If you’ve ever spent hours grinding for parts to build a new base terminal or upgrade your exosuit’s inventory, you’ve probably run into a wiring loom requirement at some point. New players often ask can you make wiring loom in No Man’s Sky instead of shelling out scarce units to buy it from space stations, and the short answer is yes – but you have to unlock the recipe first. I’ve spent over 300 hours in the game building sprawling bases across 12 different star systems, and I keep a stack of 50 wiring looms on me at all times to avoid mid-project delays. This guide walks you through every step of getting, crafting, and using this versatile component so you never get stuck waiting for one again.
How to Unlock the Recipe to Make Wiring Loom in No Man’s Sky
You don’t start the game with the wiring loom recipe unlocked, but it’s one of the easiest mid-game recipes to get access to. If you’re still working through the early game questline that introduces you to base building, you’ll actually get the wiring loom recipe automatically as a reward for completing the third Construction Overseer mission, where you’re asked to build a small power grid for your first base. But if you want to skip ahead and get it earlier, you can head to the Space Anomaly as soon as you unlock it after the first few main story missions.
Head to the Construction Research Station near the back of the Anomaly, look under the “General Construction” tech tree, and purchase the recipe for 80 nanites. Nanites are easy to earn early game by scanning fauna and flora on new planets, or turning in broken tech you find in crashed pods. You only need to unlock the wiring loom recipe once, and it stays available across all your save files permanently.
If you don’t feel like waiting to unlock the recipe, you can also find wiring looms as random loot in abandoned buildings, or get them as a reward for saving settlements from pirate attacks, but those are unreliable sources compared to just crafting your own. I recommend waiting to unlock the recipe first, it will save you far more time in the long run.
Materials You Need to Craft a Wiring Loom
The exact recipe only requires two common, easy-to-farm materials that you can find on almost every planet in the galaxy. You don’t need any rare exotic resources or high-tier refining equipment to make them, just a basic portable refiner and a standard mining laser. The full list of required materials is:
- 50x Condensed Carbon: You make this by refining 250 regular Carbon in a portable refiner, or harvest it directly from large crystalline plants found on hot, tropical planets.
- 1x Silver: You can mine silver from grey, shimmering mineral deposits on most rocky planets, or get it as a byproduct of refining other rare metals like Gold or Platinum.
I usually farm for these materials on desert planets, because they have tons of silver deposits and large cactus plants that give massive amounts of Carbon per harvest. I’ll spend 10 minutes running around with my mining laser, collect 2,000 regular Carbon and 20 Silver, head back to my base, refine the Carbon into Condensed Carbon, and walk away with 20 wiring looms that would have cost me 1 million units if I bought them from a space station.
Crafting a wiring loom costs roughly 1,200 units worth of materials, which is a 97% discount compared to buying one from a space station. That savings adds up fast when you’re building a large base that needs 30+ looms for all its terminals and power systems.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Making Wiring Looms
Even though crafting wiring looms is straightforward, I see a lot of new players make the same avoidable mistakes that waste their time and resources. One of the most common mistakes I see is not carrying enough condensed carbon with you when you’re out exploring. A lot of players will run out of looms mid-project and only have enough regular carbon to make one or two, which slows down their build significantly. I always keep a stack of 2,000 condensed carbon in my exosuit inventory so I can craft looms on the fly without stopping to harvest more.
Another common mistake is wasting your first few wiring looms on low-tier upgrades that you’ll replace within a few hours of play. For example, a C-class shield upgrade only needs one wiring loom, but you’ll find a better B or A class upgrade within a day of exploring, so you’re better off saving those looms for permanent upgrades like your base teleporter or S-class hyperdrive.
Don’t sell extra wiring looms to standard space station merchants, you’ll get far less value than if you use them to craft higher-tier tech to sell instead. I once made 2 million units in an hour by crafting 50 wiring looms, turning them into advanced storage silos, and selling the silos to a construction merchant at a planetary settlement that had a demand for building materials. If you want to make extra units with your looms, always turn them into finished products first.
Top Uses for Wiring Looms in Your Playthrough
Wiring looms are one of the most versatile components in the game, and you’ll need them for almost every advanced project you take on. The most common use is for base building: almost every advanced base component needs at least one wiring loom. That includes teleporters, power generators, storage silos, agricultural stations, and defense turrets. If you're planning to build a large base with multiple functional rooms, you'll need at least 20 looms to complete the project.
They’re also essential for high-tier tech upgrades for your exosuit, multi-tool, and starship. For example, the S-class hyperdrive upgrade needs two wiring looms to craft, and it cuts down your interstellar travel fuel costs by 40%. I always craft 4 of these upgrades for my main starship, so I can jump across 5 systems at a time without refueling.
If you’re into freighter building, you’ll go through even more wiring looms. Every room you add to your freighter, from the hanger bays to the research labs, needs at least two wiring looms to install. I recently expanded my freighter to have 12 agricultural rooms for growing NipNip buds, and that project alone required 48 wiring looms to complete.
Wiring looms are also required to repair damaged cargo pods you find on crashed freighters and starships, which is one of the fastest ways to get rare tech for free. I once found a crashed S-class freighter that only needed 3 wiring looms to repair its main systems, and I got a 34-slot freighter for free that would have cost me 120 million units to buy outright. It’s always worth keeping a few looms on you when you’re exploring uncharted systems, you never know when you’ll run into a great deal that requires one.
At the end of the day, if you’re asking can you make wiring loom in No Man’s Sky, you now have all the info you need to unlock, craft, and use this game-changing component to make your playthrough far smoother. It’s one of the first recipes I recommend new players unlock as soon as they get access to the Anomaly, because it cuts down on so much unnecessary grinding and unit spending. Once you start making your own wiring looms, you’ll wonder how you ever played the game without a stack of them in your inventory. If you have a favorite way to use wiring looms that I didn’t mention, drop it in the comments below to help other players out.
