45 Things the Game Doesn’t Tell You

45 Things the Game Doesn't Tell You

In this No Man’s Sky tips guide, we’re going to do our absolute best to help you navigate this everchanging universe. NMS has added a whole lot in the years since its release — expanding to include not just untold planets and moons, but massive expansions and free new features. There’s simply too much to cover all in one place. However, this should set you on the right path to understanding its less obvious complexities. And so, without any further ado, let’s just get on with our No Man’s Sky tips!

Learn the Melee Boost Trick

One of the very first things you should learn in No Man’s Sky is actually sort of a glitch. Yet it was so popular with fans that they begged for it to remain in the game. Whether due to those demands, or their own design ethos, Hello Games has left the “melee boost trick” in the game for years. You can (and should) still use it to this day!

The process is actually pretty simple. You start by sprinting. Then hit the melee button and, a split-second later, activate your jetpack. This will boost your horizontally forward at great speed, instead of pushing you slowly upward. That’s it! That’s the whole trick.

It takes a little getting used to, but this trick is perfect for getting around on foot very quickly. Especially if you have good jetpack efficiency mods for find a blue flower called a “Deuterium Rich Plant.” This gives you a short window of infinite jetpack usage. Combine the trick and the plant to really zoom across the surface!

no mans sky expedition 7 leviathan

Start With an Expedition (If You Can)

No Man’s Sky has a few basic difficulty settings. “Normal” is obviously the standard. There’s also a “Survival” difficulty that makes the game much harder. However, during limited time periods, you can also start what’s called a “Community Expedition.” This is typically tuned to Normal difficulty (though not always) and sets you up with a unique collection of objectives that skips the standard game’s story. At least at first.

If you’re just starting out for the first time, you should definitely start with the current Expedition. This is because the rewards are typically phenomenal. You don’t just get cosmetic and not-so-cosmetic prizes that can be unlocked on all other save files. You typically get a hefty chunk of useful upgrades, resources, and currencies only for that save. Sometimes you even get a high-class starship and/or Multi-Tool to kickstart your adventure!

You’re not locked out of anything, either. Players can start the NMS main story quests as soon as the Expedition is complete. In other words, this is basically a fast pass to the really interesting stuff, without the old and plodding tutorial weighing you down.

Don’t Take the First Freighter

Something else that happens very early on in No Man’s Sky is your first introduction to a freighter. These are basically shoved down your throat after a few warp jumps through space. You will, eventually, warp directly into a firefight. One where pirates are attacking a capital ship. You can save the big boat by killing the pirates. After which, the captain will welcome you aboard and offer you command of the freighter. All for free!

The rub is that this isn’t a very good freighter. The first one you encounter in No Man’s Sky is scripted to be a bit of a tub. Usually a C-Class affair (i.e. the lowest grade of vessel). Instead of taking over the freighter for free, you should select “ask for a reward instead.” This gives you some sort of resource or item — while leaving the scripted free freighter available. The first freighter you accept will always be free.

So, once you take your reward, you just keep jumping. Preferably to systems with a “Wealthy” economy. This increases the odds of finding A-Class or even S-Class ships. Fly around until find another freighter under attack, finish off the pirates, and check its stats! Odds are that it will at least be better than what you could have previously acquired. If you’re still not happy, try again.

Just don’t wait too long. There’s a certain cost-benefit to holding off on your first freighter. The amount of money you can rake in from Fleet Expeditions, by sending out frigates, will very quickly outweigh the cost of simply buying a better freighter down the line.

No Mans Sky Apollo NMS

Complete “Awakenings” Early

There are a lot of quests in No Man’s Sky these days. If you’re playing on a standard type of save, rather than an Expedition, one of the most important missions chains begins immediately with “Awakenings.” This introduces you to a lot of important concepts. Such as the Space Anomaly — which you’re going to want to visit constantly. Here you can acquire Quicksilver, Nanite Clusters, blueprints, and hard-to-get items (by completing Nexus bounties).

It’s also where you go to claim your Expedition rewards. If you beat an Expedition on one save, but want to pick up your account-wide items on another, you need to come here. Not to mention this plot heavy questline continues past “Awakenings” and into a variety of other useful events.

Pirates Are Great

Pirates pop up all over the dang place in No Man’s Sky. They’ll attack you while you’re mining. They appear on your “radar” at random. And they’re a very common bounty target given out by various mission agents.

That’s a good thing. Pirates are pretty easy to kill. Especially if you have a squadron helping to chew up their shields. Pirates also drop loot when they die; just make sure to fly towards their explosion for a second before switching targets. Said loot includes random mods, Starshield Batteries, and just raw Nanite Clusters. That’s on top of the bounty you get just for killing them.

The other big benefit to hunting pirates is a low time investment. When grabbing bounties, hunting pirates doesn’t require you to land on a planet or take back off again. You just fly towards the target and zap ’em. This makes them one of the most cost-effective bounty targets in the game. Keep that in mind when you’re picking something up from the mission agent.

