There’s nothing more frustrating than landing on an uncharted planet, finding a massive deposit of rare ferrite dust, and realizing you can’t turn it into pure ferrite to fix your damaged ship components. I’ve been there, panicking as my toxic protection ticked down, fumbling with my quick menu and trying every spot on the rocky ground to get my refiner to deploy. If you’re stuck figuring out how to place portable refiner no man's sky, this guide breaks down every step, common mistakes to avoid, and pro tricks to make resource refining way less of a headache.
What You Need Before You Place Portable Refiner in No Man’s Sky
Before you even open your quick menu to deploy the refiner, there are a few simple boxes you need to tick first. The portable refiner blueprint is unlocked extremely early in the game, as part of the initial "Awakening" tutorial mission where you repair your crashed ship. You won’t have to hunt for it in anomaly shops or complete side quests to get access, which is a huge win for new players. You can access the portable refiner from your utility menu at any time, even before you claim your first base.
To craft the refiner itself, you only need two easy-to-find resources: 1 Metal Plating and 30 Oxygen. Metal Plating is made from 50 Ferrite Dust, which you can mine from almost any rock on the surface of your starting planet. Oxygen can be gathered from glowing red plants, or by using your analysis visor to spot oxygen-rich flora anywhere you land. Make sure you have at least one piece of fuel (carbon or condensed carbon) in your inventory before placing it, otherwise it won’t activate even if you place it correctly. Condensed carbon lasts 4 times longer than regular carbon, so it’s the better fuel choice for long refining runs.
You also need to make sure the refiner is stored in your exosuit main inventory, not your ship cargo or freighter storage. If it’s stored anywhere else, it won’t show up in your quick menu deployable list, and you’ll waste time digging through storage menus trying to find it. I’ve made this mistake more times than I can count, especially when I’m moving resources between my ship and exosuit after a long mining run.
Step-by-Step Placement Process for Any Terrain
Once you have your refiner crafted and in your inventory, placing it takes just a few simple steps, no matter what kind of planet you’re on. First, open your quick utility menu: on PC this is the X key, on PlayStation and Xbox it’s down on the D-pad, and on Nintendo Switch you also press down on the D-pad. Navigate to the deployable utilities tab, and select the portable refiner from the list.
You’ll see a hologram of the refiner appear in front of your character. If the hologram is green, you can click or press the deploy button to place it immediately. If it’s red, that means the spot you’re trying to use is invalid for some reason. The most common cause of a red hologram is uneven or overly steep terrain, which is super common on rocky or mountainous biomes. Flattening a 2x2 foot patch of terrain with your manipulator fixes 90% of placement errors for sloped or rocky landscapes. It only takes a couple of seconds, and you don’t even need to spend any resources on the terrain edit.
You can place your portable refiner in almost any location in the game, as long as it’s not a restricted area. Some of the most useful valid spots include:
- Open planetary terrain of any biome, including frozen, toxic, radioactive and volcanic worlds, even during extreme weather storms
- Freighter hangars, corridors and open deck spaces, even when your freighter is warping between star systems
- Inside or outside your player-built bases, next to storage containers for easy resource transfer between runs
- Inside abandoned buildings, observatories or ancient ruins, as long as there is enough open floor space for the refiner to fit
Once you place the refiner, you can walk up to it and interact with it to open the input, fuel and output slots. You can leave it placed indefinitely, even if you leave the planet or system, though very old placements may despawn after a few weeks of real time if you don’t visit the spot. I have a handful of refiners placed next to rare resource deposits across my favorite systems, and I pop back every few weeks to collect the refined materials when I need extra units.
Common Placement Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Even if you follow all the steps above, you might still run into placement errors every now and then. Most of these are easy to fix once you know what’s causing them. The most common mistake new players make is trying to place the refiner too close to another deployable object, like your ship, a save point, or a communications station. The game requires at least 1 foot of clear space around all portable deployables, so if the hologram is red, just take a couple of steps away from the other object and try again.
Another super common error is the "restricted location" pop-up. This happens when you’re trying to place the refiner in an area owned by NPCs, like a settlement market, space station interior, or the landing pad of a NPC trading post. These areas are locked from player deployables to prevent clutter, so there’s no way around this error. If you get a "restricted location" error, move at least 20 feet away from any NPC-owned structure and try again. I usually just walk to the edge of the settlement’s paved area, and the placement works immediately.
Hidden terrain glitches are another less common but frustrating cause of placement failures. This usually happens near cave entrances, where above-ground and cave terrain hitboxes overlap, or near buried mineral deposits that you can’t see on the surface. If you’re sure you’re in a valid spot but the hologram is still red, try scanning the area with your analysis visor to spot any hidden deposits, then flatten the area again with your terrain manipulator. I once spent 10 minutes trying to place a refiner on a volcanic planet before I realized a small buried activated copper deposit was blocking the spot, so this trick has saved me a lot of frustration.
If you can’t even find the refiner in your deployable menu, double check that it’s not stored in your ship cargo or a freighter storage container. Only items in your exosuit main or tech inventory will show up in the quick deploy menu, so just move it over to your exosuit and it should pop up right away.
Pro Placement Tips to Boost Your Refining Efficiency
Now that you know how to place the refiner without errors, you can use a few simple placement tricks to make your resource runs way faster and more profitable. The first trick is to always place your refiner as close as possible to the resource deposit you’re mining. If you find a massive activated indium deposit, for example, placing the refiner right next to the mining spot means you don’t have to carry hundreds of units of heavy raw indium back to your ship every time your inventory fills up. You can dump it straight into the refiner as you mine, and pick up the finished high-value product when you’re done.
Another smart trick is to place your refiner near a save point or your ship whenever you’re working with high-value resources or on dangerous planets. Placing your refiner within 10 feet of a save point means you won't lose your refined resources if you die unexpectedly during a storm or sentinel attack. This is especially important for permadeath save players, where losing a full inventory of rare resources can set you back hours of progress. I always place a portable save point right next to my refiner when I’m mining on extreme sentinel or weather planets, just in case something goes wrong.
If you play with multiplayer turned on, consider placing your refiner inside a small enclosed base or a deep cave when you’re refining super valuable resources. While most NMS players are friendly, there are occasional griefers who will steal unprotected resources from unattended refiners. Tucking the refiner out of plain sight makes it far less likely that someone will stumble across it and take your hard-earned materials.
You can also place multiple portable refiners right next to each other to process different resources at the same time, as long as you leave enough space to access each one’s inventory slots. I usually set up 3 or 4 refiners at a time when I’m doing a big mining run: one for turning ferrite dust into metal plating, one for turning oxygen into condensed carbon for fuel, one for processing rare minerals into units, and one for turning di-hydrogen into rocket fuel. This cuts down my post-mining processing time by almost 75%, which means I can get back to exploring faster.
At the end of the day, refining raw resources into more useful materials is the backbone of almost everything you do in No Man’s Sky, from fixing your ship to building massive bases to buying your first freighter. Knowing how to place portable refiner no man's sky correctly is one of the most basic, essential skills you can learn, and it only takes a couple of tries to get the hang of it. Next time you land on a new planet and find a pile of valuable raw materials, you’ll be able to set up your refiner in seconds, no stress, no errors. If you have a favorite refiner placement trick I didn’t mention, feel free to share it in the comments below! I’m always looking for new ways to make my exploration runs smoother.
