The Complete No Man's Sky Origins Guide

Welcome to the Complete No Man’s Sky Origins Guide! Whether you are a new or experienced player, this guide will show you step by step how to have one of the best starts in the game, which includes unlocking all your slots and making between 2 – 4.2 BILLION credits and 10,000 nanites in under 9 hours of gameplay; and this is just to prepare you for playing the rest of the game! The guide then includes content on farming, exploring, base building, ship & multitool acquisition and more!

10.17.2020
CONTINUED GUIDE REFINEMENT
While the core guide is complete, I will continue to make adjustments to the content, updating links and refining the guide. If you see any errors or have recommendations, please leave a comment!

For those of you who aren’t aware of the new features brought to the game by Origins, here’s two videos that give great overviews:

One of the key reasons I built this written guide is while there are numerous videos online that are solid guides, most of them skip key parts, leaving many viewers wondering what happened or what they were supposed to do. This guide includes every single step required to get from starting the game to becoming a full-slotted Billionaire. There a lot of content, but if followed in order, I believe readers will quickly find the steps to be clear, highly efficient and effective.

Each section has been defined by Part, Phase and Number. This way you can quickly mark where you left off and return at any time.

This guide works for ALL DIFFICULTIES! Whether you’re playing NORMAL, SURVIVAL or PERMADEATH; I’ve updated the relevant sections to address the inventory stack size differences between NORMAL and the other modes.

If you are playing Survival or Permadeath, I assume you are an experienced player, and the parts of this guide we use or bypass are properly annotated. With the stack limitations (250/500 vs. 9999) of Survival and Permadeath, the Chlorine technique still works, it just doesn’t produce nearly the amount of credits it does in Normal mode.

An interesting point about this guide is we will make billions of credits and unlock all of our slots without upgrading our Multitool or starting Ship. I found it’s just not necessary, and we can progress (while raking in the cash) without having to pick up the mid-tier replacements. This way we go straight from our starting gear into an S-Class end-game Multitool and Ship.

Part I and II of this guide are written using a detailed step-by-step approach to help new players. Part III and VI are more verbose and contain a combination of conceptual steps with selective sections of steps. I hope this approach makes the content herein not only extremely useful, but easy to understand. If you have any questions, comments or feedback, please leave a comment at the bottom of the guide. Also note I will continue to manage and update this guide based on feedback from the community, so it will evolve over the next few weeks as I tweak/enhance/adjust any parts that need to be adjusted.

For Experienced Players: There is content within this guide that will be very useful to those who aren’t starting a new game. Check out the below Table of Contents and browse the materials to see if anything jumps out at you. Part IV has detailed information on end-game play and farming techniques.

For New Players: NMS is a very large and complex sandbox universe exploration game. Even with this guide, the game may seem overwhelming because there is so much to do and understand. Don’t worry; everyone goes through this process. It takes a few days to really start understanding the mechanics, interface and overall breadth of what the game has to offer. It’ll all be worth it in the end. If you find yourself stuck, you can always look at the in-game Guide (press P and select the Guide tab) and select the section you want to review.

Color Coding: I tried to streamline the colors in this guide. Green is for information. Light Blue is for an action that needs to be executed. Orange is for emphasized information. Red is for important/alert information. Purple is for unique/critical information.
Icons: Check Mark () is for a step/action. Info () marks information. Focused Action () is for a sustained action (such as mining). Spinner () Defines the beginning/end of a loop process.

Some players have wondered why we don’t call the Anomaly in each system to pursue the extra exosuit slot, or why we don’t get Cargo slots before the base exosuit slots. The time it takes to visit the Anomaly and get the extra slot is better spent moving to the next system to flip our Chlorine, and we’ll have 80 wealthy systems we can hop between once we’re a billionaire vs. just 40 (we revisit many of the systems for Travelers and Modules). I don’t pursue Cargo slots in the Exosuit at the beginning just because it’s unnecessary (we’re a billionaire at the end regardless) and to keep things simple and focused for new players.

Table of Contents

PART I – The Beginning

What we’ll accomplish: Starting out, Building our first base & Mining, Visiting the Space Station and Anomaly, and finally farming Gamma Root for 10,000 Nanites!

Total combined time to complete this part usually takes between 2.5 hours and 3.5 hours, depending on experience and other factors.

Phase I – Starting Out (20m-25m)

Start a new NORMAL game, hold down E to Initialize and let’s do this thing!

Your mining laser will mine more the hotter it gets (above 50%). As you hold it down you’ll see the bar (in the upper right corner) starting to fill. Try to keep the bar at 80% or higher while mining to get more resources. You’ll also see the damage number shooting up as well (100 is max at start). Make sure you don’t keep it at 100% more than a second or two or it’ll shut down from overheating.
Repair Scanner. Use Mining Beam to gather Ferrite Dust.
Install Analysis Visor (1 Carbon Nanotube). Use Mining Beam to gather Carbon.
Install Oxygen Recycler (60 Oxygen). Gather Oxygen from Hazadous plants and Scan (C).
One technique of quick movement is that of Super Flight! While holding W, hit then Q and SPACE. Your character will take a very fast flying leap.
Scan for Sodium (C). Charge Exosuit.
If you run out of power for your mining laser before you farm any carbon, remember you can “punch” carbon plants (with Q) to get carbon to recharge the laser.
Make your way towards the signal. While doing this mine everything you see: Ferrite, Carbon, Di-Hydrogen, and any Living Plants (they give Oxygen). Also pick up any yellow (Sodium) or red (Oxygen) plants you come across. Focus on Carbon, Ferrite Dust, Oxygen and Sodium.
Note we need to mine 1000 Cobalt between now and Phase II. You can find this in caves. If you come across any caves, go ahead and mine the Cobalt (1000 only takes 4 minutes or so).
Go to Distress Beacon and Broadcast.
Investigate Ship.
Repair Pulse Engine and Launch Thrusters.
Craft Metal Plate from Ferrite Dust and Repair Pulse Engines.
Take Planetary Chart from Distress Beacon and use it. Start heading to the waypoint! Make sure you have Sodium/Oxygen to survive. Go to destination. Farm on your way, also using C to identify Sodium (grab it when you see it). Use Sodium if your resistance drops.
Take Hermetic Seal. Install Visor (1x Carbon Nanotube).
START SCANNING EVERYTHING. Don’t forget to look into the sky to scan any flying creatures. Locate your ship icon and make your way back to your ship.
One method of scanning is to simply watch the left panel for ??? while spinning around at a slower pace. You can also right-click to zoom in on flying creatures that are more than 100 units away!
While running back to ship look for caves. Mine CARBON because you need it to replenish your mining laser.
If you do find a cobalt-rich cave, mine 1,000 cobalt. It will only take a few minutes.
Repair Pulse Engine (Hermetic Seal).
Craft Portable Refiner (1x Metal Plate, 40 Ferrite Dust). Refine Ferrite Dust to 50 Pure Ferrite. Craft Di-Hydrogen Jelly.
Repair Launch Thruster.
Make sure you pick up the portable refiner with middle-mouse button!
Open any Geodes you have in your inventory (with E).

Phase II – Build First Base (45m – 1h15m)

