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The subject of this article is from the SentinelUp update.
The information from this article is up-to-date as of 12 April, 2022.
Disambig This article is about the current version of Portal. For the Desolation version, see Portal (Desolation).
Screenshot8

Unknown Portal as shown in teaser video

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

Summary[ | ]

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

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

Appearance[ | ]

NMS1dot3PortalCharged

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

Locating a Portal[ | ]

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

To find a first or later portal one can use a monolith. However, a monolith will only share the portal leyline coordinate if the visitor has completed the challenge laid before them to the forefathers satisfaction. After a challenge is completed correctly, a second attempt to talk with the monolith will prompt the option to find the portal. Monoliths only reveal the portal of their own celestial body. Repeated tries on the same planet will not yield other portal locations and are fruitless. The most reliable way is to acquire an Exocraft and install Exocraft Signal Booster Upgrade Tau. Another way is to purchase a Planetary Chart (ancient artifact site) from Cartographer on a Space Station. The planetary chart approach, however, can be unreliable, as it can also return locations of historic sites or ruins. Exocraft are therefore the preferred option.

It is impossible to locate the portal of an Uncharted system without directly visiting the portal through its address. In case of an uncharted Shadow Star which is unaligned with the portal network system, finding the portal is a purely manual effort and nigh impossible. If you ever set out to do this by hand, good luck. Your portal hub base will have a lot of prestige. The only way to do so without combing the entire planet yourself is to mod the game with one of the few POI finder mods that allow you to scan for all structures ingame. The use of such tools is discouraged due to a sense of exploration and accomplishment, but not frowned upon. Time is a valuable good and solely yours to allocate.

Locating a Monolith with the Planetary Chart:

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

Locating a Monolith with an Exocraft Scanner:

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

Locating the Portal with a Monolith:

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

Portal Glyphs[ | ]

Table of correspondence for Glyphs:[]

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

Activating a Portal[ | ]

Portal Glyph 3 charge
Portal Glyph 1 charge
Portal Glyph 2 charge
Portal glyph 4 charge

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

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

Portal Travel[ | ]

Delta Majoris Expedition Photo

Portal Travellers use personal beacons, communication terminals and exocraft.

An activated portal leads directly to the portal at the address that was entered. It is a common way to discern the order of planets inside of a system or to find the portal of nearby satellites to mark them with beacons and com station for either yourself or others. The starship will be waiting next to the portal and all features of the star system will be available to the travellers.

Forward Bases[ | ]

Handling Forward Bases has changed in various ways during the different eras of the game.

NEXT
With a change to signal boosters, finding a claimable base on an expedition took a lot more effort and dedication. Even back then any habitable structure could interfere with finding one. It was part of the shelter group.
Beyond
HG removed the option to locate a forward base entirely, yet they still existed and could be found in the wilds.
Origins
With all features reunlocked, a player can simply build a new base computer and claim any part of the planet they wish to own.

Even though the starship is available on all worlds for fast travel through the stratosphere, local travel on full or partial ocean worlds by travellers is advised to be done by the Nomad to traverse water more easily. Any down or plain world can safely be traversed using the Roamer which offers a longer speed boost and more stability.

As of now nothing can stop your exploration drive or expansion through the stars. Go forth!

Portal Address[ | ]

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

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

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

Known Portal locations[ | ]

Portal Repository Logo

Portal Repository

  • For a list of known (and often marked) portals see the Portal Catalogue.
  • The Portal Repository: A catalog of known portal coordinates with more than 2000 entries. Addresses are categorized by game version, platform, mode, galaxy, and keywords. Players can add their own addresses by filling out the submission form.

Additional Information[ | ]

Weekend Missions Seasons 1 and 2 provided directions to a random portal in the current system.

History[ | ]

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

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

Release history[ | ]

  • Release - Introduced to the game.
  • Atlas Rises - Portals can now be activated. Revisit previous planets, others' bases or jump randomly to new worlds. Learn the language of portals by unlocking mysterious glyphs as you journey through the universe. Interact with a portal and input a specific combination of glyphs to quick travel to a specific planet.
Wiki notes: Previously portals acted as wormholes, certain planets were linked to each other. It was impossible for the player to retrieve their ship or buy a new one after going through a portal. In order to get to the ship the player had to walk or use a vehicle to find a base, then claim that base and use a teleporter to visit the new base from their old home.
  • Atlas Rises 1.33 - Fixed an issue where the Portal Terminal could not be updated to a different address, when the player returned through a portal.
  • Atlas Rises 1.34 - Fixed an issue where large numbers of portal visits would be added to save files, greatly increasing the save size and impeding the ability to save the game. Prevented players being blocked from progressing, if they decline to enter glyphs into a particular story portal.
  • Atlas Rises 1.35 - Added message to notify the player if they select a portal glyph they have not yet learned. Improved messaging when portal glyphs are rewarded. Added audio when interacting with portals. Prevented portals from being incorrectly left enabled at times they shouldn't be.
  • Atlas Rises 1.37 - Fixed an issue where some players did not receive all of the portal glyphs. If a player experienced this issue, the next time they find a portal glyph, those that were previously missed should be restored.
  • NEXT - All player owned ships can now be summoned.
Wiki notes: This allows system wide exploration through one portal, previously the ship remained in the starting system and the player could only explore the destination planet. The last portal of multi-body systems previously was unusable until it has been charged.
  • NEXT 1.58 - Fixed an issue where players were able to warp and get stuck on the other side of a portal.
Wiki notes: This prevents players from accidentally bugging out their station teleporter (or to prevent shortcuts to the centre, even though friend list do the same). Free-roam past the use of a portal has been completely disabled, and not even the Atlas Rises method of port, claim, build a teleport, return, port is possible anymore. Free galactic travel was eliminated.
  • NEXT 1.59 - Fixed an issue that could cause Community Research portals not to return players to the correct galaxy after mission completion. Fixed an issue that could cause portals to close and not lead players back to the correct planet.
  • NEXT 1.63 - Fixed an issue where players who were on the other side of a portal at the launch of NEXT would see their portal return marker in an invalid position. Fixed a number of issues with player position being saved incorrectly while on the other side of a portal in multiplayer.
  • Beyond - Portal charging requirements changed to include stellar elements. Signal boosters can not be used to locate monoliths anymore and were replaced with Carthographers aboard a space station to purchase a planetary chart. Base computers on portal interference worlds can't be pinpointed with signal boosters anymore either. Finding one has become luck...
  • Origins - Restrictions on Base building, black holes, freighters and access to the Galactic Map were removed after transiting through a portal. All features have been restored.
  • NextGen - the quantities needed to recharge a portal changed, cutting the previous values by more than half

Video[ | ]

Gallery[ | ]

Portals in player's Starting Planet or Starting System:

Pre-release portals:

References[ | ]

  1. Standardization of glyph names.. User Artimec_w on Reddit.
  2. These names have been mentioned in the Melody of the Egg and Starbirth missions.
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