Obscure tips -one of which at least you don't know...! + PRIZE!!

Loads of tips that I've picked up from about 500 hours playing. Mostly minor ones that aren't usually regurgitated ad infinitum though.

Introduction

There are two kinds of tips for playing games like No Man Sky- the big ones that every body mentions a 1000 times over, and the little ones , that you find out by yourself a day or so before giving up and playing something else...! Hopefully this lot, are of the latter type..

The first tip is to look around. NMS is an exploring game principally, with multiple Galaxies to see. The procedural generation is not unlimited, but it is sufficient to regularly provide jaw dropping WOW! moments, when you get hit by an unexpectedly beautiful scene. NMS can be stunningly beautiful. The most awe inspiring, combined with gut wrenching vertigo, can be found simply exploring one of your Frigates, and looking at a Solar System around you.





The second tip I'd suggest is rather less ethereal- get a notebook and an HB pencil, a pencil sharpener and a good eraser.

NMS does not help you with recipe ingredients, and there are a lot of them. Write em down- money making ones, food ones, nanite ones, what it takes to repair a wrecked space ship, and so forth.

You have 6 ship options [9 as of April 13th 2022] and 3 multi tool ones, all with 20 or so upgrades each to buy. Write em down. What Stations have S Class hyperdrives, pulse drives, mining upgrades- write em down, and go back later for more of them.

Trade routes- write em down, you can do both Trade route cycles via the Station Warps far faster and more profitably than going to planet Trade ports. Yes they give better profits, but you can be in and out a Station warp/Trade hub in one minute.

Mining. If you are intending having 5+ Bases with 3+ resources mined in each- write the base names, the elements they mine and max amounts stored. It is far easier to have this as a reference than having to flip back and forward in the Game tabs, and allows planning in much simpler means.

Edit: April 2022 Added new Sections on Hexaberry Farming, Not Being Nice to Sentinels, Building optimal Extraction Towers, Frigate Recognition, and a Trading Methods analysis. And lots more pickatures, to lessen finger wear; and they doo seys about pikatures that: " Ummmm.... A thousand seeds of Time are more not-Cramped than a few more...?" or words to that effect.

And a day later- loads more! I'm pretty much updating this every couple of days in April 2022. I keep finding out more new stuff. I'm not a great fan of the recent pirate update, although Hello Games have sorted out the worst of it very quickly. Once I've finished the current Piratey Expedition, and returned to my main Game, I'll try and do a comprehensive 'How to minimise pirate influence' for all you Explorer-faces out there. The Paradise Plannit Section below is probably a good start...!

Typical, not even got to that yet, and some Klutz Korvak called Hobbes has let a Leviathan loose in Spaaayce, and Aunty Margarine has been called up to go and round it up... AGAIN! Shouldn't be allowed to have Leviathans if you can't keep them under control. Faecium'in' all over Paradise Plannits- deeesgustin'.

Ships 'n' Tools

Ship Choice

Each of the main three races: Beep-boops, Raaarghs, and Spivs each have a respective speciality: exploring, fighting and trading. Which means in practise... there are more explorer ships in Beep-Boop Stations/Systems, more fighty ones in Raaargh Systems and more haulers in Spiv Systems. The others- exotics, shuttles and one I can't remember, are generic visitors. So if you want a specific non generic ship, go to the most appropriate race's System, and one of these which is very wealthy for the S Classes of it. Note: don't sweat S Classes. Hyperdrive is worth chasing, haulers/fighters... meah. A B Class Hauler can be picked up early game and provide plenty of storage/trade space. But always leave the ninth ship slot empty. That ideal paint job S Class turning up when you're in your ninth and best ship, is so inevitable, you can leap off the Space Station balconies with your eyes closed and youziz guaranteed to fall on it- every time.

Getting S Classes

Not seen this mentioned, but there is a more fun way of grinding/waiting in Space Stations for 'S's.
Go to a rich system as you normally would for this grind, then explore the system's planets [edit, you can use 'Tools' in the Ship options bar, first option in it -if you have installed economic scanner upgrade, is 'scan for trade port', which... you get the gist]. You're looking for a Space Port- one of them raised platform places with central seating and a Galactic Sales point in the middle, and with the all important 7 landing spots. Being a rich system these will be extremely busy. Park your own ship on the ground nearby and out of the way to maximise landing pad availability. Then wait for the ships to roll in, and scan them once they land to see if you have an S. Then run like hell and buy/swop them! I picked up two S's and a maxed storage space hauler in an hour doing this. Its way more interesting than sitting in a Space station too, you get to have landscape, watch the ships coming in an out, and can admire the scope of Hello Games's vision. I recommend it if only for that 'awe' you get sometimes with this game. The S classes were an exotic and an explorer- it was a Korvax system- see above for the Korvax/Explorer/ship likelihood situation.

[edit May 2022. I think the Trade Port ship/race relationship might have been reduced to 'random' probably by the Pirate attack update. Spent an hour at a Korvax one after an S Grade Explorer, but the ships landing were 50% haulers. Went up to the Spaaaaayce station, and got an Explorer after about 15 minutes, and explorers were still predominant there. But I did get a hauler from the Trade Port! A 47'er for 30 mil that kept turning up every 5 minutes. So it seems that the quality of Ships at Trade Ports has increased recently, but the Race/Ship Type previously has gone. Its probably still worth hanging about at the Trade Ports a few minutes to judge the predominant type landing, and if its suitable -waiting for a high quality one.]

