So I downloaded this game on Saturday to try it out. See what all the fuss was about. Oh boy, I was not prepared for how much fun it is.

I started off in the middle of nowhere on a planet that seemed ok at first. As I’m coming to grips with the controls, and following the tutorial, learning to mine and gather resources … etc. I hear “Warning. Storm approaching”. Then my screen flashes that a “wall of fire” is happening, and I need to take shelter.

As far as I can tell, I’m not within 7 zip codes of one. As far as I can tell. I might be the only living soul on this burning rock. So I start running in a random direction while watching my environmental protection bar drop real fast.

Still fiddling with the camera I miss a trench the size of the grand canyon and fall. Thankfully, the Jumpjets allow me to land without breaking my kneecaps. Downside: No way in hell can I jump jet back up to the surface. Upside: My environmental protection is stabilizing.

As I’m stumbling in the dark getting farted on by poison sac plants, I find these things called “Humming Sac”s. They look like the face hugger eggs from Aliens. I was worried that I might have to go to the new character screen real soon, but figured “Eh. Let’s let it play out”. To my surprise, they had pearls in them. Me being the hoarder that I am (I’m the guy who ends up with 10,000 potions in my stockpiles due to not using them because “I might need it later”. There’s no later. The final boss and main quest were done months ago. Without a single potion being used.) I started gathering these. By the time I found my way out of that cave I had 25 of the darn things.

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To my pleasant shock, the cave exit lead me to a “Minor settlement”. It was a shack that had two dudes in it, and a landing pad. I breathe a sigh of relief and run inside. Soon as I walk in, this console on the wall opens up and it looks like it has a gun in it. I check it out. Oooh, it’s a multitool with a gun. I feel bad for dumping my current one after I had just put in the upgrades from the tutorial, but let’s see how much this will cost. It has a big “B” next to its description. It has the advanced scanner that the big crystals kept telling me I need. Costs 3.3 MILLION. At this point, I was worried the game was going to be abysmally grindy. I feared that I may be uninstalling it sooner than expected, if my FIRST tool upgrade was 3.3 million.

Oh hey, they have a Galactic Market hub thingy. Maybe I can sell some of the stuff I’ve been collecting there. Oh, most sells for pennies. Well I’m definitely not making 3.3 million anytime this decade off of this. Then I see the pearls. 25 selling for over a quarter of a million. You ever seen old cartoons when the guy’s eyes shoot out of his skull? That basically happened to me.

So I spent the next X amount of hours (this will become very relevant) cave diving for pearls. Ran into these weird knowledge stones. Hey, they help me figure out what the other aliens are saying, nice. I figured I’d farm the 3.3 million get the multitool and call it a night. Eventually I did. I then got my tool. Naturally, I wanted to test it out. So off I went to test it. Oh hey, it has another mode, plus a rifle mode, and a shotgun one. Neat. Looks like I can mess with the terrain and mine ore veins. Awesome. Let’s try that.

Next, I followed the tutorial to base building. I figured since this one shack is the only sign of civilization I’ve seen, I might as well claim it as my base. Nice. Built the base. Built a teleporter and powered it. I don’t like this reactor powering it. Let’s use solar panels. Farmed some resources and built those along with a battery. Ok. Good point to stop now. Oh hey, it’s 8 AM. IT’S EIGHT A.M.!!!!!! That was day one. That was my first day in this game.

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Day 2, I decided to finally check those burial sites, and discovered how much money can be made off of them. Especially those intact skeletons that are 2000+ years old. So I handed in my moral compass and started grave robbing right up until a very late hour in the night. By the time I want to bed the sun was closing to being up.

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Day 3, I’ve been exploring a lot now. Have multiple “bases” on a few planets across 3 solar systems. Been doing missions, and have gotten so many words out of aliens and stones that I can understand most Vy’keen I run into. Started doing some main quest missions and a few others things on the side. Been farming more bones and underwater relics to try and get a new ship instead of my starting one. A couple of bad sales (didn’t realize I had to manually move my cargo, so I had to rebuy my ship to get the cargo out of it before I scrapped it for a pittance). I’ve gotten more comfortable now. Even had a few pirate fights under my belt (Those were rough at first because the controls are clunky. Until I discovered the S key basically auto pilots for me better than I can maneuver with a mouse and keyboard).

