Ctrl Alt WoW - The Podcast...: June 2026

AprilPvd shares her retirement experience. Send an email to ctrlaltwow@gmail.com telling us how you manage life in retirement. Discord: https://discord.gg/5dtHtHCu

AprilPvd in VR:

No Man’s Sky

Wednesday

I made a big mistake. Or maybe not. One of the rewards from the Holo Arena quest line milestone was capable of hatching eggs in a water planet, but I took it to some water and it wouldn’t work so I finally found a water planet using some glyphs but I can’t spawn the pet underwater and I’m stuck way down underwater I built a base so I could come back and of course, in the middle of all this, the expedition has started. I’m really bad underwater deep down so I’m just trying to build a base and then build a teleport, but I needed Crystal. Plus, I was trying to do it on the flat screen because I get kind of nauseous doing it on in VR, but even that became hard so what I decided to do was have a brilliant grab the stuff for me and then I could join her in her world get the mats that I need just to build a door with the door so I can build a teleporter and then I guess I’ll start the expedition the swarm. I love this so much.

I started the expedition with Sebastian and I was streaming, but then I realized there are a lot of spoilers right off the bat so I stopped streaming and I just recorded and wow, it is amazing. Then I decided after the first screen, it would be OK if I streamed the rest and it was interesting. There’s so much to it and the best part is I’m learning about what I need to bring with me when I do go in on one of my main saves. There was an interesting part where I had to get chromatic metal, and I found it in an underground cavern those Stalagmites and stalactites were full of copper as well as cobalt. The hardest thing was finding the star flowers, but I did. Also, everybody has bases all over the place so sometimes it’s hard to put down a refinery, but I managed to put one next to my ship. when Sebastian got to the anomaly, he grabbed the two multitool Staff from the expedition rewards. Then he was able to trade in one of the staffs and his issued multitool to get some money and some nanites and finally by pulling out some of the tech from his ship he was able to afford the 1400 nanites to get the living ship out of the quicksilver expedition reward.

Thursday

Watching Captain Steve, and all of his his duping,, I decided to Dupe some suspicious packets and Expansion for my suit and since I’m probably gonna grab my living ship, I did some spawning sacks as well.

Try again to defeat the machinery at the expedition the one where you have to use the gravity coil to pull parts off of it and it was very very hard. There was a lot of lag and when I tried to grab it, I couldn’t so I wouldn’t. I went to my regular save on Sebastian to try to see if I could do the gravity coil without the lag and figure out which buttons to push and then I went back and it just became a slaughter fest sentinels. The purple ones kept showing up and there was just no way to fight them, and the lag wasn’t crazy at one point I actually died, but I restored my save point. So then I decided maybe it’ll be easier on the flatscreen. So I got on my gaming laptop, and I did some on the flat screen and I had to do the same thing all over again. I had to go back and try the gravity coil without the lag and that actually worked really well and then I went back to the expedition and I was able to kill the guys and then look inside and it was great. I was able to go on with the expedition now I’ll be interested to see how it’s going to work out with my main doing the same thing.

Friday

I stocked up April Pvd with all sorts of goodies, and I was pleasantly pleased by the speed With which she was able to get to the anomaly. The two big things that really helped was of course, finding the cave and getting the copper from inside the cave to get chromatic metal and staying near my ship when I made any of those pilot things. This time when I went to claim my living shipment was free. I don’t know why, but I had already sold some stuff from some suspicious packets and I had the night. But that also meant I could bring over my cool multitool. I brought over some spawning sacks.

Saturday

Well, I was able to get the swarm a lot easier on April Pvd. I’m wondering if they fix something I was still in multiplayer mode just make sure I’m not PVP. I’m presenting my sample of ichor to the Atlas so I have commune with the Atlas another milestone. I think my whole goal now is to get to the point where I can take those missions. I am a Weaver.

I’ve been watching several different. Youtubers play the expedition and none of them bothered to get their living ship. I wonder why. I spent some time duplicating the spawning sacs and psych eggs. I believe they’re called. I wanted to get my ship some more weapons so I’m gonna spend some time doing that opening up the pods and seeing what I can get and then I’ll go back to the anomaly. They did get rid of duping at the stations and the anomaly. You can no longer reload you save, but you can still go to planet and Stack refiners.

My biggest dilemma is trying to figure out what all of these things mean for the living ships. but I ended up installing as much as I could in the living ship, and then I also installed all the stuff that was given me for my original ship that I got just in case I needed it instead of the living ship.