Ship Use

Specialise. Explorers for hyperdrive, Haulers for Trade/construction, Fighters for... what was it... ? Exotics for... making cute vooom voom noises... I have 5 ships, One for hyperdrive, one for colonising/pod/crashed freighters well stocked with the standard ingredients, a fighter, a trader- minimal technology/maximum storage, and an exotic which looks good, and usually gets used for planet exploring to maximise utility of cute voom voom noise. The last- 9th slot gets left unfilled for picking up crashed ships to immediately sell too.

The new Solar ships are nice and zippy, but... apart from pretending to be a cruise missile and max vooming terrain hugging a plannit for kicks, haven't found any extra use for them yet. Explorers for 'going', Haulers for Trading/colonising, ends up being my modus oper...thingy.

Living ships. It's fun to play alongside (but not in) a fellow Travellers game when they are doing the fetch quests for a Living ship. You'll enlarge your vocabulary of vulgarities twofold at least! But when the fun stops and they get one- I'm told it's worth the effort. But convincing an Aunty Margey takes more than that (cake/bribery usually does it).

Upgrades

Sell all non S Class upgrades, and buy S Class ones until maxed out. It wastes far less nanites. The purple glass dead Sentinel upgrades are usually pretty rubbish, but can be extremely valuable to sell to the Upgrade vendors (use 'sell' instead of the more usual 'purchase' option). I had one today that sold for 900 nanites. S's usually go for about 300.

Maxing Upgrades

Lots of vids on this, the only thing I've noticed tending to get missed, but very important is that you can have 6 hyperdrive upgrades if you put 3 in Tech and 3 in Cargo. It's also worth wasting nanites on X hyperdrive upgrades from random pilots and seller settlements, as they occasionally give good range increases- better than S class ones.

Storage.

There's plenty. 10 Storage Cubes. Exosuit Cargo takes double, juggle this with ordinary resources that do and don't double. Ships. You have 6 ship slots. 2 Haulers as Traders and colony build supply ship adds over 50 storage slots. Remove all unnecessary 'Technology' in these ships to max storage. Converters can add up to 4 storage slots when not in use. The two larger ones allow use of the empty slot to choose from multiple inventories and 'fill' the 'product' slot (if there is a product left in it) in addition to the easier to fill ingredient slots. The food maker has its own inventory and if you have say ten at your base, each can have 3 storage slots when not in use- up to 30 extra storage.

Edit: The storage 'bug'/nerfing. I hit this a day after writing this. Stuff left in refiners when you leave the vicinity of the refiner- usually but not always warping in any way, empties the refiner. Apparently this is a deliberate Hello Games update. Why it happens sometimes but not others is odd then. But it does.

Edit 2 May 22. I just discovered 1000 nanites from fungal mould processing, left in a processor from 3 game days ago. This nerfing MIGHT have been removed in one of the several recent updates.

" Bang Bangs/Pew pews " (Multi-tools)

Like ships, specialise. You can have five (I think, threes as many as I've ever needed), one for scanning, one for mining, and one for killing. The advantage of this, is that if you hot key them- say 1,2 ,3, its quicker and easier in a fight to flick through various multi tools rather than scroll their functions. Occasionally you get a multi tool without a Boltcaster- ie it has a removable weapon. This is gold dust for weaponry function. It means that the default boltcaster does not appear in the list when you want quickly scroll through weapons/ tools . Life is a lot easier too if your mining MT only has mining and terrain on, making scrolling either- one or the other.

Upgrading you Multi tool with S class scanners also increases the number of tech things yielded from the underground containers. By default it is 1 per container, with 3 S class scanner upgrades you get 4 techs each time. This makes a huge difference to upgrading blueprints, where you'll be needing hundreds of them. Underground containers are also invariably very close to 'damaged containers' which are easily scanned. If there is a 'damaged container' outside the two single cabin locations, there is always a data container between them to the rear- the easiest one to get in the game.

Post Pirate Update...

Shields.
Shields Shields shields shields.
Shields shields shields....

Hopefully Hello Games will tone the constant Pirate attacks down in due course, but until that day...
[they have, not had a single 'on planet attack' in two days.]

...rhymes with fields and begins with an S....

Remember those previously relatively useless shield restorers that you either sold or let rot in a dank corner of your inventory...? They're going to be prime equipment now, so practise opening ship inventory in the middle of a spaaayce fight, to use them! They're not hot-keyable unfortunately.

Probably want to make a lot more use of the 'Conflict Scanner' too now. Never installed one before, now it's necessary.

Repair 'n' Sellin' Spaaaayce Rokit Ships.

Found the distress beacon, compared and 'claimed' the ship, mended it.. mostly, and eventually got the Activated Copper to do the last two repairs...?
Now to sellin' em.

