Which Expeditions Should I (Actually) Play?

Hold yer horses! If you're seeing this on any site other than Steam, feel free to report them, as it's been reuploaded without my permission.

Some things to note up front, before you even start reading further.

Hello Games has a very relaxed stance on using mods: as long as it isn't disruptive (or negatively impactful) to other players, you're fine to do as you wish, from bugfixing, to cosmetic mods, to unlocking old rewards with save editing.

I'll say it again: you won't get banned for using mods.

What may get you banned is exploiting those tools against other players.

Easy enough, right? Don't be a stick up others people's exhaust pipes? Great, let's continue!

https://cwmonkey.github.io/nms-expeditions/
(That's "cwmonkey NMS Expeditions" on Google if this link breaks!)

This gem of a website allows you to select any Expedition previously released, and create a CACHE.JSON file to slap into your directory, that tricks the game into believing you have access to that specific Expedition.

It's a great answer to "earning" Expedition rewards without the straight string cheese of save editing.

Extremely Important Notes

• Make a BACKUP of your save(s)! This is in %APPDATA%\HelloGames\NMS\
  
• (You'll need to Show Hidden folders if you can't see it, Google is friend!)

• You MUST be in OFFLINE Mode (both Steam and Network > Multiplayer: OFF in-game)

• You CAN swap to Online to continue playing any NON-Expedition Saves, BUT

• You need to reinject the right CACHE.JSON file BEFORE loading the Expedition Save again!

Otherwise, the website is pretty self-explanatory, featuring 3 steps on creating and pasting in the created .JSON file.
By default, difficulty presets are tuned to Easy Mode (with a warning for Expedition #3!), but you can trim and add the fat as much as you like before scrolling down Step 3 to download.

If you have a gander a little lower in this guide, you'll see that quite a few Expeditions are on my Personally Recommended Against list for one reason or another - either an unreasonable amount of grind, unsatisfying (or otherwise meaningless) gameplay, whatever.

That's where Save Editing comes in!

My Recommended Editor Choices

• GoatFungus (goatfungus), Github
  
• NO MAN'S SAVE EDITOR (vectorcmdr), GitHub

I personally don't use NomNom from Nexus due to some incomplete features. I find Vector's is the most consistently updated today! It's a pretty simple, self-explanatory process (thank Atlas), though to break it down into steps:

• Close No Man's Sky (duh)
  
• Make a Backup of this folder: %APPDATA%\HelloGames\NMS\
  
• Install your Editor of choice, then run it
  
• Make sure the Editor is reading from the Core Save Directory (Appdata, NOT your backup)
  
• Load up your save into the Editor
  
• Navigate to Account Rewards
  
• Under Season Rewards, you can then check "Unlocked on Account" for what you wish!
  
• Save the changes to that Save Slot

"Time to Beat" is an average based on both my personal experience and those shared online.
It's based on you already being relatively experienced with No Man's Sky (so, no time lost in learning mechanics)!