The Complete No Man’s Sky 4.0 Waypoint Guide

Welcome to the Complete No Man’s Sky 4.0 Waypoint 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 hundreds of millions (even billions) of credits and tens of thousands of nanites in just a few days 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!

10.30.2022
I’ve made numerous enhancements, adjustments and changes to the guide since I originally posted it more than a week ago. Be sure to check out the External Resource List at the bottom of the guide!

10.21.2022
UPDATE FOR WAYPOINT!
As many players may be aware, the previous Chlorine money making process has been dramatically reduced through the removal of easily acquiring Oxygen in bulk, removing the ability to make billions of credits in a short period of time. I personally support this change, as making large amounts of money prior to 4.0 Waypoint was far too easy. The good news is Chlorine is still viable, is one of the best money makers, and players can still make hundreds of millions early on using a similar approach to Chlorine market trading by embracing oxygen refining industry. In the end, the new and updated approach presented in this guide is a lot more fun than before because it has the player engaging in salvaging ships from distress beacons and building a cool extractor base, which teaches the basics of industry. I do want to clarify I am aware of the push to mine gold, but I tried both the Oxygen Chlorine and Gold approaches and found the Oxygen Chlorine solution to be easier, quicker, and more profitable.

This guide was designed for players who want to play at a difficulty of at least standard across the board.

For those of you who aren’t aware of the new features brought to the game by Waypoint 4.0, here’s a video that gives great overview of the new features and changes:

• No Man’s Sky Waypoint 4.0 Update list of Features

Before we start, I want to share this excellent video that covers the progression of the game since its launch, which is useful not only for new players considering the game, but also returning players who want to quickly overview how much the game has changed since launch.

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 or SURVIVAL; I’ve updated the relevant sections to address the inventory stack size differences between NORMAL and the other modes.

If you are playing Survival, 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, the Chlorine technique still works, it just doesn’t produce nearly the amount of credits it does in Normal mode.

Part I and II of this guide are written using a detailed step-by-step approach to help new players. As the guide progresses, the steps become more interpretive and flexible. 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. Bright green is for emphasized 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 specific item reference.
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, and we’ll have dozens of wealthy systems we can hop between once we’re financially secure vs. just 40 (we revisit many of the systems for Modules and Materials). 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.

PART I – The Beginning

What we’ll accomplish: Starting out, building our first base, visiting the Space Station and Anomaly, salvaging our first ship, making over $1,000,000 credits, and farming Gamma Root for 20,000 Nanites!

Phase I – Starting Out

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

1. 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.
2. Hold down E to initialize. Wait until the game loads and you can move around.
3. Press C to scan. Follow tutorial. Use Mining Beam to gather 75 Ferrite Dust. Once done Repair Scanner.
4. 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.
5. Scan for Sodium (C). Run and gather Sodium (orange Na on Hud). Charge Exosuit.
6. 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.
7. 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. If your mining beam runs out of energy, simply recharge it with Carbon. Also, open any containers you come across.
8. Go to Distress Beacon and Broadcast.
9. Open any containers by the flag.
10. Enter the Ship. Connect Exosuit. Select Repair Ship Systems. Exit the ship.
11. Repair Pulse Engine. Craft Metal Plate from Ferrite Dust and Repair Pulse Engines.
12. Enter Ship again. Request Assistance. Exit Ship.
13. Take Planetary Chart from Distress Beacon and use it (press Tab to open inventory and hold down E while mouse is over the chart). 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. A storm will begin. Make sure you run as quickly to the waypoint (use shift to run) and use Sodium to recharge your exosuit if it gets too low (press TAB select Exosuit, click on the Hazard Protection icon, and drop Sodium into it). You can also hide in a cave to weather the storm.
14. Arrive at waypoint and enter small building. Access Holo-archive. Select Recover supplies (gives Hermetic Seal).
15. Press F. Follow tutorial. Install Visor in your multi-tool. Craft Carbon Nanotubes. Install Visor (1x Carbon Nanotube).
16. 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.
17. 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!
18. While running back to ship look for caves. Mine CARBON because you need it to replenish your mining laser.
19. Repair Pulse Engine (Hermetic Seal).
20. Craft Di-Hydrogen Jelly. Repair Launch Thruster.
21. Press Z to Craft Portable Refiner (1x Metal Plate, 40 Ferrite Dust). Refine Ferrite Dust to 50 Pure Ferrite.
22. Make sure you pick up the portable refiner with middle-mouse button!
23. Open any Geodes you have in your inventory (with E).
24. Repair Launch Thruster. Get in ship and let’s do this!