Launch! Fly to space, test controls.
I recommend switching to 3rd person Starship view (X then select the left most entry) for better visibility.
While in space shoot any asteroids you can until you get at least 30 gold. Note one gold nugget is more than enough.
Answer communication. Fly to Signal Source.
Land on planet. Get out and SCAN EVERYTHING.
Use Distress Beacon.
Acquire Base Module and Terrain Manipulator.
Run to the little tower by the distress beacon and chart the area.
Build Terrain Manipulator (2x Carbon Nanotubes and 1x Di-Hydrogen Jelly).
Scan for Copper; use E to select. If it’s more than 400u away, you can get in your ship and fly to it. If it’s <400u just run to it.
Mine Carbon and scan unidentified things as you run to the copper!
Mine the entire node of copper (can never have too much). Make sure you have at least 250 Copper Ore. Activate the Terrain Manipulator by pressing G and use it on it vein. Depending on the size of the vein, you might need to find another.
While your Terrain Manipulator is active, press R to make the mining sphere smaller; you’ll get more!
Remember to scan all new minerals, flora and critters around your mining site!
If you run out of launch fuel, just craft some (1x Metal Plate, 40 Di-Hydrogen).
Deploy your Portable Refiner (press Z) and refine ALL of the Copper into Chromatic Metal.
While it’s working away, continue to Scan and Mine. Focus on Ferrite and Carbon.
You can recharge your suit protection at no cost by getting back in your ship!
Put the Chromatic Metal into your exosuit and PICK UP the refiner!
Minor Settlements are often within areal visual range of your landing spot for the signal source. When you take off, circle around a bit to make sure one isn’t over the hill!
Jump in your ship, take off, and fly in a straight line until you find a Minor Settlement. It’s very important you select a Minor Settlement, and not another structure. Minor Settlements are single buildings with a single landing pad attached to it (which will glow green as you approach). You can press “C” while flying to help locate a Settlement. If you are having difficulty locating a Minor Settlement you can land at a large beacon tower, which will direct you to a Settlement.
If the planet you are on is mostly water (and land mass is rare), it is often better to fly back to your starting planet to find a Minor Settlement.
Land on the pad connected to the Minor Settlement.
Build Base right by the landing pad (on the ground). Use the computer for the first time and claim your base.
Use the Base Computer again to claim Blueprints.
Build 1x1x1 Shelter. One Floor, Three Walls, One Door, and one Ceiling tile (200 Carbon, 10 Ferrite Dust). If you don’t have enough, just farm it from the flora and minerals around your base.
Go to base computer. Extract Plans (Construction Research Unit).
Put down the Portable Refiner to make 40 Magnetized Ferrite (80 Pure Ferrite). If you don’t have enough pure ferrite, just throw a stack of ferrite dust in the refiner until you have 80 Pure Ferrite, and then refine that to 40 Magnetized.
Make sure you have 130 condensed carbon (takes 260 Carbon). Refine carbon to create Condensed Carbon.
Craft one Carbon Nanotube (50 carbon).
Build Construction Research Unit.
VERY IMPORTANT! When you name your SYSTEMS, adopt a naming convention so you can easily find them later. I recommend the format: OriginalName [Special] (Economy). So for example, if you came across a system named Xytrol-Iuya IV that has a Prosperous economy, the proper renaming would be: “Xytrol-Iuya (Prosper)”. And if that same system had a Paradise planet in it, the name would be: “Xytrol-Iuya [Paradise] (KorProsperPeace)”. Another example would be: “Nubaha III (Boom)”. Say a place has both a Traveler and a Grassy planet, we would combine the specials (T for Traveler) list like this: “Nukka S14 [T-Grassy] (Advanced)”. I can’t emphasize how important proper naming is since you’ll end up with hundreds of systems you’ll need to page through when you want to use the portal. Also, if you see a S-Class Multitool in the space station, you can put “MultiTool” in the special section of the name so you can go back and get it later (or if you want to share it with the community). Note PLANET naming is not as important; I only custom name Paradise planets. The rest I keep as default.
Time to get our Advanced Mining Laser Blueprint (but we’re not going to craft it just yet because we don’t have the looms). To get the Nanites to buy this, we need to turn in our discoveries. Press P and go to the Discoveries Tab. Start by naming the System (right-click to go up a level rom planet). Use whatever name works for you (I use “Moogy’s Starting System”). It’s important to mention you cannot change the name of anything after you upload it. So if you want to custom name anything, do it before the upload. This could include the planet(s) you’ve been to. When you’re ready, you will see an up arrow next to your system name. Selecting that will upload all discoveries in the system. This is a fast way to upload all data rather than having to do each item at a time.
Before going inside the outpost check outside and see if there are two small “trailer sized” buildings. If so, go in them; one will have a cluster of nanites on the wall. Grab ’em.
Go inside the outpost and first check the walls to see if there’s any nanite clusters available on the wall. If so, grab them. Check the center desk for navigational data items (which can also reward nanites).
Ignore the Multi-tool cabinet (we’re sticking with the starter for awhile and will get a S-Class later).
Go to the Vendor (the little alien, not the Terminal) and select Purchase Blueprints. Buy the Advanced Mining Laser Blueprint (costs 75 Nanites).
Go to the Galactic Trade Terminal, select Sell and get rid of the materials you DO NOT need. This includes: Crystal Fragments, Sulpherine, Mordite, Radon, Solanium, Salt, Dioxite, Nitrogen, Ammonia, Faecium, Nav Data, Vortex Cubes, Fungal Mold and Uranium. DO NOT SELL: Cobalt or Ferrite or Carbon, Di-Hydrogen, Oxygen, Sodium, Copper, or Chromatic Metal.
Time to get the Technology Modules. Exit the outpost and scan the horizon. We want to dig up enough Buried Technology Modules to get a total of 35 Salvaged Data. This takes on average 20 minutes. Each module we dig up will give us between 2-4 Salvaged Data. If you can’t see any buried technology modules on the scanner from your location, just run about 200 units away and scan again. There should be a LOT out there. Shouldn’t take long! You’ll dig them up with your Terrain Manipulator, just like digging up copper.
Do not confuse SALVAGE CONTAINERS with BURIED TECHNOLOGY MODULES OR BURIED CACHES. Salvage Containers are the rare resource yellow icons that provide modules you sell for profit. They are not what we’re looking for right now. You want the standard colored buried technology modules.
If you don’t see any salvaged containers with your scanner, just keep running in a straight line. They will appear.
Make sure you have Sodium while you’re running around because storms can quickly become deadly if you can’t recharge your suit.
There are some planets with terrible spacing on the Salvaged Data (400u+ between each one). These planets can take 3-4x longer to farm; if you are on one of these planets, just stick to it. When you’re done, you won’t have to do this again (you can salvage from better planets in the future).
As you run between the modules, make sure you scan any ??? objects, including animals.
Farm Carbon, Ferrite, Di-Hydrogen, Sodium, and Oxygen while you’re out there!
If you did not mine your Cobalt yet, now is the time to do it. Locate a cave and mine 1,000 Cobalt.
Return to base! When you get back to base, Refine your Cobalt (should produce at least 500 Ionized Cobalt).
If you are too far from your base, you can summon your ship by pressing X and selecting “Summon Vehicles”.
Go to your Construction Research Unit. Select research Buildable Technology. Under Core Habitation Tech, learn Base Teleporter, Biofuel Reactor, Electrical Wiring, Save Beacon, Battery and Solar Panel.
Build Base Teleporter (4x Metal Plate and 2x Carbon Nanotubes, 40 Sodium).
Go to your base computer and name your base. Make it good!
Go to your mission log and select “Powering the Base”.
Build Biofuel Reactor (1x Metal Plating, 40 Oxygen) next to Teleporter. Wire Reactor to Teleporter. If you don’t have Oxygen just buy it inside the base at the exchange. DO NOT PUT FUEL IN THE REACTOR YET.
Build the Solar Panel (1 Metal Plating, 30 Gold, 50 Chromatic Metal) and Battery (60 Magnetized Ferrite and 100 Condensed Carbon). I usually put these behind the portal.
Sadly, because of bad design, the Biofuel Reactor will eat the entire stack of whatever fuel you put in it (regardless of separating stacks or moving them to your ship). Condensed Carbon is probably the best choice. Go ahead and throw that in the Biofuel Reactor. This will complete the mission.
Once the mission is complete and it shows the next mission to interact with the base computer, DESTROY the Biofuel Reactor. We don’t need it. To do this hold down the left Ctrl button (in build mode) while left clicking on the reactor (and the wire that was run to it).
If you run out of inventory space, sell the same junk items we did before. Also, if you don’t have the Sodium or Oxygen, just purchase it from the Galactic Trade Terminal in the outpost.
Interact with Base Computer, get quest to go to Space Station.
Upload any new discoveries (plants, minerals, animals) to get nanites.
Pick up Portable Refiner.

Phase III – Space Station & Preparation (5m – 10m)

Take off and fly into space, look for the orange and white Hexagon marker. When you leave the atmosphere, use the Pulse Engine to fly to and dock with the station.
Exit your ship and get your first Exosuit expanded slot. This is to your upper right (when you first get out of your ship) and is the first bay on the left. Walk up to it to activate the Exosuit hologram, and press E to accept the Exosuit Upgrade (click on the green button at the bottom).
If you run out of Pulse Fuel, just shoot (mine) the asteroids to get Tritium, which you can put directly into your pulse engines to refuel them!
Pick up any Nav data you see sitting on tables (little blue squares, orange glowing objects, flat circular items with a red button). Note I do not go into the back room (on the side of the vendors). DO NOT BUY A MULTITOOL.
Roam the station and find the Alien who says 16…16…16… Keep talking to aliens until you get the one that starts the next quest requiring you to go through the portal (the 3rd one).
Go to the Galactic Trade Terminal and sell your Ionized Cobalt (should be around 250k). Also sell any extra fodder you have, such as: Sulpherine, Mordite, Radon, Solanium, Salt, Gold, Silver, Platinum, Marrow Bulbs, Nitrogen, Vortex Cubes, etc.
Buy 2 Wiring Looms and 5 Microprocessors.
Go to the Teleport Terminus and teleport back to your base.
Once back at your base, complete crafting your Advanced mining laser (2 Wiring Looms, 1 Hermetic Seal, 1 Carbon Nanotube). If you don’t have the condensed carbon for the seal, just toss your refiner down and make it. Don’t forget to pick up the refiner if you do!
If you don’t have 275 Chromatic Metal, you need to run out and mine 550 copper. Return and refine it.
Make sure you have at least 30 Oxygen and 20 Condensed Carbon. You can buy Oxygen at the Trade Terminal.
PICK UP YOUR REFINER!

Phase IV – Anomaly, Gamma Root & Nanites (1-2h)

Access your base computer. Begin the Encoded Signal Quest – Fly to Distress Signal (sometimes on another planet)
Land at Freighter. Use Distress Beacon. Receive Hyperdrive Blueprint.
Install Hyperdrive. Enter Ship. Tune scanner to Antimatter. Take off and enter space. Scan for Antimatter. Go to Antimatter Trace.
Land at Abandoned Station. If it’s a new planet, SCAN EVERYTHING then UPLOAD!
Go inside station. Interact with Terminal. Remove slime with middle mouse button (discard). Accept Antimatter.
Go outside. If necessary, use Portable Refiner to craft Condensed Carbon (if you don’t have it). Craft Antimatter Housing. Craft Warp Cell. Fuel Hyperdrive (pick up the cell and drop it in the Hypedrive). If you used the portable refiner, PICK IT UP!
Make sure you have at least 80 nanites and 10 salvaged data for the next part.
Launch into Space. Bring up Galaxy Map (with X Key). Right click to deselect system, and move mouse so you can left-click on the system the line connects to. Once selected, hold down the left mouse button to warp there.
If you get a Hostile Scan from Pirates, fly into the Space Station and they’ll disappear. Remember to hold down shift to fly as fast as possible.
Once you’re in the new system, wait until the quest pops up and it asks to Accept Guidance to Fuel Source. Accept the quest.
Fly to Fuel Source. Land at artifact site. Interact with artifact and answer questions however you would like (your answers don’t change anything). You will receive a Warp Cell. You can also use the Knowledge Stones around the structure to learn alien words.
Make sure the Awakenings Quest is selected.
SCAN Everything in sight!
Fly back into space. Answer incoming transmission. Receive coordinates. If the Stranger Coordinates are not showing, you might need to select the quest in Log (Press ESC, select Log, select Awakenings quest).
Fly to and Land at the crash site.
SCAN Everything in sight!
Repair the signal beacon (5 Chromatic Metal, 5 Sodium).
Extract records. Receive Pulse Spitter Blueprint.
Go to your Log and select Alone Amidst the Stars as your mission.
Fuel Hyperdrive in Ship. Launch into space.
Answer incoming transmission. TELL THE TRUTH! 🙂
Anomaly will appear. Fly to it and dock!
Press P and go to the Discovery Tab and make sure everything you’ve scanned is turned in and uploaded (to ensure you have all the nanites you can get).
Get out and go to Priest Entity Nada and talk to him (find by following the purple star on the map). Ask about everyone. Turn around and talk to Polo.
Go to Helios (there is a marker on your map) and talk to him. Give Planet data and get Nanites.
Go to Selene and talk to him. Buy the Haz-mat Gauntlet Blueprint for 80 nanites.
Select the Construction Research Station (next to Selene). Go to Technology Modules and buy the Nutrient Processor for 10 salvaged data. Next, buy the Medium Refiner Blueprint for 10 Salvaged Data.
Return to Nada. Can ask for whatever you would like. Talking to Nada activates the next quest.
Leave Anomaly.
Answer Communication and talk to Artemis.
At this point, we are going to ignore the quests, so it doesn’t matter which one you have selected.
We are now going to farm Gamma Root to make Nanites! Statistically, you should have already been to or seen a planet with Gamma root (it’s always on radioactive planets). When you leave the Anomaly, make sure you scan every planet (C). You can also look at your previous system by pressing P and selecting Discoveries. If the Gamma root planet is back in your home system, just fly to the Space Station and take the portal back to your base, then fly to the planet (unless your base planet has Gamma Root). Planets with Gamma Root will show them as a resource. If you have scanned all planets in the two systems you’ve been in so far and there is no Gamma Root, you’ll have to land on a planet and gather the materials to construct another warp drive cell and warp to another system (you can see how many planets are in the system before you warp; go to a nearby system with lots of planets!). Remember, the fastest way back to your system is to take the station portal to the previous station portal. If you see a planet with Salt (and haven’t seen one yet) make sure you go to the station and register the portal. We will be using salt to make our first batch of Chlorine later on. If you do have to craft warp cells, I recommend making 3 at a time just in case you have to check multiple systems. Remember to scan each planet you land on!
Note you can farm Uranium and Oxygen to create Gamma Root! So if you have a planet that provides Uranium, you can just throw it with some Oxygen in the medium refiner and make the Gamma Root!
Fly to the planet with Gamma Root and look for it. They are tall yellow glowing plants. We’re going to farm at least 400 Gamma Root, which will give us a little under 10,000 nanites.
If you are farming Gamma Weed (and not creating it with Uranium and Oxygen), we must craft our Haz-mat Gauntlet (50 Chromatic Metal, 20 Sodium Nitrate). To do this select the Technology slot of your exosuit.
SCAN Everything in sight!
Use your Visor (F) to scan for Gamma Weed. It should always be within running distance of other patches.
Once you have enough Gamma Root (400+), we’re going to portal back to our starting base. You can do this either via the Space Station Portal or Anomaly Portal. I find Space Station to be quicker, and I also get my Exosuit slot before taking the portal.
Before we start, at your base, go to the Base Computer and retrieve the Construction Blueprints. This will give you Storage Container 0 (35 Magnetized Ferrite, 20 Sodium). Build it and run power to it. You can now start using this for storage for things you don’t need to have in your Exosuit (such as Navigation Data). Note this container is shared with all others you build, so if you build Storage Container 0 on another planet, they share the same inventory.
Build 4 Nutrient Processors at your base (8 Metal Plating (400 Ferrite Dust), 4 Hermetic Seals (120 Condensed Carbon), 100 Sodium). It’s good to build them each in proximity so you can access each one from the same spot.
We are going to be putting 50 gamma root into each Processor. To create a stack of 50, move your mouse cursor over the pile and press W, holding it down until the value is 50. If the value is above 50, hold down S to lower it. Drop the new stack in your inventory, then move it to the refiner. We are making Sievert Beans.
When all 4 are done, we place 3 (ONLY THREE) of the stacks of Sievert Beans back in and re-process them to create 3 stacks of Steamed Vegetables. We take the ONE stack of Beans and put it in our Bag.
When the other 3 are done processing, We combine TWO of the Steamed Vegetables to make Flavorsome Sauce. We then combine the ONE stack of beans from our pack with the remaining stack of Steamed Vegetables to make Fibrous Stew.
When those are done, take the Flavorsome Sauce and Fibrous Stew and Combine them to create Delicious Vegetable Stew.
You can start the process again while the final brew is running by filling the 3 empty processors with gamma root.
It takes 16 minutes to manufacture each stack of 50 Delicious Vegetable Stew.
When you’re done (creating two stacks of 50 Delicious Vegetable Stew), fly up and summon the Anomaly (Press X). Land on the Anomaly and go to Cronus (the food guy). Keep presenting Delicious Vegetable Stew for Nanites until you’re empty!
Delicious Vegetable Stew is turned in 1x at a time in the Anomaly for Nanites. Yes, clicking is a PITA and it will take 5 minutes to turn in 2 stacks of 50, but you’ll have 10,000 nanites when you’re done, making this one of (if not THE best) nanite generation systems in the game!
Now, talk to the Starship Research Vendor (Hyperion, who is right next to the Construction Station) and purchase the following: Teleport Receiver for 150 nanites, Economy Scanner for 150 Nanites, Cadmium Drive Upgrade for 80 nanites, EMeril Drive for 120, Indium Drive for 200.

