Busting out the pre-order bonus ship in No Man's Sky with its built-in hyperdrive will get you exploring the galaxy far faster than going through all the tutorials… but the shortcut could lead straight to a dead end. Reddit user hilightnotes writes that they're stranded in a system after trading in the pre-order ship for what they thought was an upgrade.
The only problem was the swanky new ship didn't have its own hyperdrive. Since hilightnotes effectively skipped the part of the game's tutorial that gives you a hyperdrive blueprint - and since it seems like the game doesn't think they've progressed far enough to start generating other ships or merchants with hyperdrives - they're effectively stuck in that one system. And it looks like No Man's Sky's multiplayer features aren't working (if it ever had them to begin with), so they can't even wave at passing traffic!
Several other players who hopped in the pre-order ship a bit too early reported the same issue. You can hardly blame them; even if you don't want the pre-order bonus and would prefer to start the game with a clean slate, No Man's Sky will keep nagging you with notifications until you try it out. It's possible that there is in-game solution to the issue that the players' combined efforts haven't arrived at yet, but it's still a massive headache either way.
Fortunately, it's an easy enough bug to avoid. Just don't leave your starting system until you learn how to make hyperdrives. But without an earlier save game to jump back to, it looks like hilightnotes and company have no escape but to start over. Hopefully developer Hello Games corrects this issue in one of those free updates before more would-be explorers get stuck.
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