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I’m system hopping having just finished some deliveries for the merchants guild, and as soon as I exit warp on my main system, I’m caught in the middle of a space battle. 6 pirates, and some traders. The traders hail me asking for help. I managed to kill the pirates, since they follow Hollywood rules and only attacked me in pairs. Photon cannon turns their shields to mush, missile launchers one-shot their hull. Nice one-two punch. Freighter captain hails me and tells me to come on board for my rewards.

“Neat!” I say to myself. Big ship like this, I hope he gives me something good. He gave me the WHOLE SHIP! Flabbergasted as I was, I expected (Upon checking the wiki this morning, I now realize this may have been, in fact, a mistake). So now I have a freighter with a frigate. I start getting acquainted with the layout. turn in some missions at the nearby station, and start moving things around in my inventories/storage/freighter to see the fastest way I can upgrade this one, or trade it in for good value and get a better one instead. I log out, and go to bed.

Thank you to anyone that read through this whole post, or even skimmed it. Seriously though, how do you guys stop playing this game. I’ve already spent 2 hours today looking up videos on how to turn the freighter into more money so I can trade it in for a better one.

Also, the wiki says that the freighter captain will off you the freighter if you have none. Does this mean if I sell my current one, I could get the next one for free too?

Hey all. If you like to use a freighter as you primary base, and you don’t want to go through all the trouble of building a planetary base to get your Oxygen, it’s possible to get it entirely from your freighter! Here are the steps for a net gain of 2250 Oxygen, and you can of course scale up for your needs.

1) Collect 250 Nitrogen gas from a Stellar Extractor room. Yes, these things are actually useful! (Okay, and they are also known to be a bit buggy, but i am able to do this rather reliably. I’ll go over the bugs i’ve encountered and how to deal with them below.) To get Nitrogen from these things, park your freighter in a RED star system the day before. It’ll be ready when you start up NMS next time.

2) Harvest 3 Echinocactus plants from your Cultivation Chambers. Echinocactus is the most efficient since it gives you 100 per plant, but any of these will work: Star Bramble, Fungal Cluster, Echinocactus, Solar Vine, Frostwort, or Gamma Weed. You’ll need a total of 250 of whichever crop you have.

3) Grab 25 Chlorine and 50 Condensed Carbon from storage. Have 150 Oxygen on hand.

4) Go to your Refiners and start refining! Note that these are all “net gain” recipes, meaning that you don’t lose any of your starting materials. The extra Chlorine and Condensed Carbon can go back into storage for next time.

Refine 50 Condensed Carbon + 100 Oxygen -> 300 Condensed Carbon.

Refine 25 Chlorine + 50 Oxygen -> 150 Chlorine.

Refine 125 Chlorine -> 250 Salt.

Refine 250 Salt + 250 Nitrogen -> 250 Kelp Sacs.

Refine 250 Kelp Sacs, 250 Condensed Carbon, and 250 crop of choice into 2400 Oxygen. This particular recipe is a bit slow, so i’d recommend splitting it up into 4 or even 8 refiners. Voila!

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Okay, so let’s talk about those Stellar Extractor rooms and their little bugs? Here’s what i have personally encountered and how i’ve been able to work through them. If you know of other bugs and workarounds, please feel free to add them in the comments? Thanks! Anyway…

When you first build a Stellar Extractor room, it seems to be important to wait a few minutes until it produces at least one unit of something and then collect it. Otherwise it might not work right. This only needs to be done once, and that’s when you first build the room.

If you check your Stellar Extractor and it doesn’t have anything in it when it should, try going into the build menu, removing the room, and then replacing it. More often than not, the gathered materials have magically reappeared for me after doing this. I’ve only encountered this a few times ever, though, so your mileage may vary.

Finally, if you’d rather not deal with Stellar Extractor rooms at all, you don’t have to! Travel to any star system with water, hop in a starship, and scour the ocean floors with a Positron Ejector to collect the Kelp Sacs growing there. As a bonus, this will probably also get you a bunch of Cyto-Phosphate, Carbon, Salt, and a few other things.

Anyway, i hope you find this information useful. Good luck and have fun, fellow Travellers!

It’s possible to go to a nexus mission planet and NOT litter it with a thousand communications beacons, glitching out everyone’s game!

Why not try it on your next mission? Fun for the whole family! 🎉