Tips and tricks

The subject of this article is from the NEXT update.
The information from this article is up-to-date as of 28 October, 2018.

This page is a list of game hints.

Summary

This page contains a growing list of tips and tricks to help you with your No Man's Sky adventure. While some tips are more suited to newer players, even seasoned travelers may learn something from this list. Many of these tips and tricks have been collected from other guides and resources, but feel free to add your own tips to the list!

Currently under reconstruction for No Man's Sky: NEXT, some of the content might be outdated

NEXT Update

If you're starting the update from an old save, you will spawn without your base. Follow these steps to get your previous base back:
- Select the base building quest in your mission log. If you don't select the quest you won't be able to retrieve your base
- Fly down to a planet's surface and use your scanner. You will locate a Base Computer. Fly to the location
- Activate the base computer and choose the option to retrieve your previous base.
If you cannot craft a beacon, take a screenshot while scanning the location (hold F). The Scanner interface contains the planet name (top left) as well as latitude and longitude (top right), which you can use to find a location again.
In order to build a new base from scratch, you need to craft a Base Computer using Chromatic Metal, which can be obtained by using specific metals in a Portable Refiner.
You can switch between first- and third-person views under the quick menu, in the "Utilities" section.
Most crafting materials and recipes have changed from the previous update, so take your time to learn and understand the new systems.
You cannot use a space station teleporter before building your first base, and teleporter locations from a previous save have been wiped. To teleport back from visited locations from your base you will need to craft a Teleporter, which can be found in the base building menu. You will need to refine Cobalt into Ionised Cobalt.
You can change your appearance in a space station.
Using your Analysis Visor on a planet will allow you to find hidden resource deposits and buried treasures. It can also help you find deployable technology if you forgot where you placed it.
New deployable technology like the Portable Refiner can be stored in your inventory to be used again later, which means you only need to craft them once.
Harvesting Deuterium gives the player a short jetpack boost, which can help you travel greater distances using the jetpack+melee combo.
Teleporter locations can be sorted by type (space station or bases).
When underwater, Kelp Sac plants recharge oxygen when interacted with.
Collect Navigation Data and Drop Pod Data and use it in a Signal Booster to find new locations.

General

Try to save both using your ship and save points as often as possible in case you might want to reload your game. After using a save point you can keep it in your inventory to be used again later.
Read the in game guide for explanations of many game features, with built in control prompts.
If you press the melee button after sprinting and then use the Jetpack (so bash + boost, then jetpack quickly), you'll get a quick boost to help you get around faster. This is generally called bash-boosting or melee-boosting. It is slower than an Exocraft and consumes your Life Support quicker than regular Jetpacking or Sprinting, but is nonetheless a favored means of transportation by many travelers.

Like many games, falling hurts! Master the jetpack to ensure soft landings!

If you die, go back and find your grave. You might recover your lost inventory this way. You must revisit your grave before restarting your game or reloading an old save, or it will disappear.

Practice inventory management by transferring items to your starship to free up space in your Exosuit. You can stack twice as much of an element in your ship.

You can expand your inventory in Drop Pods on planets (in exchange for materials) or at Technology Merchants in Space Stations (once). Use Signal Scanner and Drop Pod Data to find Drop Pod signals. Upon entering the drop pod and interacting with an Exosuit Station, it will ask for repair materials in exchange for an extra Exosuit inventory slot. You can choose if you want a general slot, technology slot, or cargo slot. Be ready to pay for them because only the first one is free of charge.

Speak to every alien you encounter, as many will give you interlopers gifts! (Assuming you make the right conversational choices, obviously.) The dialogue options change depending on quest status, standing, and inventory content, so try again later.

To check the time in-game, just open photo mode. The "Scene" tab has a section for "Time of Day." Note: Reset to Default first, because moving the sun around will change this value.

Exploration

Planets with angry/frenzy Sentinels will always have a rare trade commodity to be harvested, like Gravitino Balls or Albumen Pearls.
Empty planets have lots of resources.

Using your Analysis Visor on an unknown POI (question mark) will tell you what kind of waypoint it is. Hold E to keep the marker visible on your HUD.