PART II – The Middle

What we’ll accomplish: Obtain our seed capital, Manufacture Chlorine, Visit 80 star systems, get a Freighter, acquire all 110 Exosuit Slots, and make between $2-4 BILLION in cash.

Special thanks to DeadAgain and Khraze for providing the information that led to this fantastic money making process!

Total combined time to complete this part usually takes on average 9 hours, depending on experience and other factors.

Phase I – Chlorine Manufacturing (20-40m)

Exit the Anomaly. If you didn’t already answer the communication, press X when the comms begins to blink (it won’t stop until we answer it). Complete the communication.
Fly to the Space Station and dock. If you haven’t already been here, get your Exosuit upgrade, look for Nav data and Nanites, then go to the Terminal.
Sell all of your junk!
Remember when the guide said to keep an eye out for Salt? Now we’re going to put it to use! We need 280 Salt and 280 Oxygen for the next step. If they sell it at the terminal, just buy it.
Port back to your Base. If you don’t have 280 salt/oxygen, you’ll need to farm it. Most planets have harvestable materials that give both Salt and Oxygen. You MIGHT have to go to another planet. If you do, return to your base when you have the Salt and Oxygen. Some planets have their salt plants in the water.
Build one Medium Refiner (100 Magnetized Ferrite, 5 Di-Hydrogen Jelly (200 Di-Hydrogen)).
Put 300 Oxygen and 300 Salt into the Medium Refiner and START! This will produce 750 Chlorine.
Pull out any remaining materials and put 700 Chlorine into the machine with as much Oxygen as you have and START refining!
While the refiner is running, go into the Trade Post and sell your extra Salt and any other unwanted materials. Buy all of the Oxygen available. This includes from the pilots landing at the station.
Go to your Portal and Port to one of the Stations. Buy all the Oxygen. Go to the other station. Buy all of the Oxygen. Port back to your base.
The max capacity of the Medium Refiner is 4098. If it runs out of Oxygen, put it in, and if it gets to max capacity just take out the 4098 Chlorine and put it as a source ingredient. The goal is to get all of the Oxygen you purchased into the unit.
Once you run out of Oxygen, you should have roughly 9,000 Chlorine. Pull all the Chlorine out of the refiner, and place 700 back in the refiner. Keep the rest on your character.
Port to the space station and SELL all of the Chlorine on your character (leaving the 700 in the refiner). This should net you at least $5M.

Phase II – Hyperdrive Fuel (15-35m)

We have to prepare for our 80-system jump sojourn, and we do this by making sure we have enough fuel to complete the journey.

We are now going to Craft 25 Warp Cells, our Economy Scanner and Cadmium Drive. This will take: 750 Oxygen, 1250 Ferrite Dust, 875 Chromatic Metal and 500 Condensed Carbon.
Since we just spent all our Oxygen refining the Chlorine to make our starting capital, we now will buy it from the ships that land at the station. Each ship should sell more than 2,000, so buy a 3 stacks to get nearly 7,000 oxygen (they run out after 3).
If you don’t have enough Ferrite Dust, just buy the entire amount available on the Exchange (usually more than 2,000).
If you saw Chromatic Metal for sale on the market at either station, you can buy it there. If you saw it on your home base outpost exchange, you can guy it there. Make sure you have enough to meet the 875 amount. If nobody sells it, don’t worry. Also check for Copper, because you can buy it at a 2:1 ratio and just refine it (so you don’t have to mine it). We must craft the Condensed Carbon since no terminals sell it.
Take the terminal and go to your base. Create a stack of 750 oxygen and keep that in your exosuit. Put the rest in your medium refiner and start making more Chlorine!
Now it’s time to either gather 1,000 Carbon, or 500 Condensed Carbon (depending on whether or not the red crystals are there). If you get the non-condensed Carbon, refine it to Condensed.
If you need the Chromatic Metal, we’ll have to farm a 2:1 ratio of Copper. Assuming we have none, we’ll need 875 total, or 1750 copper. Time to go mining!
Remember when using your Geo tool to press R to have the smallest diameter when mining; you’ll get more that way (it just takes longer).
When you have at least 1750 copper (or enough craft the difference to have 875 total Chromatic Metal), throw it in the Portable Refiner (using Carbon as fuel) and let ‘er rip. Takes about 5 minutes to craft 875.
Make sure you clear your inventory of junk you don’t need (Mordite, Silver, Solanium, etc.) before you start crafting. You can sell this stuff at the Galactic Trade Terminal. All you need to keep right now is: Oxygen, Ferrite Dust, Chromatic Metal, Condensed Carbon and Sodium (15 Sodium Nitrate).
Time to craft! Make 25 Anti-matter Housing Units, 25 Anti-matter, then 25 Warp Cell units. I recommend doing them in batches of 5; stacking the Warp Cells, and then moving the stack of 5 to your Ship’s Inventory. Empty every slot of your ship’s inventory as well.
Also, refill your Launch Thruster. Discard any additional fuel (we won’t have room in our inventory).
When you’re done, toss a stack of Warp Cells into your Hyperdrive.
Now we’re going to build 2 more Medium Refiners. For this we need 200 Magnetized Ferrite and 10 Di-hydrogen Jelly. Just buy the Jelly from the Outpost or port to the Space Station. Worst case scenario is you have to find 400 di-hydrogen to craft it. To create 200 Magnetized Ferrite, we just need to refine 400 Ferrite Dust into 400 Pure Ferrite, then that 400 Pure Ferrite into 200 Magnetized Ferrite.
Once the additional medium refiners are built, break up 2 stacks of 700 Chlorine and put one stack in each of the new refiners.
Before we start the next phase, craft a Save Beacon and SAVE THE GAME! Leave the beacon at your base.
Pick up your refiner and take the portal to the Space Station!

This is enough fuel to make you over a Billion credits and obtain every exosuit slot available.

Phase III – Making BILLIONS (6-8h)

We are going to be visiting 77 systems. This is going to take hours. A station visit can be completed in under 5 minutes, but it can often take a minute the locate and warp to a new system, pushing the average time of completing each cycle to 5-6 minutes. By the time you’re done doing this, you will have all 96 inventory slots for your Exosuit and all 13 technology slots; but more importantly between 2 – 4 BILLION credits. With that, you will be able to buy anything in the game.

If you are playing Survival or Permadeath this loop works perfectly!

The amount you make depends on how many space stations sell Chlorine. I’ve had 3 systems in a row sell it (resulting in over 1 BILLION profit) and have not seen it for sale while jumping through more than 20 systems. It’s all quite random, but the result is always the same – you will make well over a Billion, with the potential of hitting the Credit cap of 4.2B by the time you complete the loops. My last run I hit the 4.2B cap at my 69th jump.

Note we are going to ignore Travelers for this run. Don’t worry, we’ll quickly get our Glyphs after we obtain all of our slots and units. We are also not going to talk to aliens on this run. We’ll learn their languages later on.

