Units make the galaxy go ‘round. At least in No Man’s Sky, and the infinite iterations of those planets, ships, and aliens. One challenge we all face early on is funding our intergalactic adventure.
Becoming a billionaire in No Man’s Sky makes your survival much, much easier. Units allow you to purchase the best ships, materials for survival, and much more. The methods of accomplishing this goal can vary depending on where you are in the game. With new updates and changes to the NMS galaxy, it can be difficult to know what is the best way to make money.
These are the best ways for you to buy your way through the galaxy.
10. Multitool Mining Co.
Gold, Gold GOLD! Glorious gold.
The easiest early game method to making your initial fortune is by mining with your multitool. As you progress through No Man’s Sky and its introduction, you will unlock both your mining beam and your terrain manipulator. Both of these are the best starting points for money making.
This is the easiest way to start making money because the start-up cost with regard to materials is extremely low. Essentially all the minerals you mine with this method are profitable, as the only thing needed is fuel for the two multi-tool attachments.
One piece of advice for this method would be to make sure you are carrying extra fuel for your multitool. The mining beam can be charged using carbon or condensed carbon, making it extraordinarily easy to find the fuel. As a convenience, you can carry extra so you do not have to take a break from mining to refuel.
The terrain manipulator uses ferrite elements to refuel. One of the cheapest and easiest to find is silicate powder, which you can find simply by using the terrain manipulator on the non-mineralized ground. You can easily collect enough of this within a few minutes of starting and it should last you a long time with mining.
How it works:
- Fix up your multitool. When you first land on the planet at the very beginning of the game, you will need to melee some minerals to get ferrite dust, which will help you to fix your multitool’s mining beam.
- After a little more of the introduction, when you find the base computer, it will give you the terrain manipulator blueprint, allowing you the ability to mine for minerals with ease.
- Stock up on minerals before taking your starship to the nearest Space Station or Trading Post to make your fortune.
This is a method you can use throughout the game, but the later you are it becomes inefficient and starts to take more time than it's worth.
9. Gravitino Balls, Storm Crystals, and Other Planetary Oddities
Shiny! WARNING: Harvesting of Gravitino Balls results in sentinel activation, combat, and pursuit.
Most planets in No Man’s Sky have a unique feature to them. Some of them have gravitino balls, others have storm crystals and sac venom. They spawn at random on these planets, but when you find one where they can be found, they will be everywhere.
All of these are not created equal, however. This is because with a few of the options you end up in combat with the sentinels, which can be detrimental to your well-being. It also takes lots of time to walk between the spawn points, but only to a point.
The prices of the main ones you will encounter:
- Gravitino Balls are approximately 40,000 units per ball
- Storm Crystals are approximately 212,000 units per crystal
- Sac Venom are approximately 61,000 units per venom ball
Gravitino Balls are an easy one I almost always grab when running through planets, even as a multibillionaire. They spawn on planets with high sentinel activityand as you pick them up, the sentinels start to fight you immediately. The downside of these is that you start at a third-tier response from the sentinels meaning you have to be ready for a fight.
Storm Crystals are another easy moneymaker, the downside with these is that you can only harvest them during a supercharged storm. This means you have roughly five minutes to harvest them, and then you are unable to after the storm ends. The storms occur fairly frequently, but it will take you a bit of time to harvest enough of these to make your millions.
Sac Venom can be harvested from sac venom plants on certain planets. They spawn similar to gravitino balls and are worth a lot of units per one. They have a small stack size in your inventory, and like the gravitino balls, you get a three-star wanted level from your friendly neighborhood sentinels.
How to make your money:
- Search for a planet that has your desired collectible. Most important find one that you do not mind harvesting. I like the storm crystals because they don’t involve a lot of fighting with sentinels.
- Harvest them, and fill up your inventory. I recommend bringing an exocraft or a starship to raise the number you can carry.
- When your inventory is full, go to a Galactic Trade Terminal, either in the space station or one you have built in your base, and sell them all!
8. Digging for Buried Treasure (Ancient Bones and Salvageable Scrap!)
Salvageable scrap can make you money, so long as you don't mind corrupt zombie sentinels shooting at you.