At the Spaaayce Station, after emptying it of cargo you can do one of 3 things with it prior to selling it.
1. Dismantle all non permanent upgrades, and sell as bare minimum
2. Sell as is
3. Install some low grade C Class spaaayce ship Upgrades.

In all three cases the basic ship price appears to be dependant on class and storage slots, so it is a constant. What is different is that if you have/retain or add upgrades, you usually get something akin, or more than what was here as a bonus- excepting S classes. Its rare to get anything but a downgrade from them. Generally I find that adding some redundant C class upgrades (or the new but weak sentinel purple glass ones) often gets A class ones given to you as a bonus above the standard price when you junk the ship.

Just remember to keep at least 8-10 inventory slots in your Exosuit BEFORE selling the ship for the ship components and bonus upgrades to go into.

Fleets 'n' Bugs

Fleets Awaaay

6 fleets out from your freighter... or even 7...? Which ones need debriefing and which ones don't? It's a tedious pain to have to go and check on every terminal, so just look at the fleet-on-screen's colours from the doorway to the fleet rooms. Light green is 'Done' , blue is 'still out there'. Similarly when running through the Fleet Debrief, there's a blue band above the text that gives an idea of how many more 'adventures' there are to go. These can be skipped.

7 Fleet rooms

I've sent out about 200 fleet expeditions, and had one opportunity to do 7 fleets at once. The trick is to use the two Frigate optional extras that reduce operation duration when they get above 24 hours, and have a good S Class Frigate capability range- ie don't send Combats out exclusively on fighting patrols and so forth, get to the 5* Fleet with the minimum of the obvious class, then pull one or two off the mission set up, and substitute other classes until you can just get the 5* with non class ones. This eventually allows a 5* mission with three multipurpose S Class Frigates only, enabling the 7 missions 'in progress' potential. This is then done by getting a 24 hour and less mission cycle going in conjunction with the 24 hour new mission availability cycle. Keeping the 'new mission' arrival time in mind and instantly using them with this will eventually create an advantageous dis-continuity where 7 missions are possible.
Can't get in a Fleet room...? Minor bug- Rocket through it. Also don't build in the Freighter in the two 'room' slots immediately adjacent/closest to the Captain/Navigators lair. They have a weird invisible half division that makes getting to a Fleet Room terminal difficult.

8+ Fleet Rooms
Another 7 Fleet'er came up last week, and I just missed upping to an 8 fleet scenario because of fannying about on the Freighter- it finally was a time critical option. You have to plan ahead for this, preferably with a good stock of S Class Fleets. Use 3 only to get 1+ stars above the mission requirement, leaving plenty of options for 6+ fleets. In theory ten is possible, but... it would require at least the first 5 being the 24 hour + ones. Bit unlikely.

Where's Me Freighter's guts?

I had this on an old game- offline for a year, and on my most recent game- not got to a Freighter yet, so this might not be an issue still. The customised internal layout you make in the Freighter disappears and resets?
This came up every time I engaged with the 'freighter in distress' scenario. Any interaction at all- shooting at the baddy ships or answering comms did it. Once you go back to your freighter- its re-set to default.
To avoid this... leave the present system, and exit the game with a get in/out of ship save. Reload that save, and then go and warp in the freighter, it should be back to normal. If not- reload the hard save which should be earlier than the 'freighter in distress' scenario, change Systems and warp in the freighter. That usually resets it back to how you've customised it.
I suspect this has something to do with not taking the default free Freighter when it first comes up at your No.2 warp or whatever it is that spawns this.

Warp Wonk.

After a few station to station warps, I get frame rate issues. I've solved it by making a desktop shortcut to Steam's NMS/Binaries/SETTINGS folder. And next to it is a copy of the TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS MXL file within this folder. The copied MXL file has the NumHighThreads and NumLowThreads figures adapted to my PC's specific Cores and so forth. Plenty of U Tube vids about that. Before starting up each session I copy the desktop MXL file, then use the shortcut, and copy/replace the game version MXL (for some reason it always resets between games). This seems to remove this problem. Takes ten seconds to do once set up.

Edit. You can also change via 'Properties' the MXL file to 'Read Only'. Playing with options, I found five basic reasons for lag/ frame rate stuttering: (i) being 'Online'. (ii) Vsync being 'On', in 'Options'; (iii) Frame rate fixed too high, (iv) being in Multiplayer, and (v) post pirate fights within a plannit atmosphere. I can manage on 45 fps not 60. My system works surprisingly well with NMS generally and its 10 years old, so to optimise, framerate capping can be reduced with minimal effects until it kicks in nastily!

Edit, OK... partially solved this. It's still an issue, and more often than not- on starting the game. It appears to be partly to do with where your exit save is. On Space Stations and Trading Posts, its a pretty frequent issue. If you start the game, and once fully loaded, you turn around quickly and have a horizontal blur, its lagging. Usually moving to a planet location, 'spaceship exit saving', and restarting the game once or twice will remove the lag for an entire game session. I also altered the NumHighThreads and NumLowThreads figures to 4 and 1 respectively, after a lot of alternatives, and this seems to work best. According to my cores etc it should be 7/1, but... natch, ol' Billy Nanobots' says different.

