I still remember the first time I saw a living ship floating past my freighter a few years back. Its glowing blue hull and curved organic lines looked nothing like the clunky metal hauler I’d been grinding to upgrade for months, and I immediately knew I needed one for myself. I spent three days fumbling through wrong steps, buying fake Void Eggs from other players, and missing the pulse anomaly before I finally figured out the correct process. If you’re wondering how to get a living ship in No Man’s Sky without all the frustrating trial and error, this guide breaks down every step you need to follow, plus all the tricks I picked up along the way.
What Makes Living Ships Worth the Effort?
Living ships aren’t just a cool cosmetic upgrade for your fleet. They come with a ton of practical perks that make them way more useful for long-term exploration than most regular metal starships, even high-tier S-class models. For starters, they never take damage from meteor strikes or pirate scan retaliation, so you won’t have to waste rare resources repairing your hull mid-jump. They also have self-repairing core tech when you’re flying through open space, so you don’t have to carry around stacks of repair glue or spare parts for your thrusters or hyperdrive.
Before you start your hunt, there are a few non-negotiable pre-requisites you need to have checked off first. If you skip these, you won’t be able to trigger the required quest or complete the steps to claim your ship:
- A completed Artemis Path main questline up to the point where you unlock all 16 portal glyphs, so you can travel to any system you need for the quest steps
- At least 3,200 Quicksilver to purchase a Void Egg from the Space Anomaly’s Quicksilver Synthesis Companion
- 5+ free inventory slots in both your exosuit and current starship to hold quest items and the organic materials you’ll need for repairs
- Access to at least 10 unvisited star systems, as you’ll need to jump between different systems to collect all the required Void Egg memories
If you’re short on Quicksilver, you can earn it quickly by completing daily and weekly Nexus missions in the Space Anomaly, or by taking part in community events that run every few months. It usually takes me 3-4 days of doing 10 minute daily missions to save up enough for a Void Egg, so it’s not a huge grind.
How to Get a Living Ship in No Man's Sky: Full Step-by-Step Walkthrough
Once you have all your pre-requisites sorted, the actual process of unlocking your living ship takes between 2 and 3 hours, depending on how fast you can travel between systems. First, head to the Space Anomaly and go to the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion, the little robot vendor on the upper level next to the Nexus terminal. Buy the Void Egg from their inventory, and it will automatically be added to your starship’s inventory.
Next, fly out of the Anomaly into open space in any star system, and make sure you have no other active missions that trigger pulse drive events. Set the Void Egg as your active quest item, then activate your pulse drive and let it run. It usually takes between 30 seconds and 2 minutes for the anomaly to trigger, so don’t cut the pulse short if you don’t get a notification right away. You’ll know it worked when you get a strange, garbled transmission from an unknown source, and the Starbirth quest will pop up in your mission log.
The Starbirth quest will send you to a series of planetary locations across different star systems to collect 5 memory shards for your Void Egg. Each step will require you to craft a small organic item to activate the memory site, and the required materials will be listed in the quest description. You can check the Void Egg’s description in your inventory for hidden hints if you get stuck on where to go next—the game doesn’t always mark every objective clearly on your map, so this little trick saves a ton of time.
Once you collect all 5 memory shards, the quest will give you coordinates to a crashed living ship on a nearby planet. Fly down to the site, and you’ll see the organic ship half-buried in the ground. You’ll need to repair 5 different parts of the ship using organic materials like living sludge, fungal mould, and condensed carbon before you can claim it. Make sure you have at least one free starship slot or 10 million units to scrap your current ship before you interact with the crashed living ship—if you don’t have space, the game won’t let you claim it, and you’ll have to restart the entire quest to get another one.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Unlocking Your Living Ship
I made almost every possible mistake when I was unlocking my first living ship, so I can tell you exactly what to skip to save yourself hours of frustration. First, don’t buy Void Eggs from other players in the Space Anomaly, even if they’re selling them for way less than 3,200 Quicksilver. Only Void Eggs purchased directly from the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion will trigger the Starbirth quest—player-traded eggs are just decorative, and won’t start the required questline.
Another common mistake is cutting pulse jumps short when you’re waiting for the initial anomaly to trigger. I used to pulse for 10 seconds, stop, and try again because I thought I was doing something wrong, but the anomaly can take up to 2 minutes to spawn, especially if you’re in a crowded system with lots of other ships. Just let the pulse run until your fuel runs low if you have to, it will pop up eventually.
Don’t try to complete the entire quest in a single star system, either. Each memory shard requires you to travel to a different system, so if you’re hanging around the same system waiting for the next objective to pop up, you’ll be waiting forever. You also want to make sure you save your game right before you land at the crashed living ship site. Sometimes the game glitches and the ship disappears if you crash on landing, so a quick manual save will save you from having to redo the last few quest steps.
How to Customize and Upgrade Your Living Ship Post-Unlock
Once you’ve claimed your living ship, you don’t have to stick with its default stats or appearance if you don’t like them. Living ships use unique organic upgrade modules that you can find from pulse drive anomalies, Nexus missions, or from other crashed living ship sites across the galaxy. You can upgrade their hyperdrive range, shield strength, and weapon damage just like regular ships, and the upgrades are usually cheaper to craft than metal ship upgrades.
You can change your living ship’s appearance completely by finding other crashed living ships and interacting with them. When you approach a crashed living ship after you already own one, you’ll get the option to swap parts like the hull, wings, and cockpit with your current ship, so you can mix and match to create a design that’s totally unique to you. You don’t have to claim the second ship to swap parts, so you can do this as many times as you want for free.
If you’re not happy with your living ship’s base stats, you can also repeat the entire Starbirth quest as many times as you want. Just buy another Void Egg from the Quicksilver vendor and go through the steps again to get a new ship with better stats. I’ve done this three times now, and my current living ship has a 3,000 light year hyperdrive range, which is way higher than any S-class metal explorer I’ve ever found. It also doesn’t require launch fuel once you unlock the organic thruster upgrade, so I never have to farm di-hydrogen before I take off from a planet anymore.
Unlocking a living ship is one of the most rewarding side quests you can complete in No Man’s Sky, and it’s totally worth the few hours of grind to get one. Whether you’re a casual player who’s tired of repairing your ship every time you run into a meteor shower, or a long-time explorer who wants a unique ship to show off to friends, the process is straightforward once you know what steps to follow. If you’ve been putting off learning how to get a living ship in No Man’s Sky because you thought it was too complicated, grab a Void Egg this week and give it a shot—you won’t regret it.
