Portal

The subject of this article is from the Beyond update.
The information from this article is up-to-date as of 27 November, 2019.

Portals are structures in No Man's Sky that allow for quick travel between worlds and entire regions of space.

Summary

A Portal is a point of interest in No Man's Sky and exactly one can be found on all celestial bodies of a star system, like planets or their moons. Portals can be activated and used to quickly travel between planets of a star system, star systems of a region or entire regions within the same galaxy.

The ability to activate a portal is taught to the player in the Artemis Path storyline in the A Leap in the Dark quest and doesn't need the entirety of all sixteen glyphs to be used. All glyphs can be found within Traveller Graves beforehand and subsequently used to travel anywhere inside the galaxy.

Appearance

Portals are ancient structures that are all identical in appearance. They have a long cross-shaped platform on the ground that is flanked by floating pillars. On top of this platform stands a tall, slab-like structure with a split down its centre and with an opening at the base that allows beings to pass through it once it is activated. The tunnel has a ring that is covered in the portal glyphs, similar to the chevrons on a stargate. On both sides leading to the tunnel are minor stairs with one end having a submerged control panel that will come out of the ground once an entity enters its vicinity.

Locating a Portal

The most expedient method for finding the portal of a celestial body is to use another portal with the new planets address and to build a beacon at the target location to find it later. To help in this task it is advised to at least claim one homebase at another portal and to use it as a personal portal hub.

To find a first or later portal one can use a monolith. The most reliable way is to acquire an Exocraft and install Exocraft Signal Booster Upgrade Tau. Another way is to purchase a Planetary Chart (ancient artifact site) from Cartographer on a Space Station. Overall, monoliths only reveal the portal of their own celestial body. Repeated tries on the same planet will not yield other portal locations and are fruitless.

Locating a Monolith with the Planetary Chart:

Plot the Route with a chart.
A pulse will travel out and will reveal the location of one alien structure in the star system. If the result is "Alien Monolith detected" then move to the next step, otherwise repeat the previous step until that is the result. A navigation icon will appear for every result.
Travel to the monolith.

Locating a Monolith with an Exocraft Scanner:

Build an Exocraft Station and enter the Exocraft.
Select the Scanner in the quick menue and chose "Alien Structures".
If a monolith is found travel to its location, otherwise repeat.
Travel to the monolith.

Locating the Portal with a Monolith:

Activate the monolith.
Select "Locate a Portal" – note that this will debit either one Gek Relic, Korvax Casing, or Vy'keen Dagger from your inventory depending upon the dominant race in the star system. These can be found inside green containers, gained from NPCs, rewarded for monolith challenges or received in debrief from Frigate missions.
A message will appear that a portal has been located on the planet and a navigation icon for the portal will appear.
Travel to the portal.

Portal Glyphs

Table of correspondence for Glyphs:

Blue	Glyph	Decimal	Hexadecimal	Legacy name ^[1]	Void Egg name^[2]
00	1 / 16	1	0	sunset	Star Over Water
11	2 / 16	2	1	bird	Hunter
22	3 / 16	3	2	face	Reflection
33	4 / 16	4	3	diplo	Ancient Giant
44	5 / 16	5	4	eclipse	Obscured Companion
55	6 / 16	6	5	balloon	Ascending Orb
66	7 / 16	7	6	boat	Sailor
77	8 / 16	8	7	bug	Lowly Insect
88	9 / 16	9	8	dragonfly
99	10 / 16	10	9	galaxy	Spiral of Reality
AA	11 / 16	11	A	voxel	Anomaly
BB	12 / 16	12	B	fish	Ocean King
CC	13 / 16	13	C	tent
DD	14 / 16	14	D	rocket	Vessel To Beyond
EE	15 / 16	15	E	tree
FF	16 / 16	16	F	atlas

See: Glyph

Activating a Portal

A portal's control terminal needs to be charged before the portal can be activated and used. Approaching an uncharged portal from the correct side will cause its terminal to raise from the ground. Each potential glyph is represented by one of sixteen buttons. These buttons do not reflect a user's glyphs and have to be charged regardless of the target address using them or not. A user does not need to have all glyphs to use a portal!

