I don't understand the use of Portals

[HasNoName]

I only have about 50 hours in game and I have a couple of glyphs I found in the wild by accident. I watched a video of using the portal and it said once you go through a portal all you can do is explore the system you go to and then you have to back to where you came from. You can't go to another system after you portal to a new place. So why would you use a portal if its not a jump to other parts of galaxy to explore more? What is the real use of portals?

[I LIKE DR PEPPER]

Once you unlock all 16 glyphs, you will be able to teleport anywhere in the galaxy. A great website to check out is No Man's Sky Coordinate Exchange on Reddit where people post great finds such as exotic ships that appear in the first wave, extremely rare multi-tools such as alien or prototype style, and exotic planets where the community come together to build huge bases.

Those star portals are amazing at bringing people together.

[Dirak2012]

Initially, you were able to travel warp to other systems, but people used the portals to jump straight into the center of the galaxy, skipping most of the game. Hello Games view that as an exploit and took measures to avoid that.

[goldengoose7]

They made more sense before the Terminus Teleporter was expanded to include more than (4) bookmarked destinations. Add to that the latest addition of "The Master Terminus" located inside the new Space Anomaly which can offer players Galaxy to Galaxy fast travel, and the Portal is fast becoming an antiquated feature that no longer has a serious role to fill within the game's feature list.

[GrandTickler]

they seem pretty useless for someone who isn't in a hurry indeed

[SaD-82]

I see portals as X-mas gifts. Usually you don't know what's inside them and being curious about is half the fun. In the end NMS is an exploration game and portals serve this mechanic: Exploring where random coordinates will get you.
And if the place strikes my interest, I set a waypoint as my soon to be visited destination by normal means of travel. It's part of what the game is: A never ending discovery.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

Originally posted by GrandTickler:

they seem pretty useless for someone who isn't in a hurry indeed

You can enter random glyphs and take a chance to explore... brave new worlds.... from your home planet. :).

Otherwise you can enter published portal addresses, to see other player discoveries and artistic base builds. Some are truly astonishing.

Once you discover something interesting on the other side of a portal you can way-point mark the location in your discoveries list and follow the way-point line, warping system to system to reach it.

They can be used to reach player published meg-farms or used with Trading Loops buying and selling goods.

They are another way to travel about, that's all. Their use has been eclipsed slightly by the teleporter but to use a teleporter you do need to visit a system in reach. A portal can reach the other side of an undiscovered part of the galaxy, very quickly instead of warping there.

• Portals ought to open up intergalactic travel and not have it eclipsed by the Anomaly Teleporter.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

There are a number of features that sort of lost their purpose with the updates. The portals made sense when you could only have one base. Originally, your ship did not come through with you. So you either hoofed it to a base or created an exocraft to travel there.

As noted, players figured out how to exploit it to get to the center, (which was the only game goal at the time), so they introduced portal interference.

They have a limited purpose if you are looking for an S class item and do not want to use the save game editor. You can also use them to set a location in your discoveries, which makes traveling there via the galactic map and/or black holes a reasonable thing to do.

The Nexus teleporter kind threw a monkey wrench into things. It is still not clear exactly if you can travel between galaxies- and not lose everything in your former galaxy. That is one feature I wish they would give a little detail on.

Right now, it appears to be seriously bugged, but it may be it is operating as intended...you just need to know there will be consequences if you jump between galaxies using it.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

The Nexus teleporter kind threw a monkey wrench into things. It is still not clear exactly if you can travel between galaxies- and not lose everything in your former galaxy. That is one feature I wish they would give a little detail on.

I returned to one of my previous galaxies from the Anomaly. Then sought out an old system from my discoveries list I could now way-point (which I could not from the galaxy I had left behind) my old base was still there. Currently adding power to it. I used a space station teleport back again (the galaxy name is appended to the station name in the llist) and things were a I left them. I didn't lose anything.

If you're unsure make a back up of you game save before experimenting with travel.

[japp_02]

The only real convenience about portals is that you can visit other systems to find ressources you otherwise wouldn't find, for example red, green, blue sun systems which have dedicated ressources (Emeril etc.). Although you are restricted to return through the portal to continue playing normally, the entire galaxy is open to you with them, even in Single Player where you can enter random glyph addresses.
If you find a portal be sure to mark it with a beacon because once you use and leave it it will no longer be marked by the game otherwise.

[Chompman]

You can bypass the portal restrictions on pc if you look up the methods such as editing your saved game file and if I recall the friend joining trick might still be a thing to bypass it also.

[japp_02]

Originally posted by Chompman:

You can bypass the portal restrictions on pc if you look up the methods such as editing your saved game file and if I recall the friend joining trick might still be a thing to bypass it also.

Yes but in this case portals become just useless...You can just give yourself unlimited warp, you can directly enter a glyph adress in the editor, you can change galaxy. If you use the editor, why using portals any longer then? Ok, maybe because they look so beautiful...that's a reason yes :)

[GrandTickler]

Originally posted by Johnny in the Clouds:

Originally posted by GrandTickler:

they seem pretty useless for someone who isn't in a hurry indeed

You can enter random glyphs and take a chance to explore... brave new worlds.... from your home planet. :).