Before we head out, we want to get Hyperdrive modules. This is very important because it increases our jump range and lowers fuel costs (if we can get B or better). But first, remove any materials or items from your Ship’s Inventory (just toss them in your Exosuit). We’re going to buy the highest rated one at each station. If C is the best, get that. Do not buy a S-Class. Only go as far as A class. While our ship can have a total of 6 Hyperdrive modules, we only secure 3 in the General Slots for this phase. When placed, each of them need to be touching each other, so make sure they are side by side. If you aren’t able to buy your starting 3 before you begin the loop, it’s OK because, you’ll purchase (and upgrade) more as you move from system to system.
Buy the highest grade Hyperdrive Modules from the Starting Station Vendor, and then go to the other system and buy their highest grade Hyperdrive modules. Install however many you were able to get. You can put 3 in the General slots, and 3 in the Technology slots. Make sure they all connect (but the Technology slots may not connect). Note you can re-stock modules you purchased by jumping in your ship, jumping out (causing an autosave), and then reloading the autosave, then going back to the vendor! This means if you find a vendor that’s selling A (or in the future, S-class) modules, you can buy them, autosave, reload, and buy them again as many times as needed.
Once the Hyperdrive modules are installed, go to the Galactic Terminal and buy 5 Microprocessors and 4 wiring looms.
Install Economy Scanner and Cadmium Drive (250 Chromatic Metal) in your ship. Make sure the Cadmium Drive is touching one of the Hyperdrive modules.
Sell everything in your inventory EXCEPT Chlorine, Oxygen, and Warp Cells.
Exit the station and bring up the Galactic map (M). It’ll rotate around for about 10 seconds – ignore that. Once the automated rotation is done, right click to free the camera and then left click on any system and press “R” to open the expanded window. This will let us see the economy of the systems. Right-click and now SEARCH for one of the following economies: Advanced, Affluent, Booming, Flourishing, High Supply, Opulent, Prosperous or Wealthy. Set your filter destination to Free Explore.
Use the ASDW keys to rotate, and try to go in a direction where there’s a LOT of stars.
When you warp to a new system, the station will always be behind you.
=== BEGIN LOOP ===
Scan planets in visual range that look like they could be paradise, etc. Land on station. Get Exosuit Upgrade. Once you get 48 general slots, get Cargo slots, then Technology slots. If you don’t have at least A-class Hyperdrive modules, check the Starship Vendor, and if he has A (at this point ignore B), and you have B or C installed, purchase the A and replace an old B or C with it. DO NOT PURCHASE A S (too expensive and not what we need). The goal is to have 3 A modules.
Make rounds to pick up any Nav Data/Nanites. Check the Multi-tool cabinet just to make sure there’s not a 24-slot A-Class Rifle, or S-Class in there (just visually check, no need to click on it unless it looks awesome). Develop this habit, because in an hour or two you’ll have all the money you need to buy any class multi-tool.
If you come across an A or S-Class Multitool with 24 slots (Only max slots) and have enough money, BUY IT! But if you don’t have the money, make note of the system so you can come back later.
You can move your Nav data to your Storage 0 Unit at your base when you go back to fill and activate the Medium Refiners.
Go down to the landing ships and buy all the Oxygen from the captains until you have 3x stacks of 9999 or near 9999. Go to terminal. If you don’t have 3x stacks of oxygen, buy all of the Oxygen. Once you have 3 full stacks, you don’t need to buy any more until you start to run out from putting it in the medium refiners back at your base.
If you have more than 40,000 Chlorine on you, check to see if the Station Exchange sells Chlorine. If so, sell all of your Chlorine (which will crash the market), and buy it back! This is the key to our money making process. Once you start selling and buying it back, you will be doing this at every system that sells Chlorine. Do not sell at a system that does not sell Chlorine, or you won’t be able to buy it back. If you have less than 40,000 Chlorine, skip this step.
Visit the mission vendor and accept any missions that are KILL or SCAN that reward NANITES. Ignore all other missions (do not accept kill or scan that give credits or items). The only Kill to ignore is Kill Monstrosities, since those are location specific. All other kill missions (sentinels, quads, etc.) are fine.
You will get roughly $500M for selling nearly two full groups of inventory slots (General and Cargo) of Chlorine. This means if you have $3.7M or more with your most recent sale, at the next system you can sell everything and you’re done with the sale process. If this happens you can just jump from system to system without having to go back to your base.
Register the system in Discoveries (P) and name it properly (e.g. GekOpulentHostile Xyveros II).
Take the portal to your starting base. Make sure each refiner has at least 1000 Chlorine and 2000 Oxygen. Refill them appropriately, take out the 4098 stacks and put them in your inventory (or back into the manufacturing slot). All 3 refiners should be running when you port back to the last system.
After awhile you’ll find a cadence to doing this where you just throw the manufactured chlorine back in the refiner to keep the stack above 700 while having plenty of Oxygen.
Use the Save Beacon.
Take the portal back to the last station (marked Previous System).
Get in your ship and exit the space station.
Bring up Galaxy map, find your next wealthy system and warp to it! Go back to the beginning of the loop!
=== END LOOP – 80 SYSTEMS === === PLEASE READ THE IMPORTANT NOTES BELOW! ===
If you make any mistakes on a loop just reload your autosave – it’ll pop you back to the last time you got out of your ship!
This loop can be tedious, and you may want to take a break! Halfway through you could have well over a billion credits to spend and have fun with; but what do we do with 50+ slots of Chlorine? We can’t be lugging that around when we’re not doing the loop. The solution is easy, but you must have already gotten your freighter. Once you have it, you can build storage units on your Freighter and transfer the Chlorine to your freighter for storage. When you acquired your freighter, you automatically got access to the storage blueprints and you can build all 10 (each holds 25 slots, so 10 is 250 slots. You only need 4 to store all your chlorine). Once you do this, you can pursue any of the below next steps: multi-tool hunting, ship hunting, traveler glyph acquisition, base building and more. Many people need a break from this 8-hour cycle – don’t hesitate to take one and go off for some fun so you can come back later and resume the cycle when ready!
You aren’t going to look to buy anything other than oxygen until you make your first Chlorine sale of 40k or more. Once you make your first sale, you’ll have enough money to buy a S-class ship or A/S-Class Multitool. My first sale after 40K was for 68,857 at 42.5M. Once you make this first sale, you’re good to go!
Your Base Computer will generate a Blueprint every 1.5 hours (providing a total of 10). While you can buy these blueprints on the Anomaly, you can get them free. But to get the next blueprint to produce, you must build the item that was just provided. It’s up to you if you want a minor distraction from the main loop to do this; in the end, it can save some time. Here’s the list of blueprints (in order) provided by the Base computer: Storage Container, Save Point, Teleport Receiver, Neural Stimulator, Advanced Mining Laser, Appearance Modifier, Medium Refiner, Oxygen Harvester, Roamer Geobay, Landing Pad.
Systems start falling off the list after 70, which means if you mark a system (for example) at 5, and are at 82, it will have “fallen off the list” of systems you can port to. For this reason, it’s a good idea to revisit these systems before they get too far down the list so they keep cycling through the top. When you port to a system, it places it at the top of the list, so we always see the most recent 70 systems visited. This “pop to the top” approach ensures important systems you’ve marked don’t disappear from the list if you haven’t visited them in the last 70 systems.
Properly mark systems with Travelers. I like using [T] as the special, so an example could be: “Xyger XIV [T] (Booming)”. The reason is once we’re done, we want to quickly come back to systems to hunt Glyphs to unlock the Portal.
Buy every S-class ship you come across (max 5) to decompose (later). If you have the money and see a S-class ship (especially a fighter) BUY IT and hold it in your ship queue (keep flying your starter ship). We’ll decompose them later. You can have a total of 5 ships in the “queue”. It’s always good to run to the railing edge on the portal side before you go to the portal just to take a quick glance at the ships that landed. If you buy a ship on the station, to get your original ship back (which has the custom hyperdrives and fuel), just jump back into it (which makes it your primary). The easiest way to do this is to summon it and jump in and out when you’re at your base filling the refiners.
Get your Cadmium drive as soon as you can. Look for Red star systems (includes DATA UNAVAILABLE). When you find one, warp in, scan, land and mine what you need to build 2x Cadmium Drives (500 Cadmium). The reason we get enough to build two is so when we get a new ship we have the Cadmium to make the drive. When you get this, the next time you are at a system, buy the Looms and install it. Put the extra Cadmium in your base storage.
Once you’ve gotten your Cadmium drive, get your Indium drive as soon as you can. Look for Green stars (includes DATA UNAVAILABLE). Warp in and scan. When you find a planet with Emeril, land, mine, and gather 500 Emeril. Once you do this, head to the next station, get the looms and install it on your ship. Once you’re done, you’ve unlocked all the drives and can visit any system! You can put the extra Emeril in your base storage.
You’ll come across a mission to engage the ships attacking a Freighter. When this happens, fight the attackers, answer the communication and dock with the freighter, and then leave (do not run to the Captain). We do this because the first freighter is only 16-18 slots. Once you decline the first freighter, the SECOND one will have 28+ slots! So when you encounter the fight a 2nd time, dock at the station and exit your ship and get back in to force a save. Fly back out and destroy the fighters and when you’re done, the captain will invite you on board. Land on the high slot freighter and get out of your fighter and use your Visor (F) to scan the wall of the ship to see if it’s an A or S Class (and it’s 28+ slot). If it’s not an A or S class (28+ slot), Quit to Mode Select and reload your last save. Redo the mission until the Freighter is either A or S class (28+ slot). Once you get your Freighter, you can move Nav Data (or anything you don’t need to carry on you for the cycle) you find to the Freighter inventory from the station. Now head to the station and continue the loop. You don’t have to run to the captain to find out the freighter class and size; just land on it and look at a wall with your visor (F).
Take note of any Top Tier Habitable Planets: Bountiful, Flourishing, Humid, Overgrown, Paradise, Temperate, Tropical, Verdant, and Viridescent. However, I ignore those that have High or Aggressive Sentinel Activity. As mentioned, I annotate a “special” in the name of the system, so a system with a Tropical planet could be named “Xyander IV [Tropical] (Advanced)”. You can often quickly identify if there is a paradise planet in a system you just arrived at by pressing P and looking at the planets (and their colors) in the system overview under Discovery. Paradise planets are usually blue and green. You can then find the planet in your HUD (while flying to the space station) and pressing C to quickly scan and identify it.
See an awesome S-Class ship you want and you have enough to buy it? You can buy it, but be prepared you’ll need to take a break from the loops to craft the Scanner and Cadmium Drive. Also, you’ll need to buy and install new Hyperdrive Upgrade Modules. Without them it is unlikely you will be able find the desired economies within your limited jump range.

And there we go! You are now ready to do… everything!

PART III – Wrapping Up

Congratulations! You’ve completed the starting steps that allow you to dive headfirst into the game. While there’s a number of things we need to do, we now have enough money to buy anything we come across and enough exosuit slots to pretty much store anything we want. This is a big deal as it often takes average players days or even weeks to accomplish this goal.

You should also have around 10,000 nanites.

Now we’re going to clean things up, select our new ship, get blueprints, core materials, and acquire all of the Traveler Glyphs so we can use the portal. Then we can get any multitool we want and even go exotic ship farming.

Note the following sections are going to be much more verbose than the above step-by step approach. This is to share more conceptual information so you are able to decide what you want to pursue, and in what way.

Phase I – Cleanup and S-Class Ship Selection

Only do this phase if you have one or more S-Class ships that you either want to salvage or switch over to.

The first thing we’re going to do is get rid of our beloved starter ship. Bring up the ship and dismantle everything that can be: Indium Drive, Emeril Drive, etc. Now move all of the materials you got from dismantling to your exosuit (by mousing over each item and pressing X twice).
Time to Salvage! Go to the starship outfitting terminal by the exosuit slot, and make sure Radiant Pillar BC1 is selected (you can only salvage your primary ship). Select Claim Scrap. Twice. In addition to modules, you can also get Augments (which can be used to expand the slots of a ship, avoiding the extremely high costs).
Now one of your other ships will be available at the landing bay. If it’s not the ship you want to keep, do the same process. Dismantle, transfer components, and Salvage. This time with an S-Class you’ll get S-class modules.
If the game selects the S-Class ship you want to keep but there are others to salvage, you’ll need to fly out of the station, summon your freighter, switch to the ship you want to salvage, fly it back to the station and continue the process. Note if you’re in a system that requires a Cadmium or Indium drive (Red or Green Sun) your freighter can’t warp to you, so go to a normal system if you aren’t in one already.
You now have to decide if you want to invest in this S-Class ship by putting S-Class modules, the Cadmium, Indium drives, etc. in it. Given how much money we have, I recommend going ahead and outfitting this ship so you can do whatever you need until you find your “perfect ship” later on after we get the traveler portal glyphs. You can pay to max out the slots at any time!