Sunday

I saw an incredible Facebook post about the multitool and now I have to try it. You get this really cool one in the expedition but it’s a class and it’s doesn’t have a lot of room/inventory so today I’m gonna try what they did which is to go back to their main save, of course you have to make it your default, multitool, and then upgrade it and then go back to the expedition, destroy the one that you have and then claim the upgraded one from your console. Let’s see how that works.

OK so I was able to get the multitool over and I upgraded it to class S then I transferred some of the modules from my good multitude after expanding the inventory slots. It took a lot of work so I did it on the flatscreen.

Monday

Aprillian starts the Expedition and I loaded her up with supplies. She got sage, which means I have one of each. April Pvd is a Weaver, Sebastian is royal and Aprillian is sage. I was streaming and Grand Nagus joined me on the stream. I also was using the VRocker App so I was walking in place while I was moving. It took a few steps for me to find a cave so this one was a little bit longer than the one I had with April Pvd but once I did, it really Help. I did find a source of copper, but there were too many bases around . Did mention that you can report them but what they do is they put multiple bases and it just takes too long it’s easier for me to find another cave and finally get the copper that I needed and I also had a little bit of difficulty because I went all the way to the star bomb and realize that the hazmat glove was in my ships inventory so I had to walk all the way back using the app, but it was good exercise and eventually I got all the things I needed and was able to leave the planet and get to the anomaly and once again when I got there, my ship was free. I don’t know why Sebastian had to pay 1400 nights, but I got my living ship and I upgraded the inventory and I also got my multitool from The council and I went on to do some of the missions and I got to the crash site and I was able to pull all the pieces out. But this time I made sure that drI landed my ship nearby and then I would frequently make a safe state so I was able to complete all of the milestones.

I was really pleased that when I went to use the graviton coil to take apart that at First machinery it was a lot easier than it had been.

Something interesting happened because when I was at the Atlas. I ran into someone and he was on VR too. He invited me to group his name was Coke and I decided to accept the invite although I normally don’t, but we played together for a little while and it was very nice.

Tuesday

So today was Sebastian today to do some of the missions so I hopped on him in VR and we’re just going through all the little things you got you got anomaly or you can look on the expedition in your options menu and I’ll put a screenshot in the show notes now. there is a little bit of controversy going on right now in the No Man’s Sky community and I feel like I am a part of the problem because of the imbalance of groups you know there’s three groups is the royal the Weavers and the sage and the Weavers right now are just kicking butt and there’s some police that maybe there’s something going on in the background of the machinery that’s allowing them to have an advantage, but I think no matter what they did to make it balanced people like me are the problem because I’m not playing on all four of my characters every day and of course, that is gonna create an imbalance in what happens with the numbers as opposed to players who are playing every day so I apologize but Sebastian is a royal.

One of the missions was to bring paraffin you know what I’m talking about Polo so I looked it up on the wiki, and it said that you could make it from oxygen and silver but when Sebastian went to look at his personal refiner, he had the single one so he ran to the back and bought the plans for the double refiner or the MK two and then rushed around, trying to find all the ingredients and then he gave up and decided to just get it from AprilPvd. I’ll get the ingredients because one of the things he couldn’t make there was something he needed to make the two part personal refining so I brought a brilliant in.The gaming laptop and she gave copper and it was chromatic metal that she needed so she gave Sebastian that and then Sebastian was able to make the power and then April Pvd made some for herself at the same time. He did have a little glitch in where Sebastian went back to his save, and he could not find the para for none but he was able to bring April Pvd back in.And get some more oxygen from her and make it. It’s really neat how we can help each other out, and of course it brings back memories to the real reason I started multi boxing, which was because my husband back when I first was playing World of Warcraft would sometimes get upset about me playing, and he would interrupt my game to eat dinner or something, and would demand that I stop if say dinner was ready without any warning, so this caused me to start playing with another character that that I was controlling because it was embarrassing to stop in the middle of an instance and not even be able to say I gotta go. I just had to immediately stop so after I got the power fun for Sebastian I saw that there was a few minutes left to do the quest and so I brought in April Pvd so she could do the supply chain and do some of the other quest and she is a weaver.

It’s so confusing.I love checking out freighters so April Pvd actually got on a freighter just to check it out. It’s like seeing what it looks like seeing what the rooms have. Sometimes they have a scanner and because I had brought over that money I was able to get an a class freighter and start the whole quest line. I don’t know why but why not I love trying different things in this game and that’s what it’s fascinating about this game and every once in a while she would land on another fighter just to check it out and compare it.