Four glyphs are charged with certain earth elements: 50 Cobalt, 50 Deuterium, 50 Di-hydrogen, 13 Ionised Cobalt, or 50 Salt per glyph.
Four glyphs are charged with fuel elements: 50 Carbon, 17 Condensed Carbon, or 25 Oxygen per glyph.
Four glyphs are charged with catalyst elements: 25 Sodium or 10 Sodium Nitrate per glyph.
Four glyphs are charged with stellar elements: 50 Copper, 25 Cadmium, 17 Emeril, 13 Indium or 25 Activated Copper per glyph.

Accessing the terminal of a charged portal will display the portal's menue. It has three options: "Activate Portal", "Request this planet's address", and "Leave". Choosing the first option opens a keypad of the sixteen glyphs. Using the keypad one can enter another portal's 12-digit address. After all twelve glyphs are input the portal will activate and either report an error if the address is impossible or on the edge of the known galaxy or activate normally. Passing through the portal will then deliver the user to the destination that was chosen or a nearby random star if impossible.

One may pass through the portal and return, then enter a new destination and pass through and return for an unlimited number of times without it losing its charge. Portals do lose their charge only upon a complete reseed of the galaxy or a reset of the savegame. Once a portal is charged it is only charged for the user and remains so forever even if one quits the game or leaves the star system with any means other than the portal.

Portal Travel

Delta Majoris Expedition Photo — Portal Travellers use personal beacons, communication terminals and exocraft.

An activated portal leads directly to the portal at the address that was entered. The starship will be waiting next to the portal as well. Regardless of the actions after the transport, the portal will remain open until one travels back through it. One can save and even exit the game and the portal will remain open. It is not only impossible to enter a different address in an open portal from the target side, but for all portals in the entire target system. The terminal will remain underground for all planets until the player goes back to the starting system. Further limitations of the target system are, which will show a Portal Interference message to the player:

The Galactic Map cannot be opened. This also prevents the documentation of star systems for the wiki due to critical info being stored there.
Black Holes will not be generated in the system even if one is supposed to be present.
A personal freighter cannot warp into the system and no NPC freighters will appear in the system.
The teleporter on the space station is inoperable and will not register in the station teleport network.
New Base Computers cannot be build and if a pre-existing base computer is found the new base will not be documented in the official base teleport system. A Base Teleport Module will not work either, before or after the portal has been used to go back.

The only arbitrary way for one-way travel is to teleport to other players either randomly or in the friendlist and to register with the local station teleport network. This allows the same actions as portals did before Update 1.58. All other legitimate avenues of one-way travel are currenlty closed aside of black holes, which are one way and one direction only, towards the centre.

As stated by Hello Games in an experimental update thread on Steam, "most" of these changes and limitations of permanent portal travel are their intention. It can be argued that they might regret the severity of some of these as the systems related to the Community Research demanded a quick implementation of the features.

Exotic Portal
Dead Portal

Forward Bases

With the changes to signal boosters in NEXT, finding a claimable base on an expedition took a lot more effort and dedication as any habitable structure could interfere with finding one. It was part of the shelter group. Since Beyond HG has removed the option to locate a forward base after they also removed the general idea of permanent portal travel in NEXT prior to it. This might be an oversight and unintended consequence of their new feature implementation. The removal of portal travel was not.

Due to the new feature of planetary coordinates for the spaceship, sharing forward base coordinates between players is now a necessity for coordinated efforts of distant exploration. Finding one now comes down to sheer luck.

On full or partial ocean worlds travellers are advised to use the Nomad to traverse water more easily. Any down or plain world can safely be traversed using the Roamer which offers a longer speed boost and more stability.