Phase II – Build First Base

1. Launch! Fly straight up into space. Test controls (per the tutorial).
2. I recommend switching to 3rd person Starship view (X then select Utilities and Starship View) for better visibility.
3. While in space shoot any asteroids you can until you get at least 30 gold. Note one gold nugget is more than enough.
4. Answer communication. Identify yourself. Input Coordinates. Fly to Signal Source.
5. Land on planet at signal source approximate location. Get out and use your scanner (F). It will now default to Target Sweep Mode. Find the direction you should go. Start running in that direction and press 1 to switch between Target and Analysis mode. As you move towards the target destination, SCAN EVERYTHING.
6. You may have your first encounter with sentinels here; it depends on the planet you land on. Sentinels don’t like you farming resources and may actually attack you if you harvest resources around them. The way to get around this is to use your multi-tool to farm resources that are far away from you. The sentinel will investigate the disturbance, but you’ll be too far for them to figure out it’s you. Do not shoot sentinels! If you do “aggro” a sentinel, just keep running away until it loses interest.
7. When you are close enough, your target scanner will finalize the location, showing the signal source on your HUD. Run to the Signal Source.
8. Examine the Broken Technology. Decipher Signal.
9. Acquire Base Computer and Terrain Manipulator.
10. Build Terrain Manipulator (2x Carbon Nanotubes and 1x Di-Hydrogen Jelly).
11. 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.
12. It’s now time to mention how important Buried Technology Modules are. Now that you have the Terrain Manipulator, you can dig these up. Some planets are very plentiful with them while they are fairly rare on others. If you see them within a reasonable distance, go and dig them up. Gather as many as you can. You can never have too many, and while we do use them to acquire plans, they can also be sold for $50K each. Don’t focus solely on digging them up just yet; we’re going to do that later – but it’s not a bad idea to dig any up that are nearby as you’re looking to mine copper.
13. Mine Carbon and scan unidentified things as you run to the copper!
14. 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. Recharge it if you run out of power.
15. While your Terrain Manipulator is active, press R to make the mining sphere smaller; you’ll get more!
16. Remember to scan all new minerals, flora and critters around your mining site!
17. If you run out of launch fuel, just craft some (1x Metal Plate, 40 Di-Hydrogen).
18. If you are <200u away, run back to your ship. If not summon your ship with the X menu.
19. Once you are at your ship, Deploy your Portable Refiner near your ship (press Z) and refine ALL of the Copper into Chromatic Metal.
20. While it’s working away, continue to Scan and Mine. Focus on Ferrite and Carbon. Also go and dig up any Buried Technology Modules that are within range.
21. You can recharge your suit protection at no cost by getting back in your ship!
22. Put the Chromatic Metal into your exosuit and PICK UP the refiner!
23. 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!
24. If you don’t have enough fuel in your launch thrusters, simply make Starship Launch Fuel and load it into the launch thrusters.
25. 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). They are represented by a little house icon. 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 you do this and the settlement is a long ways off, just fly up and above the atmosphere and use your impulse drive to get to the Settlement.
26. 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.
27. Land on the pad connected to the Minor Settlement.
28. Build Base right by the landing pad (on the ground). Use the computer for the first time and claim your base.
29. Use the Base Computer again to claim Blueprints.
30. Build 1x1x1 Shelter. One Floor, Three Walls, One Door, and one Ceiling tile (150 Carbon, 10 Pure Ferrite). If you don’t have enough, just farm it from the flora and minerals around your base and use your refiner to make Pure Ferrite from Ferrite dust.
31. Go to base computer. Extract Plans (Construction Research Unit).
32. 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.
33. Make sure you have 130 condensed carbon (takes 260 Carbon). Refine carbon to create Condensed Carbon.
34. Craft one Carbon Nanotube (50 carbon).
35. Build Construction Research Unit. Just build it and place it either inside or outside of your base; we aren’t going to use it yet.
36. VERY IMPORTANT! When you name your SYSTEMS, adopt a naming convention so you can easily find them later. I recommend the format: OriginalName (Account/Character) (Special). Since we’re only visiting wealthy systems, and the portal list now shows race, economy, and conflict level, we don’t need to include anything in the name other than special markers and then our “signature” to show we discovered the system. For example, if you came across a system named Xytrol-Iuya IV, the proper renaming could be: “Xytrol-Iuya Skrunchy” (if your signature was Skrunchy). And if that same system had a Paradise planet in it, the name would be: “Xytrol-Iuya Skrunchy Paradise”. 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 just add my signature and only custom name Paradise planets. The rest I keep as default.
37. 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 from planet). Use whatever name works for you (I add “Skrunchy 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 (F) 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. This will award you with 150-200 nanites (on average).
38. 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.
39. 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).
40. Ignore the Multi-tool cabinet (we’re sticking with the starter for awhile and will get a S-Class later).
41. Go to the Vendor (the little alien, not the Terminal) and select Purchase Blueprints. Buy the Advanced Mining Laser Blueprint (costs 75 Nanites).
42. 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, Marrow Bulb, Nitrogen, Ammonia, Faecium, Vortex Cubes, Fungal Mold and Uranium. DO NOT SELL: Salvaged Data, Navigation Data, Ferrite or Carbon, Di-Hydrogen, Oxygen, Sodium, Copper, or Chromatic Metal.
43. 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 45 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. Make sure you have enough launch fuel in your ship in case you need to call it to you.
44. 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.
45. If you don’t see any Buried Technology Modules with your scanner, just keep running in a straight line. They will appear.
46. To mark a targeted module, hold down E over the icon while in scanner mode, and you can see the location more clearly as you approach it.
47. Make sure you have Sodium while you’re running around because storms can quickly become deadly if you can’t recharge your suit.
48. There are some planets with terrible spacing on the Buried Technology Modules (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 using vehicles).
49. As you run between the modules, make sure you scan any ??? objects, including animals. Also open any containers or activate any language artifacts.
50. Farm Carbon, Ferrite, Di-Hydrogen, Sodium, and Oxygen while you’re out there!
51. If you are too far from your base, you can summon your ship by pressing X and selecting “Summon Vehicles”.
52. Go to your Construction Research Unit. Select research Buildable Technology. Under Core Habitation Tech, learn Base Teleporter (2), Biofuel Reactor (1), Electrical Wiring (1), Save Beacon (1), Battery (3) and Solar Panel (8).
53. At this point you can lay down many floor panels outside of your base to make room for the teleporter, battery and array. I usually make a 4×4 section to do this.
54. Build Base Teleporter (4x Metal Plate and 2x Carbon Nanotubes, 40 Sodium).
55. Go to your base computer and name your base. Make it good! Upload your base.
56. Go to your mission log and select “Powering the Base”.
57. Build Biofuel Reactor (1x Metal Plating, 40 Oxygen) next to Teleporter. Wire Reactor to Teleporter. This will complete the mission. DO NOT PUT FUEL IN THE REACTOR.
58. DESTORY the biofuel reactor. To do this bring up the build interface (Z) and press C. Highlight the reactor and press X.
59. 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. Wire the solar panel to the battery, and the battery to the portal.
60. 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.
61. Interact with Base Computer, get quest to go to Space Station.
62. Upload any new discoveries (plants, minerals, animals) to get nanites.
63. Pick up Portable Refiner.

Phase III – Space Station & Preparation

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. 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!
4. You can use the Appearance Modifier to the left of the exosuit station to customize the appearance of your Traveler.
5. Pick up any Nav data you see sitting on tables (little blue squares, orange glowing objects, flat circular items with a red button). Remember to visit the back room on the side of the exosuit vendor; it has its own Galactic Trade interface, and there can be Nav Data. DO NOT BUY A MULTITOOL.
6. 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).
7. 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.
8. Before this next step, make sure you didn’t acquire any Microprocessors already by salvaging containers. If you did, only buy as many as you need.
9. Sell 1-5 Salvaged Data Modules to make sure you have enough to cover the below purchase.
10. Buy 2 Wiring Looms (~$120k) and 5 Microprocessors (~$140k) for a total of ~$260k.
11. Go to the Teleport Terminus and teleport back to your base.
12. 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!
13. If you don’t have 275 Chromatic Metal, you need to run out and mine 550 copper. Return and refine it.
14. Make sure you have at least 30 Oxygen and 20 Condensed Carbon.
15. PICK UP YOUR REFINER!