Exocraft Are Easy to Build

“Exocraft” is the catchall term for planetary vehicles in No Man’s Sky. Basically, it’s anything you drive besides your freighter or starships. There’s a submarine (the Nautilon), a couple different types of car, and the Minotaur (an actual mech). Each has their uses — like traveling underwater or moving quickly over land.

The game doesn’t make it extremely clear how to actually build any of these things, though. That’s because you sort of don’t build them at all. Instead, you build a “Geobay” from the base building menu, and which automatically spawns an appropriate Exocraft. From that point forward, the Exocraft that comes with this Geobay for free is your Exocraft. It’s basically locked in from that point forward.

This might seem pretty limiting. In some ways it is. However, you can construct a Geobay anywhere you want — not just inside the confines of a normal base. This makes them unique among most large structures in No Man’s Sky. This way, you can summon your vehicle wherever you like, at the cost of some materials. Though even that’s not strictly necessary. We’ll explain why later in this guide. Yet you still need to build a Geobay to create each Exocraft at least once.

No Mans Sky Inventory Tips NMS

Stop By Every Space Station Once

Every (normal) No Man’s Sky space station offers the same services. On your left (when facing towards the hangar door exit) is a gathering area with a Galactic Trade Terminal, a teleporter, and mission agents. On your right is a collection of “Technology Merchants.”

These NPCs offer upgrades for all your major equipment in the game, like your starship or Multi-Tool collection. This, of course, also includes your Exosuit. Yet the Exosuit technology merchant offers another service: upgrading your inventory slots. You just need to interact with the tall, gray cylinder. Not the merchant themself.

Your Exosuit inventory is also unique in No Man’s Sky; you can only pay to upgrade it once per space station. That means you need to do some traveling to max out your inventory. Thus, as long as you have the money, you should stop by every space station at least once to grab that upgrade. Until you’re maxed out, of course.

Adding more slots to each tab (inventory, technology, and cargo) costs progressively more Units, too. Though there are other methods to supplement this, like finding Drop Pods on planets.

No Mans Sky Tips Derelict Freighters

Derelict Freighters Are Your Friends

Speaking of Units: this is one of the best ways in the game to make money. Derelict Freighters are basically miniature dungeons chock full of loot. That includes upgrades, items you can sell, and raw Nanite Clusters. They’re also potentially pretty dangerous. Especially if you play on Survival difficulty. But each one is well worth the risk. And the cost…

See, Derelict Freighters are mostly found using a beacon purchased at the Scrap Dealer. This NPC is found in a stall next to the technology merchants mentioned above. Every 24 hours, they’ll sell you one Emergency Broadcast Receiver for 5,000,000 Units. It’s a hefty sum, but one you will easily make back from the freighter itself.

You can actually buy an unlimited number of receivers this way, too. The downside is that the price goes up until the daily reset. The cost jumps between 5, 10, 20, and finally 30 million Units for your first, second, third, and fourth purchases that day. After which it caps at 30 million as the maximum price.

You can also get one weekly Emergency Broadcast receiver for the low, low price of completely free. They’re given out by Iteration: Helios on the Space Anomaly. However, you must first “unlock” this service by completing one Derelict Freighter first. You may also need to speak to Helios twice to get to the dialogue exchange.

Last but not least, receivers are also sometimes rewards from Nexus bounties. These are also found on the Space Anomaly by speaking to the huge robot orb in the hangar area.

Grab the Pulse Spitter

If you’re going into a Derelict Freighter, you need to bring a good gun. In my personal opinion that means the Pulse Spitter. This is basically a machinegun laser that feeds on Projectile Ammunition — same as the Scatter Blaster and Boltcaster. When it comes to consistent damage at all ranges, however, the Pulse Spitter simply can’t be beat.

You can build your own as an attachment to your Multi-Tool. You just need the blueprint first. You can typically purchase this from Iteration: Eos on the Space Anomaly. They’re the humanoid shark with the facial piercings found in the backroom, along with the other blueprint vendors in the hub.

Building the Pulse Spitter requires one Wiring Loom and 200 Deuterium. Both of which we have guides to acquiring, linked in the previous sentence.

No Mans Sky Tips Quicksilver NMS

Earn Quicksilver Quickly

While you’re on the Space Anomaly: check out the Nexus. Especially if you’re playing on a weekend. That’s because the top row of Nexus bounties give out a currency called Quicksilver. You need this in order to purchase a few unique things. Most notably the Void Egg for the Living Ship quest.

The problem with Quicksilver is that it’s time gated. You can typically only get 250 Quicksilver per day. Though there are some complications…

While these “daily” missions are just that, daily, you can stack up to three of them at a time. That means, if you miss two days without doing your bounty, you can do three dailies back-to-back for a total of 750 Quicksilver in one day. After which you’re back to the 250 per day. Except on weekends. Saturdays and Sundays always have a special quest that awards a whopping 1,200 Quicksilver instead.

You can also get a bit of Quicksilver from playing through the main story quest and from random events throughout the game. Those dailies are your primary source, however, and since they’re time-limited you should do them straightaway. You’ll thank yourself for it later! Especially since the quests are usually very easy.

