I very VERY nearly learned to my cost today (exactly as Bomba Luigi did many moons ago now) that planet Wilson, pleasant tho it can seem on the surface, is DEADLY like a venus fly trap.
I touch down at Bomba's last reported co-ordinates, park the DBX and do some prospecting for repair and refuel synthesis materials while I wait for him to show up. After a while, and with the immediate area around my ship stripped of all its ore, I take off again with the intention of flying to the other side of the ravine to do the same. As I cross I observe a pair of perfectly flat topped peaks rising up out of the valley and am consumed by an idea. Land the ship on one, drive the SRV across to the other and then take a photograph looking back at my ship in the distance. It'll be fantastic, one for the album!
Mistake. Big mistake. HUGE. (did Bomba's previous adventure teach us nothing?)
I park the ship and start to bound across to the other peak but quickly get into trouble. This terrain is horrible. It's crooked and spiky and STEEP.
Before I know it I'm on the edge of what I can only describe as Sarlacc's Pit, and I'm slowly slipping further and further into it.
These don't really do it justice but the holographic terrain image in my HUD shows the true horror of the situation I find myself in (and only 639m away from my ship too!).
The more I struggle the deeper I slide, until inevitably I find myself at the bottom. You can see the tiremarks where I've tried in vain to scrabble out of this hell hole.
It's pretty much at this moment that Mr Luigi decides to show up and I have to confess that I've "done a Bomba". It seems hopeless but it's then I discover a technique of boosting myself up and across, landing sideways on alternate sides of the funnel, barely clinging to the near vertical edges. After 10 more minutes of this I'm suddenly out. The terrain is rough as hell but it's out of the pit!
I eventually get myself onto a ridge that's long enough that I'll be able to take a run up and risk one all or nothing leap across to a shelf I can see in the distance. What's beyond the shelf I have no idea but it's the only hope I've got.
But first I have to nip outside the SRV for a second to have a quick pee (I've been in that hole a long time)!
[to be continued as soon as the video of my leap to freedom (or doom) has finished uploading]