Booting up No Man’s Sky for the first time can feel like standing at the edge of an entire universe with no map, no instructions, and a broken life support system. I still remember my first playthrough, fumbling around for 45 minutes trying to figure out why my health kept dropping even after I picked up all the shiny red plants. If you’re feeling lost right now, you’re not alone. This guide breaks down exactly how to get started in No Man’s Sky, with all the tips I wish someone had given me before I wasted three hours mining the wrong resources on my starting planet.
How to Get Started in No Man’s Sky: First 10 Minutes Priority Tasks
When you first spawn, you’ll see a long list of tutorial pop-ups begging you to fix your ship first. Ignore them. Your number one priority for the first 10 minutes is keeping yourself alive, not worrying about leaving the planet. Most new players make the mistake of rushing to ship repairs and end up dying of exposure or toxic poisoning before they even collect 10 pieces of ferrite dust.
- Top up your life support first: Grab every oxygen plant you see within 10 feet of your spawn point, even if your bar is full. You’ll need extra reserves when you venture further out.
- Mine 50 ferrite dust immediately: You’ll use this to fix your scanner, terrain manipulator, and basic life support glitches before you do anything else.
- Fix your multi-tool scanner before anything else: A working scanner will highlight all nearby resources, save you hours of wandering, and alert you to hostile creatures before they attack.
- Grab 20 sodium as soon as your scanner is online: Sodium refills your hazard protection, which is non-negotiable on toxic, radioactive, or frozen starting planets.
I learned this the hard way on my first start, which was on a frozen planet with constant blizzards. I spent 20 minutes running back and forth between my ship and random rocks trying to fix the launch thruster, and I ran out of sodium three times before I realized I hadn’t even turned my scanner on. That mistake wasted almost an hour of playtime, and I don’t want you to repeat it.
Resource Gathering Mistakes New Players Always Make
Resource gathering is the backbone of every part of No Man’s Sky, from building bases to jumping between star systems. When you’re learning how to get started in No Man’s Sky, it’s easy to get caught up in collecting every shiny thing you see. But new players almost always waste time gathering the wrong resources, or hoarding low-value materials that take up all their inventory space. You don’t need to carry every piece of copper or gold you find in your first hour of play.
Your inventory space is extremely limited when you start, so only pick up materials you actually need for your immediate tasks. For your first planet, that means oxygen, sodium, ferrite dust, carbon, and di-hydrogen. Everything else can be left on the ground until you fix your ship and have extra slots to fill. You can always come back later if you need rare materials, but you can’t pick up a critical repair component if your inventory is full of random cobalt you don’t have a use for yet.
Another common mistake is mining large resource deposits with your basic multi-tool before you get the terrain manipulator upgrade. The basic mining laser only pulls a tiny amount of material from large deposits, so you’ll waste 10 minutes mining a deposit that would take 30 seconds with the right upgrade. Wait until you have the terrain manipulator installed before you go after large, high-value resource veins.
How to Pull Off Your First Interstellar Jump Without Headaches
Once you fix your ship’s launch thruster and pulse engine, you’re ready to leave your starting planet for the first time. But a lot of new players get stuck here, either because they don’t have the right fuel for their hyperdrive, or they don’t know how to select a nearby star system to jump to. The main quest line will walk you through building your first hyperdrive, but it leaves out a lot of small details that make the process way easier.
You need 200 chromatic metal and 50 condensed carbon to build your first hyperdrive, so start gathering those materials as soon as you finish repairing your pulse engine. Chromatic metal is made by refining copper, cadmium, emeril, or indium in a portable refiner, so you can mine copper from surface deposits on almost any starting planet to make it. Condensed carbon is made by refining regular carbon, which you can get from trees, plants, and small organic growths all over your starting planet.
Before you make your first jump, make sure you save your game at a save point on your starting planet. I’ve had a run where my hyperdrive glitched mid-jump and I spawned in a system with no habitable planets, and I had to restart my entire playthrough because I didn’t save before leaving. It’s a rare glitch, but it’s not worth losing hours of progress over.
Also, don’t jump to the first system the game suggests. Pick a system with 2 or 3 stars next to its name, those have more habitable planets, more resources, and more friendly NPCs you can trade with for rare upgrades. Starting with a rich system will make the next 10 hours of play way less stressful than jumping to a dead, resource-poor system first.
Early Game Upgrades That Are Worth Every Credit
You’ll earn units (No Man’s Sky’s in-game currency) pretty quickly once you start trading extra resources and completing small missions for NPCs. A lot of new players blow their first 100,000 units on fancy ship skins or decorative base items, but there are way more useful upgrades you should buy first to make your playthrough smoother.
First, buy extra inventory slots for your exosuit as soon as you can. You can buy these upgrades at any space station or minor settlement for around 10,000 units per slot, and they’re the single most useful upgrade in the early game. More inventory space means you can carry more resources, make fewer trips back to your ship to unload, and earn more units per trading run. I always buy at least 5 extra exosuit slots before I buy any other upgrades, and it cuts my resource gathering time in half every playthrough.
Next, get the better mining laser upgrade for your multi-tool. This upgrade makes mining faster, lets you pull more resources per vein, and even gives you a chance to get rare secondary resources when you mine common materials. You can usually find this upgrade for sale at space stations for around 50,000 units, or you can get it as a reward for completing the first few main quest missions.
Don’t waste your early units on a new ship. The starter ship you get is perfectly fine for the first 20 hours of play, and upgrading its inventory slots is way cheaper than buying a whole new ship. Wait until you find a crashed S-class ship for free on a planet, or save up enough units to buy a high-capacity hauler, before you replace your starter ship. I’ve wasted hundreds of thousands of units on bad early game ships, and I always regret it now that I know how easy it is to get a better ship for free later.
No Man’s Sky is designed to let you play at your own pace, so don’t feel like you have to rush through the main quest or explore every planet you see right away. Take your time, mess around, and don’t get frustrated if you die a few times while you’re learning the ropes. Once you get the hang of the basic mechanics, you’ll have an entire universe to explore on your own terms. If you follow these tips, you’ll know exactly how to get started in No Man’s Sky without the confusion and wasted time that most new players deal with. Happy travels, interloper.