Phase II – Anomaly Blueprints

Exit the station and summon the Anomaly. Dock and go the vendor section. Below is a list of the Blueprints you want to buy with your Nanites from each Vendor (will cost a little under 5,000 nanites):

Hyperion (Starship Vendor): Efficient Thrusters, Nonlinear Optics, Ablative Armor, Launch System Recharger, Positron Ejector, Fragment Supercharger.
Selene (Exosuit): Shield Lattice, Neural Stimulator, Rocket Boots, Coolant Network, Thermic Layer, Toxic Suppressor, Radiation Deflector, Oxygen Rerouter.
Eos (Multitool): Amplified Cartridges, Optical Drill, Waveform Recycler, Survey Device.
Perses (Exocraft Research): Megawatt Heater, Air Filtration Unit, Neutron Shielding, Thermal Buffer, Exocraft Acceleration Module.

I consider these to be the “core starting” purchases that we’ll want to use right away.

Phase III – Materials, Traveler Glyphs & Portal

This part usually takes between 1.5 – 2 hours. Now that you are filthy rich, it’s time to get some of those base materials back! Do this as you complete the below Glyph farming section. When you port to each station, go to every Galactic Trade Terminal and make sure you have:

Ferrite Dust (1000)
Uranium (200)
Oxygen (250)
Nitrogen (250)
Pure Ferrite (2000)
Magnetized Ferrite (1000)
Chromatic Metal (3000-5000)
Wiring Loom (20)
Gold (500)
Ion Battery (4)
Paraffinium (100)
Dioxite (50)

Remember the Travelers we ignored (but marked the systems they were in with a [T]) when doing our Chlorine loop? It’s time to go back and look through the System list. Work your way from the bottom of the list to the top since each system you visit pushes the last one off the list. So if you visit the last [T] system, that will move to the top.

While I’m going through the Travelers and getting glyphs, I also purchase Pugneum from Ship Captains and buy the Suspicious Packets (Weaponry) and Suspicious Modules they have. I’ll sell these modules for nanites at the end of my loop.

Note if there’s more than one Traveler in a station, you can get multiple glyphs! But only complete one at a time. Do not talk with the second traveler until you’ve retrieved the glyph from the first.

When you talk to a Traveler, in the second dialogue with them, ask where they are from for Nanites (100). Go to the grave and extract the Glyph. Once you unlock all 16, you can now use the portal!

To find a portal, go to the Cartographer and Exchange Maps. Buy 5 Planetary Charts (Alien Cartographic Data). Depending on the faction of the system you’re in, you will need to get one of the racial faction items (Gek Relic, Korvax Casing, or Vy’keen Dagger). To get these relics, you must fly to a trading post in the system and buy them from the captains of the ships that land at a trading post. When you have the relic, use one of the charts (hold down E). You want to find a Monolith, but it’s possible you’ll get Ancient Ruins. This is fine because there are free language stones. Once you reach the destination (even if it’s not a monolith), you can use the Chart again to locate a new ancient structure. When you locate a Monolith, build a save point and use it. That way if you don’t answer the question right you can reload and get it right. You’ll need to answer the first question correctly so you can initiate the second dialogue and provide one of the racial faction items (Gek Relic, Korvax Casing, or Vy’keen Dagger) depending on the dominant race in the system. Select Portal Location and you’ll receive the waypoint. Note the portal needs to be charged with a number of materials, but you should have all of them. There is a portal in every single system on every planet. You just have to find it. Also note you can also use the Exocraft Scanner to locate Alien Structures.

I recommend building a small base with a 1x1x1 structure with a solar powered portal so you can port back anytime you want to use a portal.

The nice thing is once you charge the portal, you don’t have to do it again!

Before we leave, we need to farm 14 Salvaged Data. I recommend doing this on the planet with the portal, although you can return to your base if there was a lot of salvaged tech there.

Once I’ve powered up the portal, I go back to the station and open the Suspicious Packets and then sell all of the X-class modules. I received almost 10,000 nanites just selling the X-class modules I acquired while hunting for Travelers.

If you didn’t find 16 Travelers to revisit and unlock all of the Glyphs, you’ll have to jump to a few more systems to find the rest. Make sure you do this before the next phase as unlocking the portal is critical to Multitool and Ship hunting.

Phase IV – S-Class 24-slot Multitool

If you didn’t pick up a 24-slot A or S class multitool, it’s time to get one since we can now use the portal to go anywhere in the galaxy.

There are two resources you can use to seek S-class multitools (including experimentals) other people have found. The first is the NMS Wiki Multitool Catalog. Browse this site, find which tool you prefer, plug the glyphs in and go to the location. The only issue with this catalog is it hasn’t been updated in awhile, but the tools are still available. The second best way to find the tool you want is to browse YouTube videos. I built the search here. The YouTube link will always show the most recent discoveries, often just a day or two old.

When you do get a new multi-tool, don’t forget to rebuild your Advanced Mining Laser and Terrain Manipulator!

Phase V – Completing Missions & Module Upgrades

First a quick note on Inventory. You now have all the slots available in the game, and your Exosuit Cargo slots carry 2x the amount of your base Exosuit slots with many items (like Planetary Charts). You can quickly transfer and stack any items from your main Exosuit inventory to your Cargo by moving your mouse over the material and Pressing X and selecting “Exosuit High Capacity Inventory”.

We need to get our missions turned in so we can enjoy those 10,000+ nanites that we will have when we’re done. To do that we need a multitool that allows us to hunt creatures and sentinels efficiently enough to complete the missions without risk to ourselves.

The weapon modifier we’ll be using to complete our missions (namely the Sentinel killing) is a Pulse Spitter, which shoots devastating projectiles that melt sentinels. To build the Pulse Spitter, we need 200 Deuterium, which can only be manufactured in a medium or large-sized refiner. Luckily, we already have our medium refiners! Only install a pulse spitter on a 24-slot A or S-class Multitool!

Go to your starting base and toss 200 Tritium and 200 Di-Hydrogen into one of your Medium Refiners to create 200 Deuterium. Time to craft the Pulse Spitter on your Multitool! Next, craft 4x stacks of Projectile Ammunition (each stack takes 50 Ferrite Dust).

You are now a killing machine. Make sure you have Amplifed Cartridges crafted next to your Pulse Spitter in your Multitool, and any S-Class Pulse Spitter modules you purchased installed and connected. To try it out press G to cycle to the Pulse Spitter and blast something. Note how quickly it drains ammo, and you must press R to reload.

We’re almost ready to complete our missions! The final step of preparation is to get our Secure Planetary Charts.

Getting Planetary Charts

We should have anywhere between 75 and 125 Navigational Data during our Chlorine haul. You may have put most of it in your Storage 0 container while you were doing the Chlorine loops. Make sure you have 25 Navigational data on your character.

For those who are new, I’m going to explain Planetary Charts. Each station has a Cartographer (first vendor to the right as soon as you come out of the station portal). This cartographer provides Planetary Charts that are used to find specific structures (use them when you’re on a planet). The four types of charts available are: Secret (Secure Sites), Emergency (Distress Ships), Commercial (Inhabited Outpost) and Alien (Ancient Sites). You can also purchase random charts for 15 Nanites each. Ultimately, Planetary Charts are for hunting specific types of structures or objects (ships).

Buy 5 Secret Planetary Charts (this is in case we get Supply Depots rather than facilities).

Completing your Missions

If you are playing Survival or Permadeath, you must be an experienced player to do this next part because you will die if you are not. Make sure you have the proper defensive modules installed and that your Pulse Spitter damage is as high as possible!

Before we start, it’s important to have supportive Pulse Spitter and Shield Modules installed. S-class are preferred, but A will do just fine. We only need 2-3 of them (for each), and you should be able to find them on the stations. Remember, they each need to be touching in order to get the bonus.

Make sure you have 4x stacks of Projectile Ammunition in your inventory before doing this! Now that you have the charts, head back to your main base (or any nice weather planet you have a base on) and use one of the Secure Site Planetary Charts. It should point you to a manufacturing facility, but if it doesn’t (like a Supply Depot) just go to the destination and use another chart (ignore things like Supply Depots). Each one should have a landing pad. Take off and head there! When you arrive, you need to use your Pulse Spitter to shoot down the door. If you get to a Secure Facility with the dog-line sentinels, LEAVE. Without shields you won’t be able to blast through the door before they kill you.

Once you find a building with non-dog sentinels and are inside, you can start blasting the Sentinels from inside the facility! You can use this for cover since they won’t attack you while in the facility. Have at it! You might need to run out to kite some of them to the door, but it works just fine. Remember to blast the little cylinders they drop when you kill them! Get the rhythm down for reloading your pulse spitter. Be careful of the Quads – their laser does a lot of damage, and you don’t have the shields to take more than a few hits – use the base walls to run around, dodge and hide. When the giant walker appears, you need to shoot off the armor on its legs and then it’s torso – then you focus on the torso. Once the armor is gone, you can completely avoid the walker’s projectile damage by side-running in circles around it as you shoot and reload.

To ensure you complete all missions, you want to kill 18 Sentinels and 4 Quads. When you’re done, either jump in your ship and hover in the atmosphere (do NOT go into space while Sentinels are active or Sentinel ships will come after you) or stay in the structure until the Sentinels deactivate.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s make sure you also completed all of your Kill and Scan missions. If there are creatures around, start blasting them. Kill no less than 16. Next, hop in your ship and fly to a new planet. Land and start scanning everything. Scan at least 14 objects. This should finish all outstanding missions.

To verify you’ve completed the missions, Press P, look at Logs and click through the missions to ensure all of them say return to agent. If you missed anything (e.g. scanning minerals, killing critters) once the sentinels have deactivated, take care of anything left over.

Quick Note on the Terminal: check out the “Secure Facility Blueprint & Language Farming” section of this guide under Part IV if you want to learn more about secure facilities and solving the terminal puzzle. We aren’t doing that here, but hunting down these types of facilities and extracting their blueprints is part of the end-game process.

Once you’ve completed all of them, head back to the station and turn all of your missions in! Note you can simply hold down the left mouse button in the same spot to turn them in. It takes roughly 8 seconds for each turn-in, so be patient. If you have 50+ missions, you could be looking at more than 10 minutes time to turn them in.

Depending on the number and rewards of the missions, you should have received around 6,000 nanites, and should have well over 10,000. Now it’s time to get some REAL upgrades for our Exosuit and S-Class ship so we can start really playing the game, which includes a lot of farming!

PART IV – Goals to Pursue

Now that the core guide is complete, I’m going to present a number of different goals the player can pursue as they play the game. This ranges from maximizing modules to building an industrial farm, and even acquiring a living ship. Also note the following Part V contains all of the farming techniques for Nanites, Salvaged Data, Quicksilver, Credits and more.

Base Building & Exploration

This is the heart of NMS. It’s really not about making billions of credits or getting all of the technology – the game is really about exploring every planet you can, continually looking for that perfect match (Paradise for some, Irradiated for others!), and then building an amazing base to make your mark.

