If you’ve ever spent hours hauling stacks of raw ferrite or cobalt across a planet only to realize you don’t have enough processed material to build a new landing pad, you know how critical a refiner is for any No Man’s Sky run. I still remember my first 10 hours in the game, wasting units buying processed carbon from space stations because I had no clue how to make a refiner in No Man’s Sky to make it myself for a fraction of the cost. This guide breaks down every step you need to build, power, and use refiners to cut down on grind and get the most out of every resource you collect.
What You Need to Make a Refiner in No Man’s Sky
Before you start building, you’ll first need to unlock the refiner blueprint, which you get automatically as part of the early game Awakenings questline when you repair your first starship’s analysis visor. If you skipped that part of the quest, you can also buy the blueprint from any space station technology vendor for 10 nanites, so it’s super easy to get even if you’re well past the early game. The materials you need depend on the type of refiner you want to build, each with different storage and processing speeds:
I always recommend building a portable refiner first, even if you plan to make a larger one for your base later. It fits in your inventory, so you can pull it out mid-exploration to process extra ferrite or carbon instead of leaving valuable raw materials behind because your inventory is full. You don’t have to commit to a permanent installation to get most of the refiner’s core benefits right away.
How to Build and Power Your First Refiner
Once you have the required materials, open your build menu, navigate to the Portable Technology tab, and select the Portable Refiner. You can place it on any flat, clear surface on a planet’s surface, or even on the floor of your existing base if you don’t want to leave it exposed to the elements. Unlike base structures, you don’t have to snap it to an existing building grid, so you can set it up right next to a resource deposit if you’re farming materials on the go.
The portable refiner runs on carbon or condensed carbon, so you’ll need to add at least 10 units of carbon to the fuel slot to get it running. One stack of 99 carbon will power a portable refiner for almost 30 minutes of continuous processing, which is more than enough for most short exploration trips. If you’re using a medium or large refiner for your base, you don’t need to fuel it manually – it will run off your base’s power grid, so you’ll need to connect it to solar panels, batteries, or a biofuel reactor to keep it working.
I’ve made the mistake of leaving a portable refiner running in the middle of a radioactive planet before, only to come back and find it broken from storm damage. If you’re leaving a refiner unattended for more than a few minutes, either pick it up or place it inside a sealed base building to protect it from environmental damage. You also can’t leave items in a portable refiner when you pick it up, so make sure you empty all input and output slots before you stow it, or you’ll lose those materials forever.
Best Recipes to Use With Your New Refiner
Now that you have your refiner set up, you’re probably wondering what you should actually make with it to get the most value. Some recipes will double or even triple the value of your raw materials, so you can sell the output for way more units than you’d get selling the raw stuff, or use it to craft high-end upgrades for your ship, multitool, and exosuit. You don’t have to stick to basic processing recipes either – higher tier refiners unlock all sorts of useful combinations.
The most useful basic recipe is Carbon to Condensed Carbon, which takes 2 regular carbon units to make 1 condensed carbon. Condensed carbon is used for almost every high-end build, including base power systems and exosuit upgrades, and it sells for 4 times more than regular carbon. Another staple recipe is Ferrite Dust to Pure Ferrite, which takes 2 ferrite dust units to make 1 pure ferrite. You’ll need thousands of pure ferrite for base building, so processing your raw ferrite dust as you collect it will save you hours of grinding later.
If you have a medium or large refiner, you can make Chromatic Metal with the recipe 2 Copper (or Cadmium, Emeril, Indium) + 1 Ferrite Dust = 1 Chromatic Metal. Chromatic metal is required for almost every mid to late game technology, including warp drive upgrades and large base components. For players looking to make fast units, use the large refiner recipe 2 Oxygen + 1 Ferrite Dust = 1 Cobalt to farm infinite cobalt, which you can process into ionized cobalt and sell for hundreds of thousands of units per stack. I used this exact farm to make 10 million units in one weekend when I was saving up for my first S-class freighter, so it’s absolutely worth setting up if you need quick units.
Common Refiner Mistakes to Avoid
Even though refiners are pretty straightforward to use, there are a few common mistakes that new players make that cost them time and resources. First, don’t waste your condensed carbon or oxygen as fuel for portable refiners. Regular carbon is super easy to find on almost every planet, so save your higher grade resources for crafting instead of burning them as fuel. I’ve seen new players burn through an entire stack of condensed carbon just to process a few units of ferrite, which is a huge waste of a valuable resource.
Second, don’t forget to take advantage of input multipliers for higher tier refiners. Medium and large refiners let you combine multiple materials to make rare items that you can’t craft with a portable refiner, so you’re missing out on a ton of value if you only ever use the portable model. For example, you can make living glass, one of the most valuable crafted items in the game, only with a large refiner, so upgrading as soon as you can will pay off fast.
Third, never leave rare materials in a refiner that’s not on your base or freighter. If you log out or travel to another system while a portable refiner is sitting out on a random planet, there’s a good chance it will despawn when you come back, along with all the materials inside it. I learned this the hard way when I left 500 indium in a portable refiner on a frozen planet and came back to find it gone after a warp trip. Now I only use portable refiners for on-the-spot processing, and I always store rare materials in my inventory or base storage before I leave an area.
At the end of the day, learning how to make a refiner in No Man’s Sky is one of the first big quality of life upgrades you can get in the game, and it cuts down on grind more than almost any other early game technology. You don’t need to grind for hours to get the materials for your first one, and once you have it, you’ll wonder how you ever played the game without it. Play around with different recipes, test out the different refiner tiers, and don’t be afraid to experiment to find the resource farms that work best for your playstyle.
