Tips and tricks

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The subject of this article is from the Echoes update.
The information from this article is up-to-date as of 13 February, 2024.

Tips and tricks is a guide that provides a list of game hints.

Summary

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

General

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

Like many games, falling hurts! Master the jetpack to ensure soft landings! Likewise, don't jetpack downhill, especially in permadeath.

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

Practice inventory management by transferring items to your starship and freighter to free up space in your Exosuit. You can stack twice as much of an item in your ship and freighter, unless that item already stacks up to 9,999.

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

Speak to every alien you encounter, as many will give you interlopers gifts! (Assuming you make the right conversational choices, obviously.) The dialogue options change depending on quest status, standing, and inventory content, so try again later.
When in space stations, you may purchase Planetary Charts from the Cartographer with Navigation Data. You may choose between four different kinds of charts : Planetary Chart (secure site), Planetary Chart (distress signal), Planetary Chart (inhabited outpost), or a Planetary Chart (ancient artifact site). The charts are destroyed on use and provide the location of a point of interest on a nearby planet, allowing for quick and easy access to valuable materials. You may purchase many at once and use them in any system.

You can switch between first- and third-person views under the quick menu, in the "Utilities" section.

You can change your appearance in a space station, at the Appearance Modifier.

You cannot use a space station teleporter before building your first base, and teleporter locations from other saves will not show up. To teleport back to visited locations from your base you will need to craft a Teleporter, which can be found in the base building menu.

Teleporter locations can be sorted by type (the types are space stations and bases).

Deployable technology like the Portable Refiner can be stored in your inventory to be used again later, which means you only need to craft them once.

Exploration

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

If you cannot craft a beacon, take a screenshot while using the analysis visor. The visor interface contains the planet name (top left) as well as latitude and longitude (top right), which you can use to find a location again.

Harvesting Deuterium-rich plants gives the player a short jetpack boost, which can help you travel greater distances using the jetpack+melee combo.
When underwater, Kelp Sac plants recharge oxygen when interacted with.
Collect Navigation Data and trade them to cartographers to find new locations.

Scanning

Don't forget to upload all your discoveries, including new planets and star systems, to the Atlas. Doing so will yield nanites. To access Discovery page, simply press Menu on PS4/PS5/Xbox, + on Switch, or Esc button on PC. You can also re-name star systems, planets, moons, waypoint sectors, plants, and wildlife in this section prior to uploading. Be careful, though. After uploading something, it cannot be renamed.
Finding all different kinds of fauna (animals) will unlock an additional bonus. To collect it, open the discovery panel, and above the list of discovered animals will be a silver colored icon of a paw. Clicking it until it turns golden will have an additional bonus of up to multiple hundreds of nanites and count towards the "Planetary Zoology" Milestones.
There are technology modules that earn you much more money when scanning.

Scanning a Transmission Tower will show white dots on other Transmission Towers and Crash Sites.

Use scanner often (Click in L3 on PS4/5, Right Stick on Xbox, or C on PC). Since No Man's Sky heavily consists of lore instead of single story lines - Knowledge Stones, Plaques, Ruins and Monoliths are your best bet to get the most fun out of the game and learn about the history of the various lifeforms. This will further aid your bartering, negotiations and relations. Interacting with knowledge stones will help you communicate better by learning different alien languages.

Keep an eye out for gear symbols while scanning the environment. They are indicators of where Damaged Machinery is located. When you activate them and provide repair materials, they give you Nanite Clusters.
Dig up hard-to-reach underground treasure with the Terrain Manipulator, but be careful not to destroy it in the process. Scan the ground near ruins and crashed freighters.
Interacting with the Distress Beacon at the site of a Crashed Freighter will grant a blueprint and start the secondary mission; which puts markers on your map for each individual cargo pod, allowing for better ease in taking full advantage of a crashed freighter's salvageable materials.

Analysis Visor

Craft the Analysis Visor as soon as possible! This will allow you to flag resources in the area and save you a lot of time lurking around and memorizing element symbols.
Using your Analysis Visor on a planet will allow you to find hidden resource deposits and buried treasures. It can also help you find deployable technology if you forgot where you placed it.
Earn units easily but slowly by using the Analysis Visor (L2 on PS4 or F on PC) on wildlife, vegetation and rocks to discover them.
When looking for specific buildings, Monoliths, crash sites or other sites on a planet, use your Analysis Visor, just as if you were scanning for flora or fauna. Without scanning anything else, get in your ship and fly around the planet. You will see white dots on your HUD of POI's associated with that building.
The in-game time appears on the right side of the Analysis Visor screen (Right Mouse Button or L2/LT on controller) as well as your current coordinates on the planet.
Using your Analysis Visor on an unknown POI (question mark) will tell you what kind of waypoint it is. Hold E Or X on Xbox to keep the marker visible on your HUD
The Analysis Visor can help you detect Hazardous Flora when you are exploring, so make sure to check your Analysis Visor often to check for it.
It is possible to scan Sodium, Deuterium, and Oxygen-rich plants to get a few extra units and nanites. (Deuterium plants boost your jetpack).

Trading

Main article: Trading

Galactic Trade Terminals can be found in various locations such as trading outposts, Minor Settlements and space stations and enable you to buy and sell items. They can also be found in player bases.

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

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

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

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

Flora and Fauna

The wildlife isn't always friendly. Keep an eye out for the predator symbol (red circle with paw within, arrows indicates the direction). You can either keep your distance, or turn and kill them before they strike. If you're careful, you can also scare most predators off by damaging them heavily but not killing them. You can also feed them to distract or even tame them.
Feeding a terrestrial animal will allow you to harvest food and ride/adopt it as a pet. Most Nutrient Processor recipes require you to feed animals to collect milk or eggs.