Ediiitt Agaaiiin! Billy Nanobots current spyware: OS-11, doesn't really attract me (strange- thumb screws and razor wire handcuffs don't either) -looking at upgrading my (just) post XP set-up with some 'leccy bits and stuff to bung in the whirry case of 'pootery things; to try and fix the constant laaaaa...aa..aa..aaaaa...ggg issues. Finally time to go all Linux'ey I feel. In little baby steps. If they had a big green 'Go' button, I'd have been high Tailing it years ago! Anybody successfully playin' NMS on Linux reading this? If you write a Guide to doing it, you'll get EVERY ONE of Aunty Margey's store of those pretty icon things that go at the top of the Guide page on Steam. Just mention it's name in the Comments below. [NB Bribery is THE basis of the Aunty Margey economy... and let's not be too coy-every other one too! Amazing really when you think about it- in 9000 years nobody has come up with a better way of social organisation than hierarchy/corruption. Apart from your Aunty Margey of course(of COURSE!). I call it 'funocide' but its a secret.]

Explore 'n' Smashy

Beep

When flying over landscape at low level, you occasionally hear a single beep or a 'bearrp'. This signifies that you are about to fly (very)near something. Usually just damaged machinery or a word pillar, but about 30% it's a settlement. To identify it, immediately 'reverse' to very low speed, scan, and do a slow 360, rescanning at 180. Two circles usually is enough to get the blue settlement icon featuring if it is a settlement. If not, just carry on to the next...! Very occasionally a non settlement icon like a word pillar will actually appear briefly on the ship HUD, but you have to be extremely close.
Occasionally the 'beeep' will happen in Pulse Speed, not worked out why yet- if you know, leave a message in the Comments, Like, Subscribe, bell, patreon, do me washing, make me tea, sandwiches... Ooops went all U Tube there. Anybody remember U Tube, used to be on that there Interwebs back in 1996-2006...?

Lemme in

Manufacturing settlements. Want a peaceful life and no Sentinels attacking when you blast the reinforced door in? Easy peasy. The doors are usually opposite a hill. Use terrain blaster to make a 25 m deep tunnel opposite and shoot the door from safety inside the hole. The flying Sentinels rarely come inside, the dogs never. No hill? Just blast a tunnel into the ground that aims at the door instead.
Same works for the Sentinel Storage Settlements. But they are best blasted from a spaceship with sufficient empty slots for the loot. Its either four or 6- can't remember. Always tag them though, 'cos its very easy to lose them in a flight turn- if you have to do a couple of runs at them.

[Edit: this no longer works easily 'Post Pirates', as any aerial attack leads to Sentinel ships, which can only be escaped by running away into Spaaaayce. Best stick to tunnels]

Lemme 'Lone

Never ever ever go into Space from a Plannit, with Sentinels still in Search mode. Sentinel ships will then appear in Space too, and they are a pain in the Narse.

Kicking the Faecium Out of Sentinels

The new Sentinel update has added several new types of Sentinels, which have new functions. Knowing them makes them a lot easier to kill. And who wouldn't want to kill these dreadful nasty robots who only exist to enforce the peace and stop stupid animals killing each other...

1. Standard Flying, as per pre-update little hover ones.. (that look like one version of the buried data caskets... hmmm?)
2. Pyramid Flying - new.
3. Barrel Bottoms Flying - new
4. Dogs Ground - old
5. Walker Robot Ground - new
6. Walker Large - old
[7. Sort of more squarey 'standards'. Not sure what they do, they get close in to you, but aren't very aggressive.]

What they do [in battle]:

Standards shoot you... but not if you are in a building, under cover, or in a hole.
Pyramids find you, and bring the Standards to you.
Dogs shoot you with a lazer even if you are indoors, they also dodge sideways if you shoot them. They often get stuck in building features that leaves them vulnerable. They can also jump on you, if you are in a shallow depth tunnel, and do very heavy damage to health. They do not attack if you are about 3m + below the surface in a tunnel.

Barrel Bottoms repair other flying Sentinels.

Walker- robots shoot you, but are dumber than Walker Larges. They can be shot at long range fairly easily. Their faces are their vulnerable spot.

Walker Larges. They really shoot you! Plenty of UToob vids on killing these- basically knock the limb armour off first, then hit the head.

Tactics
1. A Sentinel on its own? Shoot it dead by whatever means you have.
2. Sentinel Packs? Hit the Standards at close range to draw in the 2/3 Barrel Bottoms repairers. Then shoot all the Barrel Bottoms. Then kill the Standards, then the Pyramids (after the Standards as the Pyramids bring the Standards to you), then the Walker Robot/Large. Do the dogs at any opportunity but before the Walkers- you'll want no distractions from bashing them. Being in a building's entrance or a tunnel you have terrain manipulated is critical for survival. It gives you control over all attack actions not them. Retreat into a building/tunnel to heal, and shoot any Sentinels that come in- they won't fire back.

Also- hit Sentinels from the air. The armoured doors to factories can be easily shot out from the air, as can guarded storage facilities. Large walkers are large aerial targets...! Just remember to tag the location first, as they are easily lost in an aerial turn. In addition, this means you don't really need a gun in multi tools. I've just got the 100 dead sentinels achievement in a newish game, all just with a mine lazer.