If you want to obtain all of the Construction blueprints, be sure to check out the Farming Salvaged Data for Construction section!

Paradise planets are usually the most sought after types of planets, with green fields, lush forests, calm weather, peaceful sentinels, and tons of animals. But they are ultra, ultra rare. But when you find one, it’s an amazing experience, and you’ll quickly know if it’s your new home.

This brings us to building your base. Within this guide, I’ve shown you how to get all the Technology Modules you need to unlock all of the construction blueprints. It really doesn’t take that long (just a few hours at most). Once you are able to build everything, the sky is the limit. And not just the sky and ground, but you can create massive underwater bases as well. Underground? No problem! There’s a ton of Video Guides online to help players with this process, but with the recent release of Beyond and the addition of electrical wiring and connections, nobody has yet created a comprehensive “Base Building in Beyond” guide as of yet. I’ll post it here once one is available.

Here’s some very important base building facts:

Always build a portal at your base so you can easily return. A portal does not have to be powered to return to, only to port out from.
You can build up to 300 units away from your base computer. You can extend this distance by roughly 200 units by building something far away to “pull out” the radius. This method is used when setting up industrial mining arrays to nearby electrical hotspots.
Each Base is limited to 3,000 components.
You can only have a total of 20,000 components among all of your bases.
Storage Containers will share their contents with your freighter and all bases that have them built.

So if you find yourself a bit numb to running the same planets, start jumping to some new systems and keep an eye open for that rare paradise! You may also find that you prefer dry desert-like planets, or even irradiated environments. Every system is different, and every paradise planet is different. One thing is certain, when you find a planet that amazes you, build a monumental base that will stand the test of time – remember, other players can visit it!

When you’re ready to build your first real base, make sure you select the Expanding the Base mission to start staffing your base; following this quest line will unlock terminals where you can place NPCs that work for you and sell items for you. This includes learning how to make important things like Glass.

Below are a few resources you might want to look at including links to some collections of bases to provide inspiration:

Beyond Guide – How to Build and Power your Base in VR (Aug 2019)
Everything you need to know about Power, Industrial & Logic Systems (Aug 2019)
No Man’s Sky Amazing Base Designs (Sep 2020)

Installing Technology Upgrades

We need to craft all of the technology upgrades we just purchased from the Anomaly for our Exosuit, Starship, Multi-tool and Exocraft; but all of this requires a lot of materials. We’ll need to station hop to buy everything.

Each material can be purchased from a Station Exchange or the Captains of ships that land except for the Deuterium, which is crafted with Tritium and Di-Hydrogen. Some of them can be a bit rare, such as Hydraulic Wiring, or Magnetic Resonators. When you find these, I do recommend purchasing a stack of 20. Here’s a list of the materials you’ll need to install the technology upgrades:

385 Copper
380 Phosphorus
300 Tritium
250 Chromatic Metal
250 Emeril
230 Dioxite
210 Oxygen
180 Silver
150 Uranium
100 Magnetised Ferrite
100 Platinum
50 Uranium
50 Ionised Cobalt
50 Deuterium
20 Wiring Loom
9 Magnetic Resonator
5 Carbon Nanotubes
4 Quantum Computer
4 Hermetic Seal
3 Solar Mirror
3 Ion Battery
3 Tritium Hypercluster
1 Warp Cell
1 Hydraulic Wiring

Once you have all of the materials, install each of the purchased technologies (using E) for your Exosuit, Starship, Multi-tool and Exocraft. Note to craft the upgrades for your Pilgrim, you will need to go to a base where you have built one.

Exosuit Technology

Oxygen Recycler (60 Oxygen)
Coolant Network (150 Phosphorus, 60 Silver, 75 Copper)
Thermic Layer (150 Dioxite, 60 Silver, 75 Copper)
Toxic Suppressor (150 Ammonia, 60 Silver, 75 Copper)
Radiation Deflector (150 Uranium, 60 Silver, 75 Copper)
Rocket Boots (100 Tritium, 1 Hydraulic Wiring)
Airburst Engine (150 Chromatic Metal, 150 Phosphorus, 150 Oxygen)

Multitool Technology

Optical Drill (3 Quantum Computer, 3 Solar Mirror, 5 Wiring Loom)
Waveform Recycler (100 Magnetised Ferrite, 1 Ion Battery)
Survey Device (3 Magnetic Resonator, 1 Quantum Computer, 2 Wiring Loom)
Combat Scope (2 Ion Battery, 1 Wiring Loom)

Starship Technology

Indium Drive (250 Emeril, 5 Wiring Loom)
Nonlinear Optics (2 Hermetic Seal, 1 Wiring Loom, 100 Tritium)
Fragment Supercharger (3 Magnetic Resonator, 2 Wiring Loom)
Instability Drive (1 Warp Cell, 3 Tritium Hypercluster, 100 Chromatic Metal)
Sub-light Amplifier (3 Magnetic Resonator, 100 Platinum, 100 Tritium)

Exocraft Technology

Megawatt Heater (80 Phosphorus, 50 Uranium, 1 Wiring Loom)
Air Filtration Unit (160 Copper, 5 Carbon Nanotubes, 1 Wiring Loom)
Neutron Shielding (50 Ionised Cobalt, 95 Deuterium, 1 Wiring Loom)
Thermal Buffer (80 Dioxite, 2 Hermetic Seal, 1 Wiring Loom)

Remember to connect each of the technology modules so they share the same border as their counterparts. The only ones that won’t connect are the protection modules of the Pilgrim.

Buying S-Class Upgrade Modules

Now it’s time to talk Upgrade Modules. FROM HERE ON OUT WE ONLY BUY S-CLASS MODULES. Ignore the rest.

I’ve put together the below list to give you an idea of what you should strive for. Just to ensure you are aware, we can only have 3 support modules per “item”. This means only 3x S-Class Life modules, 3x S-Class Shield modules, etc. The only exception is we can also put 3x S-Class modules in the Technology tab of the objects that support it (such as Exosuit, Starship). This allows us to “double down” on S-Class module support. So when you see 6x vs 3x what that means is you want to first put 3x S-Class modules in the “base” and then 3x S-Class modules in the Technology support tab.

It’s important to note that with Origins, the new Contraband Scrap Dealer sells X-Class Modules for Pugneum. Some of these modules can be more powerful than S-modules, but many are weaker. It’s a great alternative to farm and fill all of the below slots if you don’t have the nanites to get everything you want.

Note that the Nanite cost of S-Class Modules varies depending on the module. For Exosuit, Starship and Multitool, the price can be as high as 612 Nanites, or as low as 536. I’m averaging out the projected costs to be 585 per module.

Recommended order of acquiring modules:

Hyperdrive for Ship (makes exploring easier)
Movement Modules for Exosuit (run faster)
Mining Modules for Multitool (get more quicker)
Engine Modules for Exocraft (go faster in your Pilgrim)
Life Modules for Exosuit (better survival)
Hazard Modules for Exosuit (survive any climate)

Exosuit Module List

6x Life Modules (Main & Tech)
3x Shield Modules
6x Movement Modules (Main & Tech)
4x Hazard Modules (one per hazard type)

Estimated Total: 9,360 Nanites

Starship Module List

6x Hyperdrive Modules (Main & Tech)
6x Shield Modules (Main & Tech)
3x Pulse Engine Modules
3x Photon Cannon Modules
3x Phase Beam Modules

Estimated Total: 12,285 Nanites

Multitool module List

3x Scanner Modules
3x Mining Support Modules
3x Pulse Spitter Support Modules

Estimated Total: 5,265 Nanites

Exocraft module list

3x Engine Modules
3x Boost Modules

Estimated Total: 3,510 Nanites

So we’re looking at a cost of more than 30,000 nanites to get everything we need as S-Class. But as mentioned above, we can use X-Class modules in tandem with the S-Class modules we can afford, bringing the nanite cost down dramatically. The good news is once you put S-Modules in your Exosuit or Exocraft, you never lose them. The bad news is if you get a new Multitool or Ship, you’ll have to re-acquire and add all of the modules again. You may be wondering about the Engine Modules for the Exocraft – well, when we start farming (below) the first thing we’ll do it unlock the Pilgrim and use it as our main tool for gathering Salvaged Technology so we can unlock all the Base Blueprints!

The rest depends on what you want to do. If you farm sentinels then you want to focus on shields and pulse spitter damage. If you want to kill pirates, upgrade the ship shields and weapons. Scanner modules are nice for enhancing the unit reward for each scan, but we have so much money, the upgrades really only benefit us with extended scan distance.

Exotic & S-Class Ships (Salvaging)

You should have found one or more S-class ships while you were system hopping during the Chlorine loop. I recommend choosing one of those as your primary and “reasonably” outfitting it to play the game a bit before focusing on finding the perfect ship. But when you’re ready, there’s a sea of ships to choose from. First, you want to decide what sort of look you prefer. Exotics always have unique looks, but some people prefer Battlestar-style fighters, or giant Haulers. It’s also important to note while all exotics are S-Classes, not all S-Classes are exotic. However any ship in the game can be upgraded to S-Class and max slots, so it ultimately comes down to the ship you prefer. Yes, the different ship types have different performance parameters (explorers can jump further while fighters generally have the best firepower), but the reality is once your ship has been maxed out, you can play the game any way you want, and the differences in stats really don’t matter much.

Now that we have access to the portal, we can hunt any specific ship we want. There’s three core resources for doing this.

The first is the Starship Catalogue, which is actually updated more regularly than the multi-tool version above. If you want to see what a ship looks like just mouseover the Ship Name. Make sure you choose the right galaxy! (Euclid is the starting galaxy)
Next we have the No Man’s Sky Coordinate Exchange subreddit, where people post ships they’ve found.
And finally we have YouTube. We can search for Exotics or S-Class ships.

Many players want to simply hunt on their own; and this is fine as you can find exotics and awesome S-class ships never seen before. While our first S-Class won’t necessarily be the best looking ship we want to fly in forever, it will be solid for what we need until you decide exactly the type of ship you’re looking for. First you must decide what kind of ship you’re looking for. Fighter, Hauler or Explorer? Below is a breakdown of the default max slots and best race for each ship type:

Fighter (38+12) Vy’keen
Hauler (48+8) Gek
Explorer (38+8) Korvax
Shuttle (28+8) Any
Exotics (20+6) Any

At this point, it doesn’t make sense to get an A-Class. Get an S-Class. As mentioned, we have 80 Wealthy systems on our list. It shouldn’t take long to find something that you like. And remember, we can max the slots of any ship; it can just get VERY expensive (I spent more than $3.5 BILLION to max out my Exotic!).

Salvaging Ships

You may have already picked up one or more S-Class ships running the above loop. If you just got one, simply switch over to that ship. If you got more than one, it’s time to Salvage the ships to obtain Modules and Augments. If you have multiple S-Class ships, you’ll need to fly out of your station and summon your Freighter to switch them (you can only salvage your primary ship).

Each space station has a ship salvage terminal near the exosuit terminal. Before you salvage, make sure you dismantle the parts within the ship so you can get important items such as Magnetic Resonators.

Once you salvage the ship, move the S-class modules into your cargo slots. You can go through them later. If you have more S-class ships, jump in your ship, fly back to your freighter, select your next ship to salvage and fly it back to the station. Repeat for as many ships as you are salvaging.

