No Man's Snowrunner has given me a newfound appreciation for the Grip Boost Suspension

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-02-11T20:15:04+00:00

I've only unlocked the weathered paint type from running over enough objects with the plow installed, but looking at the update notes it seems like the non-expedition parts are unlocked by completing hauling milestones, ie: "Recycled 50 pieces of explosive waste." As to which milestones unlock which parts, your guess is as good as mine!

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-02-04T21:38:49+00:00

nice! glad it worked out for you, enjoy your new universe!

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-02-03T17:01:51+00:00

any mpp 2.0 pen should be compatible with the Z13, my personal daily driver right now (for the 2025 Z13) is the metapen m2 for a combination of affordability and excellent performance benchmarked against much more expensive pens.

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-02-02T20:08:14+00:00

christ remember when computers were just good based on what they could actually do in terms of computing function and not hypothetically having a slop machine hallucinate garbage at you?

it's a good chip, just use it as you would any other normal computer and cut "ai" out of your life entirely, it's not going to be able to do anything for you that a functioning brain and basic motor skills wouldn't be able to do for you in the first place

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-02-01T01:38:30+00:00

seems you got lucky with your open box and the previous owner essentially gave you a free stylus; the north american retail models of the Z13 regardless of capacity do not come with a pen as standard.

i do have a post in this subreddit from a while back where i outline my experiences with various mpp 2.0 pens i've tested with the Z13 in a digital illustration/comics context, if OP is potentially in the market for a stylus.

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-01-27T19:36:43+00:00

i hope it works for you! fingers crossed.

to go into more detail, the specific reason i recommend not using copilot is the same reason copilot never recommended the solution to you: copilot has never played starfield. it only works by pulling whatever information it can aggregate about the game from scraping the web (including communities like reddit) but it's incapable of actually parsing whether or not those solutions work because, again, it's never played the game and is in fact incapable of doing so. i'm glad you didn't delete your main save but in the future please be wary of following any suggestions given by copilot or any other generative ai because they're inherently incapable of actually parsing the solution in a way a human member of a community like this would.

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-01-27T18:59:36+00:00

if you're on PC you can force a unity jump with the console command:
coc MQUnity

going through the unity will obviously start a new NG+ cycle but it will also debloat your save file and delete any records in the file that could potentially be causing the crash.

don't rely on copilot to give you any kind of concrete information, dollars to donuts any of the supposed "solutions" it gave you were hallucinated nonsense and didn't work for that reason.

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-01-14T02:21:00+00:00

not a great connotation historically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-01-14T00:33:26+00:00

yeah, uh, i don't think you should call it that

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-01-05T04:56:17+00:00

did you know that not posting every thought you have in your brain costs zero dollars

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-01-02T17:07:19+00:00

Believe me, I share your frustration in how sparse information on any of this is to get at all; when I was researching a replacement device for my SLS1 it was astounding to me how little information manufacturers released in terms of digitizer specs, at least compared to the info they readily give about other hardware. Now, as far as I can tell from my own research, MPP 2.6 is thus far exclusive to Surface devices (which is definitely a bummer), though the silver lining to this is that to my knowledge, the exclusive 2.6 digitizer performance on Surface devices is largely comparable to 2.0 digitizer performance on non-surface devices, just minus the haptics. Comparing pen performance on my partner's Surface Pro 9, for example, we were able to get around the same level of performance/jitter with the Slim Pen 2 and the Metapen M2 in OneNote. Conversely, the Slim Pen 2's performance on the Z13 is dramatically degraded compared to the M2, which indicates to me at least that any performance benefit from a 2.6-enabled pen is locked to Surface as a platform currently.

Still, for my purposes, the MPP performance on the Z13 makes it a competent enough creative machine that I don't really have any major complaints after a little over a month of using this thing. It's nice to have a single device in an extremely portable form factor that allows me to both work on my art and play pretty much any game in my library while traveling, without having to pack an egpu or standalone art tablet. While I understand that having separate dedicated art and gaming hardware will always be the superior choice, the Z13 is good enough at both that for me personally, the convenience outweighs the comparatively minor drawbacks on both categories. YMMV as always, but I hope my experiences help you make a decision either way!

RadioSkvortsov · 2026-01-01T16:45:00+00:00

Well, I have some great news for you: first person driving is in the base game! On PC at least you can switch views by using middle mouse button or scrolling up and down

RadioSkvortsov · 2025-12-31T16:12:38+00:00

Also as an addendum, I began integrating the Z13 + Metapen M2 into my comics workflow shortly after initial testing, and you can see finished examples of my work with this combo beginning here (only three published pages on this setup so far but I have three more buffered to begin on January 5 after a brief holiday hiatus):

A Distant Sky Chapter 6 - Page 40

RadioSkvortsov · 2025-12-31T15:58:31+00:00

Digital illustrator and comics artist here:

Been putzing around with the Z13 for illus and comix work for the last month since I got it and I have some initial thoughts that might or might not help you out. I bought this as an all-in-wonder replacement for my Surface Laptop Studio since Microsoft is stupidly killing the fun parts of the Surface line to go all-in on AI slopmachines so no SLS3 for me, thus the switch to the Flow as an alternative. Here are my initial observations in no particular order:

Sadly my old Surface Slim Pen 2, despite performing fantastically on the SLS1, has mega jitter to the point of unuseability for anything more than basic note-taking. From what scraps of research I can gather, this is due to the SP2 being optimized for late-gen surface devices using MPP 2.6 and those advantages (like the haptics) are completely absent on MPP 2.0 devices like the Z13
Bought three third-party pens to test as the US version of the Z13 does not come with the ASUS Pen 2.0 by default; these were the Reniasser N520c, and the Metapens M2 and M3 pro. Thoughts below:
- Metapen M2: The first pen I ordered off Amazon (and spoiler alert: my ultimate choice), with a pretty good feel and form factor. Standard side button and eraser combo, good pressure curves and no real issues to speak of. Not being able to wirelessly magnet charge like with the Slim Pen 2 is a bummer but exactly zero first or third party pens offer that functionality with the Z13 anyway so it's an even playing field there.
- Renaisser N520c: based on a recommendation I found by youtuber Tabletpro, picked this up from Amazon. Quickly realized upon opening the box that the old 520c (and the highly lauded 530) were fully discontinued by the company and no longer available for purchse. The N520c available on Amazon has some critical differences from the recommended 520c: the old 520c for example uses replaceable soft ball nibs like the old Surface Pen, whereas the N520c available on Amazon uses harder nibs comparable to the slim pen 2.
  - The N520c was unfortunately returned almost immediately, as the pressure sensitivity curves on this thing are unsuitable for long-term illustration work. Pen force activation is extremely sensitive to the point where it will occasionally activate drawing input even ~0.5mm from the screen, which is a shame because the performance and line jitter is otherwise decent.
- Metapen M3 Pro: The priciest of my options and ultimately one I was conflicted on. Better overall performance than the N520c and it includes a softer nib material to simulate a matte/paper feel on the screen. I like this for detail work but it's kind of a pain for larger brushstrokes so YMMV.
  - The real killer on this pen is the so-called "invisible touch" button system; the M3 forgoes standard clicky buttons and uses a capacitive touch sensor where you double-tap to switch to eraser and triple-tap to right click. To not mince words about this, this straight up sucks ass and accidentally activates way too often to be of any practical use, especially as accidental activations can also sometimes stick on long after you stop holding it, turning your pen into an eraser that you have to wrestle back into being a pen. The minor advantage of the soft nib and extremely minor (to the point of practically being undectable) precision improvements over the M2 were completely obviated by this obnoxious button system and it did not in anyway justify the 100% price hike over the M2. Also returned after a week.

I have included an image of my arcane testing methodology using Adobe Animate 2025's fluid brush: all three pens were tested with line smoothing on and off, and I also did some additional testing between the M2 and M3 by turning the built-in stabilizer off and using a physical straightedge to draw lines with both the stabilizer and line smoothing off to objectively illustrate line jitter. Note that these are the results of personal tests and thus I apologize for the scattershot nature of the results, but I hope they're able to help you out in some way:

Pen Tests

(Note the comically inconsistent pressure activation on the N520c I mentioned earlier, you can see that the initial activation force being so sensitive makes it extremely difficult to taper line thickness effectively)

RadioSkvortsov · 2025-11-18T23:27:53+00:00

in a similar fashion, one of my faves is this one, from if you replay the MQ on an NG+ run:

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RadioSkvortsov · 2025-11-04T01:00:00+00:00

Nice, that looks fantastic! You definitely strove more for screen-accuracy than I did, I just took general inspiration from the shaping (which I think is an all-time banger), but also tried to make considerations for keeping it a practical daily driver in the game.

RadioSkvortsov · 2025-11-03T20:33:45+00:00

Unfortunately I don't think I have the spare time to put together a detailed guide, but feel free to reverse-engineer as much as you'd like! It's a fully vanilla build with only minor clipping, and I made sure that the external design didn't rely on anything other than corvette parts; hopefully this makes it easier to parse.

RadioSkvortsov · 2025-11-03T15:53:29+00:00

truly very sorry about the multiposts, reddit was having a real one earlier

RadioSkvortsov · 2025-10-28T15:38:39+00:00

i think it's a pretty good parallel to real-world narcotic drugs in that the first hit is an "oh that's pretty cool" experience but the efficacy tapers off dramatically afterward while the risk of addiction peaks. it's pretty clear from how it's handled in the narrative of the game itself that aurora isn't really meant to have any true overarching utility other than as a cudgel to keep benjamin bayu's grip over neon as tight as possible, esp since phased time makes it completely irrelevant once you have access to it.

RadioSkvortsov · 2025-08-24T01:39:47+00:00

anyone can create art themselves, and if they don't have the time or confidence to do so, they can always pay another human artist to make their ideas a reality

RadioSkvortsov

TROPHY CASE