If you want to feel like Indiana Jones, this is the method for you. Scavenging remains and salvageable materials can be a lucrative money-making scheme. It has the potential to make you lots of units for little work, depending on how kind the RNG gods are to you.
This is because there is no way to determine which bones/scrap you are going to be pulling out of the ground when you do this. Ancient Bones and Salvageable Scrap are two that I like to use when I want to go exploring through planets and still make some money on the side. They are buried in the ground on planets and both require the terrain manipulator to uncover.
Salvageable Scrap can be a hazard because as you break apart the scrap, it activates corrupt sentinels that begin attacking you. This can also result in the normal planetary sentinels becoming activated, but only sometimes. Ancient Bones are simply excavated and then result in no negative consequence. Both of these also have the downfall of only being able to hold one of these items per inventory slot, so bring your ship.
How Salvageable Scrap harvesting works:
- Look for the Salvageable Scrap Icon with your scanner. Once you start to spot them and know what to look for it will become really easy to find them.
- When you find one, you will use your terrain manipulator to dig it up.
- It will have multiple protective casings you will need to destroy to access the scrap in the center. Use a blaster or a mining beam!
- When they are broken, corrupted sentinels will begin to attack after rising from the grave.
- You don’t have to kill them to harvest the scrap, but it makes it easier.
- When you have killed them, harvest the scrap, and it will be ranked from common to legendary (similar to all things in NMS, matching the color scheme of blue, purple, and yellow). The highest cost was roughly 2.8 million units, so it adds up fast if you find a lot of rare ones.
- Look for another and continue on your journey.
One tactic you can use is to throwaway the non-legendary ones, it will save inventory space and you can grind out the pieces that cost 2 million or more. Also, the number of protective casings on the scrap correlates to the rarity of the item within, if there are four, it will be worth more!
How Ancient Bones Work:
- They will spawn on a planet, similar to the salvageable scrap. The planet will have labeled this if you scan it from space, and it will allow you to see that they spawn there before you land.
- Find the icon somewhere in your scanner, I recommend tracking it when you spot it so you don’t lose track of your journey.
- When you reach your destination, use the terrain manipulator to dig it up!
- Harvest the bones, and it will let you know what rarity and a price estimate. The highest official price was roughly 2.3 million units, but it is possible that it to be more expensive.
- That is it!
While the Ancient Bones are slightly less valuable, the benefit of not having to fight the sentinels makes it worth itto choose that over Salvageable Scrap. The other downside of these two methods is the walking that is required. If the odds were better to get legendary or rare spawns, it would be worth more.
7. Starship Tow Company
One man's crash is another man's treasure.
Much like this section is titled, you will make your money in this section by harvesting dead and broken ships. They are crashed on planets, and you then claim them, repair the bare minimum, and deliver it to a space station. It is rather easy to do this method, and it can be effective. Plus it is always fun to be an international space tow truck.
You get the distress coordinates in a few ways. You can purchase them on space stations, or you can also find them when exploring abandoned buildings on planets. Please do note, these are different from freighter distress signals you purchase from the black market, but we will talk about those in a little bit.
How to salvage ships:
- Purchase your coordinates from the map dealer on the space station. They are located next to the teleporter and the guild master of each space station. Each costs one navigation data (found on planets).
- Activate using the directed button (depending on your console or PC, it will be a certain key or button).
- There is a 15% chance of this encounter occurring per map, so it comes down to your odds of finding it. There arefive possible outcomes from this, and you can only have one active instance for each outcome, so there is an exploit for this. If you can get each type open in a different star system, then you will be able to get the one you want to have to happen 100% of the time.
- When you arrive at the ship, you will claim it and add it to your collection. Make sure you don’t swap and lose your other ship.
- Fly back to your freighter (using your fixed and normal ship).
- Fix the landing gear and any other critical equipment using the desired materials.
- Fly to the space station. When you land, go to the left side of the space station, near the upgrade shops. There will be a starship upgrade/recycler. It will have a hologram of the starship you landed there.
- Salvage the ship, it will require a lot of inventory space, and then you can sell those parts. It will give you an estimated amount for the salvage, and this will then allow you to switch to another ship.
6. Freighter Fighter
Nothing like a little space piracy to get your heart rate going!