Another thing you can do is watch the ships that land in the space station and buy them on the spot to immediately salvage, which produces Ship Modules you can sell to any module vendor for Nanites.

Augments are very important when it comes to saving money to upgrade your ships. The cost in Credits to take a normal Exotic to Max Slots without Augments is over $3.5 BILLION. Since you can get up to 3 Augments per salvage (the higher the number coming from S-class ships), just a handful of Augments can save you well over a Billion credits. This is another reason why Salvaging is really important.

The best ship for farming nanites (by acquiring S-Class Modules you sell) are A-class explorers, as seen below:

A-Class Explorer for $1,500,000 gives $1,090,000 (Cost $500k) produces 900 nanites.
B-Class Explorer for $845,000 gives $590,000 (Cost $255k) produces 270 nanites.
A-Class Fighter for $15,500,000 gives $10,800,000 (Cost of $5M) produces 800 nanites.
B-Class Fighter for $1,120,000 gives $785,000 (Cost $350k) produces 400 nanites.
A-Class Hauler for $37,500,000 gives $26,250,000 (Cost of $11M) produces 900 nanites.
B-Class Shuttle for $935,000 gives $655,000 (Cost $280k) produces 280 nanites.

Gek systems are the best for farming explorer ships, and A-class explorers land in the station all the time. It’s easy to make thousands of nanites in well under an hour with this technique; which can also lead to finding S-class and exotic ships as well; and also serve as a nice break from doing other things!

S-Class Ship Hunting Technique

The most efficient S-Class hunting is the Trading Post Save/Reload technique. Here’s how you do it. In a wealthy economy, the chance of a ship being S-Class is 2%. 1% in medium economy and 0% in low economy. When you’re S-Class hunting ALWAYS TURN MULTIPLAYER OFF, especially when you go to a publicly shared location through a portal.

Dock with Station.
Go to Station Portal.
Press P and bring up Discoveries.
Browse Named Systems for the Race that has the Ship you want (e.g. Vy’keen for Fighter).
When you click on the system, look for planets that look like they support good life; tropical, humid, etc. Granted you won’t know until you actually scan the planet. When you find the system that looks right, take the portal to the system station.
Depart the system and fly to the planet. Gone are the days of the guessing game. You have an Economy Scanner! Press X and go to the far left menu and select the option “Scan for Trading Post”. Voila! Fly to the waypoint and you’re good!
Make sure you check the terminal for any goodies like Chromatic Metal, etc. (to replenish your stock).
Fly to the very top of the center building and build a Save Beacon.
Use it.
Quit to Options, and reload your Manual Save.
Here’s your loop. When you reload, you’re going to find the ships generally all fly in from one direction. Once you get this down, you can use your visor to identify them as they approach (to see if they are S-Class, slots, etc). This “first wave” is all you want to review before you reload and do it again. Once you’ve reviewed all the ships in the first wave, quit to options, and reload your manual save.
You’ll notice there are generally 5 different variations of each ship: Fighter, Hauler, Explorer and Shuttle. 3 of those variations can never be max slot (e.g. you’ll see fighters that max out at 20 slots), but 2 of them can be max slot. Quickly identify which ones have the potential of being max slot because even if a S-class variation of one of the first 3 appears, it can never have max slots (e.g. you’d be stuck with a S-Class Fighter with 20+8 vs. 38+12. A HUGE difference).
Using this technique you should have your first S-Class in under 30 minutes. Now that we can upgrade our ship cargo size, we don’t care about the ship we find having the cargo space we need – we can upgrade that later. Do NOT get a ship you think is ugly or do not like – you’ll regret it! Be patient. And if you don’t see ANY ships you like after 15-20 minutes, you need to find a new planet with different ships.
Happy hunting!

It can take hours to find the ship you’re looking for. Be patient!

Acquiring All Remaining Blueprints

Since we already got all of the tech modules we need to buy every construction blueprint in the game, we can get all of the remaining Ship, Exosuit, etc. blueprints that cost nanites. We already purchased the core ones, so these are more fluff and true end-game than anything else, but in the end, each player probably wants to own all of them. Here’s a breakdown of how many we’ll need based on what we’ve already purchased:

Starship Upgrades (2,170)
Exosuit Upgrades (2,270)
Multi-tool Upgrades (1,600)
Exocraft Upgrades (3,480)

This brings our total to 9,520. If you just completed the guide and turned in your missions, you should have more than 10,000 nanites to buy all of these.

Acquiring a Living Ship

Living ships were added to the game early in 2020 (version 2.3). To start this quest, you need at least 3,200 quicksilver.

(Video) Khraze’s guide to Acquiring a Living Ship (Feb 2020)

Transmitting Milestone Data on Anomaly

As you explore the universe, don’t forget to occasionally visit the Anomaly and transmit milestone data to Helios and Ares, who reward you with Nanites.

Milestones (Achievements)

NMS has three categories of “Milestones”, which also includes Faction standings with Races and Guilds. At this time, I’m not aware of any rewards tied to completing the milestones (other than feeling good about it), but lifeform standing will impact whether freighter fleets of specific races help you with pirates, and merchant guild standing will impact the missions you can choose. You increase both Racial and Guild standing by completing missions. You can also complete racial standing by turning in racial relics (note you can turn in an unlimited amount to the same NPC). If you want to find a ton of relics, just park your freighter in a system run by the race you want to process, dock with your freighter, and each NPC ship that lands on your freighter will sell the relics. 10 stacks of 5 should be enough to reach maximum rank.

Main Storyline

The main storyline of NMS is actually quite good, and takes on average more than 30 hours to complete. If you need a break from generic farming, just jump back into the story, and if you want a break from the story, you can do one of the many other activities covered herein.

If you do make it to the center of the galaxy, give careful consideration to leaving Euclid (the starting galaxy) as Euclid portal codes will no longer work (which is where 95% of all portal codes for ship and multitool hunting are located).

Freighters

I didn’t forget about Freighters, or the mechanics behind him. I just decided to avoid using them in this guide because I personally don’t use (or need) them. However, those who love space battles and sending ships on missions, the Freighter system is for you! If you want more information on using Freighters, I just wanted to mention Freighters, which are a mechanic all on their own. I’m going to keep that out of this guide because I don’t really do much with Freighters (I honestly never had a need), but there are a ton of great guides on Youtube.

Video: Hawke’s Complete Freighter Building & Tips Guide (Jun 2020)

PART V – Farming

By making over a billion units, getting a solid ship and multitool, core blueprints and components, we are more than ready to take on what the universe has to throw at us.

This is where players can decide to play the way they want, take breaks from one thing, work on another, and jump around to whatever suits them. This is the order I pursue the farming:

Nanite Farming to get max Exocraft modules (for speed).
Technology Modules and Blueprints (half).
Base Building.
More Nanite Farming to get modules for Multitool, Ship and Exosuit (half).
S-Class Ship/Multitool hunting (through portal).
Language & Secure Facility farming.
Technology Modules and Blueprints for Construction (second half/complete).
Industrial Base Building.
More Missions.
Storyline.
Jump between all of the above.

Every player will have a different approach to what they prefer and want to focus on. Some players may want to build out their Freighter Fleet, base, and send their ships on missions. I don’t even cover that here – but it’s really the only feature that I chose to not include. Regardless, there is always something to do, with exploration being the key part that goes on forever.

Farming Salvaged Data for Construction

Now that we have tons of money, a nice S-Class multi-tool, and around 10,000 (or more) nanites, it’s time to farm Salvaged Data! We need to do this to buy all of the blueprints we can for base construction, etc. The most efficient way to do this is to find a planet full of Buried Technology Modules, build a Pilgrim exocraft, and zoom around the surface in the NMS Batmobile, digging up as many modules as we can.

If you haven’t done this already, go to the Anomaly and the Construction Research Station. Select Transport Modules and purchase the Roamer Geobay and Pilgrim Geobay for 14 Salvaged Data.

I highly recommend having 3 Engine and Boost modules installed on your Pilgrim when you start farming Salvaged Data. It will make things go a LOT faster.

It appears the best technology module planets in the game are in Korvax systems, so when you’re ready to go farming, focus on this system type! Economy (wealthy, destitute, etc.) doesn’t appear to have any impact, but the quality of a planet (temperate, paradise, etc.) does seem to increase the chance of more tech. You know you have the right planet when you can see 3+ Buried Modules from the same point, and receive 3-4 Salvaged Data for each Buried Technology Module. When you find the right planet packed full of modules, make sure you build a base with a portal so you can return to farm them anytime in the future. Do not waste your time with a planet that only has one module every 400-500 units and provides just 2 each and every time.

Using every Knowledge Stone you come across as you move between modules is a great way to learn alien languages!

Don’t forget about the [Paradise] and other systems you should have marked when doing the Chlorine loop. You can go back to these systems, fly out to the planets, land on them, and see if they have a good number of modules.

Once you decide which planet you want to start farming, you’ll need to build the Pilgrim Geobay (5 Metal Plating, 4 Ion Batteries, 100 Paraffinium). Next, craft the three support suspensions (Drift Suspension, Grip Boost Suspension, Hi-Slide Suspension), and you should be good to go! You can also install S-Class modules to increase speed.

You should have already installed the hazard and Accelerator modules, so we should be ready to hit the road!

In a Pilgrim, we should be able to go to, dig, and grab Salvaged Data at a rate of at least 2x every 30 seconds. This means it will take roughly 3 hours of farming to get all of the salvage modules we want to purchase everything available. However, some planets are packed with Salvage and can give up to 4x per dig, so that could be cut down to well under 2 hours on the right planet. This is why it’s worth finding a planet packed with Buried Technology Modules. The other thing you can do is break it up. Focus on certain categories of modules first, then go off and do something else. Whatever works best and is the most fun!

Below is an overview of the total amount of Salvaged Data we need to get all of the Construction Blueprints. It’s important to state the order each player acquires their blueprints is different; some people want to build structures before they create an industry refinery, while others want to grow plants in a cave and don’t care about prefabs at all. Once you get a few hundred Salvaged Data, review what’s available and pursue the components you want to pursue first. My personal recommendation is to max out Concrete Shelters; they cost Ferrite Dust and are great for building your first base to place your hirelings.

Concrete Shelters (33)
Technology Modules (134)
Industrial Modules (48)
Wooden Shelters (26)
Small Prefabs (26)
Large Prefabs (78)
Transport Modules (93) (30 for race stuff, which I ignore)
Agricultural Modules (53)
Decal Designs (24)
Metal Shelters (33)
Primitive Shapes (9)
Storage Units (45)
Illumination (11)
Decorative Modules (Page 1) (20)
Decorative Modules (Page 2) (23)
Aquatic Construction (60)

The total required Salvaged Data to unlock everything comes out to 716, or 686 if you don’t care about building a race course for your Exocraft. But the reality is most players don’t need to unlock everything to play the way they want; they generally only need to unlock ~500 worth of blueprints, with an extra 60 if they want to build underwater bases.

Farming Nanites

The old method of farming Nanites was to harvest eggs at Abandoned Facilities, but now we have Gamma Root Farming, Contraband, Egg Farming, and Ship Salvaging.