Send Fleets Out Immediately

Another thing you should do very soon is send out frigate fleets — after you finally pick a freighter, of course. These are also events gated by real time. You select a frigate (or multiple frigates) after building a Fleet Command Room and then send them on their way. They’ll passively complete the mission, even when you’re not playing the game, and bring tons of rewards your way!

These expeditions last anywhere from an hour to a full day. The longer the mission, the better the rewards. So it’s good to start sending them out soon.

There’s another reason to complete as many Fleet Expeditions as possible, however. You’re fishing for a Dream Aerial blueprint: a special item which summons most players’ first organic frigate. This is basically a “space whale” that joins your capital fleet like any normal frigate.

However, organic frigates also bring random rewards in the form of Living Ship upgrades. The sooner you get a Dream Aerial the sooner you start building a stockpile of upgrades! Even before you get your own Living Ship.

no mans sky submarine nautilon nms

Build An Orbital Exocraft Materialiser

There are a number of other extremely important rooms to build on your freighter ever since the Endurance Update overhauled the capital ship system. I’ll go over some of the really useful ones now, section by section. Starting with the Orbital Exocraft Materialiser.

This mouthful of a construction is vitally important for planetary exploration. That’s because it allows you to summon any Exocraft in your repertoire without constructing a Geobay: saving you time, resources, and potentially inventory space.

Instead, after you complete a Geobay for the first time (on any planet) you can use the materialiser to summon its associated Exocraft from your Quick Menu. So long as your freighter is in the same system. The vehicle will simply teleport to your location automatically. This is especially great for exploring water planets or fighting Sentinels with your Minotaur. Particularly if you build the mech a brain first.

Use the Scanner Room to Find Fauna

This isn’t as useful as some of the other contraptions on your big ship. However, you’ll be glad you have one when you need one. The Scanner Room allows you to send out a radar ping that automatically scans every planet and moon in your current system all at once. This adds them (and a lot of information about them) directly to your Discoveries menu.

This saves a ton of time when you’re looking for something specific. Things like specific resources and, sometimes crucially, large amounts of wildlife.

Certain quests require you to find, befriend, and/or kill animals. Yet there’s no good way to know a planet will have lots of animals until you scan it. The Scanner Room speeds up this process by eliminating the need to check each world one by one. It’s pretty simple, but effective!

The Refiner Room is a Godsend

Very early in No Man’s Sky, you need to build a Portable Refiner. This is quite useful, since it lets you convert things like Sodium into Sodium Nitrate, which is a huge boost in resource efficiency. However, you need a Medium Refiner or a Large Refiner to really get cooking. That’s because these two bigger categories of machine let you combine two or three elements into something entirely new!

In No Man’s Sky, that lets you create the vast majority of resources in the game from scratch. Tritium by itself refines into Di-hydrogen, for instance, while Tritium plus Di-hydrogen makes Deuterium.

The best refiner in the game is, hands down, the Refiner Room: another freighter base construction. What makes it so good, you might ask? The Refiner Room works for free. Planetary base constructions need electricity generated from biofuel, solar power, etc. The Refiner Room just works. No extra effort or resources required!

No Mans Sky Anomaly Detector NMS

 

Keep Mining Asteroids Until…

…you get an Anomaly Detector. These things are a super-rare drop from asteroids, but since you can destroy space rocks very quickly, you can actually find them pretty frequently. Each Anomaly Detector is good for one use; activate it from your inventory and you’ll encounter something after engaging your Pulse Engine for a while.

What that “something” is depends on chance. It’s fairly random and there’s a wide assortment of possible strangeness you can draw. Some of it is just for flavor (like encountering a giant space larva). Some of it, however, is extremely profitable. You can attack many of the weird objects you encounter to mine them for precious items worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of Units if you sell them.

Once you complete and use your first Dream Aerial, this also becomes the primary way to find new organic frigates.

Squadron Pilots Are Free(ish)

Ever since the Outlaws Update, players have been able to recruit a squadron of NPC pilots to accompany them into battle. They’re not great combatants. At least not at first. Yet you can upgrade them (and add more slots to recruit more wingpeople) from your Fleet Management menu on the freighter.

That part costs Nanite Clusters. Recruiting, however, is totally free. Early on there’s basically no reason not to recruit as many squadron members as you have slots to house. They may not do much damage until being upgraded. However, they can keep a target’s shields from regenerating — since taking even a little bit of damage will pause that process.

No Mans Sky Tips Scrap Ship NMS

You Can Sell Ships (Sorta)

There is no way to directly sell one of the ships in your No Man’s Sky collection. However, you can scrap them for parts, which can then be sold on the galactic market for an equivalent sum!

This is mildly inconvenient (it takes up inventory space) but does come with the added benefit of letting you pick and choose when to sell the parts. Different items are worth more or fewer Units in different star systems. If you scrap your ship, you can sell the parts one by one, in places where they’ll get a better trade-in value.

No, Your Multi-Tool Isn’t Gone

By default, players can have a collection of up to six Multi-Tools at one time. This gets a bit confusing for multiple reasons. One is that the world “collection” implies you can find these devices in a single, physical place. Similar to your starship collection (which is found in your freighter hangar after you acquire a capital ship). The other issue is that, for whatever reason, adding a Multi-Tool to your collection automatically equips it.

