How much of the junk should I be keeping from frigate missions?

[Gojak_v3]

I look on the wiki and some of it can be combined to make expensive stuff to sell, then that stuff combined to make even more expensive stuff and so on. Thing is I don't have blue prints of any of it. So I'm wondering how much of it I should hang on to given the fact that the raw materials often fetch a high price themselves (relatively speaking).

Some of it I know I can get rid of. Like dirty bronze is only used to make geodesite. But I already have 3 stacks of it. On the other hand I don't know how much geodesite to save cause it can be used to make things that sell for millions of dollars. For instance it's an ingredient for fusion ignitor which can be sold for 18 million dollars.

[chonwaen]

How soon until you plan on hunting down blueprints? If you aren't planning on doing the full manufacturing/farming/gas harvesting soon, sell them so you can trade up for better starships/multi-tools/exosuit slots. If you decide to hunt blueprints, then hold onto them so you can multiply your profits, provided you have the spare inventory space to do so. Since there is no "right" way to play, there's no definitive right answer for this.

Also, anything that is blueprint upgradable has a clear upgrade path from raw materials, be it gas, plant, or local elements. So if you decide to sell, you will be able to build those items later on.

[Gojak_v3]

What do you mean hunt blueprints? If I find a crashed freighter I search, but usually don't get much. And you know other sites.

[chonwaen]

navigation data plus your portable scanner. Look for secure frequencies on a planet. Manufacturing Facilities and Operations Centers often have blueprints as a reward for breaking in. You may want to upgrade your exosuit shields and multitool weapons first though. Sentinels always guard them.

Oh and learn as much languages as you can in the meantime, puzzles are much easier if you know what the clues are. Save first at the beacons near the facilities, so if you mess up the puzzle, you can reload and try again.

[Gojak_v3]

Puzzles, didn't even know there was puzzles.

[Gojak_v3]

Guess I'll sell. Still need to fill out frigate fleet, and a decent freighters can cost hundreds of millions of dollars I think.

[chonwaen]

Indeed :) Might be faster if you do more planetary exploration, and go through the base building missions. You will get upgrades (some can be installed on the freighter, but not all) that can really help out with cashflow.

[ZomBeGone]

I tend to sell everything and not bother with it. Especially if you don't have the BPs yet, just sell it*, every mission you get more. I typically get $2-8 million for each of the 5 missions per day, with very little work. I even buy the stuff to make frigate fuel, its cheap, beats di-hydrogen cycling. i am lazy :D

In the mean time, I do other things.

I have done the farming/manufacturing thing, and its a lot of work. Its worth doing it once. But to be honest the money I make from frigate missions allow me to buy everything I want with no more mining, like di-hydrogen jelly, tritium, antimatter housings.... they are cheap.

* note: The one exception is activated metals. Turn them into chromatic metal and stock pile it. No more mining:D

[MechWarden]

It is hard to say how much of it you need to keep, since it depends on how far you are in the game, and most importantly how much surplus money you have (and ships, and freighter class).

It is all based on priorities. What do you want to focus on, if anything. Of course the trade goods get sold (unless you find a funny one that's worth the inventory space), since that's all they are good for.

The cultural items can be sold too, even at a loss, since you can only go to so many other aliens before giving them their respective items stops giving you any more reputation... and it is so easy to max reputation on all three.

Condensed stuff, like carbon, oxygen, etc are really great as compact storage. It takes practically no energy in a portable refinery to break down, and you can get so much of them from Frigates that you might sell them anyway. But break down Cobalt and Chlorine crystals for more credits before selling.

For the rest of the items, typically stuff used for crafting other things, you might want to carve out some space in your base storage (or favorite hauler you keep parked) so you can make a buffer of certain kinds of materials. Pick how much you want to store for combining into higher end materials and sell the rest. Otherwise you can easily get a clogged inventory from hording too much.

These two links help me out a lot on referencing what needs what.

https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/File:Product_Crafting_Tree.png (Got a tab dedicated to that)

https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/Product (list of all products, sorted by type)

Ultimately, after getting all the blueprints (from manufacturing facilities) and amassing over a billion credits after finding all the S Class ships you wanted, you will likely just sell everything those frigates bring in. Assuming The Beyond update doesn't alter things when it hits.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

Put aside some empty slots to hold up to 10 units of anything you can not make, until you get the blueprint. Sell the extra high value items. If you can not make it, you can not sell it. Everything can be made from basic resources so focus on storing that, whilst collecting the blueprints. You have lots of slots from Haulers, your freighter to Exocars and Crates to hold stuff.

[MechWarden]

Very early on, it is just best to just keep some of the crafting materials, but sell the leftovers. Storage space is typically at a premium at that stage and money can buy a good number of things if you note where best to find it.

One or two base storage slots worth of each useful material should be fine for general needs, but base building may easily exhaust that (which is what credits and a well supplied station can help with). Keep your Freighter as empty as possible, save for some important things like frigate fuel and repair materials, so you can use the freighter as a big buffer chest (aka. temporary storage for loot) since you can send anything you are carrying to it. Also frigates dump everything into it anyway when they return so keeping that clear is obviously important.

Having several max slot haulers is nice, but not needed. The downside of using ships as long term storage is that you can only have one of them active as your primary ship and have to jump into another ship to get access to its inventory. Everything else (assuming Exocrafts are in range) can be accessed via the Quick Transfer menu very easily while in a base, making inventory management a lot easier. Transferring stuff from the Freight to your Base Storage is doable while at your base, but sometimes it doesn't want to work.