With the new Fractal update, No Man’s Sky released a brand-new expedition, Utopia. With rewards including a sleek new ship and the Fearsome Visor, a helmet that lets you live out your dreams of cosplaying Darth Vader, it’s an enticing offer. It also showcases the new features of the Fractal expansion practically from the word go. Utopia is also just the right balance of challenging, urging the player to explore and base-build while also giving them a variety of unconventional tasks on each planet. One of the most unconventional is of course “Caldera,” a deceptively simple objective that involves climbing a volcano.
While “climb a volcano” might seem easy, the actual steps and survival involved are much more difficult. Volcanoes in No Man’s Sky are a hotbed (literally) of environmental hazards, jetpack-intensive platforming, and possible death. With a few helpful tips, you might just persevere and make it to the top of the mountain.
Find a volcanic planet
Thankfully, this part of the expedition is easy. The second planet you visit should be volcanic. If not, explore your solar system a little and you should be able to find one as part of the quest line. Just follow the quest instructions to set up your outpost, and make sure it’s near one of the volcanoes. This is one of the important bits, because later on, it’ll help to have someplace close to get back to.
Be A Nomad
For this next part, you’ll need an exocraft. While you can do it on foot, it’s a lot easier to get up the volcano if you have help. The Nomad is a good choice. While it handles like a greased bar of soap on an iced-over lake, you only really need it to go in one direction: Uphill. The Nomad won’t get stuck on terrain and it bowls over any obstacle easily. If you built your base close enough, all you have to do is hop in and skid your way up to the top of the volcano.
This will also save on jetpack energy, which is going to be a must for the next part. When you reach the top, get out just below the crown of the volcano. Go the rest of the way on foot. The best way to do this is to go into first person mode, press up against the side of the volcano, and then press into the hill while jetpacking. If you do it right, your jetpack won’t even deplete.
Use Lots Of Protection
Now to take a moment to evaluate things, because here’s where it gets tricky. You might have noticed that when you reached the crown of the volcano, you didn’t receive an event notification. That’s because the quest isn’t complete until you do one thing further. That next step is a bit of a doozy. While your options are a bit limited at this point, research and upgrade all the thermal protection you can from the Utopia suit station you picked up earlier in the expedition. You need as much heat protection and movement as possible. The following upgrades help a lot:
- Coolant Network, a decent-level thermal protection upgrade (150 Phosphorus, 60 Silver, 75 Copper)
- Airburst Engine, a jetpack upgrade that allows limited recharging while airborne (150 Chromatic Metal, 150 Phosphorus, 150 Oxygen)
- Neural Stimulator, a jetpack upgrade that increases energy efficiency for your sprint and jetpack (100 Condensed Carbon, 100 Chromatic Metal)
This seems like a lot of copper and refining, but it’s necessary for the really dicey part of this.
Floor Is Lava
Jump into the volcano.
No, seriously. You need to jump into the volcano. It’s difficult to tell exactly when the achievement fires, but somewhere around “inside the lava” is about where the notification popped up while testing this guide. According to the game, the “summit” isn’t actually at the crown of the volcano, but actually in the lava. This is where all that protection comes in handy. You will take a lot of fire hazard damage very fast, and you’ll have to move even faster if you want to get out alive.
Luckily, there’s a method to this madness. First, choose a lower point on the volcano. Not every point on the crown of the volcano is high up. You want to choose a point low enough that you can climb back up. Second, do not jump into the center of the volcano. Instead, simply drop off the side and hug the wall until you see the event popup. Once the popup for completing Caldera appears, turn and climb the wall as fast as you can. The best method in this case is to also move to the side, looking for easier exit points, but there are two things to keep in mind at this point:
- Don’t panic. If you panic, there’s a high chance you’ll fall further in, and retrieving your items from that point is an exercise in anxiety management at best and a painful time at worst.
- Get out of the volcano.
If you die, don’t worry, you still get credit for the expedition. You’ll even come out of it with a hazard protection upgrade, 999 Pure Ferrite, 999 Carbon, and three repair kits. Once you’re out of the volcano either with or without your inventory, breathe easy. The hard part’s finished.
An Alternate Route: The Scoundrel’s Way
If you want to do this with a little more risk management and you’re playing on PC, you can save-scum. What you want to do is park your spaceship at the bottom of the volcano. Then, just climb up the volcano, following the steps in the guide, and hitting Alt+F4 when you see the death screen fade in. If you time it before you respawn, when you start up the game again, you’ll load in before the death. While this is a form of cheating, the sheer stress might cause you to just rage-force-quit the program anyway. Look on it less as a cheat and more as a last-resort escape hatch if it helps.
Full disclosure: In the course of writing this, the author took a flying leap into a volcano while erupting. This article is a result of their trial and error in the service of their readers. The screenshots are all from them repeatedly trying and failing to retrieve their body
For more guidance on the Utopia Expedition, check out our guide on How to Get Fearsome Visor in No Man’s Sky. For more fun in the infinite galaxies, read up on how to Become a Smuggler in No Man’s Sky’s Newest Update
