If you’ve ever spent hours grinding for units, fighting off pirate ambushes, and jumping through 30+ star systems just to get your hands on an S-class freighter in standard No Man’s Sky playthroughs, you’ll be thrilled to know the process is way simpler in creative mode. Learning how to get a freighter in no man's sky creative takes less than five minutes, no resource farming or combat required, and lets you jump straight to building massive mobile bases, storing unlimited resources, and exploring the galaxy with all your favorite ships in tow. I’ve spent hundreds of hours messing around in creative mode testing base builds and fleet setups, so I’ve broken down every possible way to grab a freighter, plus the best tips to customize it to fit your playstyle right away.
First: Confirm Your Creative Mode Settings Before Spawning a Freighter
Before you try to summon your first freighter, take 30 seconds to double-check your game settings to avoid frustrating glitches. If you’re playing solo, you don’t have to adjust much, since creative mode unlocks all spawn permissions and blueprints by default. But if you’re joining a friend’s multiplayer creative lobby, you’ll need to ask the host to enable “allow entity spawning” and “allow base building” for your user profile, otherwise you won’t see the freighter summon option in your menu.
Make sure you are not standing on a planet surface when you try to summon your first freighter, because the game will not spawn large capital ships inside a planet's atmosphere. That’s one of the most common mistakes new creative mode players make, and it leads to a lot of confused questions on community forums. You only need to fly into open space, at least 1000 units away from any planet, space station, or asteroid field, to trigger the spawn option successfully.
You also don’t need to have any freighter blueprints unlocked, even if you’re playing a brand new save file. Creative mode automatically unlocks all vehicle and building blueprints the second you start the game, so you don’t have to visit the anomaly or complete any story missions first. That’s a huge difference from standard survival mode, where you have to progress through the main story for hours to unlock freighter access.
How to Get a Freighter in No Man’s Sky Creative: 2 Simple Methods
There are two easy ways to get a freighter in creative mode, and each has its own perks depending on what you want to use your freighter for. You can pick whichever fits your goals, and you can always swap out your freighter later for a different design if you change your mind.
- Summon from your quick menu: This is the fastest method for most players. Open your quick access menu, navigate to the “Summon Vehicles” tab, and select “Freighter” from the list of available vehicles. The game will spawn a random default freighter right in front of you within 10 seconds, and you can land in its hangar immediately to start using it.
- Claim a spawned freighter from a space battle: If you want a specific S-class freighter with a particular hull design, color scheme, or cargo capacity, you can trigger the standard freighter rescue event even in creative mode. Jump to a new star system, wait 30 to 60 seconds, and a pirate attack on a freighter will spawn. You don’t even have to fight the pirates if you don’t want to – just fly close to the freighter, land in its hangar, and talk to the captain to claim it for free.
The quick summon method is perfect if you just need a freighter to use as a mobile base right away, and you don’t care about its appearance or stats. The only downside is that you can’t pick the design, so you might get a small cargo freighter instead of the large capital ship you wanted. But that’s an easy fix – you can just dismiss it from your fleet menu and summon another one until you get a design you like.
The rescue method takes a couple extra minutes, but it lets you pick exactly the freighter you want. If the freighter that spawns in the rescue event doesn’t match what you’re looking for, you can just reload your last auto-save and jump to the system again to get a different design. I use this method whenever I want a specific alien race freighter design, since each star system’s spawned freighter matches the dominant alien race in that system.
Top Customization Tips for Your Creative Mode Freighter
Once you have your freighter, creative mode lets you customize every single part of it without spending any units or resources. You don’t have to grind for salvage or freighter upgrade modules like you do in survival mode, so you can experiment as much as you want without worrying about wasting materials.
You can change your freighter's class, color, and hull design at any time from the freighter management console near the bridge, so you don’t have to worry about picking the “perfect” one right away. I usually start with a random summoned freighter, then swap out its design later once I decide what theme I want for my playthrough. You can even switch between small cargo freighters and massive capital ships in 10 seconds if you want.
You can build as many rooms and decorations as you want across the entire freighter interior and exterior. Popular builds include hydroponics bays that grow every type of plant in the game, fleet command centers that let you manage dozens of frigates, and even custom art galleries or roleplay spaces. I always add a dedicated crafting room with every type of refiner and upgrade station, since I do a lot of resource testing in creative mode.
You can place base teleporters anywhere on your freighter to link it to all your planetary bases, so you can travel between them in seconds without having to fly through space. You can also spawn up to 30 frigates to join your fleet for free, and you can set their rank to S-class instantly from the fleet management menu, no need to send them on missions to level them up. That means you can have a fully maxed out S-class fleet in less than five minutes.
Common Mistakes to Avoid With Your Creative Mode Freighter
Even though creative mode is pretty forgiving, there are a few common mistakes that can ruin your fun if you don’t watch out for them. Most of these are simple to fix, but it’s easier to avoid them in the first place.
Don’t build too close to the freighter's core systems, like the bridge or the hangar entrance. If you block the hangar door with base parts, you won’t be able to land your ship on the freighter anymore, and you’ll have to delete the blocking parts to fix it. I made this mistake once when I built a large garden right outside the hangar, and I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out why my ship kept bouncing off the freighter when I tried to land.
Don't summon your freighter too close to a space station or other large structures, because the game will glitch and either spawn it inside the other object or not spawn it at all. If this happens, just fly a few thousand units away from the structure and try summoning it again. You also shouldn’t summon it near dense asteroid fields, because the asteroids will glitch inside the freighter hull and make it hard to land.
If you’re playing multiplayer, don’t make major changes to your freighter when other players are on board, because it can cause sync issues that kick everyone out of the game. It’s best to customize your freighter when you’re playing solo, then invite friends to visit once you’re done. Also, remember that you don’t have to pay for freighter warp fuel in creative mode, so you can jump to any star system in the galaxy instantly without having to craft warp cells first. That’s a huge perk most new creative players don’t find out about for weeks.
At the end of the day, the best part of playing No Man’s Sky in creative mode is that you can skip all the boring grinding and jump straight to the fun parts of the game, like building massive mobile bases and exploring uncharted systems. Knowing how to get a freighter in no man's sky creative opens up so many new possibilities for your playthrough, whether you want to make a mobile art gallery, a fleet of warships, or a self-sustaining farm that travels across the galaxy. Try out both spawn methods to see what works for you, and don’t be afraid to mess around with customizations – you can always change anything later if you don’t like how it turns out.