Scanning

Earn units easily but slowly by using the Analysis Visor (L2 on PS4 or F on PC) on wildlife, vegetation and rocks to discover them.
Don't forget to upload all your discoveries, including new planets and star systems, to the Atlas. To access Discovery page, simply press Menu on PS4 or Esc button on PC. You can also re-name star systems, planets, moons, waypoint sectors, plants, and wildlife in this section prior to uploading. Filling in all of the entries for a planet will also yield a large bonus of hundreds of thousands of units. Note: re-name is just a feature of fun, you will not earn additional units by naming every individual planet.
There are technology modules that earn you much more money when scanning.

When looking for specific buildings, Monoliths, crash sites or other sites on a planet, use your Analysis visor, just as if you were scanning for flora or fauna. Without scanning anything else, get in your ship and fly around the planet. You will see white dots on your HUD of POI's associated with that building. Scanning a Transmission Tower will show white dots on other Transmission Towers and Crash Sites.

Use scanner often (Click in L3 on PS4 or C on PC). Since No Man's Sky heavily consists of lore instead of single story lines - Knowledge Stones, Plaques, Ruins and Monoliths are your best bet to get the most fun out of the game and learn about the history of the various lifeforms. This will further aid your bartering, negotiations and relations. Interacting with knowledge stones will help you communicate better by learning different alien languages.

Keep an eye out for gear symbols while scanning the environment. They are indicators of where Damaged Machinery is located. When you activate them and provide repair materials, they give you Nanite Clusters.
Dig up hard-to-reach underground treasure with the Terrain Manipulator, but be careful not to destroy it in the process. Scan the ground near ruins and crashed freighters.

Trading

Main article: Trading

Galactic trade terminals can be found in various locations such as trading outposts, observatories and space stations and enable you to buy and sell items. They can also be found in player bases.

Look for beacons while flying around on a planet. Beacons are easily spotted by their long antenna. Activate a beacon to scan for a Shelter. Those scanned waypoints are guaranteed to have a Landing Pad, a Galactic Trade Terminal and a Multi-tool for sale.

Be on the lookout for Trade Commodities, especially when you're near a trading post. You can net some units very easily. Bear in mind that these commodities do not stack and that inventory slots often run out quickly. On a side note, although they offer great sum per item, their values often swing heavily up and down. Sell wise and right.

Different trading posts will offer different prices for resources and items. Accordingly to a handful of players, the same trading terminal does not refresh or restock after 30 minutes. Scout around for the best deals to make the most of your time.

Specific occupations in each of the NPC races will carry similar inventory collections. If you frequent a specific space station, track the names and ships of the traders that fly in and out. The same ships will return on a regular basis, and with inventories of the same general composition each time.

Flora and Fauna

The wildlife isn't always friendly. Keep an eye out for the predator symbol (red circle with paw within, arrows indicates the direction). You can either keep your distance, or turn and kill them before they strike. If you're careful, you can also scare most predators off by damaging them heavily but not killing them.

Solanium is found on hot planets, Cactus Flesh on desert planets, Frost Crystal on cold planets, Fungal Mould on toxic planets, Gamma Root on radioactive planets, and Star Bulb on lush planets.

Crafting tips

Craft the Boltcaster or Blaze Javelin in your Multi-tool inventory to gain the combat-side ability. Boltcaster is (unless you upgrade it) similar to a standard fully automatic gun (perhaps an SMG or assault rifle) and Blaze Javelin is more like a semi-automatic rifle, firing slower and dealing more damage per shot.
Craft the Plasma Launcher in your Multi-tool inventory to unlock plasma grenades. Place upgrades for the Plasma Launcher in the slots around the Plasma Launcher for bonus damage. Grenades can be used for combat, blasting open doors, or terrain destruction (such as digging a tunnel).
Use (x on PC, ∆ on PS4) to pin craftable items/upgrades in inventory (install technology window) so you can easily keep track of what you're doing.
Craft a signal booster to manually scan for a Resource Deposit, a Colonial Outposts, a Habitable Base or a Monolith.

