Things To Do First - No Man's Sky Guide - IGN (2024)

Want to get off to a great start in No Man's Sky? Here are the things you'll want to do right away to get a jump on the huge space epic.

Learn more about how to get off to a great start with this guide, and also check out our very helpful collection of Things No Man's Sky Doesn't Tell You.

Upgrade Your Scanner

It’s difficult to overemphasize how important long-range scanning is. You’ll use it to find valuable Elements, and more importantly, the relays that guide you to Colony Bases, Manufacturing Facilities, and more.

Weapon upgrades recipes (which include scanner Blueprints) are plentiful if you know where to look. Most of the time, you’ll find them in Colony Bases and Manufacturing Facilities in little wall terminals. Once you have a recipe and the necessary resources, Craft it using an empty slot on your Multi Tool.

Get an Atlas Pass

If you're lucky enough to warp into a system hosting an Atlas Station, you'll be privy to a repository of wealth and ancient knowledge.

In addition to providing you with Warp Cells, language training, and valuable Atlas Stones, encountering these stations usually opens the path to finding a Space Anomaly. Board an Anomaly (typically encountered in the system you leap to following an Atlas Station) to get an Atlas Pass Blueprint. Atlas Passes open all kinds of locked storage rooms and boxes, especially the upper reaches of Space Stations.

Talk to Everybody

The stations and facilities you visit are populated with myriad strange life forms. Talk with them. Even if you don’t understand every word they say, you’ll often get the gist. Go along with their desires, give gifts, and act nice, and you’ll find the rewards are almost always worth the trouble.

The more you learn about a language, the better you'll be able to understand what the lifeforms want. This goes double for accessing manfacturing plants and supply depots.

Learn Languages

Languages are the key to better negotiation, which means more free stuff. When in a Manufacturing facility, always pick up a new word if one is available from a wall terminal.

Likewise with Knowledge Stones that can be found all over planets.

You can sometimes "farm" languages by finding an alien, and after speaking with them once, trade carbon to speak again. If presented with a request for fuel (or carbon) you can sometimes get more carbon than you gave, and keep talking to request new words, and then more carbon to replenish your supply as long as the option appears.

Hoard Blueprints

You can never have too many Blueprints. Unlike most other resources, they don’t take up inventory space, so grab as many as you can. You’ll almost always encounter a situation where they’re helpful.

Build a Teleporter

Once you're able to build a teleporter, build one immediately. By placing one in your base and following the story until you reach your first Atlas Station you'll gain the ability to teleport not just between your various bases, but between every space station you've ever visited in any system you've ever been to, meaning you won't need to keep extra warp cells on hand to visit a system you've already been to.

Conserve Your Warp Cells

Don’t leave a system until you’re done there. Warp Cells are a rare and precious commodity...crafting them takes some diverse resource gathering. Don’t be too frivolous when hopping from star to star. At the same time, always remember that the components you need to craft cells will be available somewhere in your system, so don’t panic if you find your reserve dry.

Understand Isotopes

Isotopes are among the most common, and important, Elements in the No Man’s Sky galaxy, providing primary power for most of your key equipment, including Weapons, Life Support, your Mining Beam, your ship’s Launch Thrusters and Pulse Drive.

Isotopes (particularly Carbon) are also useful in activating many helpful wall terminals. In a sense, Carbon is the pocket change of the No Man’s Sky galaxy, eternally useful in the frequent interactions you’ll have with the world around you.

Get Free Stuff Planetside

Don't bypass anything in the structure where you meet the first alien and get your Hyperdrive Blueprint. Look around for whatever free supplies are in shelters. There will often be wall mounted terminals that give money, blueprints, or reputation increase, and storage boxes on the ground and plants can give supplies as well.

Cash on Demand

Valuable Elements (the green ones) and rare materials (the purple ones) are a great way to earn cash. Need more Units? Scan and farm for these planetside and sell them in space. Look for giant sparkling rocks of gold, copper, and emeril that often stand out among the terrain, either in large pillars or huge oval-shaped boulders.

Get Free Stuff in a Space Station

Every star system has a Space Station, a haven for travelers providing trade services, saving options, and shield replenishment. So long as you don't attack them. Space Stations represent near impregnable havens.

But perhaps more importantly, in the upper reaches of Space Stations exist small rooms with canisters often containing valuable Crafting materials or other useful Elements, which are very helpful for rapidly upgrading your character's equipment. [1] These are especially useful for find valuables and Warp Cells. To enter, you'll need to craft an Atlas Pass.

Take a Deep Breath

The overwhelming scale of No Man's Sky might be a bit intimidating at first. With very little linear guidance, you might be a bit overwhelmed. Remember that as big as things are, the game's activities really boil down to a few core activities: Exploration and Gathering, Barter, Combat, and Finding the Center.

Upgrade Your Hyperdrive or Ship

Your starter ship is fine, but you’ll want something with greater warp range. Grab a vessel with an extended hyperdrive range as soon as you can. Save some cash and hang out in a Space Station dock until what you need shows up, or start following Transmissions until you find a repairable crashed vessel with the equipment you need.