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

1. Access your base computer. Begin Decryption, which starts the Encoded Signal Quest. Get in ship and fly to Distress Signal (sometimes on another planet).
2. Land at Freighter by marker (use the pad by the freighter so you don’t have to use launch fuel when you take off again). Use Distress Beacon. Receive Hyperdrive Blueprint.
3. Install Hyperdrive (125 Chromatic Metal, 5 Microprocessor). Enter Ship. Tune scanner for Antimatter. Take off and enter space. Press C to Scan for Antimatter. Go to Antimatter Trace. Look around the marker because it won’t be right on top of the base; fly in a circle and you’ll quickly find the base. Land near it so you don’t have to run.
4. Land at Abandoned Station. If it’s a new planet, SCAN EVERYTHING then UPLOAD! If there are eggs around the base, DO NOT SHOOT THEM or you may experience a quick death from the swarm of monstrosities that spawn to protect the eggs.
5. Go inside station. Interact with the Terminal. Remove slime with middle mouse button (discard). Take Antimatter blueprint.
6. Go outside. If necessary, use Portable Refiner to craft Condensed Carbon (if you don’t have it). Craft Antimatter Housing. Craft Antimatter. Craft Warp Cell. Fuel Hyperdrive (pick up the cell and drop it in the Hypedrive). If you used the portable refiner, PICK IT UP!
7. Make sure you have at least 80 nanites and 10 salvaged data for the next part.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. Now that you’re in a new system, use C to scan each planet to see what biome and minerals they have. If you haven’t seen a Gamma Root planet as of yet, check to see if there’s one in this system. Land to register the planet in your database. You can also name the planet with Gamma after the name.
12. Fly to Fuel Source. Land at artifact site. Use any knowledge stones at the 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. Dig up any Buried Technology Modules in the area.
13. Make sure the Awakenings Quest is selected.
14. SCAN Everything in sight!
15. Fly back into space. Dock at Station. Get Exosuit slot. Pick up all Navigational Data you can find. Leave Station. Press P and rename the system to what you prefer, noting if you found any Gamma Root.
16. Refuel Warp Drive. Select Galaxy Map (X). Warp to next system.
17. 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).
18. Dock at the station and get your Exosuit slot. Pick up all Navigational Data you can find. Leave the station.
19. Fly to and Land at the waypoint. Locate the site with Target Sweep Scanner and go to it.
20. SCAN Everything in sight!
21. Loot any containers at crash site. Repair the signal beacon (5 Chromatic Metal, 5 Sodium).
22. Extract records. Receive Pulse Spitter Blueprint.
23. It’s now time for us to Salvage our first ship! Learn this process as it’s one of the best money makers at early game. We’re going to claim the ship as our own, repair it, fly it back to the station and scrap it.
24. Go to the crashed ship and select it with E. Select Compare and then select Claim Ship. Repair the Launch Thrusters (50 Pure Ferrite, 1 Di-Hydrogen Jelly) and Pulse Engine (1 Hermetic Seal, 1 Metal Plating).
25. Take off and fly to the station. Do not answer the incoming message yet. If pirates try to attack just fly at max speed in a straight line away from them until you get far enough away.
26. Once you land on the station, go to the Starship Outfitting terminal by the Exosuit station (against the wall). Select Claim Scrap Worth XXX. Note the value of this number varies based on the class and slots available of the ship you are salvaging. Claim the scrap. This puts items in your inventory you can sell to make the money. You do not want these in your inventory when you leave the station or pirates will attack you.
27. Go to the Galactic Terminal (there is one on this side of the station in the back room) and sell the items you received from scrapping the ship (such as Subatomic Regulators, Recycled Circuitry, Spool of Nano-Cables, etc.) . Do NOT sell Storage Augmentation modules as these are extremely valuable late game. Instead keep them and put them in storage at your main base. Sell any other junk items you may have gotten while opening containers. You should now have well over $1,000,000 credits.
28. Get back into your ship and Launch into space.
29. If not already selected, go to your Log and select Alone Amidst the Stars as your mission.
30. Answer incoming transmission. TELL THE TRUTH! 🙂
31. Anomaly will appear. Fly to it and dock!
32. This is our first multiplayer instance, so you will see other players and their ships. We’re focusing on doing our own thing for now, so decline any invites from other players.
33. 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).
34. 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.
35. Go to Helios (there is a marker on your map) and talk to him. Give Helios Planet data and get Nanites.
36. Go to Selene (Exosuit Research) and talk to him. Buy the Haz-mat Gauntlet Blueprint for 80 nanites. Next, buy the Trade Rocket for 90 nanites.
37. Select the Construction Research Station (next to Selene). Use A and D to cycle through the categories and select Technology Modules and buy the Nutrient Processor for 10 salvaged data. Next go to Transport Modules and, buy the Roamer Geobay (4) and Pilgrim Geobay (10). Next, go to Perses (Exocraft Research) and buy the Exocraft Booster Module (180 Nanites). If you have the nanites, you can also choose to buy the Exocraft Environmental protection modules, but they aren’t a requirement.
38. Return to Nada. Can ask for whatever you would like. Talking to Nada activates the next quest.
39. Leave Anomaly.
40. Answer Communication and talk to Artemis.
41. At this point, we are going to ignore the quests, so it doesn’t matter which one you have selected.
42. 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 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!
43. 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!
44. Fly to the planet with Gamma Root and look for it. They are tall yellow glowing plants. Always scout while flying your ship slowly at low altitude. The patches are very easy to see. We’re going to farm at least 800 Gamma Root, which will give us around 20,000 nanites.
45. If you are farming Gamma Root (and not creating it with Uranium and Oxygen), we must install our Haz-mat Gauntlet (50 Chromatic Metal, 20 Sodium Nitrate). To do this select the Technology slot of your exosuit and craft the item.
46. Once you land near a Gamma Weed patch (Gamma Root), if it’s a new planet, make sure to SCAN Everything in sight!
47. Once you have enough Gamma Root (800+), 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 (if it’s a new system).
48. Before we start, at your base, go to the Base Computer and retrieve the Construction Blueprints. If they don’t come up, make sure you select the proper secondary quest. 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 Gold or Storage Augmentation Modules you receive from scrapping ships). Later, as we begin to scrap ships, we will be storing all A and S-Class modules here. 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.
49. 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.
50. We are going to be putting 100 Gamma Root into each Processor. To create a stack of 100, pick it up and spin your middle mouse wheel down until it hits 10. Then slowly move the mouse wheel up until the value is 100. Drop the new stack in your inventory, then move it to the refiner. We are making Sievert Beans.
51. 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 Sievert Beans and put it in our Bag.
52. 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 Sievert Beans from our pack with the remaining stack of Steamed Vegetables to make Fibrous Stew.
53. When those are done, take the Flavorsome Sauce and Fibrous Stew and combine them to create Delicious Vegetable Stew.
54. You will do this process twice to create a total of 200 Delicious Vegetable Stew.
55. You can start the process again while the final brew is running by filling the 3 empty processors with gamma root.
56. It takes 32 minutes to manufacture 200 Delicious Vegetable Stew.
57. While you are waiting for the process, focus on farming Carbon (or Condensed Carbon), Ferrite Dust and Di-Hydrogen. We need these resource for fixing ships we will salvage.
58. When you’re done (creating two stacks of 100 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!
59. Delicious Vegetable Stew is turned in 1x at a time in the Anomaly for Nanites. Yes, clicking is a pain (click through dialogue to make it go faster) and it will take roughly 20 minutes to turn in 200, but you’ll have roughly 20,000 nanites when you’re done, making this one of (if not THE best) nanite generation systems in the game!
60. Now, talk to the Starship Research Vendor (Hyperion, who is right next to the Construction Station) and purchase the following: Teleport Receiver (150), Economy Scanner (150), Cadmium Drive (80), EMeril Drive (120), and Indium Drive (200). Next go to Eos, the Multi-Tool vendor, and purchase the following: Waveform Recycler (120), Survey Device(320), and Optical Drill (460). Next, go to the Synthesis Laboratory and purchase the following: Microprocessor (250), Quantum Computer (250), Hydraulic Wiring (250), Solar Mirror (250), and Magnetic Resonator (250).

PART II – The Middle

What we’ll accomplish: Visit numerous Wealthy Systems, Acquire Salvaged Technology, Build our Oxygen Refinery, Manufacture Chlorine, get a Freighter, acquire numerous (possibly all) Exosuit Slots, and start making hundreds of millions of credits.

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

Players can easily make more than $100M credits in less than 8 hours from starting a new game using this method, and ultimately making well over a billion within just a few days of play time.

Phase I – Securing Salvaged Data to buy Industrial Blueprints

1. Before we can build our Oxygen refinery to start making Chlorine, we first need to secure the Technology Modules to purchase the blueprints. To buy these blueprints will cost us a total of 62 salvaged data.
2. You should have already found a planet rich in buried technology modules; as such, can take the portal on the Anomaly to the system station and fly to the planet directly.
3. Go to the Portal room in the Anomaly and teleport to the station of the system you want to farm your salvaged data in. If you’re not sure about how dense the salvage is on your target planet, purchase 100 Silver either from the Exchange, or wait for a ship captain to land that sells it.
4. Fly to the planet. 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. Land on the planet. If the salvage is far apart, you can build a Pilgrim Geobay (5 Metal Plate, 100 Silver, and 5 Di-hydrogen Jelly) and use it to quickly move between points, cutting down on the travel time dramatically.
5. Once you have at least 62 Salvaged Data, take off, summon the Anomaly and dock with it.
6. Go to the Construction Research Station, select Industrial Modules, and purchase: Mineral Extractor (10), Gas Extractor (10), Supply Depot (10), Supply Pipe (1), Electromagnetic Generator (10), and Wall Switch (1). Switch to Technology Modules and purchase a Medium Refiner (10) and Landing Pad (10).

Phase II – Locating and Building your Oxygen Refinery

We are going to find a B or higher rated Oxygen Hot Spot and build Gas Extractors with Storage units and a supportive Electromagnetic Generator, and connect it all together. This will be our starting point for generating enough Oxygen to manufacture Chlorine in bulk. It may take some time to locate the proper hotspot, and then we will have to continually harvest the materials necessary to build and expand our base to the initial functioning state. My understanding is all planets have harvestable Oxygen, but it’s critical to avoid planets with additional gases (Radon, Sulpherine, Nitrogen, etc.) as this will decrease the chance of finding a qualified Oxygen hotspot in a reasonable amount of time. I also recommend choosing a world that has an abundant amount of Buried Technology Modules so you can farm them while manufacturing Chlorine. Let’s get started!

