Tips finding Flora/Fauna/Minerals

[Nimarus]

I got the Expedition Guide job to survey a planet. 8 Fauna, 22 Flora, and 28 Mineral. After over an hour, I have all the fauna scanned. I have, 2 flora, and 6 minerals left. Seriously got me wanting to put NMS on the shelf again. My brother tells me on PS4 that it offered him hints as to were to look (like caves, under water, etc.)

After all these years, has HG added anything to help ease this monotony or are we stuck searching for a needle in a haystack?

[NiceGuy]

This "job" is no a real job, you get it by default as soon as you step on a planet. It does not earn you anything it just tells you what can be scanned on the planet.
The only thing that really counts are the animals as you get many nanites if you scanned everyone. And for the animals the game actually tells you where to find them.
The plants and minerals are just for perfection 🤪

[Dirak2012]

That's not a quest, and has nothing to do with the expedition. Just ignore it.

[Kazuma]

What you describe is not Expedition Guide but Exploration Guide, I believe.
This is something that tells you what you can expect on given planet. It's only informative.... and it's often wrong. Expecially on planets hand-tweaked by devs, like expedition starter and rendezvous systems. In those you see discrepant info on discovery quide, live planet scanning and this guide. While adding helpful info for those who aim for completeness, devs botched the job and added to the confusion, IMHO.

The only neat thing about it is it shuts up other mission-specific tips appearing on lower-right banner and disappears from the screen quite fast, too. I like having it selected when doing free exploring for this reason.

[Gaxel]

Did you mean you get an exploration GUILD mission ?
That one require to scan some fauna, flora and mineral, and to survey a mineral, gas and electromagnetic hot spot... you just have selected the wrong mission on the journal

[Nimarus]

It's listed under Log>Secondary Missions. Regardless of how this popped up, my question was if the devs ever added any way for players to actually find that last needle in a haystack or are we still having to keep the scanner up and pray to god we actually find that last Fauna/Flora/Mineral on the list. You know, should a player actually have the idea to actually scan them all on a planet.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

Originally posted by Nimarus:

It's listed under Log>Secondary Missions. Regardless of how this popped up, my question was if the devs ever added any way for players to actually find that last needle in a haystack or are we still having to keep the scanner up and pray to god we actually find that last Fauna/Flora/Mineral on the list. You know, should a player actually have the idea to actually scan them all on a planet.

It is possible, with a catch. When it was first introduced, someone was complaining about it. I knew I had left a planet recently where I had gotten most of everything. I went back and got actually more than the amounts for each listed (except fauna).

While I was away some of the discoveries had gone away and were available to be discovered again. So I ended up with more than the count shown for minerals and flora.

Technically, you probably can do it in one go on some planets. Unfortunately, there are some planets that are "legacy" from older iterations of the galaxy. My home base planet (discovered over five years ago) shows I discovered 9 of the six planets currently in system and 14 of the 9 fauna still there.

So it can make you crazy if you want to use the guide as a fun activity.

[Gaxel]

Originally posted by Nimarus:

It's listed under Log>Secondary Missions. Regardless of how this popped up, my question was if the devs ever added any way for players to actually find that last needle in a haystack or are we still having to keep the scanner up and pray to god we actually find that last Fauna/Flora/Mineral on the list. You know, should a player actually have the idea to actually scan them all on a planet.

I think you're not suppose to find all flora and mineral on a planet, since you do not get the thousands of nanites you get instead for finding all animals.

Anyway, you can find everything, just keep in mind that some flora and minerals can be found only at specific locations, like under water, underground, on mountains or even at north/south.

[Liralen]

Originally posted by Nimarus:

It's listed under Log>Secondary Missions. Regardless of how this popped up, my question was if the devs ever added any way for players to actually find that last needle in a haystack or are we still having to keep the scanner up and pray to god we actually find that last Fauna/Flora/Mineral on the list. You know, should a player actually have the idea to actually scan them all on a planet.

Regardless of how you obtained the mission, if you don't want to do it, then don't.

Edited Note: I get that you want an easy way to do it, but I'm not aware of an easy way to do it. I also don't get why you think that there should be.

[lordoftheapes79]

Originally posted by Nimarus:

It's listed under Log>Secondary Missions. Regardless of how this popped up, my question was if the devs ever added any way for players to actually find that last needle in a haystack or are we still having to keep the scanner up and pray to god we actually find that last Fauna/Flora/Mineral on the list. You know, should a player actually have the idea to actually scan them all on a planet.