This leads many a player to wonder: Where did my Multi-Tool go? Did I accidentally sell it? How do I equip the old one? Don’t fret! Your collection is actually found in your Quick Menu (X on a keyboard and down on your controller). Meaning you can switch guns mostly whenever you want. We have a whole guide with more specific details to that right here.

Tritium is More Valuable Than You Think

Tritium is everywhere. Almost literally. It’s certainly in every star system, anyway, since you all but need it to get around. It’s the basic fuel that charges your Pulse Engine — allowing you to travel from space stations to planets to freighters and more. Much like Ferrite Dust and Carbon, the game needs to give you a way to acquire more pretty much all the time. That means Tritium is the most common resource mined from asteroids. And asteroids are basically omnipresent in space.

Thus — while searching for Anomaly Detectors, Gold, Silver, and Platinum — you’re going to naturally wind up with a lot of Tritium. That’s okay! Tritium is actually much more valuable than you might think.

I already hinted at the reason for this above; Tritium can be refined into Di-hydrogen. Di-hydrogen, while not exactly rare, is a bit of a nuisance to harvest naturally on planets. At the same time, it’s needed in great quantities for several vital things. That includes Life Support Gel, Starship Launch Fuel, and especially Frigate Fuel.

Frigate Fuel needs both Tritium and Di-hydrogen to craft. It’s also a two-for-one exchange: 200 Tritium and 200 Di-hydrogen makes one unit of Frigate Fuel (200 Tonnes). You’re going to chew through that in a heartbeat if you send out lots of Fleet Expeditions (which you should be doing constantly). As such, it’s good to stockpile as much Tritium as you can. While it seems overly common, you’re going to use it up quickly.

No Mans Sky Tips Freighter Teleporter

The Freighter Has Multiple Teleporters

Here’s something else related to your freighter. The capital ship is actually a fairly decent “hub” these days. Especially after the Endurance Update. You can construct a Teleporter Room to that lets you travel directly from the vessel to your most recently visited space stations, your planetary bases, and back again. To return to your freighter, look for the green box listed among other teleporter locations.

That’s not all I’m talking about, though. The freighter now lets you teleport directly from the hangar (where your starships are stored) to the bridge (where you can access Fleet Expeditions and your freighter base). Just step on the blue, glowing pad in either location! Each will instantly warp you to the other.

That’s still not everything. You can finally teleport directly to any one of your frigates by accessing the “Manage Fleet” menu located on the central console in the bridge. This lets you inspect your frigates and squadron. It also lets you teleport directly to the hull of any frigate.

What makes this so useful? Frigates will occasionally take damage during expeditions. You need to repair these issues manually by inserting specific resources (e.g. Platinum) into slots throughout the ship. You can, of course, fly your own starship to dock with the frigates. Or you can just… teleport there! Your starship will travel with you if you want to leave that way. Though there’s also a teleporter that takes you right back to the freighter.

Altogether, these many fast travel options save a ton of time.

Turn Your Discoveries into Nanite Clusters

The Space Anomaly isn’t just a good place to spend nanites. You can also make a few there. It’s not always the quickest or the best source in the game. However, there’s a good chance you’ve already earned some of the unique currency and didn’t even realize it. That’s because various discoveries and achievements will award you with the stuff. But only if you talk to the right characters.

Iteration: Ares will pay you for your achievements (otherwise known as milestones in NMS terms). Whereas Iteration: Helios will pay you for different types of discovery (otherwise known as things you find and scan).

There’s also Iteration: Cronus. They work a little bit differently. This NPC will give you Nanite Clusters in exchange for food cooked using the Nutrient Processor. That’s a bit less “passive,” but it’s worth mentioning in this same conversation.

No Mans Sky Tips Sell Mods NMS

You Can Sell Randomized Mods, Too

Remember how pirates drop randomized mods? They’re not alone. You can get these technology items from several different sources (like killing Sentinels). The vast majority of them, however, aren’t terribly useful a 2% bonus to Boltcaster damage probably isn’t worth an entire Multi-Tool. Especially not if you have more useful options to install. In such cases, it’s a good idea to get rid of these random packages — especially the ones at C-Class or B-Class.

You can do so by speaking to any technology merchants. A.k.a. those same NPCs who sell random mods and upgrade your inventory slots. Simply speak to them on any standard space station and choose the dialogue option to purchase upgrades. While the text window doesn’t mention it outright, you can choose to “sell” by clicking down once from the “buy” menu. At this point, any random mod packages that haven’t yet been installed will be visible.

The great thing about selling these is that they give you Nanite Clusters. While not ultra-rare, these are harder to get than raw Units, and you want to take most opportunities you can get to acquire some. They’re very important for buying different blueprints and upgrades throughout the game.

Move Your Technology into Technology

It’s another of our tiniest No Man’s Sky tips. Yet it’s still important to know. By default, things like your Life Support and Hazard Protection modules can be found in your inventory. That’s actually a bad thing… They serve absolutely no purpose in these slots except taking up space that would be better saved for resources and items.

