that has been fixed. The vintage Sentinel Interceptor reward has improved visual effects. A separate bug forced players to swap out an existing ship before they could add the Interceptor to their collection, and that is fixed too.
The remaining expedition fixes are smaller but still visible:
- Legacy space stations now appear on the new Star System Map during the expedition.
- Nexus missions for creature taming and fishing are no longer offered during the Beyond milestone.
- The Weekend Missions milestone no longer tells players to look for Knowledge Stones on planets that have none.
- A third-person character model no longer appears before third person has been unlocked in the expedition.
- Developer notes collected during the expedition no longer omit their platform-specific text, and a text error in the Worlds II milestone has been corrected.
All Things How describes 7.04 as the largest cleanup pass since the 7.0 launch earlier in September, and says the headline fixes are the ones that were stopping players from finishing missions.
Corvettes and Space Station Claims Lose a Limit and Several Glitches
One change in 7.04 may look like a new feature, but Hello Games lists it as a bug fix: an issue that capped how many space stations one player could claim has been resolved. Space station directorship was a central Cosmos feature, so players who hit that cap may have thought it was an intended rule.
Corvettes are the multi-crew, player-built starships introduced in the Voyagers update. They get several targeted fixes:
- Corvettes spawn in a better position when a player teleports to a space base.
- During the expedition, Corvettes can no longer teleport to legacy space stations and get stuck there.
- Salvage that sometimes couldn't be pulled inside a Corvette now can be.
- Corvette landing docks no longer appear on civilian frigates.
- A hint about refunded Corvette modules no longer stays on screen after it stops being relevant.
Hello Games also improved collision on external Space Station decorations. Previously, ships could bump into invisible collision around very large parts. The notes list these as specific fixes and don't claim that every Corvette or station problem has been solved.
Patch 7.04's Crash, Hang and Memory Fixes Depend on Your Platform
The stability fixes are brief. Hello Games lists a memory crash, a rare hang during reload, and an audio threading crash as fixed. It also says it improved memory usage on XboxOne and on Switch 2. The notes don't say which hardware triggered the crashes, how much memory was saved, or how often any of these faults happened. Players who were hit by one of these crashes should see an improvement, but there is no data on how large it is.
Mac players get a fix for a visual problem with volumetrics, affecting both space views and planetary clouds. VR players get a single change: a fix for incorrect input processing on some VR controllers. ixbt.games described "changes... to the VR version", but the official notes list only this controller-input fix, not a broader VR update.
These fixes only apply once 7.04 reaches the relevant platform. As All Things How points out, the Xbox One, Switch 2 and VR improvements are part of the 7.04 build, so they only take effect on those platforms once the patch reaches them. That makes this a PC-first release. Steam players on Windows get the crash and hang fixes now. The Xbox One memory work in these notes will arrive only when Hello Games ships the console build, and the release log gives no date for it.
The release also fixes several audio and visual problems. Ambient audio in space was sometimes wrong, some locations were too loud, and portals could fail to show all their activation effects. The sky could flicker during the initialisation sequence, underwater particles could appear when the player was out of the water, and the Space Anomaly's interior could look foggy when it sat inside planetary rings.
Settlement and Mission Bugs That Worked Against Players
Some of the gameplay fixes were quietly costing players resources or progress. One bug made settlement productivity increases do the opposite: productivity increases to settlements to actually decrease the rate at which it produces items. Another could make settlement debt suddenly become approximate 2 billion units. Hello Games also fixed a number of issues that could cause settlement buildings to fail to spawn construction terminals, blocking progress. According to All Things How, the construction-terminal bug was the worst of the three, because a missing terminal left a building project stuck with no way forward.
Several mission fixes address stalled objectives. The first Atlas Path mission could keep selecting itself. Mission markers on the Space Anomaly could fail to load if the game had been saved aboard the Anomaly. Deep-space salvage missions could break on collection or completion when more than one mission of the same type was active.
The In Stellar Multitudes mission gets two fixes. It could fail to register the Atlantid Drive installation when Crafting was set to Free in the difficulty settings. It could also fail to move a player's first restored purple system to the top of the teleporter destination list.
Other deep-space fixes remove an oversized explosion when some points of interest were destroyed, and stop frigates spawning too far from those points or inside objects. Log snippets in derelict freighters were in the wrong positions, and some rare space-hulk salvage items failed to spawn. Ships no longer slow down sharply when leaving the Space Anomaly. The Echo Locator reminder no longer repeats, and the companion-egg reminder no longer fires when all pet slots are full. Hello Games also lists improvements to creature navigation and IK (inverse kinematics, the system that places a creature's limbs on terrain), without giving details.
What this means for you
If you play on Steam, the fixes are available now. Console, Switch 2 and VR players should wait until their platform's update lists them. On PC, Steam normally downloads the patch automatically. All Things How suggests you update through Steam, reload your save, and confirm your Atlas Path and expedition missions now track normally. If you stopped an expedition run because of the Multi-Tool or Waking Titan portal bugs, the fixes suggest it is worth resuming. The notes don't say whether saves that are already stuck recover without further action.
If a settlement's debt jumped or a building project stalled, check the settlement again after updating. The notes describe what caused these bugs but don't say whether existing debt balances or stuck buildings are fixed after the fact.
- Patch 7.04 went live on Steam for PC and Mac on September 21, 2026, and Hello Games has not given a date for the other platforms.
- The official patch notes are titled 7.04, but their opening paragraph calls the patch 7.03. The release log shows 7.03 and 7.03.1 as separate earlier builds.
- MP1st reports that current-gen consoles label the build 7.004. Check your console's update listing and don't assume the Steam fixes are already there.
- The Xbox One and Switch 2 memory improvements and the VR controller fix only take effect once 7.04 ships on those platforms.
- The expedition blockers involving a traded-away Multi-Tool and the misrouted Waking Titan portal are fixed in 7.04, and the Terrain Manipulator blueprint is now known by default.
- Players who hit the per-player space station claim limit should find it removed in this build.
Hello Games says it will continue to release patches as issues are identified and resolved and asks players to submit bug reports. The notes thank players who reported problems through Zendesk and console crash reporting. For PC players, 7.04 is already the build to be on. For everyone else, it depends on when the console builds, which MP1st reports as 7.004, appear in the release log. Those builds will bring the Xbox One and Switch 2 memory fixes that this Steam release describes but can't deliver on consoles.