This is just a checklist for completionists. It doesn't need to be completed.

[Teratus]

As far as I know there is no point in trying to find all the plants and minerals on a planet.
Only the Animals give you any kind of reward for finding them all.

As far as hunting animals goes, any underwater ones have the best chance of being found in deeper oceans so if a planet has large bodies of water that's the place to look for them.

Flying and Land animals are easily found just by running around usually, go hunt some salvage or Drop Pods or something and you'll probably find them.

And then there are the Underground creatures.. the bane of any would be explorer.
These little gits can range from easy to find to damn near impossible to find at times.
I have spent hours on some planets looking for underground creatures..

There are no good tricks I know of for Underground creatures.. best I can offer is get a lot of charts and look for NPC structures and hope they have caves near them.. and then hope the creatures bloody spawn in them.

Do be sure to fully check the creatures text when you're in the Discoveries tab too, some of them can only be found in the North or South of certain planets and that can lead to a lot of wasted time if you just glance the creature info and fail to note that.

[Comradovich]

Funny you should ask, see I've already made a reply to a similar post that lays out everything for an example planet: Any tips to Discover all Planet Minerals and Flora?.
The planet in question is in Euclid galaxy, (the starter galaxy). Portal coordinates are in my second reply. If you want to see what it's like to have everything, there's a sample planet with a detailed list of everything on it. Completion is... underwhelming, to say the least. Doable, just not exactly fulfilling.

[Happy Monkey]

Tips:

Plants:
There are often two species of cave marrow.
Red and yellow plants have solo versions and large bed versions. I've heard that sometimes there may be two species of solo ones, but I'm not certain.
There are sometimes two species of the gas explosion hazardous plants. Maybe the others, too, but I've mostly seen it with the gassy ones.

Minerals:
There are many many duplicates.
Mountaintops and other desolate areas will usually have 3 unique minerals
Caves have stalagmites and stalactites. I think they may rarely have a second stalagmite.
Caves may also have other unique minerals.
Shallow water, deep water, and water caves have unique minerals.

[SaD-82]

Originally posted by Nimarus:

my question was if the devs ever added any way for players to actually find that last needle in a haystack or are we still having to keep the scanner up and pray to god we actually find that last Fauna/Flora/Mineral on the list

For animals there is help in form of the discovery page where hints are listed to what creature and where/when to find (at times I'm glad about it - at times I don't look at so that I can feel a little bit of nostalgia in just hunting as it was some years ago without any hints given to the players).

For minerals and plants there is no such hint, but it's doable without any real hassle by just remembering that there are different biomes (and I'm not talking about underground/water/land), but actual biomes. You have barren spots and lush spots on a planet. If you find those (which is easy) and then underwater and underground places, too, you will find all plants and stones with ease.
(Remember to look for sodium-/oxygen-/jet-booster-plants and dangerous flora, too. And remember, too, that there can be duplicates of them - they look the same but are different species.)

[Gaxel]

Originally posted by SaD-82:

Originally posted by Nimarus:

my question was if the devs ever added any way for players to actually find that last needle in a haystack or are we still having to keep the scanner up and pray to god we actually find that last Fauna/Flora/Mineral on the list

For animals there is help in form of the discovery page where hints are listed to what creature and where/when to find (at times I'm glad about it - at times I don't look at so that I can feel a little bit of nostalgia in just hunting as it was some years ago without any hints given to the players).

For minerals and plants there is no such hint, but it's doable without any real hassle by just remembering that there are different biomes (and I'm not talking about underground/water/land), but actual biomes. You have barren spots and lush spots on a planet. If you find those (which is easy) and then underwater and underground places, too, you will find all plants and stones with ease.
(Remember to look for sodium-/oxygen-/jet-booster-plants and dangerous flora, too. And remember, too, that there can be duplicates of them - they look the same but are different species.)

About animals, you have some that are only at north or at south, so you must check the discovery page otherwise you'll never find them if you aren't on the right "pole"....

[SaD-82]

Originally posted by Vardyn:

About animals, you have some that are only at north or at south, so you must check the discovery page otherwise you'll never find them

That always was the case - what helped before there were hints at the discovery page: Jumping into the ship and just flying to the other side of the planet to find the last mssing 50 feet tall creature that someone already could spot from space but you weren't able to because render distance. Or so.

Of importance is to check places at day and night, too (or just spoilering it for yourself by looking at the discovery page).