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 Vikeen pirate, as then you have two good and 1 remote chances at high-maneuverability S-class: fighter, solar, exotic.

No Man’s Sky has been a one time purchase since it was launched 5 years ago. How can Hello Games continue to update the game without charging a single dollar? Is it sustainable? I have been wondering about this a lot. I did some digging and these are some of the things I was able to find.

Launch: According to Superdata article, No Man’s Sky made 78 Million USD from digital sales during the first month of the launch. (No man’s sky also had a physical retail launch). (My guess is during launch year, it generated around 100-130 Million USD revenue (not profit))

Now hard facts, looking at the Hello Games’ (No man’s sky developer) financials, just before January 2018 (1 and half year after launch) they had roughly 82 million USD cash left. out of which half 41 million was taken out of the company for something (to buy office space? long term investment? cash payout to founders? I don’t know). So January 2018 in hello games company had 41 million USD cash. In late Summer 2018, came the first Big “Next” update, which generated roughly 35 million USD by October 2018. In summer 2019, came the “Beyond” update which generated 25 million USD.

As of October 31 2019 (3 years after launch. and last publicly available financial), they have around 100 million USD cash left. They have a burn rate of 6.2 million USD a year (salary + admin). This means without additional money, they can keep updating no man’s sky for 16-17 years. (Not to say that they should update no man’s sky that long. They have already gone above and beyond of what’s expected)

2020 and future: No man’s sky surely made significant money in 2020 with “Origin” update. (How much would be know around October this year when the next filing will be made public) They also released “The Last Campfire” game but revenue from that small game would hardly be a million or two. No man’s sky has been part of Xbox game pass since 2020. So Microsoft should also be paying some money as well. This being said there are surely diminishing revenues. But profitable nonetheless. Meaning their current net worth should be well beyond 100 Million cash (107 million net worth) at 2019. (My guess for current net worth would be 125 Million USD)

No man’s sky has been a unique case. It’s an indie game that has generated AAA level of revenue. (My guess is close to 180-200 million USD revenue in its life time with roughly 10 million copies sold (5.4 million PlayStation, 4.4 million steam, 2.4 million Xbox) (source: playtracker) I would argue that a AAA game studio (with much higher burn rate) would also have been able to break even with sales and revenue of No Man’s Sky for 5 years post launch support. But Of course, breaking even is never enough for publicly traded parent companies of AAA devs. For any indie team like Hello Games, this is very rare and more than enough to sustain for decades.

At any time, Sean (who owns 50% which equates to 60 million USD) and other founding members can pack up and buy an Island and retire but they decided to stay and make No Man’s Sky better and so far it has paid them well financially. Sean has said in interviews that Hello Games are also developing something new as ambitious (if not more) as No Man’s Sky. My great many wishes for amazing, hard working, inspiring folks at Hello Games.

Source:

Hello Games filing history

(Note filing numbers are in pounds. I have converted them in USD and also rounded them for simplicity.)

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! 🎉

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?