In short: move these (and any installed modules) to the Technology tab of your inventory menu. This is the middle of three options — between General and Cargo. The Technology tab cannot contain any item except for installed modules like these and other upgrades. It’s literally what the slots are designed for. Yet, for whatever reason, the NMS devs at Hello Games still put your basic technology in the first tab.

Another, smaller tip is to prioritize putting “passive” modules into Technology over anything that needs to be fueled (e.g. Life Support or a Personal Refiner). This saves you a button press every time you want to recharge such a technology module from the menu, since you don’t need to tab over. Realistically, most players will probably just recharge these items from the Quick Menu anyway, thus skipping the inventory step altogether. But sometimes you want to top things off while you’re sorting your goods.

The Personal Refiner is Still Inventory

Let’s have another ultra-tiny tip. The Personal Refiner — which basically functions like a Portable Refiner that lives in your backpack — doesn’t necessarily take up an inventory slot. That’s because you can permanently place items and resources inside of it. Just don’t activated it! Technically, it can even hold two resources at one time, if you could the amount of fuel placed inside to power it.

This means, unlike other technology modules, you can leave it in your General inventory tab. It’s functionally similar to an open slot; the major difference being that it takes more clicks to grab whatever you place inside it. The upside to this is that you can place more “rigid” mods in the Technology tab. It’s one way to free up a tiny bit of space!

No Mans Sky Ship NMS

There’s an “Undo” Button

Well… It’s more like several buttons. You just need to quit to the main menu without saving. That’s it!

This is because, despite being an online game these days, No Man’s Sky still saves most of your data locally. And the game only very rarely autosaves at all. Normally, you need to “manually” save by interacting with a beacon, Save Point, or entering and then exiting your ship. Anything you do before that — like selling an item by accident — will be erased when you reload your save.

Oxygen is Actually Terrible Life Support

Oxygen is extremely useful. That’s true in real life, too, but it’s actually somewhat deceptive in No Man’s Sky. The primary use for Oxygen early on is recharging your Life Support. This is somewhat akin to eating and/or drinking in more traditional survival games. In other words, your Life Support is often ticking down, and you’ll eventually take damage if you don’t refill it. Oxygen is the simplest resource to refuel with.

If you look at the math, however, it’s quite literally the worst way to recharge Life Support in the game. At the very least it’s the least efficient option.

One unit of Oxygen recharges 2% of your Life Support gauge. By comparison, Dioxite and Cactus Nectar recharge more than twice that amount at 5% per unit. Oxygen is obviously more plentiful than either of those items. However, it’s less plentiful than Carbon and/or Tritium. Both of which can be used to make Life Support Gel: an item that recharges 100% of your Life Support gauge. No matter how low it goes!

To craft Life Support Gel, you need 40 Di-hydrogen (to make one Di-hydrogen Jelly) and 20 Carbon. Tritium is infinitely plentiful, as it’s the most common resource mined from asteroids, and it refines directly into Di-hydrogen. Or you can convert lesser amounts of Oxygen, Condensed Carbon, and Di-hydrogen directly into Life Support Gel en masse using a Large Refiner or the aforementioned Refiner Room.

This saves on Oxygen, which is comparatively annoying to harvest in large quantities, for consumable items like Warp Cells. Or you can convert it into Chlorine to basically print money — refining Chlorine plus Oxygen into even greater amounts of Chlorine. Which you can turn around and sell.

no mans sky sodium plant nms

Sodium is Also Terrible Hazard Protection

The same rule for Oxygen also applies to Sodium. Though it’s even easier to get more bang for your buck with this resource.

Sodium refines directly into Sodium Nitrate at a ratio of 2:1. Sodium Nitrate is, in turn, more than twice as effective at recharging Hazard Protection (the bar that keeps you from taking radiation, heat, toxic, and cold damage). Thus it’s basically just flat-out better to have Sodium Nitrate instead of Sodium on hand. Especially if you refine it using the Refiner Room, which cuts out the Carbon cost of running the machine.

Similar to Life Support Gel, you can also use an Ion Battery to recharge your Hazard Protection to 100%. Even if your gauge reaches zero. One battery costs just five Ferrite Dust and 10 Cobalt to craft. Both of which are resources that can be found on nearly any planet (note: Cobalt is always found in stalagmites and stalactites in caves).

Terrain Manipulation is Basically Infinite

Speaking of recharging devices: you can use the same dirt dragged up by your Terrain Manipulator to refuel your Terrain Manipulator. This stuff is called Silicate Powder and it comes from simply vacuuming up dirt with the terrain tool.

Since Silicate Powder is quite literally found on every planet —and comes from using your Terrain Manipulator in the first place — you can use it to safely refuel this part of your Multi-Tool pretty much infinitely. This is surely another of our smaller No Man’s Sky tips, but it’s good to know if you never noticed.

Digging Holes Can Save Your Life

Besides soaking up resources like Copper and Cadmium, or flattening out the ground by your base, the Terrain Manipulator has another use. It can save your bacon. At least when that bacon is being cooked by Sentinels and/or dangerous weather.

