OK, apologies if this is a worn topic; I’m fairly new to the game and still discovering things.

Early on when I was learning my way around space stations, I found that room off the side of the technology merchants’ area, with a little hallway leading to a locked door that said “AltasPass v3 Required”. My interest was piqued. I eventually found the recipe for an AtlasPass v3 and saw that it needed Emeril. So I looked up Emeril and found that it can only be found on planets around green stars, and that required a special update to my ship’s hyperdrive. Now I was really interested! Something that takes that much work must have an interesting reward, right?

So I eventually got my hyperdrive upgraded, visited a green star, found an Emeril deposit on a planet, and mined it. Crafted my pass, and I was good to go.

The next station I visited, I ran straight to that door, opened it, and… WTF? A hydroponics garden? That’s it?

I felt a bit like Ralphie in A Christmas Story when he finally decoded his Ovaltine message. Is that really all there is to this room? Does the AtlasPass v3 have other uses?

No complaints here, it pushed me to explore a little more which is part of the point of this game. I just thought it was a little weird to have to go to so much trouble for such a pointless room.

I remember when following the atlas I was presented with other galaxy types, iirc that’d dictate where I’d go to next.

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Also do I have to go through the whole new galaxy cutscene thing every time I go? Thinking of going as far as Teyaypilny.

I am IN LOVE with the low-orbit frigates flying over top of me. It never ceases to stop me in my tracks and jumping into my ship and flying next to one just makes me happy. It makes me feel like there’s an actual “world” going on around me, like the game is more “alive”. That addition brings me back to when the visuals for weather changed to being able to see a storm growing over us as we hear the “Warning: Incoming storm” and the first time I saw clouds building up I just stopped and watched it happen.

So. What other relativley small changes could Hello Games add to make our beloved space sim feel more Alive?

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!