No Man's Sky was easily one of the biggest and most controversial releases of 2016. It's quite massive, with a planet count of 18 quintillion unique and discoverable worlds and nearly endless ways to experience and to play through the game. Simply put, no two people had the same experience with No Man's Sky.
Over the past five years, the gameplay and your ability to interact with others has changed tremendously, bringing many users back to the game.
So if you're diving back into No Man's Sky Next No Man's Sky Next, here are the tips and tricks to get you on the right track during your space adventure.
No Man's Sky tips and tricks: the secret mechanics you need to know
Here's our list of the best tips and tricks for a successful journey in No Man's Sky.
1. Download all your discoveries
It might seem like a no-brainer but, aside from a 200 credit bonus when you scan a new creature, No Man's Sky doesn't automatically reward you for new discoveries. To claim money for your discoveries, you will need to access the game's pause menu and download each discovery individually.
Downloading a new system nets you 5 credits, with a new planet or animal also granting you 000 credits (and yes, that's on top of the 2 an animal discovery already gives you). A new base earns 000 credits, and new flora discoveries give you an additional 200 credits to play with. Also, if you find 1% of all animal species on a planet, you can upload your find and win a huge bonus in the hundreds of thousands of credits. Not bad.
2. Scan everything you can
In addition to uploading all of your finds, be sure to scan everything you see. Not only is this a great way to earn some extra cash, but it can also help identify a species' behavior towards you (so you don't get attacked unexpectedly).
If you have an improved proximity scanner for rare resources and points of interest, your scan sight can also identify some of the "?" the markers off are.
3. Make friends with wildlife
Making friends is a crucial life skill, and in No Man's Sky it's no different. Befriending wild animals is essential if you want to find rare items, blueprints, or multi-tools, as friendly animals will dig up and bring you the goods or lead you to secret places.
You can befriend any non-hostile animal by offering that particular creature's favorite bait.
4. Become multilingual
Scattered around each planet you visit are Stones of Knowledge, Ruins, Monoliths, Plates, and Intelligent Lifeforms. It is through these that you will learn the main languages used in the systems of No Man's Sky galaxy.
Split into Vy'keen, Korvax, Gek, and Atlas languages, knowing a wide variety of words in each language is key to solving some of the problems. No Man's Sky's puzzles. As many of you know, alien traders and inhabitants regularly have problems to solve, and knowing exactly what their problem is will be much better than just trying to find the right answer. Go ahead and learn!
5. Save fuel when launching ships
Spending plutonium on your launch propellant when blasting off from an alien planet can be expensive and time-consuming. Don't worry, there is a very simple way to save fuel: look for airstrips.
You can find landing pads in trading posts and shelters that contain trade units inside. Shelters such as observatories and some maintenance facilities also have ship landing areas designated by a beacon-like structure. These stops may not have airstrips, but you can still take off from these locations without having to worry about the cost of fuel.
6. Manage your Exosuit and ship inventory
Keeping control of your inventories is incredibly important in No Man's Sky. Hello Games' title draw is really about the art of exploration, but resource management plays almost as big of a role.
Your Exosuit can hold 250 units of any resource, but your ship inventory is capable of holding up to twice that amount. As you probably guessed, the best way to deal with materials you don't need is to send them to your ship for storage.
Go for a cargo when you have the option of having even more storage. Because so many valuable resources are on different planets than the one you're likely on, it's a good idea to have a freighter with plenty of available slots (you can also upgrade your freighter now).
7. Don't sweat the small stuff
A crucial part of keeping your inventory low is letting go of items you really don't need to carry around with you.
Things like carbon and iron are incredibly common and therefore shouldn't really be taken with you unless you really think you need them. You can also drop some rarer elements such as plutonium, thamium9, platinum, and zinc: many planets have them in abundance in the form of crystals in caves and around launch pads or wildflowers.
8. Easily upgrade your Exosuit with more slots
No matter how hard you try to limit your inventory, there comes a time when you simply can't continue living your life in 13 slots. That's when it's time to upgrade your Exosuit through the various pods that litter the planets of No Man's Sky galaxy. Finding those pods is another matter, however.
Luckily, there's a little trick you can use to help you hit a few drops more often. If you're looking for the nearest outpost beacon (the ones with the orange lasers, not the big antennae) and craft an iron and carbon bypass chip yourself, you can ask him to find your "shelter" point. " the closest. There's no particular science to this, but about 80% of the time you'll end up with a new drop location. Pile a few on your map and wander around – you're bound to come across a few Exosuit upgrades on your travels.