You can use the Terrain Manipulator to dig holes: straight down, at an angle, through mountains. It doesn’t strictly matter. At least not for this purpose. Creating a foxhole with a covered roof (or digging into a cave system) will protect you from deadly heat, toxin, etc. Whatever the environmental hazard on your current world happens to be. This allows your Hazard Protection to recharge naturally without spending an Ion Battery or Sodium Nitrate.

Sentinels also have one helluva time finding you inside these hidey holes. They rarely follow deep into manipulated terrain, if at all. This forces them into a “search pattern” that eventually ends with them giving up the chase. You can hide from them this way in a variety of places, of course, but the Terrain Manipulator means you can do it anywhere.

no mans sky white arrows

Take a Look at the Little Arrows

Speaking of Hazard Protection, both it and your Life Support bars show more information than you might think. This comes in the form of those little white arrows next to the gauges themselves. These actually indicate two things: when your gauges are taking “damage” and also how much they’re draining at one time. The former is obvious, but latter is also pretty important. More arrows mean your Life Support and/or Hazard Protection are draining faster.

This can be caused by various things — not all of them super clear. A storm, for example, will cause your Exosuit to drain faster than regular weather. But an extreme storm will cause it to fall off even faster. Pretty straightforward! However, even just sprinting will burn through Life Support faster than usual. As will using your jetpack.

The big strains on Life Support include:

Walking
Sprinting
Jetpacking
Using the Personal Forcefield
Boosting underwater

You will also take intense Life Support damage if you wind up in open space without a starship. For example, if you jump off one of your frigates. The cost of doing anything at all on a Dead Planet is also multiplied. Just walking will take more Life Support than usual, for instance.

No Mans Sky Tips Launch Pads NMS

Look for Green Circles

No Man’s Sky is pockmarked by green, concentric rings. These usually appear by planetary buildings and on Derelict Freighters. Though they’re only visible from your starship. Keep an eye out for these! Landing on one will let you take off again for free (i.e. without spending Starship Launch Fuel).

Don’t worry about perfectly lining up your vessel to land on top of these designated spots, either. Technically the circles start out as blue. They only turn green as you get close. This indicates that you can hit the “landing” button. The ship’s autopilot will take over and magnetize you to exactly that spot!

There’s Some Light Autopilot

Oh, right. Autopilot. No Man’s Sky actually has a number of semi-secret autopilot interactions. The landing pads are just one example. Approaching the blue light by a space station or an active freighter (including your own) is another. Doing so will bring your ship in for a free landing without any further button inputs from you. Just wait for the landing animation to finish!

A less obvious bit of autopilot involves your Pulse Engine. At any point, you can line your ship up with an objective marker, for instance a pirate signature, and hit your pulse. The ship will fly forward automatically and drop out of superspeed once you reach the target. If you’re pointing towards a planet, the ship will even turn to point towards the marker on the surface, ensuring that you never fly past it without dropping out of pulse.

No Mans Sky Tips Speed NMS

Speed is Relative

You can’t use your Pulse Engine when you’re too close to a planet, moon, capital ship, or space station. The game will tell you you’re too close to a possible obstacle. However, this isn’t the only thing that effects speed. Proximity to a world will also slow you down. Even when you’re not pulsing!

You can see this for yourself when flying close to a planetary surface. Try to boost. Then look at the speed indicator in your cockpit or the estimated time to arrive at your next destination. You’ll see that your maximum speed is much lower than when you’re flying free in space.

To counteract this issue, fly higher. Heading into the upper atmosphere of a world will remove this “cap” on your standard engines — allowing you to fly faster towards your next destination. Usually this is important when traveling great distances on planets. A 20-minute flight in low orbit can be shaved down to just a few seconds in high orbit.

Rockets Are Better Than They Seem

One of the earliest (and cheapest) weapons you can craft for your starship is the humble Rocket Launcher. This one-and-done gun fires a single projectile before overheating — forcing you to switch back to a more traditional weapon. Like the Photon Cannon. It also doesn’t appear to do very much damage. So, what gives?

The issue isn’t clear until you actually craft the weapon and read its item description. The damage rockets deal to shields is terrible. The damage they deal to a ship’s hull is enormous. The Rocket Launcher can one-hit-kill most pirates in the game after their shields fall. This makes the module all but essential for quickly clearing out pirates.

Mining Beams Get Better as You Fire

This No Man’s Sky tip might actually be mentioned early on in the game these days. However, if you’ve been away for a long time and find yourself loading up an old save, it’s worth the refresher. That’s because the way the Mining Beam overheats is completely different now than when the game first launched.

It used to be that you could simply stop firing for a split second. This would reset your heat gauge entirely — allowing you to shoot rocks and trees again with almost zero pause. Now heat dissipates more gradually, like you might expect by default. The tradeoff? The hotter the Mining Beam gets, the more efficient it becomes.

You can see this for yourself by watching the damage numbers pop up as you fire. They’ll increase the hotter your Multi-Tool gets and gradually take on darker shades of yellow and orange. Instead of the basic white. That means you’re actually incentivized to keep firing for long periods without letting your beam cool off!