1. You should have already found a planet with abundant Buried Technology Modules. I recommend we use that planet to set up our Oxygen harvesting. You can, however, search for another planet if you would like. The only additional requirement I highly recommend is the planet has Copper to mine, because we require a lot of Chromatic Metal to build the base out. I also recommend staying away from planets with High Sentinel Activity. It’s just annoying to have them around.
2. To properly prepare, there’s a number of things we want to get. We’ll be building a Survey Device in our Multitool to locate the hotspots, a Pilgrim Geobay on the planet we’re going to search, and when we do find a hotspot, we’ll be building a Base Computer, Solar Array, Battery, Portal and Landing Pad. Once the base is set up, we’ll then need to locate a power hotspot, build an Electromagnetic Generator, and then run wire all the way back to our base, where we’ll finally start building the Gas Extractors and Supply Depots. And we have to wire and pipe it all together.
3. The good news is we can farm materials to build out our mining system as it slowly gets up and running. Pretty much everything requires Ferrite and Copper (Chromatic Metal), which we can farm and mine on-site. Once we’re done, it will take roughly 8 hours of real time to generate between 4000-8000 oxygen, depending on the class of hotspot we found. Yes, it’s slow compared to before, but once it picks up and we’re able to crash the Chlorine market, the credits will start rolling in.
4. There are some items we need to start that are harder to get than usual. We did pick up the blueprints to make everything, but sometimes it’s easier to just buy them from the market. Our laundry list is: 100 Silver, 50 Cobalt (or 25 Ionized Cobalt), 2 Ion Batteries, 30 Gold, 3 Magnetic Resonators, 1 Quantum Computer, 150 Magnetized Ferrite, 50 Paraffinium, 50 Tritium, 50 Dioxite, and 5 Wiring Looms. I recommend purchasing these from the Exchange, Ship Captains on a station, or go back to your starting base and check the exchange and vendor at the outpost. Note there’s a chance you already have the gold and silver in your ship’s cargo hold from shooting asteroids.
5. You can craft all of these items if you wish, as follows: Ion Battery (10 Cobalt, 5 Ferrite Dust), Microprocessor (40 Chromatic Metal, 1 Carbon Nanotubes), Magnetic Resonator (40 Magetised Ferrite, 40 Ionised Cobalt), and Quantum Computer (1 Microprocessor, 1 Antimatter, 25 Chromatic Metal).
6. Take the Anomaly portal to the station you want to go to in order to pick up the above laundry list.
7. Once you have everything, Build your Survey Device (3 Magnetic Resonators, 1 Quantum Computer, 2 Wiring Looms).
8. Press P and examine your discovered systems and determine which planet you want to select as your first gas mining base. Teleport to that system’s station (if you’re not already in it).
9. If you don’t have a previously visited world with good Buried Technology and Copper without any aggressive sentinels, you can go back to the systems you’ve already been in and scan other planets. Worse case scenario, you can craft additional Hyperdrive fuel and jump to nearby systems to check those.
10. Remember that Navigation Data does regenerate, so as you move around, always pick up any data you find laying around. We’ll need it later.
11. Exit the Space Station. 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 planet you’ve chosen, find a good landing spot and let’s do this!
12. When you land, first try your new scanner. Press F and use 1 to cycle through until you select Gas Survey Mode. See if anything comes up. If something does come up close, you can just run to it and analyze it, but more than likely nothing will come up. If you’re ultra lucky you can find a A or S class where you land, but that’s ultra rare. If you do find this near your landing spot, skip down to where we start to build our base.
13. Build your Pilgrim Geobay (5 Metal Plate, 100 Silver, 5 Di-Hydrogen Jelly).
14. Enhance your Exocraft by installing: Drift Suspension (50 Magnetised Ferrite, 50 Paraffinium, 1 Wiring Loom), Grip Boost Suspension (50 Magnetised Ferrite, 50 Tritium, 1 Wiring Loom), and Hi-slide suspension (50 Magnetised Ferrite, 50 Dioxite, and 1 Wiring Loom).
15. Time to find our hotspot! Note this can take a lot of time; sometimes an hour or more, but it’s also possible to find what you need in less than 10 minutes. I highly recommend selecting an A or even S class hotpot, but those are quite rare. If B is the best you can find, go with that. Ignore C class.
16. Hotspots are generally 1000 units or less between each other, so if you come across a hotspot that is a bad class or different gas, just drive in any direction roughly 1000 units and you should be able to home in on a new hotspot. If you see “hotspot discovered” when you scan, it means you’re still too close to the last scan.
17. Not only are we looking for a hotspot, we’re also farming all of the Buried Technology Modules we can, also using them as waypoints to help determine the distance we’ve traveled since our last hotspot scan. As you fly across the landscape, when you get out to scan for Gas, also scan and mark a technology module in the direction you want to go. Arrive, dig it up, scan for gas, and the next module. Repeat this cycle and you’ll find a ton of them during your quest to secure a high class Oxygen hotspot.
18. In the event your Pilgrim falls into a cave, just jetpack up and out, and re-summon it using X, similar to your ship.
19. When you find your A or S class Oxygen Hotspot, build your base computer and claim the spot. Name it something that defines it as your Oxygen farming base.
20. Now it’s time to find a power source! We must find one that’s 1000 or less in distance from the Oxygen source. The way we do this is to jump in our Pilgrim and start doing a circle around our base roughly 600-750 units out. A C class electrical hotspot is just fine for our needs, so take whatever you find. You can use your visor in Analysis mode to see the exact location of the hotspot. DO NOT BUILD A BASE HERE. It’s unnecessary as we’re going to run wire.
21. Once you find the hotspot, park your pilgrim there and run back to your base. We will be using it as a waypoint as we run wiring from our base to the power center.
22. Now for the fun part! Depending on the planet, you can decide if you want to run the wiring along the terrain, or if you want to dig tunnels to the power source. If there’s any mountains or hills, I prefer to dig tunnels if it makes getting to the electrical hotspot easier. This also allows us to hang the wire on top of the tunnel as we bore it out.
23. Lay down a number of floor panels at your base. Make sure they extend a fair distance from the mining hotspot center. On the panel closest to your power spot, place a Wall Switch (25 Ferrite Dust, 25 Ionized Cobalt) on the floor. This is our wire connector point. We’re going to run a wire from this button all the way to the power source.
24. By default, a base cannot extend more than 300 units, however if you build an object right on the edge of that distance, you can extend it another 100 units. The build radius for a base can be extended up to 1000 units in distance using this technique. So what we’re going to do is run our wire, dropping segments every few hundred units, and when we get to the edge of our base building radius, we’re going to build a simple item like a floor panel. That will extend the radius and allow us to reach our power site. As mentioned above, you may also tunnel through a hill or mountain while you do this in order to keep the connection straight vs. running over rough terrain.
25. Use the Pilgrim as your waypoint for tunneling, building the tunnel before dragging the wire (don’t do both at the same time – tunnel first, then wire).
26. When you arrive at the power spot, lay down a 2×2 or 3×3 flooring system with the middle of the hotspot in the center tile. Be sure to have the center point at the highest value possible. Build your first generator in the middle and connect the wire to it. If it’s a C spot, it’ll only be generating 145kph, but that’s fine to get us started. We can add more as we expand our extractors.
27. Go back to your base with your Pilgrim. Lay down flooring in a 2×2 or 3×3 size around the highest concentration of the hotspot. Place your first Gas Extractor (5 Metal Plating, 100 Chromatic Metal) in the middle, and connect it with wiring to the switch. An A-class Oxygen Extractor at highest concentration yields roughly 500/hr. Congratulations! You’re now harvesting Oxygen!
28. In general we want a 1:1 ratio of storage for each extractor, so choose a location about 50 units away and put down another 2×2 or 3×3 floored area. Build your first Supply Depot (10 Metal Plating), and then run a pipe from that depot to the extractor. As you can see, each storage container holds a total of 1,250.
29. How much power draw does our base pull? We can’t tell without going all the way back to the Electromagnetic Generator and checking it, and without a teleporter, that’s a long journey. Luckily, there’s a workaround!
30. Build an Electromagnetic Generator anywhere in your base and connect it to the wiring. While it won’t generate any electricity, it will tell you the power supply and pull of the system! Hold down E on the generator to get this information.
31. Next, build a Base Teleport Module (4 Metal Plating, 2 Carbon Nanotubes and 40 Sodium), and connect it to the switch.
32. Build a Storage Unit (35 Magnetised Ferrite, 20 Sodium) and connect it to the grid. Throw any items in there you don’t need on your traveler to craft the additional industrial systems.
33. And finally, build a Landing Pad (10 Metal Plating, 2 Ion Battery, 2 Microprocessor) on the edge of your base (making sure it won’t get in the way of expanding your refinery).
34. Congratulations, your core refinery is now up and running! Our next task is to expand it to a total of 9 Extractors and 9 Supply Depots. This will also require additional Electromagnetic Generators to feed the depot. You can get an idea of how many are required by examining the Grid Power Usage and availability depending on class of the Electrical hotspot.
35. Depending on the power hotspot class (usually a C) we’ll need to build at least 3 more Eletromagnetic Generators (total of 6 Metal Plating, 180 Magnetized Ferrite, and 225 Chromatic Metal). I recommend building these first so we only have to run back to our power source once.
36. We’ll need to build 8 more Gas Extractors (40 Metal Plating, 800 Chromatic Metal) and 8 more Supply Depots (80 Metal Plating). I recommend build them in batches of 2-3 making the Supply Depots first, so we can manage the incoming farm amount while we expand.
37. This is the point where we want to start farming ferrite because we’ll need to build a total of 120 metal plates (which are 50 ferrite dust each, so 6000 in total). There should also be copper nodes around your base so you can refine to the amount of Chromatic Metal you need.
38. An optional yet very useful recommendation is to build the Optical Drill for your Multitool. You’ll need 3 Quantum Computer, 3 Solar Mirror, and 5 Wiring Loom. We don’t want to augment our starting multi-tool much more than this because we’ll be looking for an A-class or S-class once we get our mining operation up and running. Make sure it’s connected to your mining beam and advanced mining laser modules!
39. The nice part about building this base out is we’re harvesting Oxygen while we’re farming and expanding the base.
40. Once we have all 9 Gas Extractors and Supply Depots completed, powered, and harvesting, it’s time for the next step.
41. On my last playthrough when all 9 Extractors and Depots were complete, I was using 475kP and harvesting 1,425/hr (Class B) with a storage total of 11,250.
42. Now the system is up and running, we have plenty to do while we wait for it to fill up!