Otherwise you can enter published portal addresses, to see other player discoveries and artistic base builds. Some are truly astonishing.

Once you discover something interesting on the other side of a portal you can way-point mark the location in your discoveries list and follow the way-point line, warping system to system to reach it.

They can be used to reach player published meg-farms or used with Trading Loops buying and selling goods.

They are another way to travel about, that's all. Their use has been eclipsed slightly by the teleporter but to use a teleporter you do need to visit a system in reach. A portal can reach the other side of an undiscovered part of the galaxy, very quickly instead of warping there.

• Portals ought to open up intergalactic travel and not have it eclipsed by the Anomaly Teleporter.

cool thanks for the info, i didnt know about the waypoint thing in discoveries

[Rexxer]

Originally posted by gadgetm3:

I ... What is the real use of portals?

You will need all 16 glyphs to go anywhere you want via Portal, but you can always use what you have to explore randomly. You must visit 16 different "Unknown Graves" to get all 16 glyphs, (or even the same one 16 times if you exit and reenter the system, or wait for it to reset). Travellers are easy to spot at any Space Station though as they don't look like the standard 3 alien types. They will always direct you to an unknown grave unless you've used them already and they have not reset.

Your question also shows you have no clue how big the galaxy, much less universe, really is. I think someone calculated that if you were to visit one planet in the NMS universe every *second*, you'd still not be able to see it all in over 400 years.

You use portals for:
(1) Some planets not near you spawn really good equipment or resources, and if you are pre hyperdrive, then you have no other way of getting to another solar system by yourself. For example, most players spawn on systems that don't have cadmium, emeril, or indium, but those are critical elements needed to get the hyperdrive upgraded to the point where there are no longer restrictions on where you travel.

(2) Some sponsored community events (ie: multiplayer) are in a system across the galaxy, which may be 500 or more hyperjumps away. You would not be able to participate otherwise if you couldn't portal there. One jump, if you account for map targeting time plus jump time, might take you 5 minutes. That means you could be over 40 real-time hours away from an event that may not even last 40 hours.

(3) When you portal to a planet, it is placed on your "Discoveries" list. This is probably THE most important purpose. Why? Because then you can navigate to it with your galaxy map. Since there are 15 quintillion systems, you'd have no other way of finding a particular place on your own if you wanted to try and hyperjump there yourself. By highlighting the system in you discovery list as a waypoint, you can now use the galaxy map to bring up "Custom Waypoint" which will allow you to fly blind through the galaxy to the desired system even though it may be 500 jumps away. You'd never be able to do that otherwise, or at most, have only a really tiny chance of doing it successfully

(4) You may want to return to a base or planet that has scrolled off your base or space station teleporter list. The in game list only holds 50 discoveries, and if you go anywhere in the galaxy, you will pass by waaay more than that. I currently am going to lesser bases to dismantle them for resources for that reason as I don't go to them often enough to keep them on the teleporter list.

(5) Last, but not least, Relic Portals allow you to find other Relic Portals in a new system, once you understand how the portal glyphs work.... the first rune in a portal address is the planet number, moons are included in this numbering system. Now instead of wasting time collecting gek relics, vykeen daggers, and Korvax whatevers, you can sell them and just use a Portal to locate the portals much more quickly in a new system, if you so wish.

[goldengoose7]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

It is still not clear exactly if you can travel between galaxies- and not lose everything in your former galaxy. That is one feature I wish they would give a little detail on.

Right now, it appears to be seriously bugged, but it may be it is operating as intended...you just need to know there will be consequences if you jump between galaxies using it.

The "Master Terminus" inside the Space Anomaly most definitely supports Galaxy to Galaxy travel. The problem is that the Terminus List for the player is still behaving the way it did back when changing galaxies was intended to be a ONE WAY trip. Back then, it was accepted that if you moved your operation from Euclid to say Eissentam that you would loose all of your previous Euclid based discovery data along with any Euclid based Teleporter bookmarks. That is just how it worked and everyone accepted that.

Fast forward to Beyond, and you now have a way to travel "Back and Forth" between Galaxies...

But in typical Hello Game's fashion, apparently no one on the development team thought to update the way the terminus teleport bookmark list was treated when a player switched galaxies. Instead of expanding the listing to retain existing teleport bookmarks while adding new ones from the newly arrived at galaxy, the game is still deleting everything a player had on their list before they made the trip.

So... I wouldn't call this a bug, as much as I would call it a BONE HEADED oversight on the part of the development team. And anyone in doubt as to the intention on the new Master Terminus to provide Inter-Galactic travel needs to more closely examine the custom UI of this GIANT Terminus which will clearly reveal the Inter-Galactic teleporting feature.

[Chompman]

Originally posted by japp_02:

Originally posted by Chompman:

You can bypass the portal restrictions on pc if you look up the methods such as editing your saved game file and if I recall the friend joining trick might still be a thing to bypass it also.

Yes but in this case portals become just useless...You can just give yourself unlimited warp, you can directly enter a glyph adress in the editor, you can change galaxy. If you use the editor, why using portals any longer then? Ok, maybe because they look so beautiful...that's a reason yes :)

Because if you use a game editor like that some people believe it ruins your gameplay vs just bypassing the portal interference that was added and many people do not like.