Just out of interest, in my previous game i died vast numbers of times fighting Sentinels... in every case blowing myself up with my own plasma caster. Do you do this too?
I've stopped using them!

Outlaws Update:

Its hard to tell if the Sentinels attacks have been increased with the Outlaws update, as we have to spend most of the time underground now sheltering from the "Every 2 Minutes" Pirate attacks. However, they do seem to be more persistent, and the notion that you can kill a sentinel on its own quickly and not have the rest turn up has definitely gone. On the Easter 2022 'Kill Hostile Plants Nexus mission, I landed, was immediately attacked by Sentinels, and as I began to lose badly, shelter in in my ship did not help, so I had to get out, and quickly 'terrain formed' a short tunnel. That seriously changed the odds. With a medium upgraded Pulse Spitter- took out about 50-60 in ten minutes. 3 waves ordinary, a couple of dog waves, two medium robot , and the final large walker. Virtually no damage to me from shooting out my hole, in for reload, out- kill the repairers and in again. One Pulse spitter clip is enough to knock out all the smaller sentinels, -reload, kill another.
HOLES are your life saver for dealing with sentinels. And if you can't be bothered to fight them once they are on to you, just tunnel about 100 m away, wait for them to magically congregate at that end of your tunnel, then run back to the beginning and resurface out of their range and ski-daddle pronto-quick (or faster!)

Talking to Weirdo Bipedals, DNA Testing, Origins of Aliens, and their Dietary Fads

NMS has a cute alien dictionary aspect, where talking to aliens allows you to understand more of what they are on about. You learn one word at a time normally. This isn't just for fun, it is critical for obtaining benefits at the Planet settlement- manufacturing buildings that you have to shoot the door in. There is a choice of options at the terminal here, and understanding some or all of the language is extremely helpful in getting the right outcome. Its usually a 1 in 3 chance otherwise. Missing getting new blueprint here is extremely annoying otherwise!

Alien words can also be got from the talky stones on planets, and as an option at ancient Buildings instead of another ancient relic location.

The words can be obtained quicker from aliens at the Space Station and Trade stations on planets. There are some rather subtle rules though it took me for ever to notice...

Using the 'talk to alien' option- the one standing in front of you... will initially give you two options:
Learn word, and practise dialect. The first is simple- ask for one of four options, and get a word. You may notice that 1 or 2 of the words are akin to the alien racial traits. Beep Boops: are explorer/religious, Raarrghs: warlike, honour/death, Spivs: Trade/money. Its probably a minor advantage to keep to these initially to get the basics of their language sorted, then go for the more obscurer options later.

The 'practice dialect' option is different. You can get rewards or reputation downgrades by picking the 'right' or 'wrong' option. The same principal as above normally works- match word type with racial traits, BUT... it doesn't always work logically. They may occasionally get all pissy for no good reason- its not as 100% as in the First option. You just have to chance it. In addition there appears to be a direct connection between the initial 'learnt' word received, and the options available in 'practice dialect'. I think this is a relatively new development, and it pays to make the word learnt in the first option, one that is relatable to the race of the alien. A positive response is thus significantly higher.

The 'Practise Dialect' Option is, and this is not very clear, a multiple option too. You can do it up to 3 or 4 times, depending upon what translating upgrades you have. This is what they are for. The Translators + Artemis one for talking to aliens 'stack' so keep them all [kudos to Korkmann on Steam for testing that]
.................TOTAL & UTTER WEIRDO.................



..................................................TOTAL & UTTER WEIRDO'S SHIP..........................................

Its usually a convenient option to dump off your alien artefacts at the same time as you do the learn words options; (and after doing them one by one when your fleet picks up dozens of them, time after time can lead to a certain dullness). So check your reputation with the races tab occasionally, as it doesn't take long to get maxed out with all three from giving them artefact gifts. Once maxx'd, sell them, they don't help any more, and the tedious one by one gift handover can finally cease. Now you can go and do this with Cronus instead and fill him up with cake... one crumb at a time.

....DNA Testing, Origins of Aliens, and their Dietary Fads


Artemis "him...her...it...Thing"?
DNA testing reveals 'Sugar 'n Spice' proteins, cake codons, and residual RNA chocolatacil , hence Artemis is definitely a gurrl. The name is somewhat indicative too, and her [younger ...siiiigh] ladies thigh shape. And she's cuter than a Korvax's krotch, which proves it. Being lost in an unrecognisable nowhere with no distinctive features whatsoever, unaware she was dead, and with weirdo's coming to get her- suggests she was stuck on the St Austell plannit in the Outlaw Kernow system. Her elongated anthropoid arm length and proper DNA hydrogen bonds at the top, not folded 'long the edge, suggest origin from the adjacent Paradise Plannit- Debben, specifically the Northern parts. Her diet would thus be V. Soggi-otters (underwater, night, rare-ish). And Ambrosia rice puddin (nice settlements, dinnertime, always available). If her species metabolised complex carbons, had a Krebs Cycle equivalent, a fairly uniform rate of calorific conversion; and she was on a diet, she'd probably add some space lettuce to that.