Phase III – Setting up Chlorine Manufacturing

Previously, we could just focus on Chlorine Manufacturing without having much of a delay between the growth of our stacks and crashing the market. We could make over a BILLION in just a few hours. That’s no longer the case; but I think that’s a good thing. We can now focus on actually playing the game while we’re making money rather than just pushing the money envelope. This section sets up the Chlorine Manufacturing process, which now takes place in the background until you’re ready to push it full force.

1. Make sure you pick up your Portable Refiner. Take all of the Oxygen out of your refinery storage.
2. Put all of your resources into the Storage Unit except for all of your Oxygen, 200 Magnetised Ferrite and 10 Di-Hydrogen jelly. Also, keep a stack of Sodium on your character. The reason? To keep your shields (exosuit or spaceship) charged.
3. Portal to the station and buy all the Chlorine you can find. Whatever volume is available at the stations you’ve visited already. It should be available. If, for some reason there is no Chlorine available, get your hands on Salt to make Chlorine. Also buy up to 3 Hyperdrive Modules that are B class or better.
4. Install whatever Hyperdrive Modules you have on your ship (max 3). Make sure they are connected to your Hyperdrive.
5. Port back to your Refinery. Build two Medium Refiners (200 Magnetized Ferrite, 10 Di-Hydrogen Jelly) next to your Storage Container (not the extractor storage, but the item storage for your traveler).
6. If you don’t have Chlorine, you will need to farm Salt. 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 a few hundred Salt and Oxygen. Some planets have their salt plants in the water. You can also use your Medium Refiner and combine Di-Hydrogen with Oxygen at a 1:1 ratio to create Salt. If you need to make Chlorine with Salt, just throw all of your Oxygen in with the Salt.
7. Once you have Chlorine, put the stack of Chlorine into the machine with as much Oxygen as you have and START refining! You can equally break it between the two refiners to speed things up.
8. We have the second refiner for when we return to the game after our extractors have completely filled their storage (when you are away from the game for 7+ hours).
9. The max capacity of the Medium Refiner is 4098 (or 250 for Survival mode). If it runs out of Oxygen, put more in from your Oxygen Storage system, and if it gets to max capacity just take out the full Chlorine stack and put it as a source ingredient. The goal is to get all of the Oxygen you purchased into the unit.
10. If you are playing Survival, your slot stack size is restricted to 250 and you’ll have to run the processing multiple times to fill your inventory slots. Put the extra Oxygen in your storage unit as you stack your inventory full of Chlorine.
11. Once you get more than 9999 Chlorine (or 250 if you’re playing Survival/Permadeath), start putting the “overflow extra” into the Storage unit. Our goal is to continually refine Chlorine with that Oxygen we are harvesting.
12. We are going to keep revisiting our base as we progress below with the next steps and throwing Oxygen into the Medium Refiner with the Chlorine we manufacture. Once we have a total of 40,000 Chlorine, we can crash the market, which is covered below.
13. It takes roughly 13,300 Oxygen to produce 40,000 Chlorine. This means an A-class Oxygen Extractor setup of 9 units can produce the amount needed in roughly 9.5 hours.

Phase IV- Hyperdrive Fuel (15-35m)

We have to prepare for our next sojourn of system jumping and distress call scrapping, we need to make sure we have enough fuel to complete the journey.

1. We are now going to Craft 10 Warp Cells, our Economy Scanner and Cadmium Drive. This will take: 300 Oxygen, 500 Ferrite Dust, 500 Chromatic Metal and 200 Condensed Carbon, 5 Microprocessors, and 3 Wiring Looms. We’ll get the processors and looms when we go to the station.
2. Now it’s time to gather the above materials. You should already have most (and in some cases) all of it in your storage. You will buy the Microprocessors and Wiring Looms from the station.
3. 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).
4. Time to craft! Make 10 Anti-matter Housing Units, 10 Anti-matter, then 10 Warp Cell units. When done, move them into your ship’s inventory.
5. Also, refill your Launch Thruster. Discard any additional fuel (we won’t have room in our inventory).
6. When you’re done, toss a stack of Warp Cells into your Hyperdrive.
7. Grab all Navigation Data you have in storage and keep it on your Traveler.
8. Take the portal to the Space Station!

This is enough fuel to begin the process of making hundreds of millions of credits.

PART III – Beginning the Core Process

It’s now time to have some real fun. We’re going to hunt distress signals and scrap ships, expand our exosuit inventory, and begin our Chlorine Market Crash as soon as we have 40,000 or more available. This will make us hundreds of millions (and possibly Billions, depending on your focus) over just a few days. I was able to make my first $100M roughly 8 hours after starting a new game on Normal difficulty, and by that time I already had an S-class Multi-tool and S-class ship.

This process consists of running two loops concurrently. The first being exploration, chlorine refining (and market crashing), and the second being distress signals. I’ve defined the loops below in two separate parts.

Once you secure at least $30M you will also be in a position to buy most any Exotic or Tier 3 fighter you come across. Here’s a quick reference to the ships and their tiers.

If you are playing Survival this loop works, BUT you will make far less money because the inventory space does not allow us to crash the Chlorine Market. You can still make hundreds of millions, which is very good for these modes. See the notes below on the difference in playing this loop in the more difficult modes.