Starships

Main article: Starship

Ships have two kinds of health. "Shield health" is represented by a white bar in the upper left of the screen while flying, and can be recharged with oxide elements like Iron or Titanium. "Critical health" is represented by multiple starship icons (inside white squares), located under the white shield bar, and cannot be directly recharged like shield health. If your ship loses all "critical health," you will enter a "crashing" animation, followed by death and respawning (unless you are in Permadeath).

Tapping the "fire" button can be vastly more effective than holding it down with some weapons, like the Phase Beam and Cyclotron Ballista.

Trust your starship! The ship will basically land itself on a planet (square on PS4 and E on PC). The only thing it won't automatically avoid are terrestrial trees, interplanetary asteroids, and other extraterrestrial obstacles (Freighters, space stations).

You can usually find your starship on your Heads-Up Display (HUD), Since the Atlas Rises update, you can also call your ship to you by selecting the up arrow, so feel free to wander and explore.

Before buying a new ship or multi-tool don't forget to dismantle and reclaim resources for the extensions installed on your old tool. It helps refitting the new slots.

When buying a new ship, don't forget to transfer items to the new one first. If you forgot, and your old ship is still around as an abandoned ship, you can go to your old ship reclaim it, then go back to the new ship and transfer your inventory before you reclaim the new one.

Always have spare Launch Fuel or Uranium so that you can power up your Launch Thrusters.

Using a Bypass Chip to summon your starship to a Landing Pad or ship summon beacon may be quicker than walking back to it. It will save fuel as it costs no fuel to launch from pads. (Note: in older versions it spent fuel from your launch thrusters)

If possible, avoid using your Phase Beam or Rocket Launcher in combat or when mining since they are the only ship weapons that require recharging.

Freighters

Owning a Freighter will allow you to own six starships. To buy an additional starship, it must land in your freighter, and then you must click the "Buy at Full Price and Add to Collection" option. You can then trade that ship for a new ship at a Space Station, Trade Post, etc. In other words, you cannot add new ships directly to your collection unless they land on your freighter. But, you can always swap ships which you purchased on your freighter with ships from anywhere else. Some ships can be bought at a relatively low price for this purpose, for 400,000 Units or less.

Freighters can be called and warped into any system, regardless of distance from previous warp. Make sure you have enough space to call your freighter and it's not too close to another fleet or station.

Pre 1.5 only: Build Red Canisters on your Freighter for a steady supply of Suspension Fluid, Electron Vapor, Antimatter, or even Warp Cells no matter where you go. These can be found under the "Decorations" section in the build menu. They recharge in 1 hour (turning yellow at the 30 minute mark), and change their output whenever you move your freighter.

Combat

If a white circle shows up in your ship's monitors, a pirate is about to scan you. When the circle completely ticks down, the pirate will engage. Entering atmosphere or entering a space station or freighter will pause the countdown.

It is possible to talk to a pirate using comms before they attack and try to bargain or call for help. In order to call for help you require a Defence Chit in your inventory. Even if you have NPCs help you still need to fight them yourself.

Resources Gathering and Mining

See Resources if you are looking for a specific resource. Try to keep at least a decent supply of Sodium, Oxygen, Ferrite Dust, Carbon, Di-hydrogen and Cobalt.

Craft the Analysis Visor as soon as possible! This will allow you to flag resources in the area and save you a lot of time lurking around and memorizing element symbols.

Careful when Sentinels are around. They attack you if you're found guilty of overharvesting and destroying planetary balance!

Take time to loot containers. There could be lots of goodies.

Don't overheat your Mining Beam. The fastest way to continue mining resources is to hold down the beam button until you receive a warning of overheating (watch the mining Beam bar on top right corner of player's screen), and then attempt to use beam again. The Mining Beam will automatically cool down completely and re-accumulate heat.

To make Units quickly without a base/farm, you can mine Emeril, which generally takes the form of metallic green resource columns or rarely green crystals. Viridium or Cymatygen are also viable choices, however, they require that you visit a green or blue system respectively and therefore are not an efficient choice early on.

Using Autonomous Mining Units (AMUs) is a way to harvest small quantities from a single resource deposit with minimal user intervention. Each AMU will give you 100 units of the resource, and will eventually destroy the resource deposit when the deposit is exhausted. You can place several AMUs on the same resource deposit. They are slow but work while you're away.