Are you ready to be a space pirate? Then this is the best option for you. As you warp throughout space, you will likely encounter many different freighters hovering in space. As you scan them, you will identify the many different storage containers and the treasures within. You can start blasting them when you see valuables you want to steal.
The downside of this method is that you will instigate a fight with the locals, irritate the race of space-dwelling creatures, and piss off the sentinels. The upside is you can easily warp away and survive this warfare. Especially with the Outlaw update, and the introduction of the passport (which repairs your reputation with the dominant race when used on a space station they control), you can make a lot of units this way.
How to raid freighters (the right way!)
- Make sure you are on a ship that can shoot fast and furiously. I recommend using the regular photon cannon. It has a decent cooldown period, you can do a large amount of damage in no time flat, and this means you can take out all of the storage containers.
- Shoot all the loot containing storage pods on the freighter, and their frigates. These can contain raw materials, pre-crafted materials, and sometimes just straight units.
- Get ready to fight or flight, the sentinels and occasionally other ships will start fighting you.
- If you warp, you are already done. Otherwise, you can fight your way to the space station.
- If you already have a passport, make your way over to the space station and access the terminal on the ground level of the space station. (see image below). It will reset your reputation with the dominant race in that space station. Then you can sell your loot guilt-free and start making your millions.
Swipe your forged passport for unlimited piracy!
This method can make you money quickly, depending on the type of loot you encounter. Since you can quickly go after multiple freighters in a system, then warp to another, it can be a fast process. You do need to be a decent amount of time into the game, however, as you have to be able to find freighters, travel to wealthier systems where the loot is better, and be able to run from sentinels.
5. Scanning Flora and Fauna!
Units Received will be music (and money) to your ears!
The upgrades you can get for the scanner allow you to greatly amplify the number of units that you get per scan. This makes an enormous difference when you are looking for new creatures and plants. You can also get upgrades that improve minerals scan bonuses.
This is a very easy method to make units as every planet has so many different species. For each new planet, you can scan all new minerals, plants, and animals. You need to make sure to get upgrades from the space stations, as this increases your total revenue.
Best methods for making money as a naturalist:
- The most important part of this method is finding scanner upgrades. You need to look for S-Ranked upgrades. You can look for all of the same category, flora, fauna, or minerals. If you carry multiple scanners, it might not hurt to have one maxed out for each of them. I would recommend flora or minerals, even though fauna has a higher base value.
- The highest upgrades you can get are up to +11,000% value.
- Scan all the organisms and minerals on the planets, and watch as the units immediately add up.
- When you finish up a planet, move on, continuing to discover more and more things.
One of the perks of this method is that units are immediately paid out, and you don’t need to fly anywhere and spend fuel and time traveling (aside from planet to planet.)
4. Crafting Tradeable Items
So many fun items to craft, sell, and trade.
This method can be a very profitable method if you pick one recipe to focus on and set up everything you need to craft it. Many of them can be crafted from materials you can encounter easily and streamline them. The real hurdle for this, and why it is more efficient late game, is because you need to unlock a lot of crating recipes from the space anomaly, or from the manufacturing facilities you break into. This means it can take a lot of time to get to the money-making point.
When crafting the real challenge is making sure to have enough of each material as without them, you won’t be able to make the final product. This can end up costing you millions (literally). Lets walk through making circuit boards.
To craft a circuit board, you need a heat capacitor and poly fiber. But tocraft each of those heat capacitors require 100 frost crystals and 200 solanium. Poly fiber requires 100 cactus flesh and 200 star bulbs. So the important part of this would be to have a regular source of frost crystals, solanium, cactus flesh, and star bulbs.
How to craft effectively!
- Pick one recipe to focus on.
- When you have found the recipe thatmakes you the most money, figure out the base ingredients that you need.
- I recommend setting up a farm on a planet, somewhere near an electromagnetic hotspot for any plant materials.
- If you use the bio-domes (a building at your on-planet base) you can plant 16 items there, and harvest all sixteen at the same time.
- Plant all your plants need, in bulk. Wait for the grow time and harvest them.
- Craft all your items, and find a solar system to sell things in and make your millions.
Circuit boards (third-tier craftable) sell for 900,000 per one, which means very quickly you can make millions.