What’s interesting is there is some of these missions that give plus to everybody which is weird but so I’m brilliant did a couple of missions. She actually went down to do the one where you have to fight the swamp the crash ship and then you get attacked and she’s gotten really better at fighting off the damage and I ended with with her doing as many missions as she could before I logged off for the night. Pull off the parts then the before Big swarm things come attack you and just like the sentinels when you kill them they do drop those little purple glowing green thingies that will give you some stuff. Sometimes I give man night sometimes they give ammunition and they also give that eye core stuff but the most important thing they give you is they mean they recharge your shield so after you kill one, make sure you go and grab that that keg that they drop because it’s gonna recharge your shield I saw a YouTuber kill all four and then pick them up but if you kill them if you pick them up as you kill them, you’ll prevent yourself from getting more damage. And then I logged off. I’m having fun. I’m really enjoying this expedition and I think that one of the things that people are missing is that you can go back to your main save and do stuff on your main side you do not have to stay in the expedition.

Wednesday

I got curious about the possibility of setting down a base computer really quickly during that time when they whip you around from portal to portal after you leave the Atlas and go to Battle. So I decided to start another expedition with Epril. I can’t believe it, but I did it on flatscreen mainly because I hadn’t turned on the gaming PC or the Quest 3 All day because I got a lot of things done around the house such as doing laundry, mopping floors, and working on recording some of the podcast. Before I started, I loaded her up with a bunch of stuff as usual for the living ship, but I also got her to bring some freighter stuff because it looks like we’re gonna all get freighters. So she brought some bulkhead and some of the other things that lets you buy the rooms that you need. She brought enough for everybody. Epril got Royal. It was a little bit harder, not being in VR, but in some ways it was easier because I could just point at something like where the star bulbs were and do auto run. It took me a bit to find underground cave so I could get the silver, but I did, but I stopped at the point where I needed to fly off into space because I cannot do combat on the flatscreen at all.

Thursday

Got back on Epril this time in VR and I took her off the planet. She fought the first big bad and then we got to go to the anomaly and she got the living ship for free. I’m still not sure why Sebastian had to pay 1400 nanites. Oh I just thought of something. I wonder if it was because Sebastian was in a new save and not coming from an old save. Epril got all her stuff out of the console expanded the living ships inventory and her own XO suit and then went on to grab the damaged swamp thingy and break it apart, and she claimed her multitool from her main save which is always weird because she already has a lot of the things they give you for a rewards like the graviton coil. She also grabbed the two staffs from the expedition rewards just to sell them back. Then she went to the Atlas and there was no one around, which was the first time that happened since I started the expedition and yes, she has multiplayer on. She actually did very well fighting and actually defeated the swarm but still got transferred around. The first portal she went to she didn’t have the option to pull out the base. The second portal she did, but she had to go a few units out to find a place and then couldn’t remember where the portal was so the whole experiment didn’t work out. Maybe she’ll go back later and try to figure it out. But she went onto complete The supply chain quest, and also to use those psyhonic eggs to upgrade the tech in our living ship, and then I went to bed.