Note obtaining Traveler glyphs during our run is optional. I find it more fun to just play the game without visiting specific planets, but in the future, if you want to get specific ships or multitools posted in the community by other players, unlocking all 16 glyphs is required.

Part I – Main Loop

This is our main loop that takes us through the systems, expands our exosuit, grabs missions, gathers navigation data, sells Chlorine (if we’re ready), and kicks off the distress loop once we have at least 10 navigation data. We do the distress loop because it takes time for our Chlorine farm to manufacture the Oxygen necessary craft the Chlorine we need to really crash the market and make bank. Distressed Freighter cargo pods can also provide the multi-tool augmentation upgrade, which is extremely valuable.

1. Craft 10 Hermetic Seals, 10 Metal Plating, 10 Di-hydrogen Jelly, and make sure you have at least 500 Pure Ferrite on your Traveler. Also make sure you have 5 Starship Launch Fuel (200 Di-Hydrogen and 5 Metal Plating). If you have the money, just purchase the raw materials from the Station.
2. Go to the Galactic Terminal and buy 5 Microprocessors and 4 wiring looms.
3. Install Economy Scanner and Cadmium Drive (250 Chromatic Metal) in your ship. Make sure the Cadmium Drive is touching one of the Hyperdrive modules.
4. === BEGIN LOOP ===
5. 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.
6. Use the ASDW keys to rotate, and try to go in a direction where there’s a LOT of stars.
7. When you warp to a new system, the station will always be behind you.
8. Scan planets in visual range that look like they could be paradise, etc. Land on station. Get Exosuit Upgrade. Initially you will focus on Exosuit Cargo Slots, but you’ll also want to unlock all of your Technology Slots as you begin to make money and acquire S-class exosuit modules. Choose as you progress. 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 S (too expensive and not what we need). The goal is to have 3 A modules.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. If you have more than 40,000 Chlorine stored, check to see if the Station Exchange sells Chlorine. Remember, there are two exchanges on the station; both can have the chance of selling Chlorine, but if you do crash the market, even if both sell it, both markets will be crashed so you can’t do it twice. If so, go to your base, and get it all. This may require you to transfer some materials into storage to fill your inventory with as much as possible. Once you are fully loaded with all of the Chlorine you own, go back to the station, 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.
12. If you are not going to do distress beacons and are flying straight to the next system, keep the Chlorine on you. If you plan on doing Distress Signals or any other activities, go to your base and store the Chlorine for the next time you can sell it. Be sure to grab any materials you had to store that are needed for this or the Distress loop.
13. My first sale was around 50,000 Chlorine, which netted me approximately $4M. I had over $100M in just a few hours (which included doing Distress Signals).
14. Visit the mission vendor and accept any missions that are KILL or SCAN that reward Nanites, Exosuit Upgrade Charts, or Credits. Ignore all other missions. The only Kill to ignore is Kill Monstrosities, since those are location specific. All other kill missions (sentinels, quads, etc.) are fine.
15. Register the system in Discoveries (P) and name it properly (e.g. Xyveros II SkrunchyCakes).
16. Depending on how much time has passed, take the portal to your starting base. Make sure your refiner is as full of Oxygen and Chlorine as possible. Refill appropriately. If you don’t have to put the full stack back into the refiner to keep it going, put the stack into your storage.
17. After awhile you’ll find a cadence to doing this where you just throw the manufactured chlorine back in the refiner to keep the stacks going while you feed the refiner all of your Oxygen.
18. Take the portal back to the last station (marked Previous System).
19. If you have at least 10 Navigational Data, go to the Cartographer (by the Portal) and buy at least 10 Emergency Cartographic Data maps and do the below DISTRESS LOOP. Once done, continue this loop. Once your character has $50M to $100M, the financial reward from scrapping ships becomes minimal, however the real rewards are Ship Storage Augmentation modules from scrapping, and Multi-tool Augmentation modules from Freighter Crash Site Cargo Pods. So when you want to pursue these augmentations, processing Distress Calls appears to be the best method.
20. Get in your ship and exit the space station.
21. Bring up Galaxy map, find your next wealthy system and warp to it! Go back to the beginning of the loop!
22. One note before we begin. This loop will probably overlap time you don’t play (sleep, work, etc.). It’s designed to do that. Even when you’re not playing, your refinery is producing, so if it takes 8 hours to fill your Oxygen storage system, you’ll want to log in, grab the oxygen and use it first thing before you resume play. If you want you can build more Supply Depots, if you want to get more but will be offline for a longer period of time.
23. === END LOOP ===
24. === PLEASE READ THE IMPORTANT NOTES BELOW! ===
25. This loop can be tedious, and you may want to take a break! Very soon you can have hundreds of millions of credits to spend and have fun with. Many people need a break from this 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! Did you get a Freighter? What about running a Settlement? Did you get a S-Class Multitool or Ship and start building it out with S-Class modules? Have you visited a Black Market? Have you found a Paradise “Home Base”? What about upgrading your warp drive to Indium? Look at the sheer volume of construction objects you can buy in the Anomaly. Farming Salvaged Data is a necessity. Did you build out and augment your Pilgrim? Have you built a Minotaur for mining? Have you gotten all of the Glyphs and unlocked the stargate? Have you run Nexus missions and gotten Quicksilver to purchase visual enhancements for your traveler? Have you explored a Derelict Freighter? You will run out of nanites, but you can re-run the Gamma Root process to get your hands on another 20K. There is so much to do in this game; it truly is a sandbox.
26. Your Base Computer will generate a Blueprint based on various progression milestones, such as learning alien language words or completing missions. The base computer blueprint system was recently reworked, so I’m not sure of the specifics as of yet and will update the guide as the details become clear. 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.
27. 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.
28. Fetch the glyphs of Travelers as you encounter them. This is a great break from running so many systems. When you encounter a traveler, try to answer their first question properly, but always ask them where they came from (100 nanites) after the initial communication. This will mark a location on a planet in the system. Fly to it, land, and extract the glyph. Make sure you have enough hyperdrive fuel to take off once you land! 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. Once you unlock all 16, you will be able to use the portal!
29. Once you have the money, Buy every S-class ship you come across (max 9) to scrap (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.
30. Get your Emeril drive as soon as you can, but I recommend waiting until you find an A or S-class ship you want to keep. Look for Red star systems (includes DATA UNAVAILABLE). When you find one, warp in, scan, land and mine what you need to build an Emeril Drive (250 Cadmium). 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.
31. Once you’ve gotten your Emeril 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 at least 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 for outfitting other ships.
32. You’ll come across a mission to engage the ships attacking a Freighter. This is why we have Sodium. You’ll need to recharge your shields during combat. When ready, 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).
33. 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 Skrunchy Tropical”. 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.
34. 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.
35. Don’t forget to go back to your base and load up your Medium Refiner with Oxygen to continue making Chlorine! It can create an entire stack in just over 4 minutes, so if you are logging on after being out of the game overnight or a long period, you might want to spend time hanging around the refiner while it does its thing so you can keep loading it every 4 minutes. You could create additional Medium Refiners, but I found two refiners do the job just fine. Plus you can go out and mine ferrite and other resources while you wait for them to process.

Part II – Distress Loop

This loop processes 10 ships at a time, but can do as many as you would like as long as you have the charts and repair materials. This means we will always have the resources available to repair and fly 10 distress signal ships back to the station to scrap. Once we’ve processed the 10, we need to re-acquire the repair materials to start the process again. Looting Crashed Freighter Cargo Pods doesn’t take any resources.

After you’ve started making a ton of money, running Distress Calls may seem to be a waste of time because the credits you receive are so small compared to selling your Chlorine. The reality is the Storage/Multi-tool Augments are the most valuable reward as these are required to expand the cargo and technology slots of your ships and multi-tool. If you are loaded with credits, you can simply purchase ships from captains that land on the station and salvage them immediately after purchase. Until then, the distress calls are the way to go.