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

Crafting Tips

Craft the Boltcaster or Blaze Javelin in your Multi-tool inventory to gain the combat-side ability. Boltcaster is (unless you upgrade it) similar to a standard fully automatic gun (perhaps an SMG or assault rifle) and Blaze Javelin is more like a semi-automatic rifle, firing slower and dealing more damage per shot.
Craft the Plasma Launcher in your Multi-tool inventory to unlock plasma grenades. Place upgrades for the Plasma Launcher in the slots around the Plasma Launcher for bonus damage. Grenades can be used for combat, blasting open doors, or terrain destruction (such as digging a tunnel). Plasma Launcher makes breaking into most armored facilities (Manufacturing Facility, etc.) very easy. It is also quite dangerous to the player as the close blast can kill you.
Use (x on PC, ∆ on PS4) to pin craftable items/upgrades in inventory (install technology window) so you can easily keep track of what you're doing.
Craft a Signal Booster to manually scan for a Resource Deposit, a Colonial Outposts, a Habitable Base or a Monolith.
You can exploit certain curiosities by refining them and then deconstructing them for their base materials. For example, to refine Destablised Sodium you need 50x Sodium and 50x Sodium Nitrate. Then you can put the Destabilised Sodium back into the Refiner to gain 150x Sodium Nitrate, which you could turn some into regular Sodium and repeat the process.

Starships

Main article: Starship

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

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

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

You can usually find your starship on your Heads-Up Display (HUD), and you can also call your ship to you by accessing the quick menu, as long as your launch thrusters are sufficiently fuelled, so feel free to wander and explore.

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

When buying a new ship, don't forget to transfer items to the new one first.

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

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

If possible, avoid using your Rocket Launcher in combat or when mining since it is the only ship weapon that require recharging.

Freighters

Owning a Freighter allows you to access all of your starships (up to six of them) in the docking bay. It also provides you the ability to build a fleet of up to 30 frigates. To get an additional starship, you need to purchase it from an NPC at full price without trading in, or claim a crashed/abandoned ship from a distress signal waypoint. Claimed or purchased ships can be safely flown away or left behind and will teleport to your freighter after it makes a jump.

Freighters can be called and warped into any system, regardless of distance from previous warp, provided it has the appropriate warp drive upgrades if it is being called into a red, green, or blue star system. Make sure you have enough space to call your freighter and it's not too close to another fleet or station.
The first Freighter you save from pirates is offered to the player for free, and It will always be a regular freighter containing 15-19 slots at a price range of 5M to 23M from C to S class, and If the first rescued freighter is refused, the second freighter will also be offered to the player for free, and it will be a capital freighter containing 24-34 slots at a price range of 26M to 178M from C to S class.

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

Combat

If a white circle shows up in your ship's monitors, a pirate is about to scan you. When the circle completely ticks down, the pirate will engage. Entering atmosphere or entering a space station or freighter will pause the countdown.
The Cargo Scan Deflector has the potential to deflect both the sentinel cargo scans and Hostile Sub-Space Scans from pirates, which will avoid combat. Wait for the enemy to start their scan before activating the Cargo Scan Deflector. If it fails, try again. You should be able to get 2-3 tries before enemy scan is completed.
It is possible to talk to a pirate using comms before they attack and try to bargain or call for help. In order to call for help you require a Defence Chit in your inventory. Even if you have NPCs help you still need to fight them yourself.
Sentinels can sometimes be evaded by getting in your ship and landing nearby quickly.
Reinforced doors and resource depots can be destroyed from starships. Note that missions to destroy resource depots require you to at least start them on foot.

Resources Gathering and Mining

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

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

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

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

Always use the smallest size of the Terrain Manipulator to mine Resource Deposits. The size of the Terrain Manipulator will not change the amount of minerals per terrain modification. The smallest size will provide the highest amount of terrain modifications and therefore the highest amount of minerals.

To make Units quickly without a base/farm, you can mine Cobalt, found in caves and deposits on some planets.

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

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

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

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

Crashed Ships can be a source for upgrades and materials, although not especially viable they're still worth visiting. They can be found by solving Transmission Tower puzzles. Each site will yield the following:
- Nanite Clusters or other stuff from Damaged Machinery, usually located at the left of the crashed ship when facing it
- A chance for an additional blueprint or a multi-tool from Distress Beacon located at the rear of the crashed ship
- A crashed ship of random stats. Crashed ships generally have few if any upgrades installed, and will need their broken slots repaired with a variety of resources, most notably Chromatic Metal, Magnetized Ferrite, Platinum, and Paraffinium.
- Repairing the Launch Thrusters and Pulse Engine will allow you to fly to a space station and scrap the ship for parts, which sell for large amounts of units with little effort on your part.

Exosuit

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

If your oxygen meter is almost depleted while in water, you can use your jetpack to fly above the water as long as you can to allow your oxygen level to recharge. The gauge on your jetpack is heat level. When you fall back in the water, your jetpack instantly cools allowing it to be used again immediately.

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

Your exosuit's Life Support will decrease while you explore, and if it empties, it will drain your health and shields whenever you move. Keep this from happening by ensuring you always have a supply of Oxygen, Dioxite or Life Support Gel to recharge.
Also make sure you have plenty of Sodium or Sodium Nitrate to keep your hazard protection topped up. Sodium Nitrate is more resource-efficient to use over Sodium, so consider using that instead.

Photo Mode

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

Missions

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

Just for Fun

Feed the animals! You can feed the animals to make friends. Feeding them will yield different results per species such as: riding them, adopting them as a pet, harvesting certain resources that can be used for Cooking, or they also may poop Faecium.

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