Storage Augmentation

Storage Augmentation (SA) applies to the exosuit, multi-tool, space ships and freighter. I don't use Exocraft much- but I assume it also applies to them.
In the Exosuit you can upgrade Exosuit , Tech and Exosuit Cargo. Multi-tool adds up to three rows of utility slots- that's nice and easy.

The ship SA comes in two formats: storage or tech [three now, a new 'Cargo' has been added recently] and is either paid for or via a SA upgrade from usually Crashed Starships, Derelict Starships in Space or your freighter's Fleet Acquisitions.
There are some little details that make prioritising these formats and their cost- very significant.

SA'ing a C class ship is cheap, and fairly pointless. It will cost 25,000 and 50,000, and 100,000 (?) nanites to upgrade a C Class to S class. The only reason to do so I've encountered is that it has an exceptional paint-job. My purple with pink highlight Explorer being a case in point... totally worth 175,000 nanites to S Class it...!

I'd suggest choosing either the 'great looking ship' or A/S class SA upgrade route. SA cost more at each new horizontal line you add. Each class has a maximum number of lines with S giving you all for that ship type- 48 max for S class haulers. I think they are about 180 million golds for the last ones. Not exactly cheap, so it pays to be clever upgrading ship SA. The most cost efficient option is to buy the first 2/3, 3/4 SA cash, and upgrade the cheaper first slots ASAP- particularly if you intend trading. For the last SA's, usually the final line, use the SA upgrades instead. Save them specifically for this, because one thing you may not notice- is that if you use a 'free' upgrade SA, it counts as a bought one, and the price still goes up irrespective for the next ones. If you use your SA upgrades early on, they are worth about 50,000 gold, later on: 150 million + each. Assume 30 million profit on a trade route stage- that's 5 Trade routes worth for ONE SA upgrade. Definitely worth saving til later!

One minor aspect of Ship SA upgrades, is that in having Storage & Tech, you can have 6 active Hyper & Pulse upgrades, if you put 3 max in each. Probably shields too- never tried that. So this has a minor affect on how you might want to upgrade SA.

SA'ing the Exosuit has a similar cost increase increment too, but here there's little you can do about it (except to buy Landing Pod locations- where an exosuit upgrade is available for virtually nothing). However there is some tactical advantage in having the three options as to where the SA goes: Exosuit General, Tech or Exosuit Cargo. The latter has double the capacity for the low stack items (those not max stack 9999)- those with max stack of 10 in Exosuit are 20 here. Shifting 10 stackers to Exosuit Cargo 20 stackers, doubles you Exosuit capacity, which is the most convenient to use.

Tech obviously only takes tech items, but can be SA'd similarly. I'd recommend maxing Cargo SA first, but when convenient, getting the Tech SA's up too, to remove as much of Tech from Exosuit General to free the latter up as much as possible. Exosuit General is probably the lowest priority.

Exosuit SA upgrades being available from the Space Station and Amomanlly, as a one off each time you visit a new system. You don't have to take the first option- when it flashes in 'Exosuit', just tab to Tech or Cargo, and have it upgrade there instead.

With the high cost of Storage in NMS, one obvious but easily forgotten aspect is the value of what you put in these slots, and whether it is redundant? Atlas passes 1 & 2 are redundant once you can get an emeril based Atlas 3 pass. Delete the first two from the Exosuit. Similarly in principal for the Ship drives- you can delete the cadmium and indium drives once you have the emril based one. HOWEVER, this does reduce your hyperdrive range down- by about 100 ly, if your S class hyperdrives upgrades are well 'aligned'.

Selling stuff at every opportunity- even if it isn't at max profit at one sales point, selling it, and buying something with a bigger profit margin, is more cost efficient. As you get wealthier, the alien artefacts, fuzzy balls, gravitinos, all the stuff that gave you good profit early game is just semi profitable junk as you pass 100 million golds. Sell it irrespective of profit, because latently, it is costing you better value storage options.

A Comprehensive Look at Freighter Upgrading...

I lied.


I have absolutely not a clue as to how to S class or upgrade freighters. Total mystery. I've done EVERY gesture at the Captain & Navigator, and kicked all 9 Food Processors.

NOTHING works.

I fear gentle reader that on this subject I must pass the baton of writing stuff on to you. Or if you don't want it.. I'll just chuck it in a cavern system, where like anything 'rare underground' it'll never be seen again.

OR... since your Auntie M. is lovely beyond word's- here's where to get the best advice I've seen so far on Freighter upgrading:

go on U Tube, [via a VPN + Singapore node if you'd prefer to skip the vile ads) and after the .com/ bit of the address substitute this:

watch?v=nS5lU31f0js

or search for:

"How to Fully Upgrade your Freighter in No Man's Sky" by CookingDoor

... and then ponder the staggering amount of effort/research he put into making that 16 minute vid. And the superb level of razor sharp editing incorporated that, would make ...REDACTED.......REDACTED.......REDACTED.......REDACTED....ailway Empire Utube vids.

