Wrote this as a comment to answer someone’s question, figured it could use it’s own post.

There is no pattern for ship spawning, there are set parts it uses to build random ships just like all the other ships, someone built a list of parts, when you’re on the galaxy map looking at a system, some systems say “water” if there’s a planet with water in the system, but there’s a new type of system that is corrupted and it says dissonant where the water should be, and won’t say water even if there is.

Make sure you have an advanced mining laser and keep an exocraft summoning station in your pocket too (which you should always do anyway, drop it, summon, pick back up, can then summon that or those crafts from all over that system without dropping it again), preferably one that can summon a fully boosted nomad with an advanced mining laser installed.

When you warp to those dissonant systems one of the planets will say it has corrupted sentinels listed with the minerals when you scan it. That planet will have a specific interceptor ship that will spawn on it, unless it is a dead planet or a lush planet (lush planets are currently broken). There may be several of that ship on the planet but they will all be exactly the same except it’s class can be different so you can hunt for higher class ships on that planet if need be. Most planets seem to have an average of 3 but i’ve seen some with only 1 and some with quite a few.

There are a couple ways to find those ships, you can land on the ground, pick a fight with sentinels, win all 5 rounds and it will find a shard for you to fly to, that’s the ship. You can also pick a fight with the sentinels and then jump in your ship and do a space battle and beat the dreadnaught on round 5 (you don’t have to kill the other ships on round 5, just the big one) and it will give you an AI thing you can use to search for shards which are the ships.

There are also some purple towers you can fly or drive around and shoot. (do not stand close to them when they blow up, it will instakill you or your rover). Those drop mirrors, which is a thing you’ll need and should collect lots of, but some of them drop Echo Locators, if you’re in a rover and maybe have the right scanner installed the tower will tell you what it will drop when you get close. Those echo locators will find a camp, at the camp it has a computer with a math puzzle, solve the puzzles and if gives you the choice to unlock the gun and find shards, you can do both. The gun has 2 options, either a pistol or a rifle, far as i’ve seen there aren’t various models of it. If it’s a class you want you can take the weapon but if you don’t like which one it is you can usually save and reload and it will switch to the other type or try dropping a save point, then flying off and saving and reloading on another planet and flying back to your save to see if it’s changed, you can try every planet in the system just like regular multitools the box defines the class it will be but what planet or space station you last loaded on defines what weapon it is. Then head off to the shard to find your ship.

Once you’re at a ship you just rip it’s brain out, use the brain in your inventory to get directed to a small monolith, go there, do some shock therapy on the brain and bring it back to the ship, insert it with the other parts (which you should collect lots of when you can, they’re needed for everything interceptor related, healing and fueling), and you have a free ship, that’s worth quite a bit of money to sell.

To get tons of shards and mirrors and quite a few echo locators, find a corrupted dead or airless planet that is fairly flat and barren and ride your nomad around scanning and you can find lots of shards and towers. you can do that on any corrupted planet but it’s way faster when there’s not other crap to deal with and go around. Build a base there, name it something to remind you what it’s for.

When you get to a dissonant system you can quickly use a echo locator to find out if that system actually has ships, if it’s jammed there are no ships, just leave unless it’s a dead planet you can use for farming.

Lush planets aren’t corrupted on normal difficulty but they are in survival and permadeath but they are broken and don’t have crystals on them. If you find a sentinel and go through the fights you get nothing for it, and picking a fight and trying to drag it into space results in nothing happening when you get in your ship. So currently no corrupted lush homes.

Let me know if I have any wrong information or if I should add anything. I’m in a lot of pain always so i have a hard time thinking.

All jokes aside, I’ve been seeing a lot of people genuinely complaining about the latest Expedition. Granted we had a rough start with not being able to start it (Couldn’t start mine until today) and some server issues. But this is HG we’re talking about here; they were bound to fix is as soon as they could so stop being mean.

As for the community goal: oh no, you can’t finish the expedition in the first of FIVE weeks that it’s here. I wonder if there is anything else for you to do while you wait…..Not like there’s a whole game to play or anything. Build a base, explore, help others, do other stuff.

Also I’m seeing stuff about a timer for the goal: they use a timer to slowly increment it while we contribute so the milestone is finished by the end (or earlier) of the expedition at least.

TLDR; Save your hate for Reddit rn

This post will be refreshed every few days. The old post are still available for answering questions in those post.

Below are a few popular questions that we’ve received from our past FAQ thread. As always we ask that everyone be respectful and we welcome everyone’s contribution so have fun!

Q- I’m keen to start a new passive money making pursuit. What are some good ideas or guides post-Waypoint?

A#1- Gold farm, then take that stack and sell it at a terminal (not traders) in systems that sell gold. Sell all your gold to the terminal and crash the economy. Then buy it all back at 80% off discount. You just got free money and keep all the gold. All this takes is an initial investment on a gold farm, then you carry all that gold with you and just sell/buy back when you get to another system that sells gold. With 50 stacks in my ship’s cargo hold, I can make somewhere around 150 million units in each system I do this in.

A#2- Start a Farm, Fusion Igniters or Statis Devices Farm which will increase your profits to 100- 200 mil fairly quickly and you can even send out multiple freighter missions which will help you get aronium, magno-gold, Enriched carbon and more which will increase the profits even more.

A#3- Quickest way I’ve found to make a TON of units: Harvesting Storm Crystals. Find a VERY hot planet that has frequent fire storms. DURING STORMS ONLY – you can see the bright white light from Storm Crystals if you fly around low enough. Fly to them, land, quickly harvest them, get back in your ship and fly to the next before you burn up. Q-Where can I post ships and other cool stuff that I want to share with the public? A-You can always post on this sub and now the NMSGlyphExchange is live! Q-How do I get the Advanced Mining Laser? I don’t have the option to craft one, and the multi-tool upgrade vendor at the space station doesn’t have the blueprint for sale.

A- In order to get it, you have to look for the blueprints in crashed ships or abandoned facilities. You get it from the main story (awakenings) or you can buy it on the anomaly.

Q-What do I actually do in the game? I finished the tutorial, is there anything else beside gathering stuff, building a base and repeat?

A#1- It’s really whatever you want, there’s a base story, (assuming you haven’t completed it already), follow the quest log and you’ll figure it out, but things You’d want to do for end game? You can collect multiple multitools, ships, built a fleet for your freighter, etc.

Q- Is there a planet that is populated by many players, and they built their base close to each others like a city?

A- Yeah its the Galactic Hub Project, Its a place where many people have bases and each day the numbers grow. Please help yourself. There are many factions in NMS that do this, even NMS Pirates Hub.

Q- I’m still pretty early into the game, just making my way to the center of the galaxy, what should I be spending my credits on?

A- Go hang around a outlaw/pirate trading post. Cheapest S-class start at around 8-8.5 million without a trade-in. I recommend Vykeen pirate, as then you have two good and 1 remote chances at high-maneuverability S-class: fighter, solar, exotic.