Friday

I am so fortunate to have VR in my life. A lot of things for me and has made me healthier and I get to do a lot of fun things that so many people do not get to try and I wish that I could share more of it or interest more people to try and in fact and a lot of the videos I have done and a lot of the talking about VR on this podcast was done to try to get people interested in VR, but I’ve had to just accept that it’s not gonna happen. It’s just something that I have and I’m just going to try to enjoy it as much as possible no I had a friend over on Friday and I spent most of the day cleaning and we sat out on the balcony. It was really nice and I was showing him some of the videos of me doing VR and he actually got interested so I put the headset on him and at first I was showing him Medieval Dynasty basically just using the controllers myself, I was casting it to my laptop and watching what he was seeing and I use the controller to move him around but then I know that he used the game and he doesn’t game anymore and I said you know maybe you should try one of these fighting games you might enjoy it so I brought out this game called Barbara and it’s it was one of the games I got free on Meta quest plus so whatever they call it cause I have the subscription and it is so cute. It’s you are fighting in a dungeon type thing, but I was still in the tutorial so he was able to follow along and figure out the little steps on how to use it the interesting thing though was that my muscle memory is so deep that it is hard for me to deconstruct what I do to use things in VR so I’m like OK. You have to press the grip button but for some people they won’t know the grip button is your middle button your middle finger and then I had to explain the different buttons on the controller plus the other button that that’s not a button it was a button, but it’s a depressed the way to send to yourself and also how to use the thumb stick to move around. I was really impressed my friend actually got he grasp very well and he was playing he was hitting a couple of times he moved forward and at one point he did come close to hitting the mirror and I was I had to explain to him don’t move your body and I did put them on the cushion that I used to keep myself in place I have A cushion from a patio furniture that gives me a place to know where I am and so I don’t move forward and and he actually got used to using the drumstick to move forward and there’s a lot to being in VR but once you do it, it’s totally totally muscle memory and you really start getting into it so I was really happy to share it with him. We played a good 1520 minutes and he really liked it. I’m hoping that he’ll come back in and try it again or maybe even be interested in getting his own headset but it made me realize how fortunate I am to have this because one of the reasons I love VR and jumped head first into it was because of the immersion of it. There were times when I was playing World of Warcraft where I could no longer really tell where I was on the screen and where I had to go at the time I attributed to my eyesight and getting older and I did things like I got a bigger screen. I got like a 32 inch screen monitor and it still wasn’t working for me in the minute. I got into VR. I’m like yes I can see. I need to go to that spot over there and I can see that I need to look for this thing over there so it was very the visual part of it was with the immersion was so much better and to be honest it’s 2026. I really thought everybody would be in VR. I didn’t think people would still be playing flatscreen games not just for the reason you’re looking at a screen and moving a character around instead of moving yourself around but also for the activity no matter what I’m doing, and my friend was noticing this when he was hitting these the monsters he was fighting. He was moving his arms. You were physically moving and not just sitting there look in front of a keyboard pressing button buttons so I really enjoyed showing it to him and again it just made me realize how lucky I am to be in VR and believe it or not. I didn’t even get into No Man’s Sky on Friday but Saturday will be a whole different thing.

Saturday

Zenith Cosmic Craze

I ran the cosmetic Craze on Zenith and that was a lot of fun. I run an event that is organized by the United Zenith alliance. We usually start off with the sunshine event and that gives you a whole set of really cool clothes. If you complete the events this one you can only do once to get the big bonus which is 40 tokens once a day, but there’s another event called Neo wear, which gives you tokens for another set of cosmetic clothing, but that has 3 different events around the map Scarlett Vale sky song, Summit and. The beauty of this is that you get to modify how you appear in the game as you level your tune and Zenith you will find that some gear. That’s really good and powerful might not match the gear that you’re currently wearing so this is the way of personalizing your outfit to make you look more like the way you wanna look I really love this aspect of the game. I really miss the mechanics of that game. When I use my controller this use my weapons. It feels like I’m swinging a blade or aiming a bow and arrow. It was really nice to be back in Zenith and we had a really good crowd this Saturday. We get together at 4 PM EDT every first and third Saturday of the month.

Saturday evening I hopped back on Apple Pvd and she did a few missions now she is Weaver and it was fun and then I didn’t didn’t play too long. I just did all three missions and then headed to bed. I did my share for the Weaver.

Sunday

Sunday I logged on April Pvd and she did some missions. There was an update and they fixed a lot of bugs. The mission where you have to pull off the parts of the injured the dead swarm thingy machinery is much easier now.

My scanner is working now to scan animals. I’ve been scanning most animals. I see to try to see if I can get some triple S class animals from the expedition. Before the scanner was working, I would adopt him and then check the info and then put them back or release them. One of the missions was a supply chain and Paula wanted ammonia so I I did some duping. I got some paraffin on and I think you mixed that with dust and you get ammonia. So she turned in the quest and then she did the other two quest. adding some points for the Weavers. She had to go repair some one of the swarm things that’s what I hadn’t done before where you have to give it Carbon Nanotubes, a microprocessor and 2 glass.

After April Pvd finished her missions I brought out. Sebastian and Sebastian started to do his missions but now he has a freighter of so now Sebastian was af and I wanted to do more things with him in the freighter so I brought in April Pvd Who brought over the parts to upgrade you’re afraid of the bulkhead modules and salvage frigate modules that you need to upgrade the freighter, so Sebastian met up with E and traded the parts and then he did some duplicating which she had to do on the planet because you can’t do the duplicating thing in your personal refiner on the space station or the anomaly in the expedition. Sebastian is royal so he did some missions and at one point, I had two characters on the planet at the same time and one could see bases that were there and the other curtain so apparently you can only see the bases of your faction, which is interesting. and then Sebastian had the fun of setting up his freighter getting the teleporter. I don’t know why I love doing that so much.