Be warned, though: each upgrade will cost you 10 credits more than the last, so things can get expensive pretty quickly.
9. Stop Sentinels From Attacking You
Sentinels are the police forces of No Man's Sky galaxy. No one knows exactly how they came into existence or what their real purpose is, but one thing is certain: Sentinels are annoying.
However, you can avoid their contempt if you're smart. Destroying plants, resources or killing animals attracts their attention. At this point, they will scan where your target was and then seek you out to scan you. At this point, if you stay completely still, they'll leave you alone. Of course, this requires that your planet's sentinels aren't crazed killers, to begin with.
However, if you end up inciting their hatred and the walkers start chasing you, trust plasma grenades, as they seem to completely immobilize the enemy. It could be a deliberate feature, or it could be a hassle – either way, it works.
10. Never worry about an overheated multi-tool
Nothing is worse than waiting for your multitool to cool down when you mine a big, juicy boulder of rare elements. That's why this trick to avoid overheating is essential for those looking to gather resources at high speed.
Use your mining laser as normal and once the bar starts flashing red due to overheating, stop for about half a second and then continue. The bar should drop back to zero and you can continue.
11. Learn to fly like an ace
No Man's Sky never really tells you how to fly, beyond taking off, landing, boosting, and launching your Pulse Drive. If you want to defeat your enemies in space combat or navigate planets like a pro, you need to know how to get the most out of your ship's controls.
You can find an overview of the controls in the pause menu, but it's essential to know when to use your ship's ability to roll, as well as initiate reverse thrust to avoid an asteroid. You can also reduce flight times by using a planet's gravitational pull to launch you through space before falling back to Earth - or whatever planet you're on - right next to your desired waypoint.
12. Make friends with the "Pin" option
Gathering resources for an upgrade or an item you need to craft can be a bit of a pain. Sometimes you forget what you're supposed to be looking for - was it chrysonite you were looking for or did you need more copper? Well, worry no more: you can pin yourself a reminder for what you need, and it will periodically appear in the lower right corner of your HUD.
You can pin an item by simply hovering over it in your inventory crafting menu and pressing the pin button. So.
13. Never get stuck in a crater or at the base of a high cliff
With a mix of weird textured overlays and weird designs, you can get yourself out of any crater or up any cliff with your jetpack. Ascending so as to enter the cliff or crater wall, boost while holding the front end to fly alongside it without expending any of your jetpack thrusters. Easy.
14. Learn to run even faster
Even with all the sprint stamina buffs, sometimes you can't run fast enough or long enough to get where you want to be in a reasonable amount of time. That's why the Hidden Push Thrust will completely change your life.
Pressing the Melee button, followed directly by the Boost button, will cause you to move forward at a much greater speed than if you were sprinting. Keep pressing the Boost button and you'll jettison forward, cutting those strenuous waypoint ETA times in half.
15. Know where to look to find a planet's animals
Tracking down the last animal on a planet is a total pain. You've apparently looked everywhere, but you don't know where to find the last species you need. Well, a handy hint is to search for caves, as some smaller critters love hanging out in these dark, dank underground systems.
If cave systems prove unsuccessful, look for bodies of water – if there is water on a planet, at least one species is bound to live there. Also, as a rule, if there is water and creatures living in it, you will also find flying animals around the place. You should be able to scan the larger flying creatures with ease, but you may need to shoot down some of the smaller ones before you can scan them - before you say anything, I know that defeats the whole idea of conservation.
16. Create Atlas Passes Easily
You may have seen many locked doors and containers on your journey across the galaxy, all of which require what is known as an "Atlas Pass". Don't worry, you can create them as part of the main storyline as long as you follow it. If you decided to skip the Atlas early in the game, you can always stumble upon a blueprint and the materials required for one later, so don't panic.
You should probably keep your Atlas Stones – no matter how tempting it is to sell them for over 70 credits per pop. Rumors say you'll need it when you reach the center of the galaxy.
17. Find your resources
Naturally, you'd assume a barren moon has less to offer you than the lush, verdant planet it orbits, but you might be surprised to know that moons are a great place to land in No Man's Sky. Because moons are much smaller than planets, Hello Games' world-building algorithm packs them with things to do and see.
If you want to find Exosuit upgrades, learn lots of alien worlds, or find some nice crashed ships, a moon is the perfect place to do it.
When you approach a planet or moon, press the scan button…