No Mans Sky Tips Cobalt NMS

Water and Caves Have Unique Resources

Not all No Man’s Sky planets are flat spheres. Most include systems of cave, lakes, and even entire oceans. These are important for a couple reasons. One is that fish and cave-dwelling animals can be found here to fill out your fauna discoveries.

What you’re probably after, however, are the unique resources. Cobalt in particular is found underground. Mining just about any stalactite or stalagmite will yield the important material in addition to Ferrite Dust and other things. You can also find Cave Marrow by digging beneath the surface this way. Though that’s not nearly as useful.

More unique items include Crystal Sulphide and Kelp Sacs. These appear pretty much exclusively underwater. The former requires you to grab chunks of rock off (deadly) Crystal Sulphide deposits, while the latter can be harvested by mining Candle Kelp. Just bear in mind that Candle Kelp can also be harvested by hand to refill your breathing gauge while submerged.

Water is found on many different worlds throughout the game. Though it’s most plentiful on water planets (obviously). These are spheres almost entirely covered in ocean — with just a few little islands on which to land your ship. The Orbital Exocraft Materialiser really comes in handy here, since it lets you summon a Nautilon at will. However, you first need four Crystal Sulphide to build a Nautilon Chamber in the first place, so a little manual undersea exploration is required.

Your Jetpack Doesn’t Always Use Fuel

This No Man’s Sky tip is useful in two particular circumstances: in the ocean and inside caves. The game basically uses this as a secret system for making sure you never get stuck somewhere. Since the two most likely places for that to happen are underground and underwater, jetpack fuel use is disabled in these locations.

However, this only refers to two specific circumstances. When fully submerged, your jetpack will use fuel while boosting down or side-to-side. It will only function for “free” when trying to surface (i.e. going straight up). The same is true in caves. Your jetpack can function for free, but only when going up and pressing your body against a wall.

This doesn’t cancel the Life Support drain, either. Remember how walking, sprinting, and using your jetpack sucks up Life Support? That’s still true. Though this can be rectified with Oxygen and/or Life Support Gel. Not to mention various foodstuffs and the like.

The actual use-case for this feature is pretty small. Most caves aren’t that deep. Meanwhile, oceans have generous helpings of Candle Kelp to let you breathe. Yet there are other special instances (such as the “Rocketman” Milestone from Expedition 3) where it’s extremely helpful.

No Mans Sky Tips Bounties NMS

Some Bounties Can Stack

Nexus and Outlaw bounties are individual affairs. Once you start one, you’re locked into it, and can’t take another until you complete or cancel the first. The same isn’t true of most regular missions, however. You can pick up stacks of multiple bounties at the Mission Agent on any standard space station.

This, in theory, allows you to complete several objectives at the same time. Though it doesn’t always work out that way. Certain missions send you to specific planets to scan resources and the like. Those won’t always occur on the same world. Thus, you can’t kill two birds with one stone. It does occasionally work out perfectly, however, with multiple missions either overlapping locations or not requiring a specific one.

There’s also the matter of travel time. Docking, talking to the Mission Agent, and lifting off again all take time. It’s pretty much always more efficient to just grab multiple bounties at the same time and complete them all at once. Assuming the rewards are useful to you, of course.

No Mans Sky Tips Secret Door NMS

Space Stations Have “Secret” Rooms

While you’re on that space station, by the way, check out the hidden rooms. They’re honestly not even that hidden. The doors are right in front of your eyes pretty much the moment you touch down. The game just doesn’t point out that these round, silver circles are doors in the first place. But now you know to just look for apertures like the one shown in the screenshot above.

These rooms often contain some pretty useful stuff. The most common are NPCs needed for your base-building quests. You will eventually need a Vy’keen, a Korvax, and a Gek to operate various terminals build in your freighter or on a planetary base. Beyond that, you can also harvest a few scraps of Carbon or even some Nanite Clusters from nodes throughout each room.

But the real prize — if you don’t have all your Portal glyphs — are the Travellers. These are strange-looking aliens that don’t fit any of the major species listed above. Just like most of your friends on the Space Anomaly. However, these more ethereal and ghostly variants will sell you coordinates to their own graves. Just make sure to speak to them twice! Each grave will then be marked on your map and lead you to a glyph.

No Mans Sky Tips Save NMS

Place a Save Point Right Outside Your Door

Freighters have many useful features. For whatever reason, though, they don’t have a very easy way to save your game. Not without teleporting back to your starship in the hangar anyway. So, why not place a Save Point? Just put it right outside your door.

These are incredibly cheap – costing just 2x Metal Plating and 1x Di-hydrogen Jelly to construct under the building menu (like the Portable Refiner). They’re also compact. Meaning you don’t need to build an entire room to house one! Just set it right inside the base section of your freighter, outside the door leading to the command bridge.

Setting a Save Point like this saves a ton of time. Especially if you run a lot of Fleet Expeditions. With the saving spot in place, you can collect rewards from your Fleet Command Room, send out more frigates by speaking to your Navigator, save your progress, and log back out. All without heading back to the hangar!

Look for the Green Stairs

Oh, speaking of your freighter base, it’s up the green set of stairs. You can find these in your bridge (next to the circular command table where you upgrade the capital ship).