If your AMU says "Inventory Full" when you try collecting your resources from it, destroy some of the resource deposit beneath it - the AMU will still gather resources, and it will "grow back" over time.

Some rare resources, like Sac Venom, Albumen Pearls, or Gravitino Balls may be found "in the wild" and sell for a decent price. However, these resources can also be farmed in a base. Gathering resources like this is not a particularly viable way of making money after the Pathfinder update, even those which cannot be farmed, like Aqua Spheres or Vortex Cubes.

When you get a planetary base and/or personal freighter, you might invest your resources in order to put as many plants as you can into it, with the help of your farmer. These plants have a fixed regenerating time and offer you valuable resources, such as Mordite, Frost Crystal, Solanium, or Fungal Mould. You can sell them all at low price (between 30 and 200 units each), OR use blueprints granted by your Scientist to craft Glass, Insulating Gel, Lubricant, etc... and earn more than 20k for each instead (detailed numbers can be found in the "Farming" section of Base building)

Crashed Ships can be a source for upgrades and materials, although not especially viable they're still worth visiting. They can be found by solving Transmission Tower puzzles or giving cultural relics (ie, Korvax Casing) to NPC's in space stations. Each site will yield the following:
- Nanites from Damaged Machinery, usually located at the left of the crashed ship when facing it
- A chance for an additional blueprint or a multi tool from Distress Beacon located at the rear of the crashed ship
- A crashed ship of random stats (prior to Pathfinder, your own ship's stats changed crashed ship stats - this is no longer the case). Crashed ships generally have few if any upgrades installed, and will need their broken slots repaired with Units.
- Crashed ships can be destroyed for nanites and Tropheum with your ship weapons at the cost of some standing with the species in charge of the system.

Exosuit

Don't dive deep underwater without first upgrading your exosuit with an Aeration Membrane or else you'll likely drown. Without the upgrade, a player usually can last about one minute under water before stamina is depleted and it begins to damage your health.

If your oxygen meter is almost depleted while in water, you can use your jetpack to fly above the water as long as you can to allow your oxygen level to recharge. The gauge on your jetpack is heat level. When you fall back in the water, you do not take damage and your jetpack instantly cools allowing it to be used again immediately.

Jumping back in your ship will fully recharge your Hazard Protection over time, so you can always retreat there if need be.

Your exosuit's Life Support will decrease while you explore. Keep your shields and health topped up at all times by ensuring you always have a supply of Oxygen and Sodium to recharge.

Photo Mode

Photo Mode is not just a handy tool to take that perfect screenshot, it's very useful to survey a limited area visually without worrying about anything. Note: In NEXT, your game is not paused if you're playing in multiplayer. The main menu also does not pause the game while in multiplayer.
- Perhaps you're stuck in a cave without a plasma launcher, and don't know whether to go left or right.
- Maybe you're about to land and are concerned with launch thruster usage, photo mode will help you locate a ship summon beacon if available allowing you to launch at no cost. They are small and easily missed during a flyby.
- Helpful while playing Permadeath and you want to know where the next cave for cover is, or where to find resources while trying to reach your crashed ship.
- When you explore an abandoned building, it's easy to get struck by Carnivorous Flora perched on the ceiling. A quick photo survey and they can be avoided.

Missions

To progress missions, make sure to press 'P' (PC version) to bring up the log and select the appropriate mission.
For the Atlas Path, it is especially important to select the Atlas mission. Otherwise, the Atlas Interface may not offer you any options and you'll need to proceed to the next one. It is recommended to make sure the Atlas Path mission is selected prior to warping to a system with an Atlas Interface. (v1.35)

Just for fun

Feed the animals! Different creatures eat different materials depending on the planet and climate, but once you figure it out you can feed the animals and make friends. Feeding them correctly will yield different results per species such as: becoming pets for a short period of time, alerting you to rare loot, or pooping Coprite.

Take your time to enjoy the parts of the game that are most suited to your play-style. Being an open-ended game, there's no need to rush around or complete specific tasks if you don't want to. Enjoy the game however you want to. That said, keep moving!