Hello Games' No Man's Sky has been around for a few years now, giving us plenty of time to explore the worlds, surviving heavy combat along the way. With more planets in the game than our human brains could even fathom, there's a lot to do. There are various alien species to be befriended or defeated, resources to be mined, and valuables to be traded. The chances are you've only discovered a fraction of the possibilities in this game - there are tons of tips and tricks to make your space exploration the best it can possibly be. Here are the best 11 features that fans didn't know existed... until now.
Updated on September 28th, 2020 by Drew Ferguson: No Man's Sky received another absolutely mind-bogglingly huge update recently called Origins, and with it comes a plethora of new things. While the core gameplay structure has more or less stayed intact, there's going to be a lot more to see in the world(s), ranging from a gargantuan increase in variety on planets as well as some cool new stuff to see in space. With each new update comes a lot of new (or returning) players, so let's go over some more things that players might not know that they can do in No Man's Sky:
11 11. Change Your Appearance
One of the things that might surprise some players is that you can change your character's appearance — just not right off the bat. Once you make it to your first Space Station, there is an unassuming little terminal that allows you to customize the look of your character to an honestly impressive degree. From a tiny little frog person to a wide-eyed robot to a pretty normal-looking humanoid, there are a ton of possibilities here, and you can even save some of your favorite looks and swap them out at any of these terminals, wherever you find them in the universe.
10 10. You Can Upload Discoveries For Nanite Clusters
The immediate benefit of scanning lifeforms/minerals on planets, besides the educational value, is that it gives you units. This is reason enough in itself, but there's another reason, too. You can go to your menu and upload each and every discovery you make, granting you Nanite Clusters in reward. These Nanite Clusters are used to purchase some of the best things in the game (generally technology blueprints), so while the few Nanite Clusters you get for each discovery might not seem like a lot, they add up. Pretty quickly you'll have a few hundred of them sitting around, and you'll be able to snag some pretty nice upgrades from the nearest Space Station.
9 9. Refill Life Support With Di-Hydrogen/Carbon
While keeping your hazard protection up with Sodium might not seem like too tough of a task (especially considering you can just jump into your ship or the nearest cave to escape the negative effects and recharge the protection), keeping your life support up can be a vastly different story. Finding oxygen can be a little rough, especially on certain planets, and you can't simply recharge that in your ship; it just stops going down.
So it's probably pretty good news that you don't need oxygen to keep your life support up, isn't it? You can craft Life Support Gel with Di-Hydrogen Jelly (crafted from Di-Hydrogen) and carbon, which is abundant on just about every planet with plant life. This is a much, much easier way to keep your life support going, and goes a long way in making the game feel less like a chore and more like a fun time exploring.
8 8. Fly Across The Ground
It's pretty obvious what a jetpack is used for - to reach higher places. But did you ever consider it could be used along the ground as well? In a game as huge as No Man's Sky, one of the most time-consuming things can be simply getting from A to B. But with a jetpack, you can cover a lot more ground really quickly. Simply sprint, press the melee button, then the jetpack button immediately afterwards, and you'll jet far closer to the ground than you usually would. You'll move faster than you do when sprinting, saving you time to explore more planets. Just make sure you keep an eye on the fuel being used to avoid fall damage.
7 7. Avoid Bad Encounters
So there you are - you've just ransacked a load of goodies from a planet, and you're back on your way through space. You've likely come across a few hostile encounters before now that have blown your poor ship to smithereens. It seems like it's just your luck.
But the truth is, it's not just luck making this happen. The more valuable items you have on-board, the more likely these encounters are to occur. The idea is to give seasoned players a challenge, but of course, if you're not prepared it makes things much harder. Just reduce the amount of fancy things on your ship by trading them with on-world NPCs to help reduce the encounters.
6 6. Follow Trade Routes
During your space travels, you may have noticed various ships leaving the space stations and making their way to different planets. If you look closely you'll see pale lines tracing their routes, and you're actually able to follow these. It can be tricky to do, especially when they're hard to see, but it will usually lead to a useful trading post. You can also find stockpiles with valuable resources. A good way to find them is to look up from a space station when the sky is dark, and you should see them leading to a planet. Sometimes there are multiple, but with a keen eye you can figure it out in no time.
5 5. Boost Your Upgrades
One thing you should have plenty of by now is upgrade blueprints. As handy as they are, there's a way to make them even better; if you arrange your upgrades into particular shapes, you'll get a decent hidden bonus. You're looking for adjacency here, so diagonals don't count.
You'll get a +4.6% bonus for two items, and +6.8% for three, so it makes quite a difference. They also need to be upgrades from the same 'family', if you will. It should be fairly obvious which ones go together, but a same-color outline will appear around related objects to make it nice and clear. Who knew organization could make life so much better?
4 4. Befriend Alien Animals
Being able to feed animals in No Man's Sky is pretty fun - who doesn't fancy an intergalactic petting zoo? But making friends with these creatures has even more benefits besides having really cool animal buddies. It's a great way to get hold of rare resources like Calium and Omegon. Plus, if you get one of these animals to like you, they can follow you around on your travels, and possibly take you to areas with high concentrations of other elements. You can even find rare minerals in their poop. Nobody said babysitting a weird space goat would be plain sailing.
3 3. Jet Up Walls
So we've established that the jetpack can help you cover more ground, but there isn't just a trick for horizontal travel. Every now and then you might become seemingly stuck in a super deep crater, with steep walls that make exit impossible.
It turns out that the jetpack helps you to climb walls, without even using any fuel! If you make your way over to the wall and get really close, you should be prompted to hold the jetpack button, and you'll speed up the cliff-face in no time. It's a neat trick to get you out of a sticky situation, and the fact that you conserve fuel while saving yourself some time makes it even better.
2 2. Get Valuable Resources From Asteroids
Sending a barrage of lasers at an asteroid is always good fun, but it's actually very useful, too. When they explode, certain resources fly out that you can grab, saving you the time of mining them. Often you'll find massive meteors of Aluminium and Nickel, both of which come in handy. The most common thing you'll find is Theranium9, and although it's not the most exciting thing, it does help power your boosts and thrusters, so stock up wherever you can. Besides, barrelling towards an asteroid and unleashing all hell upon it is just standard space fare isn't it?
1 1. Retry Failed Conversations
We've all been there - you're trying to have a decent conversation with an alien, as you do, and presented with a multiple choice question, you get it totally wrong (we don't all speak Gek). And now it seems you can't try again. Well, it turns out you can prompt the question to return if you have enough Carbon to offer. But where can you find a load of Carbon at a time like this? If you take a look around the office these creatures tend to hang out in, there should multiple plants around. Check them out and you should have enough Carbon to retry the conversation a couple more times. If only it worked like that in real life!