3. Mineral Extractor
Mineral extraction helps you to extract the most out of money making!
Want a passive income? With no work needed? That makes youunits while offline? This is the perfect strategy for you. All you need to find is a mineral hotspot so you can pull minerals without doing anything.
This is a late-game tactic that many players grind for because if you can find a valuable mineral, you will quickly be able to make units while you are offline or online. The only challenge is finding the right deposit. The different rated hotspots are sorted out by the output of the deposit. Here is the breakdown of the output rates:
- C-Class deposits generate 245 per hour
- B-Class deposits generate 365 per hour
- A-Class deposits generate 485 per hour
- S-Class deposits generate 625 per hour
While this takes time, the nice part about this is that it continues even when you are offline, meaning that when you aren’t playing, you will continue to pull minerals and store them. Search for activated indium or gold. Gold has the highest cost per individual gold, but it's harder to encounter it. Both can make you rich however.
How to set up the mineral extractor
- Land on a planet, open up your scanner, and use the analysis visor to look for mineral hotspots.
- When you have located one, you need to walk close enough to identify which mineral is there.
- After you find a suitable mineral deposit, you will want to build mineral extractors over the mineral deposit. You can build more than one extractor over each deposit, which gives you multiple outputs from the hotspot in an hour.
- You need to produce energy to power these, so figure out which method of power makes the most sense for you.
- Finally, build some storage containers connected to the extractors with supply links which will allow your extractors to run efficiently while you are away.
2. On-Planet Farm
Just a nice, relaxing, space weed farm.
The second best way to make money is if you are setting up farms on planets. This is an easy way to make money because you can have essentially unlimited space, as you can just build more and more farms on the surface of planets.
You can either do what is in this picture above, where the crops grow outside, which requires a matching environment to the plant that you are trying to grow.
Otherwise, you can use the bio-domes to grow any crops. The downside of the bio-domes is that each one uses 50 power. The upside is you can collect all of the plants in each one all at once.One suggestion is to grow plants on many different planets and put teleporters in each base, which allows you to jump from farm to farm.
How to farm (on a planet):
- Set up a farm on the planet of your choosing, ensuring that the planet's ecosystem matches the plants' needs. For example, gamma roots can only grow on planets with high radiation, and frost roots can only grow in extremely cold places.
- Set up biodomes if you are trying to grow multiple plants in one base.
- Set up a reliable power source, and backup storage for power so if anything goes wrong, then you don’t stop harvesting minerals.
- Check into your storage facilities each time you play, then sell your minerals on the market. Build a galactic trade terminal in your base to save time, and in no time you will make your money.
1. Freighter Farming
Don't like settling down? Take your space drug empire and fly on your freighter today!
Finally, the best way to make the most money. It requires a freighter and a lot of time on the front end, but then it will help you to make plenty of money. Freighters now have agricultural rooms that you can build, that allow you to harvest all four of the plants grown in that room.
If you want to have your freighter making you money, look no further than growing one of the four following plants: gravitino host, venom urchin plant, and nipnip. Venom urchin plants produce sac venom, which is the most valuable you can produce for one item. Nipnip buds sell for the second most, and gravitino balls come in third.
How to farm (on your freighter):
- Buy a freighter if you do not have one, and make sure that you want to keep it for a while.
- When you do, enter the part of the freighter where you get to build and add rooms.
- The agriculture room can fit four plants, and you can build a lot of them. There is likely a build limit, but I haven’t reached it yet with the 200+ nipnip plants I have growing.
- Plant all your venom urchin plants, and then you just need to wait.
- Harvest all your plants, sell them to the space station, and build a terminal on your freighter so you don’t have to leave your ship.
- Build the bonus storage rooms so you can store as many plants as you harvest, cause overflow goes to those storage rooms.
- Sell, sell, sell. Depending on the plant you planted, every three to four hours you will have yourself making millions upon millions.
Have fun building your intergalactic farming empire!
Units make the game happen much quicker and it allows you to grow your ships and your weapons to make your chances of survival much greater. These are the fastest ways to get to the point where your unit count outnumbers the planets in the game.
It comes down to the effort you want to put in and how many hours you want to put into building your money. Get out there and become the next billionaire in No Man’s Sky!
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