You’re mid-exploration on a radioactive planet, pockets full of activated indium you don’t need, while your friend is stuck 200 light years away with a broken freighter warp drive and zero chromatic metal to fix it. Instead of making them grind for hours to get the parts they need, you can just swap your surplus for whatever they have to spare. That’s exactly why figuring out how to trade with friends in No Man's Sky is one of the most useful multiplayer skills you can pick up. I’ve spent over 800 hours in the game across PC and console, and I still remember my first failed trade attempt back when the Next update dropped: my buddy and I spent 20 minutes running around the same space station yelling at each other because we couldn’t find the trade prompt. Now I’ve done hundreds of trades with friends across multiple saves, so I’ve worked out all the kinks, common bugs, and best practices to make every transaction go smoothly. This guide covers everything from basic pre-trade checks to swapping rare S-class ships without losing them, so you don’t have to waste time fumbling with menus like I did.
Pre-Trade Checks to Do Before You Trade with Friends in No Man’s Sky
Jumping straight into a trade without these checks is a surefire way to run into glitches, lost items, or missed prompts. Most failed trades happen because of small, easy-to-fix oversights, not actual game bugs. First, add each other to your in-game No Man’s Sky friend list, don’t rely only on platform friends. I’ve had multiple cases where I could see my friend on my Steam list but not in game, until we added each other directly via the NMS friend tab. Cross-play works far more reliably when you use the in-game friend system, even if you’re both on the same platform. Second, confirm you’re both in the same multiplayer lobby and visible on each other’s HUD. If one of you is in a single-player lobby by accident, you won’t be able to interact at all. Third, clear enough inventory space for the items you’re receiving. If your exosuit, ship, or freighter inventory is full, the trade will usually fail with no warning, and you might even lose the items you sent in rare cases.
It’s also smart to pick a low-traffic location for your trade. Busy space stations or crowded community bases have far more instance glitches than a small outpost on an empty, uncharted planet. Run through this quick checklist before every trade to avoid 90% of common issues:
- Confirm neither of you is trying to swap non-tradable quest items, like Atlas seeds or story-specific relics
- Make sure both of you have saved your game in the last 10 minutes, just in case something goes wrong
- Disable any multiplayer or inventory mods if you’re playing a modded save, unless you both have the exact same mods installed
- Stand within 10 feet of each other with no obstacles (like rocks or base walls) between you before sending a trade request
Step-by-Step Process for Safe Item and Resource Trading
While the process to trade with friends in No Man's Sky is pretty straightforward once you get the hang of it, there are a few small mistakes that can derail your transaction fast. Start by opening your quick menu (the one you use to summon your ship or place building parts) and navigate to the friends tab. Find your friend’s name on the list, select it, and choose “Initiate Trade” from the dropdown menu. If you don’t see that option, you’re either too far apart, they’re in a menu that blocks requests, or you’re not in the same instance.
Once you send the request, your friend will get a small pop-up in the corner of their screen. If they don’t see it within 10 seconds, cancel the request and try again. Sometimes the notification gets buried under other HUD prompts if they’re scanning creatures or checking their inventory at the same time. When they accept the request, a shared trade window will pop up for both of you. You can drag any tradable item from your inventory to your trade slot, including resources, upgrades, construction parts, and even excess units. Always double check the item count and rarity before you hit confirm – I once accidentally gave my friend a stack of 500 activated indium instead of 50 when I was rushing, and there’s no way to reverse a trade unless they voluntarily give the items back.
You don’t have to trade equal value items if you don’t want to, either. You can send a full stack of rare resources for free, no strings attached, just leave their trade slot empty when you confirm. After both of you hit confirm, the items will automatically move to each other’s inventories. Wait 5 seconds after the window closes to check that you received the items you expected, before you run off to do something else.
How to Swap Ships, Freighters and Multi-Tools With Friends
You can’t trade ships, freighters, or multi-tools directly through the regular trade window, but there’s a simple workaround that lets you share these high-value items with friends easily. This trick has saved me dozens of hours hunting for S-class fighters, and I’ve used it to give new friends fully upgraded ships to get them started in their first few hours of play.
For ships, start by both flying to a space station or a trade outpost with landing pads. Land the ship you want to swap, get out, and make sure you don’t get back in it. Your friend can walk up to your ship, and they’ll see a prompt to purchase it from you for its listed unit value. If you want to gift the ship instead of selling it, send your friend the exact number of units the ship is worth via regular trade first, so they don’t have to spend their own money. I once found a perfect white and gold S-class exotic in a quiet system, called three of my friends to join me, and we all swapped ships so everyone got one for free by gifting each other the units to cover the purchase cost. Just make sure the ship is fully repaired before you try to swap it, you can’t trade broken ships with missing components.
For multi-tools, the process is even simpler. Build a multi-tool storage cabinet in your base, place the multi-tool you want to swap in the cabinet, and your friend can walk up and take it for free. Just make sure you have at least one other multi-tool to switch to first, because you can’t drop your only multi-tool. For freighters, you can transfer ownership by inviting your friend to board your freighter, then they can purchase it from you the same way they would a regular ship. Again, you can gift them the units first to make the trade free. Always save your game before swapping any of these high-value items, as instance glitches can sometimes make ships disappear entirely if you’re trading in a busy system.
Common Trading Bugs and How to Fix Them Fast
Even if you follow all the pre-trade checks, you might run into an occasional glitch, especially if you’re playing cross-platform. Most of these issues have simple, fast fixes that don’t require restarting your entire game. The most common bug is the missing trade request: you send a request to your friend, but they never get the pop-up. The fix for this is usually as simple as canceling the request, having one of you fast travel to a nearby point and come back, then sending the request again. This resets your local instance and usually fixes the notification issue.
The second most common issue is the invisible friend glitch, where you’re both in the same system and same lobby, but you can’t see or interact with each other. The fastest fix I’ve found for this is for one of you to summon your freighter, then invite the other to board it. 90% of the time, you’ll load into the same instance once you’re both on the freighter, and you can trade from there. If that doesn’t work, fast travel to a different star system and come back, that will fully reset your instance.
Rarely, items might disappear after you confirm a trade. This almost always happens if one of you had a full inventory when you hit confirm, so the system had nowhere to put the items. If this happens, restart your game immediately – 9 times out of 10, the missing items will be back in your original inventory when you load back in. Never leave a trade session before both of you have confirmed you received the items you expected, because once you leave the instance, it’s almost impossible to recover lost goods.
Trading with friends turns No Man’s Sky from a lonely exploration sim into a collaborative adventure where you can share your best finds and help each other progress faster. Now that you know how to trade with friends in No Man's Sky, you can stop hoarding all your rare resources and start swapping them for the upgrades, ships, or materials you’ve been hunting for. I still trade with my regular group every week, swapping S-class upgrades I don’t need for resources to build out my base, and it’s cut my grind time by at least half. Just remember to run through the pre-trade checklist, double check every transaction, and save before you swap high value items, and you’ll avoid almost all common issues.