Gamma Root Farming

As we’ve seen in this guide, the gamma root crafting approach is one of the most effective in the game, producing more than 10,000 nanites in less than 30 minutes with 4 Nutrient Processors. Set up 8 doing this and you’re now making 40,000 nanites per hour. You can revisit Section I, Phase IV as a reminder of how to process the gamma root. Just remember you get roughly 10,000 nanites for every 400 gamma root, and it takes 16 minutes to create one stack of the stew, and each stack gives around 5,000 nanites. The player could have multiple nutrient processors, so this technique makes roughly 20,000 nanites per hour.

Contraband Method

With the addition to Contraband, there is a new method of farming nanites that costs credits and pugneum. While you can make more nanites per hour with this method than Gamma Root, I’m pretty confident it will be nerfed. Go to the Contraband vendor on each station and buy all of the:

Suspicious Packets (Weaponry)
Suspicious [X] Modules

Need Pugneum? Just buy it from the Ships that land in the station. Want to replenish the stock of the vendor? Enter your ship and exit, then reload. Khraze did a great video that outlines the technique.

Egg Farming

For those who want more exciting farming paired with exploration, Farming Abandoned Facilites is another way to obtain nanites. We already farmed with this method back in Part II and we can do this again and again. It’s easy. Go to the Anomaly, run to the Nexus (it’s the large hologram computer console at the docking level in the middle). Start the Biological Horror Mission. select ready, and you’re good to go. Hop in your ship, and fly to the waypoint. We’re not actually going to complete the mission, we’re just getting a quick waypoint to guaranteed eggs.

We can also use Distress Signal navigational charts, but the Nexus Biological horror mission is the quickest and easiest way to get a waypoint to the eggs.

An experienced player can farm on average 1,250 nanites every 5 minutes (including harvest and flight reset time), which means 15,000 nanites per hour.

You get 225 nanites for refining a stack of x15 technology modules (the ones you dig up). While it’s not nearly as efficient as eggs, it’s a fun alternative if you like to race around and dig things up!

Not all facilities are equal! You always want a facility with at least two sections – one section won’t have enough eggs. If you take the Nexus mission and it points you to a facility with too few eggs, go to another system, call the Anomaly, leave the mission and restart it. You will receive a new waypoint in the new system, and hopefully to a larger facility.

To reset the eggs, we just jump in our ship and fly into space, pulse past a few asteroid fields, turn around, and fly back to the facility. The eggs will have respawned.

If you find an awesome facility with a ton of eggs, I recommend building a base there with a teleporter so you can easily come back anytime to farm them. To make things even better, build a landing pad for your ship as well as you’ll be flying up and down a lot.

Even though it was included above in Part I, Phase IV, here’s a link to the video showing you How to farm Whispering Eggs for Nanites.

Ship Salvaging Method

The final method of farming nanites is that of Salvaging ships, which also provides technology modules based on the class of the ship. If you’re looking to just farm nanites, A-class Explorers are the best. But if you want modules and nanites, S-class is the best choice. Here’s a link to the section above that provides instructions of how to do this.

Farming Secure Facility Blueprints & Language

Infiltrating and fixing Secure Facilities is one of the best ways to obtain “Components & Devices” blueprints, which include the Atlas Passes and creation of combined materials (such as Salt Refractors, Starship Batteries, and Warp Hypercores). While you can play and enjoy most of what the game has to offer without ever unlocking these blueprints, those of us who are compulsive to have access to all content are drawn to gather these blueprints.

To obtain these blueprints, we break into secure facilities and solve the puzzles at the stations. However these puzzles require you to be semi-fluent in the alien language for the system in order to get enough information to figure them out (at least on the first try). Solving these puzzles can reward you with blueprints or Factory Override Units, which can be used to purchase specific blueprints (if you select Learn Blueprints from the terminal after successfully solving the puzzle). If you put in the wrong answer at the terminal, you won’t get anything and it will lock you out. The workaround is to save the game at your ship (Autosave) before going inside to solve the terminal puzzle, and if you don’t get it, just reload and try it again.

To find these buildings, we need to acquire numerous “Secure Site of Interest” Planetary Charts from a station Cartographer (in exchange for Nav Data or nanites). All you need to do is use these charts and they will direct you to the facilities you need to infiltrate (occasionally sending you to a Storage Depot, which you can ignore). I usually purchase 4 stacks of 5 (x20) to start the process, then go back and refill based on how many more I need to pursue. If you use a chart and it says “Nothing Found” it’s time to go to another planet or system.

If you don’t want to shoot the door down with your pulse spitter, you can shoot the doors with your ship before you land, but it requires some solid piloting skills. I personally just land and blast the doors with my pulse spitter and run inside (the sentries deactivate at that point).

As mentioned, this is where being able to speak an alien language is important. I recommend learning at least 100 words before you start this process; or you can install the new translator modules. The choice is yours.

Below is a great video on how this process works:

How to find Manufacturing Facilities and get Blueprints

Farming Missions and Racial Faction

We can re-run the “mission loop” that we did while selling the Chlorine; it’s ultra easy – just revisit each station and pick up every scan/kill mission that rewards nanites. You can also visit the Guild Merchant (next to the Mission vendor) and receive rewards for each faction increase you’ve achieved.

When you’re exploring, make sure you pick up all scan/kill missions from your new stations – they quickly add up!

At this point, it doesn’t appear racial factions provide anything of value. Prior to Beyond and the new Blueprint system the Anomaly provides, certain blueprints were locked behind certain racial faction levels. That doesn’t appear to be the case anymore. I’ll update this guide if I learn differently, or when Hello Games makes Racial Faction Farming a “thing to do” again.

Industrial Mining

With the Beyond Update, players can build industrial mining and gas extraction facilities, making well over $100M per hour. This system also unlocked the Hotspot mechanic, which allows players to place electromagnetic energy collectors, and the mining/gas harvesters themselves. In order to unlock this system, the player must install the Survey Device Visor Upgrade in their Multitool (purchasable from the Anomaly Multitool Vendor for 320 nanites). Once you have the upgrade, you can use your visor to track down and mark hotspots, which come in C, B, A and S classifications. The most productive facilities are S in production, but having a B or A power source nearby works just fine. The trick is finding a S or A mining field next to a B or better power field. And even then, the mine you find may not be the material you want (e.g. you could get Copper vs. Indium). This can be quite challenging to find and takes time.

Most players are ignoring gas harvesting and focusing solely on Activated Indium, since it produces the most profit. At this time there’s only a handful of guides available, but it’s pretty easy to set up and configure once you find the hot spots. Below is a link to a video that explains the process of setting up the mine and raking in the money (Activated Indium Mines can make over $50M per hour):

(Video) How to Make 50 Million Per Hour with an Indium Mineral Farm (May 2020)

Farming Glitches

Glitches are rare visual objects spread throughout the universe that can be picked up and placed at your base. These include floating cubes, Fissures, and strange alien artifacts. At this time there are a total of 11 known glitches, which are:

Calcishroom
Light Fissure
Rattle Spine
Terbium Growth
Bubble Cluster
Ossified Star
Cable Pod
Capillary Shell
Hexplate Bush
Glitching Separator
Electric Cube

A list of glitches and their locations can be found on the NMS Wikipedia.

Farming Quicksilver

Quicksilver (QS) is the rarest form of currency in NMS, and it’s used to purchase numerous visual enhancements and other features, including the quest starter for obtaining a Living Ship.

There are currently 124 unique items the player can buy from the Quicksilver vendor. This includes items you can place at your base, decals, animations, face transformations for your Traveler, and even con-trail colors for your jetpack and ship(s). 3,200 Quicksilver is also required to purchase the Void Egg, which starts the living ship quest line. It’s basically the MTX store for NMS. QS purchases are game based, so if you start a new game, you’ll have to re-acquire Quicksilver to purchase the items you want (again). This system entices players to stick with a single character to focus on daily missions and getting as many QS rewards as they can.

Daily missions reset at 11:00 GMT. The Weekly Events (when active) start at 18:00 GMT Fri Night, and end at 03:00 GMT Mon morning.

There are currently three methods of obtaining Quicksilver in NMS. They are:

Main Quest
Daily/Weekend Nexus Missions
Stellar Ice Farming

The Main Quest only awards 250 Quicksilver (in total), so it’s not really a viable way of making enough to do anything (and it’s only repeatable when you go to a new Galaxy).

Daily and Weekend Nexus Missions are the most common way players farm Quicksilver. A character receives one Daily Nexus Quest mission per day. Each daily mission rewards 250 Quicksilver. The Weekend Community Event rewards 1,200 Quicksilver and can only be completed once per weekend, however it appears Weekend Missions have been disabled since the launch of Origins. Below is a message from Hello Games regarding this.

09.25.2020
Developer Notes about Weekend Quicksilver Missions
This season of weekend missions has concluded on a note of mystery. Is Ariadne who they say they are, or has their place been taken by an imposter? It’s beyond question that much has changed throughout the galaxies – planets are bursting with new life, new celestial bodies have formed – but is the universe now settled, or does some dark force still lurk out there? New means of earning Quicksilver are coming soon. In the meantime, Quicksilver rewards are still available daily from The Nexus.

Not all Daily Nexus missions are equal; you’ll want to avoid some of them. If there’s a bad daily mission up, just wait 5 minutes and it will change. Below are the missions I recommend staying away from, and the others I recommend jumping right on.

Stay away from these missions: Any Scan Plants/Minerals, Tame Creatures
Take These missions: Kill Pirates, Kill Monstrosities, Kill Dangerous Plants

You can find a complete list of Missions the Nexus offers here.

Stellar Ice Farming is the only method available that has no limit and can be done as long as the player wants, however it’s repetitive and borderline cheating as constant reloads are key to pursuing the reward – but it’s definitely the quickest way to gain Quicksilver, empowering players to make around 1,000 Quicksilver per hour (can be more or less based on RNG). This method of farming is based on a random space encounter of Condensed Stellar Ice that only appears in green star systems and has the possibility of rewarding 100 Quicksilver; but it can also reward Nanites, Di-Hydrogen, Uranium, or Condensed Carbon. I was never able to get Stellar Ice to spawn in Green Systems, so it appears to be very rare, and unique to specific systems. As such, using the portal to go to a system where the event is already confirmed is the best choice, and both of the below videos provide coordinates and talk about how to properly farm this event.

My personal opinion is just playing the game and doing daily missions is more fun than engaging in Stellar Ice Farming.

(Video) Captain Steve’s Stellar Ice Farming Guide (Jun 2020)
(Video) Hawke’s Guide on How to Farm Quicksilver (May 2020)

Farming Credits

Even though we have Billions upon completing the initial guide, it’s possible to run out of money through various money sinks. Not a problem! Just repeat the Chlorine loop!

PART VI – Conclusion & Resources

I hope the NMS community finds this guide helpful, and it empowers new (and experienced) players to enjoy everything the game has to offer. As mentioned at the beginning of this guide, if you have any feedback, questions or recommended changes/enhancements, please leave a comment below!

Here’s a few additional resource references along with dedicated Youtube Content providers I highly recommend. Khraze is my favorite.

Thanks to Hello Games for making such an amazing game, and the NMS community for being awesome!

The Complete No Man’s Sky Origins Guide