No Man's Sky: Tips and Tricks No Man's Sky Guide

First time in No Men's Sky? Check out our guide, which gives useful starting tips on basic resources, good landing spot, multi-tool, valuable elements.

Last update: 24 July 2024

Our No Men's Sky guide contains useful starting tips. Our tips will help you find out how to start your game in this ever-changing universe. The advice also applies to the latest NEXT and ENDURANCE updates.

• Take care of the vital functions
• Don't worry about the lack of basic resources
• Scan everything - this is basics
• Find a good landing spot
• Increase inventory limit
• Make autosaves
• Don't let the multi-tool overheat
• Look for monoliths
• Collect Atlas stones
• Sell valuable elements

Take care of the vital functions

Do not leave AFK for too long. Spending time on a planet's surface consumes the power supply of our life support system, which must be regularly recharged. If we deplete your energy reserves, our character will die. Furthermore, weather conditions on the planets can vary, for example, at night the temperature can drop significantly, and during the day we will face vicious storms that significantly reduce the time our character may spend outside the ship. If we want to leave the game for a while, it is safer to do so with the character sitting in the cockpit of our spaceship.

Don't worry about the lack of basic resources

Every planet has significant deposits of carbon, zinc, iron and any one of the fuels available in the game, making it virtually impossible for you to get stuck on a planet because of poor resource management - in the worst case, you will be forced to take a long walk on foot to resupply.

Hoarding resources other than fuel isn't really worth it - what you procure on the surface of a planet (and what you do not need on the spot to improve or repair something) is better sold for any kind of profit than left to occupy our precious inventory space until it may or may not be useful or sold for 3 percent more cash. Sooner or later you'll stumble upon this resource once again. And even if we don't, you can always buy it for credits - assuming you empty our cargo hold regularly, you will soon collect enough money not to fret at the thought of purchasing this or that resource on the market.

Scan everything - this is basics

The Scanner is a source of some very valuable information. By looking at the color of the marker you are able to determine what can be found in a particular location. The red markers indicate isotopes (i.e. various types of fuels), yellow ones - oxides (usually containing zinc), blue - silicates (most often with platinum), and the white ones lead to one of the much rarer elements, usually highly-valued on the market, such as aluminum or gold, or perhaps to a gift box. The purple color symbolizes Knowledge Stones that allow us to learn a single word of an alien language, while the dark green markers usually lead to camps where we can find transmitters or buildings.

You should also use the Scanner when off-world. Very often, it enables us to discover mineral deposits, trading outposts, wrecks or even factory located somewhere on the planet's surface, and save time on searching for a suitable place to land.

You can scan on the galaxy map to see systems and planets discovered by other nearby players, as well as our discoveries. This helps in returning to places we have already been to.

Find a good landing spot

When you go on planet, it is good to first decide on a suitable landing spot instead of choosing one at random. If you can land in the vicinity of a building that enables us to trade, you can save time on trips into space and back.

Sometimes you can come across a wreckage of some other spacecraft. This is a free opportunity to swap our current vessel for a better one, but you should keep in mind that the "new" vehicle will have most of its components damaged and restoring the ship to a usable condition can be very time consuming - sometimes it is outright more cost-effective to purchase a new, fully operational vessel on a space station.

Increase inventory limit

At first, your spacesuit will have only 24 slots. You will fill them up after just a few hours. If that happens, you can move some of the items to your spaceship or build a container and use it to store your most valuable finds. You can buy new suit slots at space stations.

The easiest way to solve the problem of shortage of space in our inventory is to proceed through the game's plot until you acquire the AtlasPass v1 access card. The card will enable us to buy additional inventory slots on the space stations (which are found in every system) we visit. While it is a one-off purchase on each station, after visiting several star systems, our problem of lack of space will become much less annoying. If we do not yet have an AtlasPass, we have to carefully explore the planets - sometimes the opportunity to increase our cargo capacity awaits at landmarks.

Atlaspass w2 and w3 access cards can only be acquired by searching through buildings and speaking with aliens in search of new technologies. The plans you receive after completing dialogue puzzles are random, but there's always a small chance that you will receive the "right one". Manufacturing facilities and abandoned buildings are a good starting point for search.

Make autosaves

Incorrect answers for puzzles during an interaction with an alien, a terminal, or a monolith will cause you to lose your chance - you won't be able to repeat the process. You can, however, bypass this limitation by loading the last saved game.

The game creates an autosave every time you leave your space ship. You can also carry a special saving device (it will, however, take up inventory space) or save the game at saving points.

Don't let the multi-tool overheat

Never let the mining beam to overheat. When the heat bar becomes red, you just have to let the trigger go for about a second and you will be able to resume the mining operation afterwards. This will allow you to save a lot of time needed for the device to cool down after overheating.

Look for monoliths

Monoliths are a valuable source of equipment upgrades and knowledge about the languages of the aliens. Those monoliths that present you with a puzzle to solve always reward you with a plan for a new technology, or even a new multitool. These places will be marked with a purple icon after area scanning.

Collect Atlas stones

Don't sell Atlas stones if you are following its path. When visiting the last Atlas Interface, you will need 10 stones to create a new star in the galaxy.

Atlas' path is a little longer when it comes to the distance, but at the same time easier and will allow you to reach the galaxy core quicker thanks to the resources it supplies you with.

Sell valuable elements

When you are on a planet full of rare elements, collect as many of them as you can and store them in your suit's and space ship's inventory. By selling them at the nearest space station or trading post, you will get a lot of money.

While docked at the space stations you should check the prices of different elements, note the ones that sell well above the galactic average and, without leaving the system, head to nearby planets to acquire them. Additionally, you can earn some money without leaving the space station - you just have to purchase those elements from aliens and sell them with profit at the nearby terminal.