Portal Address

Every portal has its own unique Portal address. The address is a sequence of twelve glyphs arranged so that one glyph represents the planet, three represent the star system, and eight represent the region. A portal's address can be learned by requesting it from a charged portal or by conversion from Galactic Coordinates. It is necessary to input a portal address at a charged portal to activate the portal for travel.

Portal addresses break down into five parts. The first glyph is the Planet Index. The second, third, and fourth glyphs combine into the Star System Index. The remaining glyphs are used to identify the region (i.e. define X, Y, and Z locations) in the galaxy. It can be visualized as follows:

[P][SSS][YY][ZZZ][XXX] – (P = Planet Index / S = Star System Index / Y = Height / Z = Width / X = Length)

See: Portal address

Known Portal locations

Portal Repository

For a list of known (and often marked portals) see the Portal Catalogue.
The Portal Repository: A catalog of known portal coordinates with more than 1000 entries. Addresses are categorized by game version, platform, mode, galaxy, and keywords. Players can add their own addresses by filling out the submission form.

History

First announced during the 2014 Game Awards, portals have the ability to take the player to a random part of the galaxy. In the pre-release version of the game, the only planets known to have portals were Gorogohl and Yaasrij.

They normally appear as an individual portal, but some have been discovered with multiple smaller portals surrounding a larger one.

Release history

Release - Introduced to the game.
Atlas Rises - Portals can now be activated. Revisit previous planets, others' bases or jump randomly to new worlds. Learn the language of portals by unlocking mysterious glyphs as you journey through the universe. Interact with a portal and input a specific combination of glyphs to quick travel to a specific planet.

Wiki notes: Previously portals acted as wormholes, certain planets were linked to each other. It was impossible for the player to retrieve their ship or buy a new one after going through a portal. In order to get to the ship the player had to walk or use a vehicle to find a base, then claim that base and use a teleporter to visit the new base from their old home.

Atlas Rises 1.33 - Fixed an issue where the Portal Terminal could not be updated to a different address, when the player returned through a portal.
Atlas Rises 1.34 - Fixed an issue where large numbers of portal visits would be added to save files, greatly increasing the save size and impeding the ability to save the game. Prevented players being blocked from progressing, if they decline to enter glyphs into a particular story portal.
Atlas Rises 1.35 - Added message to notify the player if they select a portal glyph they have not yet learned. Improved messaging when portal glyphs are rewarded. Added audio when interacting with portals. Prevented portals from being incorrectly left enabled at times they shouldn’t be.
Atlas Rises 1.37 - Fixed an issue where some players did not receive all of the portal glyphs. If a player experienced this issue, the next time they find a portal glyph, those that were previously missed should be restored.
NEXT - All player owned ships can now be summoned.

Wiki notes: This allows system wide exploration through one portal, previously the ship remained in the starting system and the player could only explore the destination planet. The last portal of multi-body systems previously was unusable until it has been charged.

NEXT 1.58 - Fixed an issue where players were able to warp and get stuck on the other side of a portal.

Wiki notes: This prevents players from accidentally bugging out their station teleporter (or to prevent shortcuts to the centre, even though friend list do the same). Free-roam past the use of a portal has been completely disabled, and not even the Atlas Rises method of port, claim, build a teleport, return, port is possible anymore. Free galactic travel is permanently eliminated.

NEXT 1.59 - Fixed an issue that could cause Community Research portals not to return players to the correct galaxy after mission completion. Fixed an issue that could cause portals to close and not lead players back to the correct planet.
NEXT 1.63 - Fixed an issue where players who were on the other side of a portal at the launch of NEXT would see their portal return marker in an invalid position. Fixed a number of issues with player position being saved incorrectly while on the other side of a portal in multiplayer.
Beyond - Portal charging requirements changed to include stellar elements. Signal boosters can not be used to locate monoliths anymore and were replaced with Carthographers aboard a space station to purchase a planetary chart. Base computers on portal interference worlds can't be pinpointed with signal boosters anymore either. Finding one has become luck...