Know Your Frigate

I prioritise Frigates pretty much over everything, when a new Expedition arrives, its freighter & Frigates first! And after 400 hours game play, I just about can recognize a frigate from a distance when hiring them. So I imagine I'm not the only one who's observation powers are well meh!

So here are all five types with observational highlights to make identification at a distance easier, so you can reverse away from ones you don't need, before being bombarded with repetitive dialogue.

No. 1 The EXPLORER
Easy-peasy, its got a big wheel on the front. Broom broom!


No. 2 The TRADER
Also easy to identify, its got a big loopy thing underneath. For hanging shopping baskets and stuff off.

WHEREZ THE PIKKACHURE GONE STEAM??????



No. 3 The COMBAT
Its shape from above is two triangle wings. From above it and the Trader are pretty similar- sleek and pointy. The Trader is a bit curvy, the Combat is all angular. That's it 'Rrrr' war face, showing how big and warry it is... until it gets sold for scrap by a minor be-specktacled bureaucrat, for budgetary expedience.

AND AGAIN YA' THIEVING CORPO ????

No. 4 The INDUSTRIAL
The Rear Shielding is distinct at a distance. Its all boxy at the front, for putting mining stuff in, like gold, frankinsteins and murr.



No. 5 The SUPPORT
The Central Spikes, and prominent cylinders in the middle. Easy to confuse with the 'Industrial', but note the square ends of the Industrial, and general more regular symmetry, where the Support is more messy. Its a support ship, so expect it to turn up late. I re- name mine after cliched builder's excuses. I'm up to 'Grannies' Funeral XII' now.


TEST!!!!! There's no avoiding it. Stick pencil in ear, tongue out, and assume facial grimace substitute for situational awareness. SPOTTTTT the Frigate. Which type is missing?

Trick Question- they're all there! "I gotttt piiig irron !"

You can have 30 frigates, six of each if you prefer. Rename them with name types that identify their type and write 'em down, as you get them. Once you have over 20, trying to keep track of what types you have/want otherwise is difficult.

When approaching Fleets to hire frigates, hire one, then back off a bit, its a lot easier to find the next one from a distance rather than trying out volumetric spatial awareness in too close.

I've seen a UTube vid on Frigates that goes into intricate detail of their specs for hiring purposes.
Fair enough- but I can't be bothered personally. If its a C, with no negatives and on or under 2 mil golds- i buy it. Its far more fun watching your 30 crappy C's all upgrade into S's eventually, rather than spending 10-20 mil on initially hiring one rare S class.

The Mental Gymnastics of Sending Frigates on Expeditions.

You have five expedition options. Explore, Industry, Fight, Trade. Balanced. And ideally you want all 30 ships off on expeditions. 5 x 5 = 25, 30 ships, you have enough for 6 expeditions. The expeditions are timed from about 5 to 24 hours, so some get back a lot quicker. However, the Expeditions come available faster than the longest expeditions so eventually even seven 4 ship ones can be done.
So which frigates to assign to have them all out? First count up how many .. say- 'Industrial' expeditions there are available. Eg: three. And a 'Balanced' mission requiring one Industrial frigate too. With ideally 6 frigates of each type available in your fleet, you'll need one for the 'Balanced' and 5 shared between the other three. You put two lower starred/ranked frigates in each of the two higher starred missions, and make up the 'Industry' total with non Industrial frigates with good 'industry stats. The lowest star mission takes your final highest industry stat Industrial frigate, and make up the stats again with non Industrial frigates. Its a balancing act. Bear in mind that usually there are only three mission types available, a Balanced, and two/three of a single type. Its very rare for one of each to turn up. Keeping a high level of non specialist frigates in specialist missions, gives you much better long term options, as individual ships are multi-taskable. You only need 105 for a 5* mission status, so five 30 status frigates is a 30% waste of resources. All at 21 is the theoretical optimal. Most are already at that if you buy them at C Class. Hence getting stats up in other specialities makes more sense. 'Course higher stats gets more stuff from the Expeditions, but ... that's just junk!

I love my Frigates. They have only one flaw in my opinion. No plannit busting capability... If only they could spread mathematical viruses, watching physical reality collapse through becoming 'un-formatted' when volumetric structural evolution had to re-set to an alternative sequential development path would be even more fun!

[If pre 'photon decoupling' Reality hasn't grabbed you yet- that isn't going to make much sense! Check it out, and note its highly embarrassing quality of indicating that physical reality [ie the discipline of physics] is not even close to being a fundamental component of the Big Bang volumetric Universe- its 360,000 years too late! Rather a lot given that the real fundamentals of the Universe occurred sequentially before; (ie before Time evolved- they occurred in a non temporal linear sequence] and mere microseconds after the Big Bang].

How to Build Mining/ 'Leccy Extraction Towers.

Nobody builds pretty mines.

Aunty Margarine does. 'Cos its easy, and mining is beautiful.

There is also another good reason to do so- it's optimal efficient.

When you have located your hotspot for 'leccy, minerals or gas... and the C 40% A 80%, S 100% [are there B's ??? , don't recall ever seeing one] is directly in front of you (and...you should be so lucky 39%, 79% and 99% are most likely)... actually it isn't- it's physically under you where you are standing- not where the scanner is pointing.

