Along with the required milestones, in the No Man’s Sky Leviathan Expedition 7 Optional Milestones are available and these require the community’s combined effort for their completion.
In this guide, we will be talking about the NMS Expedition 7 Optional Milestones, how to complete them, and what are the rewards tied to them.
How to Complete the Optional Milestones in Expedition 7
Completing the Optional Milestones is a community effort, so you cannot just singlehandedly complete it. This also means that all of the memory Fragment class upgrades won’t be available until the final week or so of the expedition, which would still depend on how much Loop Research every player in the expedition will do.
To contribute to the Optional Missions, you will first have to go to Polo at the Space Anomaly. He will then offer three different missions that you can do called Loop Research missions. These missions require you to gather special items from different kinds of sources, and then you can hand them back over to Polo to get some rewards.
To be more efficient in doing these missions, you can simply gather as much of the materials as your inventory can hold, and then make the trip back to Polo to deposit them. Each deposit will reward a random Memory Fragment. When opened, the class level of these fragments will depend on the community’s overall progress or the Universal Loop Progression Progress.
Loop Research Missions
These are the missions that can be done to contribute towards the Optional Milestones:
- Loop Research: Liquid Sun
- Gather x250 Liquid Sun by using the Solar Ray to extract it from resource deposits.
- Loop Research: Ancestral Memories
- Gather x200 Ancestral Memories from creatures after feeding them.
- Loop Research: Somnal Dust
- Gather x100 Somnal Dust from derelict freighters.
Expedition 7 Optional Milestone Rewards
When the community’s overall progress reaches a certain tier, it will complete the optional milestone corresponding to that tier for everyone playing in the expedition. Each optional milestone completed will also provide additional Memory Fragments as rewards.
Aside from that, the most important reward is the class upgrade of all technology upgrade modules that can be received from Memory Fragments moving forward.
Iteration One: Cycle Observed
- Complete the first universal loop (tier 1)
- Memory Fragments Upgraded to B-Class
- x2 Memory Fragment (Inventory)
Iteration Two: Perpetuity
- Complete the second universal loop (tier 2)
- Memory Fragments Upgraded to A-Class
- x2 Memory Fragment (Inventory)
Iteration Three: Recursion
- Complete the third universal loop (tier 3)
- Memory Fragments Upgraded to S-Class
- x2 Memory Fragment (Inventory)
- x2 Memory Fragment (Exosuit)
Iteration Four: A Way Out?
- Complete the fourth universal loop (tier 4)
- Memory Fragments Upgraded to X-Class
- x3 Memory Fragment
Iteration Five: Unbound
- Complete the final universal loop (tier 5)
- Memory Fragment (Inventory)
- x4 Memory Fragment
Are Optional Milestones needed to complete the No Man’s Sky Expedition 7 Leviathan?
Technically, no, optional milestones are supposed to be optional and thus players are not required to complete them in order to finish the Expedition and claim its rewards.
However, since this Expedition’s release, players who have completed all the main milestones and iterations early discovered a bug where the final Expedition badge remained unavailable and the progress showing as 0/5 iterations completed. It appears that despite being meant to be optional, these optional milestones still counted as part of the required milestones.
The devs have been made aware of this bug and has fixed the issue through an experimental branch of the game. If you have finished the expedition and would like to know how to get the final rewards without waiting for the official patch rollout on the public branch, then check out our How to Claim Leviathan Frigate in No Man’s Sky Expedition 7 (Steam) guide for the steps on how to do it.
If you like this Guide, be sure to check out our other No Man’s Sky articles:
- No Man’s Sky Leviathan Expedition 7 Walkthrough & Rewards
- How to repair your starship in No Man’s Sky Expedition 7 Leviathan
- How to Get Technology Upgrades Fast in No Man’s Sky Expedition 7 Leviathan
- How to Claim Leviathan Frigate in No Man’s Sky Expedition 7
- No Man’s Sky Leviathan Expedition Update Now Available
- No Mans Sky Coming To Xbox Game Pass Next Month
Check out this video by Jason Plays showing how to complete the Loop Researches for the Optional Missions: