If you’ve spent any time playing No Man’s Sky’s 2026 Echoes of the Void update, you’ve probably noticed that glass is one of the most versatile crafting materials in the game, used for everything from sleek base viewports to advanced tech components. A lot of new players get stuck trying to track down the recipe or gather the right materials, especially with the recent tweaks to refining recipes this year. This guide breaks down exactly how to make glass in No Man’s Sky, so you can stop grinding and start building the base or tech you’ve been planning.
What You Need Before You Can Make Glass in No Man’s Sky (2026 Updated Requirements)
First, you’ll need to unlock the Basic Glass Fabrication recipe to start refining. Prior to 2026, you had to complete the first three base building missions to get access to the recipe, but Hello Games adjusted this earlier this year to make it available much earlier. You can now purchase the recipe from any Construction Research Unit for just 10 Salvaged Data, which you can find buried on most planets with your Analysis Visor.
Next, you’ll need two core materials and one piece of equipment to process them. The materials are 50 Silicate Powder and 1 Refined Carbon per unit of glass, and you’ll need either a Portable Refiner or a permanent base refiner to combine them. You don’t need any advanced tech or high-level upgrades to make glass, which makes it a great early-game crafting option for new players.
Step-by-Step Process to Make Glass in No Man’s Sky
Once you have the recipe, materials, and refiner ready, the process is super straightforward. I’ve refined thousands of units of glass for my base builds over the last six months, and I’ve got the process down to a couple of minutes even when I’m starting from scratch with no resources.
The 2026 update cut the refining time for glass in half, which is a huge quality of life improvement for players who need large stacks for big base builds. If you want to see all the recent crafting recipe adjustments, you can read the official 2026 No Man’s Sky crafting patch notes for a full breakdown of changes to refining times and material requirements. I usually keep a stack of 200 Refined Carbon in my exosuit at all times, so I don’t have to stop and harvest plants mid-crafting session when I need to make a few extra pieces of glass.
Best Spots to Farm Glass Materials Fast in 2026
While you can harvest Silicate Powder on almost any planet, some spots make the process way faster and less frustrating. The best planets to farm Silicate Powder are barren, rocky planets with no hostile sentinels – these have 2-3x higher silicate concentration in their top terrain layer than lush or frozen planets, so you’ll get way more powder per minute of harvesting.
I always land near large mountain ranges on these planets, because the exposed vertical rock faces give way more silicate than flat ground. If you have an upgraded Terrain Manipulator with the wide blast mod, you can harvest 500 units of silicate in less than 5 minutes on these planets.
For Refined Carbon, you can either harvest raw Carbon from dense forest planets and refine it, or mine Condensed Carbon from underground deposits and convert it directly to Refined Carbon at a 1:1 ratio. If you’re playing long-term, you can also set up passive resource farms on your freighter for both Silicate Powder and Carbon, so you can generate glass without ever leaving your base. The only downside is that these farms take a couple of hours to set up, so they’re not ideal if you need glass right away.
Top Uses for Glass in No Man’s Sky (2026 Meta)
Glass isn’t just for pretty decorations – it’s a core component for some of the most useful tech and base features in the 2026 update. The most common use is base building: you can use glass to make curved viewports, underwater tunnel enclosures, and greenhouse walls that let you grow crops indoors in any climate. The new underwater base mechanics added this year rely heavily on glass, so you’ll need a lot of it if you want to build a base under the ocean of a water world.
Glass is also required to craft a lot of advanced tech components, including solar panel covers that boost your solar panel efficiency by 30%, and the interstellar base teleporter that lets you fast travel between any of your bases across the galaxy. You’ll need 10 units of glass to build your first interstellar teleporter, so I recommend saving your first few batches of glass for that instead of wasting it on decorative items early on.
If you’re looking for a quick way to make units early in the game, glass is also a great trade item. Each unit sells for 1,200 units at space stations and trade outposts, so if you batch process 100 units of glass, you can make 120,000 units in less than 10 minutes of harvesting and refining. I used this trick to earn enough units for my first freighter back when I started playing the 2026 update, and it still works just as well today.
Knowing how to make glass in No Man’s Sky is one of the most useful early-game skills you can pick up, and it will save you hours of grinding later on when you’re working on big base builds or tech upgrades. The process is simple once you know the recipe and where to find the materials, and the 2026 update made it even easier with shorter refining times and earlier access to the recipe. Next time you’re stuck needing glass for a build, just follow the steps we laid out, and you’ll have a full stack in no time.