The plain set of stairs leads back to your hangar and any ships you have stored there. If you choose to walk instead of taking the teleporter, of course. Meanwhile, the green stairs will take you to separate door. Beyond which lies what No Man’s Sky considers the customizable portion of your vessel. You can’t build rooms and place objects anywhere else.

No Mans Sky Tips Feed Animals NMS

Give Food to Make Food

You can coax animals for certain resources like milk, honey, and berries. Most of which are ingredients in foodstuffs that you can use for various buffs or to exchange with Cronus on the Space Anomaly. You just need to feed the fauna, first.

This process is actually pretty easy (as long as the wildlife isn’t automatically aggressive). Just go to your inventory and craft Food Pellets. You’ll get a stack of five in exchange for 60 Carbon. Then approach an animal and press the interact button to feed it. Alternatively, you can place it as “bait” directly on the ground using the Quick Menu. This is more useful when dealing with angry creatures, which will in turn calm down after stopping to eat the snack.

Fed creatures can be interacted with again for a variety of reasons. You can choose to ride them (if they’re the right size), adopt them as a pet, or request a food item from them. Whether that’s milk or whatever specific resource the animal produces. This then triggers a cooldown timer. You can’t “milk” that creature again until said timer runs out, but it’s typically less than a minute or so.

Your other reward for this whole process is Faecium. Many creatures will, uh, poop on the ground after you feed them… You can then “harvest” this dung for a resource called Faecium that’s used in a variety of blueprints. Though it’s not the most pleasant way of collecting the stuff.

Not All Inventory is Created Equal

This can be slightly confusing for new players, but it’s an absolute game-changer when you figure it out. It’s also not really that complicated when you know the details.

Essentially, certain inventory tabs can hold more or less stuff than others on a per slot basis. Your basic Exosuit General inventory is at the bottom of the barrel, while the Cargo section can hold twice as much per tile. Your starship is in the same boat. Then the freighter doubles those numbers in its inventories. Finally, a Storage Container built at any base will hold the most per slot.

Let’s use the Gek Relic as an example. This is a very basic item found all throughout the universe (just like Vy’keen Daggers and Korvax Casings).

A General slot will hold five Gek Relics. Any Exosuit Cargo slot, by comparison, will hold twice that many: 10 Gek Relics. The same goes for your starship: the General tab holds five will the Cargo tab holds 10. By comparison, your freighter slots start with 10 in General and double that number to 20 in Cargo. Last but not least, a Storage Container will hold 20 in every slot, effectively acting like expanded freighter Cargo.

No Mans Sky Tips Freighter Inventory NMS

Here are all those same multipliers laid out in one place:

General (Exosuit & Starship) – 1x standard inventory size
Cargo (Exosuit & Starship) – 2x standard inventory size
General (Freighter) – 2x standard inventory size
Cargo (Freighter) – 4x standard inventory size
Storage Container (Freighter & Base) – 4x standard inventory size

This gets a little more complex when you throw resources into the mix. Materials like Carbon, Ferrite Dust, Oxygen, etc. all have an upper limit of 9,999. No matter where you store them. This means it’s actually a potential waste of space to put resources into Cargo, Storage Containers, or even your freighter itself. Though there’s much to be said for keeping clean Exosuit and starship inventories so you can pick up new and unexpected items (such as when exploring a Derelict Freighter).

Finally, the Technology tabs mentioned above can’t hold items or resources at all. They can only install mod. The opposite is true of Cargo: these slots cannot take modules and can only hold resources and/or items. Whereas the General tab can hold either. In fact, you’ll almost certainly wind up with more modules than you can fit in your Technology tab after a certain point. Meaning even more excess stuff will need to be stored offsite.

The Matter Beam Matters

The note about storing items offsite is where the Matter Beam comes in handy. This is another nearly essential quality-of-life upgrade for your capital ship. I’m simply mentioning it here, and not above, because it relates more to inventory management.

The Matter Beam functions a bit like the Orbital Exocraft Materialiser. Instead of letting you summon your Exocraft from almost anywhere, however, it lets you access your freighter inventory. This is especially handy on space stations — where you can sell goods needing to haul them manually from the big ship. Make this upgrade a priority.

No Mans Sky Tips Freighter Upgrades NMS

Look for Salvaged Frigate Modules

This is a good time to bring up Salvaged Frigate Modules. This is one of the rarer and more tedious upgrade items to find in No Man’s Sky. You can only farm it from a few different sources and the drop rates are incredibly rare. At least after a patch nerfed some old, extremely effective ways of gathering it. If you ever find yourself discarding items to make inventory space: don’t get rid of your Salvaged Frigate Modules.

At least not until you buy every available upgrade. You can do so, once again, from the circular terminal on your command bridge. The freighter upgrade menu is right there next to your fleet management and galaxy map windows.

From the freighter upgrade panel, you can use Salvaged Frigate Modules to buy freighter enhancements (despite the item’s name). The Matter Beam mentioned above costs five modules. Though you may need to buy certain upgrades first to unlock items lower on the tech tree. Just like when you buy blueprints for nanites from the Synthesis Laboratory. Which is found right next to Iteration: Eos.

Author: Deann Hawkins