If you’ve ever stared at your menu wondering how to invite friends on No Man's Sky without hitting random connection errors or loading into the wrong star system, you’re far from alone. I spent my first three months playing the game entirely solo, convinced that multiplayer was broken after half a dozen failed invite attempts. Once I figured out the small, easy-to-miss settings that block most invites, the game opened up to a whole new level of fun I’d been missing out on. This guide breaks down every part of the invite process, fixes for common issues, and tips to make your co-op runs go smoothly no matter what platform you play on.
How to Invite Friends on No Man's Sky for All Platforms
The core invite process works almost identically across PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, but there are a few small platform-specific notes to keep in mind first. Before you send any invites, you’ll need to make sure your game is updated to the latest version, and that you’ve linked your Hello Games account if you plan to play with people on different platforms. Crossplay is enabled by default for most new installations, but it’s worth double-checking before you start.
To send an invite, open your in-game menu by pressing the options/escape key, then navigate to the Network tab at the top of the screen. Make sure your “Session Visibility” is set to either “Friends Only” or “Public” — if it’s set to “Private”, no one will be able to join or receive your invites. From there, select the “Friends” option to pull up your platform friends list, plus any Hello Games friends you’ve added manually. Find the friend you want to invite, select their name, and click “Send Invite”. They’ll get a pop-up notification in their game that lets them join your session directly.
If you’re playing with someone you don’t have added on your platform, you can also share your unique friend code from the same Network tab. Have them enter the code in the “Add Friend” field, and you’ll be able to send invites to each other even if you don’t share a platform. This works really well for playing with people you meet in public lobbies or community groups, and it avoids the hassle of adding random accounts to your personal platform friends list.
Common Friend Invite Errors and How to Fix Them
Even if you follow all the steps correctly, you might run into errors now and then, especially if you’re playing across different platforms. Most of these issues have super simple fixes, and you won’t need to mess with any complicated router settings or external software to get things working. I’ve run into almost every possible invite error over the last two years of playing co-op, so these fixes are all tested and proven to work for most cases.
The most frequent issue people run into is invites not showing up at all, even when both players have multiplayer enabled. The most common invite error happens when you and your friend are on different game versions, so first confirm both of you have downloaded the latest patch for your platform. Patches roll out at slightly different times across consoles and PC, so you might have to wait a few hours if one platform’s update is delayed.
For other common errors, try these quick fixes first before digging into deeper settings:
Don’t try to invite friends while you’re in the middle of a galaxy warp or expedition mission, as these game states often break invite functionality. Wait until you’re fully loaded into a system or standing on a planet’s surface before sending invites, and you’ll cut your error rate by at least 70% in my experience. If you still can’t connect after trying all these fixes, you can also try joining a random public lobby first, then inviting your friend to that session — this often resets any broken network connections preventing direct invites.
Best Practices for Smooth Co-op Sessions After Inviting Friends
Once your friend successfully joins your session, there are a few small steps you can take to avoid frustration and make your playtime way more enjoyable. The first thing I always do after a friend joins is drop a shared waypoint on my current location, so even if they spawn a few thousand units away when they load in, they can find me easily. No one wants to spend 20 minutes flying across a planet looking for the group when you could be exploring or building together.
Set a shared base or space station as your default spawn point for all group members if you plan to play multiple sessions together. This way, if someone disconnects or dies, they’ll spawn right with the group instead of in their own home system hundreds of light years away. You can adjust spawn settings from the base computer menu, and you can give individual friends permission to build, delete, or access storage at your base if you’re working on a shared build project.
If you’re playing through story missions or expedition content together, take an extra minute to sync your quest progress before you start. If only the host has the quest active, only the host will get the rewards when you complete it, which is a huge letdown if you’ve spent an hour working through a tough mission together. You can sync quests by having all group members select the same quest from their log before you start the objective. I also recommend turning friendly fire off in the network settings if you’re new to co-op, unless you specifically want to mess around with PvP combat.
Fun Activities to Try With Friends After You Connect
Now that you’ve got your group together, you might be wondering what to do first that’s way more fun than playing solo. My personal favorite group activity is building themed bases in weird or dangerous locations — last month my friends and I built a floating research base on a planet with constant acid rain and 90% toxic atmosphere, and it was way more satisfying to pull off as a team than it would have been alone. You can split up tasks: one person gathers resources, another designs the structure, another sets up power and utilities, and you’ll finish in a fraction of the time it would take solo.
If building isn’t your thing, you can also take on pirate fleets or large Sentinel waves as a group. Group combat runs give you way higher reward payouts than solo runs, and you can split up rare resources like activated indium or stolen cargo to make a ton of units fast. You can also do joint exploration runs of uncharted systems, and name planets and landmarks after each other for a fun personal touch. A friend of mine named a mountain range on an ice planet after my dog after I saved him from a pack of aggressive fauna on our first group run, and it’s still one of my favorite little details in the game.
You can have up to 32 players in a single session, so you can even host small community events like base building competitions or treasure hunts if you want to invite more people. A lot of No Man's Sky communities host regular public events for players of all skill levels, so once you get comfortable with the invite process, you can meet tons of new people to play with too. The game’s procedural generation means there’s always something new to discover, and it’s way more fun to share those discoveries with other people.
Once you get the hang of how to invite friends on No Man's Sky, you’ll realize the game has way more to offer than just solo exploration. Don’t get discouraged if you run into a few errors your first few times trying to connect — most issues take less than a minute to fix once you know what to look for. Next time you log on, grab a friend and try something you’d never do alone, you might be surprised at how much more fun it is.