Gek systems seem to be the most profitable for scrapping because of the number of haulers you can encounter, which are ultimately the most expensive ships.

We need to have 10 Hermetic Seals, 10 Metal Plating, 500 Pure Ferrite, and 10 Di-hydrogen Jelly on us for each loop. It’s also not a bad idea to carry additional materials with us because when we land at a ship with a stranded pilot, we can help and repair their ship through other means, such as using Sodium Nitrate or Pure Ferrite (directly). As such, I recommend adding 100 Pure Ferrite to the stock, 50 Sodium Nitrate, and 50 Condensed Carbon. You may also see the request for materials as you encounter more pilots that you want to add as well.

While some charts may return signals other than distress, once they are activated, they cannot be reactivated, so you will never have less than 7 ships to go after. Statistically it is possible for those 7 ships to not be salvageable, but I’ve never encountered anything like that. With my loop of 10 I usually make between 4-6 million. Additionally, we want crashed freighter sights so we can loot the cargo pods.

One of the reasons we choose Wealthy Systems is to increase the chance of finding S-class ships and Exotics.

As for results, the average ship scrap yields around 1.5 million credits, however I have scraped C class ships that awarded almost $7M. The most I’ve made on a loop of 10 is $25 million and 3 storage augmentations.

Let’s get started!

1. Craft 10 Hermetic Seals, 10 Metal Plating, 10 Di-hydrogen Jelly, and make sure you have at least 500 Pure Ferrite on your Traveler.
2. Purchase 10 Emergency Cartographic Data Planetary Charts from the station Cartographer, next to the Portal.
3. === BEGIN LOOP ===
4. Use the chart (while in the station) until you get a Distress signal (either ship or Freighter). If you get another signal type, just use another chart. We’re only going after Distress. If the chart fails, just keep using it until it works.
5. Fly to the location and land.
6. If it’s a Freighter, land, and start digging up the Cargo Pods with your Terrain Manipulator (the pods can be seen with your scanner). You will have to shoot through some broken doors to get to many of them. There will always be numerous pods, so make sure you get all of them. Once done, use the map again to find either a ship or another freighter and repeat. Do not sell multi-tool augmentation modules, and only use them in S-class multi-tools!
7. If it’s a ship, open all containers. If an alien is there, talk to him and see if you can help by repairing ship. He will reward you. If that happens, just use a map again and fly to the next ship.
8. If there is no alien, interact with the Distress Beacon, which will often result in a reward of a blueprint or something else useful. Compare and Claim the ship. Repair the Launch Thrusters and Impulse Drive (sometimes just one is broken).
9. Take off, fly back to station, scrap ship, sell the items you acquired. Remember, do NOT sell Storage Augmentation Modules and only use them on S-class ships you plan on keeping! I want to make a quick note that you can simply jump back into your old ship after claiming the distressed ship and stack them up in the ship queue (max of 9) before heading to the station to salvage them at that time, but I prefer flying them back directly because it’s fun to try out new ships and feels more immersive.
10. If your inventory is full, it’s probably due to modules you received from scrapping, so you may need to do the below step first.
11. Sell any B or C class ship mods, but keep any A or S class. If you received a Storage Augmentation, port back to your base and put it in your storage. The reason we do this is if you get a sizeable stack of Storage Augmentations, pirates will target you when flying around.
12. If you find any S-class modules for your exosuit (e.g. Thermal Protection) go ahead and install them!
13. Go back to the station and start the loop again until you are out of maps. If so, end this loop and go back to the main loop.
14. === END LOOP ===
15. As mentioned, once you get a ton of money, the credit value of this process isn’t really worth it, but the Storage Augmentations are. It’s also fun to find random things and get occasional mini-missions from the captains.

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

PART IV – 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.

Now we’re going to clean things up, select our new ship, get blueprints, core materials, and acquire any remaining Traveler Glyphs (if we didn’t get all of them already) 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.

1. If you haven’t done it already, we’re going to 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).
2. 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).
3. 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.
4. If the game selects the S-Class ship you want to keep but there are others to salvage, just take the station portal to your starting base and summon the ship you want, take the portal back to the station and continue the process.
5. 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 use the portal. You can pay to max out the slots at any time!

Phase II – Anomaly Blueprints

Note: I still have to update this section for the 4.0 release. We’ve already purchased a number of these blueprints above; for now, just get the ones you don’t already have.

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):

1. Hyperion (Starship Vendor): Efficient Thrusters, Nonlinear Optics, Ablative Armor, Launch System Recharger, Positron Ejector, Fragment Supercharger.
2. Selene (Exosuit): Shield Lattice, Neural Stimulator, Rocket Boots, Coolant Network, Thermic Layer, Toxic Suppressor, Radiation Deflector, Oxygen Rerouter.
3. Eos (Multitool): Amplified Cartridges, Optical Drill, Waveform Recycler, Survey Device.
4. 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 – Exosuit Upgrade Charts

You have probably acquired many Exosuit Upgrade Charts by now, and are sure to get a ton when you complete and turn in your missions. Each of these maps will lead you to a drop pod you can repair for 1 Antimatter Housing, 10 Sodium Nitrate, and 1 Carbon Nanotube. If you want to get additional expansions without system hopping, or are running out of space, run these maps. You’ll also find small container drops to loot as well.

Phase IV – 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! If you have not collected all 16 Traveler glyphs, keep exploring new systems (with wealthy economies) until you find all 16 glyphs. If you already have all of the glyphs, begin porting back to previous systems, starting from the last system on your list. When you port to each station, go to every Galactic Trade Terminal and make sure you have:

1. Ferrite Dust (1000)
2. Uranium (200)
3. Oxygen (250)
4. Nitrogen (250) – Farm this on Toxic Planets as secondary resource
5. Pure Ferrite (2000)
6. Magnetized Ferrite (1000)
7. Chromatic Metal (3000-5000)
8. Wiring Loom (20)
9. Gold (500)
10. Ion Battery (4)
11. Paraffinium (100)
12. Dioxite (50)
13. Copper (80)
14. Solar Mirror (1)

Once you have all glyphs and the above materials, it’s time to find our portal! Note every planet in every system has a portal, so if you want to secure a portal on a Paradise or other preferred planet you already discovered, go to the station associated with that system for the next step and use the chart on the planet you want to discover the portal on.

To find a portal, go to the Cartographer of any station. 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. You can locate a trading post by using your economy scanner! Press X, select Utilities and Scan for Trade Post! If you don’t care about what planet the portal is on, you can just use it on the station, but if you want to find the portal on a specific planet, you must be on that planet or flying in the atmosphere and use it there. Once you have the necessary relic, use one of the charts (hold down E).

You want to find a Monolith, but it’s possible you’ll get Ancient Ruins or Plaque. Keep using the charts until you locate a Monolith. When you locate a Monolith, exiting your ship will create a save point. With the new 4.0 release, the game regularly saves, so you want to immediately run to the center part of the alien structure and answer the question. If you get it wrong, you can reload and do it again until you get it right. Once the first question is answered correctly, 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 Portal waypoint. Note the portal needs to be charged with a number of materials, but you should have all of them based on the above list; the good news is once you charge the portal, you don’t have to do it again!. Also note you can also use the Exocraft Scanner to locate Alien Structures.

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

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.

Make sure you have acquired all glyphs before the next phase as unlocking the portal is critical to Multitool and Ship hunting.

Phase V – 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 VI – Completing Missions & Module Upgrades

We need to get our missions turned in so we can enjoy the rewards we will have when we’re done (including a ton of exosuit upgrade charts). 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. You will need a Solar Mirror to craft the Amplified Cartridges module; you can buy this from traders and station trading nodes. 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

Make sure you have 25 Navigational data on your character for the next step.

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.

If you have a Geology Cannon, DESTROY IT. You don’t want to accidentally 1-shot yourself.

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.

