No Man's Sky: Advice for New Players

This is what I posted on a Reddit thread: With a bunch of new people coming into the game, and old players returning, what is a helpful tip that you know that could save someone a headache in the future?

- get a terrain manipulator if you don't already have one. burrowing underground is the best way to avoid attacking sentinals, mining minerals is essential, and buried technology modules are valuable

 

- upgrade the scanner first on your multitool, and scan everything you can just as a habit while you're doing other things. This will quickly deliver you all the money you need, and also, if you scan all the fauna on a planet there's a good nanite bonus

 

- killing animals produces meat; eating meat restores your health if you become injured, so keep a stock on hand

 

- learn how to craft batteries (cobalt and ferrite dust) and life support gel (di-hydrogen plus oxygen) instead of trying to survive on sodium and oxygen (and as soon as you can, start buying them from trade terminals)

 

- get an advanced mining beam as early as possible to mine pure ferrite and large carbon and dihydrogen crystals

 

- get an economy scanner as early as possible and travel only to prosperous (three ***) worlds to improve your chances of finding exotic S-class ships (keep 30 or 40 million units handy to buy them)

 

- get a personal refiner upgrade as soon as possible to process minerals

 

- when you build a base, add a few standing planters to produce an endless supply of carbon (which you can't but from trading posts)

 

- other people won't see your base until you upload it; maximum 3000 pieces allowed for a base upload (and something like 20,000 in total)

 

- when attacked (by sentinals or fauna) run backwards (use 'S' on a keyboard) so you can face your enemy and fire on them as they advance. The same strategy works for ship battles (the more recent versions use 'S' to lock on to an enemy ship, but even with that turned off, use 'S' and face your enemy while retreating out of their range)

 

- mine uranium and keep it on hand to refuel the launch thruster; mine phospherous and keep it on hand to refuel the mining beam

 

- keep your plasma launcher unloaded so you don't accidentally kill yourself with it; use it only for higher level sentinal robots (keep a stock of unstable plasma on hand so you can load it up and fire when needed)

 

- if you warp into a system and a freighter is under attack, destroy the pirates, board the freighter, and see the captain, who will offer you the freighter; but don't take the first freighter offered, wait at least for an A class

 

- of you find yourself fighting sentinal spacecraft because you shot at a ship or space station, know that you can't win; call the Nexus (x on the keyboard) and hide; if you can't, kill the current wave, head for a planet, and land in between waves, go underground and wait

 

- when you go to a space station, load up on missions even if you're not going to do them right away, because when you have many stacked up, doing one counts as doing them all 

 

- learn languages to better solve puzzles; use knowledge stones and interact with every alien you see

 

- to find portals, collect navigation data and use it to buy maps in the space station for 'alien artifacts' and find 'alien monolith', and if you solve the puzzle correctly you can interact with the monolith a second time and trade either a Vykeen dagger, Korvax casing or Gek relic for a portal location; 

 

- to use portals, interact twice with travellers on space stations and pay 100 nanites to find graves, extract glyphs from graves, enter the first glyph 12 times in a row to end up very near to the galaxy core

 

- to enter the galaxy core you must have hyperdrive with three S-class upgrades, as well as the modules for different colour worlds, and it must be fully fueled; in the map tool, select 'Galaxy Center' and use the automated mechanism to go them (ie., not 'free explore') (on keyboard, left click to select direction, right-click (and hold) to engage)

- travel to a new galaxy will break all your technology, so store all your exosuit technology (use x), switch your good multitool for a bad one, and use a 'burner' ship with only hyperdrive modifications, and catty enough chromatic metal, ferrite dust and wiring looms to repair the modules

- when you arrive in a new galaxy, be ready in case it's dangerous; immediately switch to your good multitool, go underground, and take stock