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 V – 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Each Base is limited to 3,000 components.
4. You can only have a total of 20,000 components among all of your bases.
5. 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:

1. 385 Copper
2. 380 Phosphorus
3. 300 Tritium
4. 250 Chromatic Metal
5. 250 Emeril
6. 230 Dioxite
7. 210 Oxygen
8. 180 Silver
9. 150 Uranium
10. 100 Magnetised Ferrite
11. 100 Platinum
12. 50 Uranium
13. 50 Ionised Cobalt
14. 50 Deuterium
15. 20 Wiring Loom
16. 9 Magnetic Resonator
17. 5 Carbon Nanotubes
18. 4 Quantum Computer
19. 4 Hermetic Seal
20. 3 Solar Mirror
21. 3 Ion Battery
22. 3 Tritium Hypercluster
23. 1 Warp Cell
24. 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

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

Multitool Technology

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

Starship Technology

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

Exocraft Technology

1. Megawatt Heater (80 Phosphorus, 50 Uranium, 1 Wiring Loom)
2. Air Filtration Unit (160 Copper, 5 Carbon Nanotubes, 1 Wiring Loom)
3. Neutron Shielding (50 Ionised Cobalt, 95 Deuterium, 1 Wiring Loom)
4. 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.

Farming S-Class and X-Class Upgrade Modules

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

If you have $50M or more, all traveler glyphs and the portal located and unlocked, but haven’t found your favorite ship yet, I recommend checking out the No Man’s Sky Coordinate Exchange. Plug in what you’re looking for and see if you can find it! If you do, go and farm the ship!

The best way to relay optimal loadouts is through the No Man’s Sky Resources website. This site features regularly updated “Best Loadout” images for your Exosuit, Ship Multi-Tool, Freighter and Exocraft. Scroll down to see the different categories.

I found the best approach is to first load out your focused systems with S-Class, since they are easily acquired as you explore the galaxy and run the Chlorine selling route.

Once you are ready to acquire X-Class modules, simply hop to Black Market systems, dock, and talk to Salvage Dealer Rabinqew, who sells “Aftermarket Upgrades”. These are the mixed bag of Suspicious X-class modules for all platforms, and they cost on average 400 nanites each. The thing about X-class modules is most of them are total junk; it takes some time to find one better than S-class, but when you do, it can be a awesome.

When you are ready to start farming S-class modules for your exosuit, multi-tool, ship, freighter, etc., I recommend having at least 20,000 nanites as purchasing them will quickly deplete your nanite fund.

When you’re ready to start farming X-class modules, I also recommend having at least 20,000 nanites, and even that might not be enough as most of the modules you get will be tossed.

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.

1. 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)
2. Next we have the No Man’s Sky Coordinate Exchange subreddit, where people post ships they’ve found.
3. 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:

1. Fighter (38+12) Vy’keen
2. Hauler (48+8) Gek
3. Explorer (38+8) Korvax
4. Shuttle (28+8) Any
5. 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:

1. A-Class Explorer for $1,500,000 gives $1,090,000 (Cost $500k) produces 900 nanites.
2. B-Class Explorer for $845,000 gives $590,000 (Cost $255k) produces 270 nanites.
3. A-Class Fighter for $15,500,000 gives $10,800,000 (Cost of $5M) produces 800 nanites.
4. B-Class Fighter for $1,120,000 gives $785,000 (Cost $350k) produces 400 nanites.
5. A-Class Hauler for $37,500,000 gives $26,250,000 (Cost of $11M) produces 900 nanites.
6. 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.

1. Dock with Station.
2. Go to Station Portal.
3. Press P and bring up Discoveries.
4. Browse Named Systems for the Race that has the Ship you want (e.g. Vy’keen for Fighter).
5. 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.
6. 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! Land your ship OUTSIDE of the trading post so you do not take up a pad.
7. Make sure you check the terminal for any goodies like Chromatic Metal, etc. (to replenish your stock).
8. Fly to the very top of the center building and build a Save Beacon.
9. Use it.
10. Quit to Options, and reload your Manual Save.
11. 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.
12. 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).
13. 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.
14. 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.

Running a Settlement

The Frontiers expansion (Sep, 2021) introduced the ability to acquire, run, and build Settlements. This is a whole other mini-game within the game, a sort of base building simulator complete with events and rewards. What I did was waited until I found a nice Paradise planet in a Wealthy system. I went to the Cartographer and purchased a Settlement Chart, flew to and landed on the Paradise planet and used the chart. This gave me a Settlement on the Paradise planet that I’m still building out. Unfortunately, most of the Settlement Guides are a year old, and there have been minor changes since then, but a quick search on YouTube should provide some solid guides to help you get started. Settlements do provide some unique rewards only available through building out your town, including Minotaur upgrades and a Sentinel pet. Make sure you complete the “A Trace of Metal” questline!

You can build a base within a Settlement, which allows you to customize the environment greatly (put down roads, etc.). Due to some glitches with the game, it’s recommended players only do this after building all available structures available through the Overseers interface.

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 VI – Farming

By making hundreds of millions of 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:

1. Nanite Farming to get max Exocraft modules (for speed).
2. Technology Modules and Blueprints (half).
3. Base Building.
4. Settlement Management.
5. More Nanite Farming to get modules for Multitool, Ship and Exosuit (half).
6. S-Class Ship/Multitool hunting (through portal).
7. Language & Secure Facility farming.
8. Technology Modules and Blueprints for Construction (second half/complete).
9. Industrial Base Building.
10. More Missions.
11. Storyline.
12. 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.

1. Concrete Shelters (33)
2. Technology Modules (134)
3. Industrial Modules (48)
4. Wooden Shelters (26)
5. Small Prefabs (26)
6. Large Prefabs (78)
7. Transport Modules (93) (30 for race stuff, which I ignore)
8. Agricultural Modules (53)
9. Decal Designs (24)
10. Metal Shelters (33)
11. Primitive Shapes (9)
12. Storage Units (45)
13. Illumination (11)
14. Decorative Modules (Page 1) (20)
15. Decorative Modules (Page 2) (23)
16. 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 (Derelict Freighters)

With the addition to Contraband, there is a new method of farming nanites that costs credits and Tainted Metal, which is acquired by running Derelict Freighters. While you can make more nanites per hour with this method than Gamma Root, many people like to run the Freighters because they get to explore and fight; however, you don’t want to do this without all of your shield upgrades as the environments can be very hostile (temperatures, gas, etc.)

To get the location of the freighter, go to the Scrap Trader and “Acquire Coordinates” for $5M credits. Use the item put in your inventory, exit the space station and enter pulse drive to “tune” the locator. When it finds a Freighter, exit impulse and board the Freighter.

Tainted Metal comes from selling the Manifest and Log, and can also be found in containers. The amount per run can vary between 1,500 – 2,500.

Once you secure Tainted Metal, you can return to the Scrapper and purchase Suspicious Packets (Weaponry tends to be the most profitable for nanite sale), which will provide modules you can either use or sell for nanites.

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:

1. Main Quest
2. Daily/Weekend Nexus Missions
3. 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.

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 hundreds of millions (or possibly billions) from 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 VII – 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!

External Resource List

• No Man’s Sky Coordinate Exchange (find the ship or multitool you want!)
• No Man’s Sky Resources (updated regularly)
• Tech Layout and Adjacency Bonus Chart (10.2022 – Updated Regularly)
• Hawke’s New Player Beginner Guide Video (10.30.2022)
• Everything you need to know about Exocraft (10.2022)
• Starship Tier Breakdown and Overview Chart (10.2022)
• Awesome Royal Multi-tools (confirmed 4.0.5)
• NMS Portal Decoder
• 80 Tips and Tricks for the Ultimate Traveler
• Top best exotic planets in the universe
• KhrazeGaming’s Youtube Channel
• Hawke’s Gaming Youtube Channel
• Xaine’s World Youtube Channel