Visually mark the exact position with reference points (plants, mineral bits, ground crack patterns) in your head- cos opening 'Build' will alter your position slightly. Open 'build' and place a small floor section exactly over the hot spot. Hard work over.

"MINING IS BEAUTIFUL" Prof. Lady Margarine MA COWS. Luki Dip. GnT, VC & BRA.

To get the most amount of 'leccy, mineral or gas out of this hotspot, you need to build upwards over it (or 'terrain remove' downwards to 'solid', re-find the hotspot, then build upwards). Optimal efficiency allows only one extraction unit on the optimal location- hence the 'small floor' piece fits over this exactly, and forms the basis of your construction.

To optimise the output of the hotspot, you need to build upwards from the small floor piece. But as we all know- accurately stacking leccy, gas, mineral extractors is a right pain.
So here's the magic ingredient. Half wall sections. Add two of these (per tier) to two opposite sides of the small floor piece, and stack about 15-20 high each side. Stone Half piece arch doors look nice for the bottom, a couple more stone tiers, then maybe some alloys. Colour them - 'leccy is DEFFO purple, Gas green and minerals- whatever they look like. Gold yellow etc etc.

Then place your lowest extractor centrally on the small floor piece. Note the base/feet of it and how exactly far they intrude into the half wall piece either side. Put another extractor on top, and locate the base/feet the same way- intruding into the 'half wall' piece the same. Repeat until you run out of patience, stuff or space. Stacking is thus made extremely easy by using the half walls as a uniform reference point.



You now have a perfectly aligned optimally placed series of extractors precisely on the hotspot. More importantly, if you added colours- it looks good. Just like Aunty Margey always does.

This usually accommodates about 8-10 extractors. More than sufficient in most cases. You may need more 'leccy if you have a large base, in which case just snap another small floor piece adjacent to the existing one, and build another vertical 'half piece' wall, and infill with extractors the same way. Not as optimal as the first in theory but in practise it is. There is no BETTER location, unless you find another hotspot.

You can infill the open sides of your new tower- after adding the 'leccy wires and pipes- it helps to see these directly when linking, rather than rely on the green circles which can be confusing in terms of position on extractors.

Ta daaah! Pretty mines! And aesthetics is worth far more than mere minerals. Except orichalcum obs, cos that's pretty too. For the fundamental relationship between ugliness and inefficiency, I recommend an unpaid internship with a successful socially aspirant owned architects' firm with corporate/government clients... and keep your eyes, ears, mind [and options] open. THEN you'll quickly see 'why' from the dirty end!

Oh and 'build' using the build camera... waaaay easier. Except the 'delete' bit... still awful, but at least better than it was. I swear on me Mother's po', I deleted 32 Freighters completely trying to add/colour a Freighter A Corridor- Gawd's Own Honest Troof!

Planet Trade Ports

Kabooommmb!!! Warped into a new system... What to do first...?

This:

1. Ignore that very tempting Space station for the moment.

2. Call in your Freighter if you have the Freighter Teleportation upgrade installed- this gives you full access within this system to all Freighter/ storage options, assuming you've built all ten storage upgrades in the freighter.

3. Pulse drive to nearest planet- distant scan it if you like, and choose another if its Sentinel hostile.

4. Get below 'orbit' into 'enter atmosphere'. Then (having previously ship upgraded to an economy scanner) go to the "Warp Freighter/Amonially, photo, etc" Bar, and find the cog/tool option at the almost far left. In it first option should be 'Find Trade Post'. Do that- in the atmosphere it usually appears on the planet your are near, often directly below you. Fly down- dump off any trade goods, do alien chat for words etc, and scan a few obvious fauna. Then rename the planet.


5. Then do what you want to do. The reason for the above is that - if you go directly to the Space station, the game will keep two sets of System names. One- your renamed ones in your Exosuit info tab options and Two- in the Space Station 'system visited/your bases' warp machine lists.This confuses the situation if you use the System/Base/Planet renaming options to include Trade route (or any other reason) data in the renaming. The obvious place to do it. If you properly visit a planet first, before the Space station, you then get the full renaming ability.

6. Optional. Whilst at the Trade port, with one ship and your exosuit cargo full to the gills with trade route goods, call in your Hauler also full with trade goods, and, using your Exosuit cargo, shift goods between all three, so you only sell all of one type at one time from either the current space ship or exosuit. You have up to 9 ships... you can net over 100 million from filling them all up- in theory, although its a bit tedious to do in practise, and your exosuit cargo needs to be maxxed capacity.

Then
7. Visit some planets, get the big nanite boost for 'all fauna scanned'...
8. Visit the Amoninally, to get your Exosuit upgrade
9. Visit the Space station to get your Exosuit upgrade.

Trading- An analysis of Methods:

Systematic trading is knowing what to trade, where, and in what quantity. Added to which is the 'Galactic Economy', which adapts to your larger transactions, making initial routes less profitable, forcing you too into a more dynamic approach. Optimising profit is not just about 'the profit' but also how long it took to obtain, and the Galactic Economy cool down effect on repeating that transaction. This means there are a number of balancing options if OPTIMISING is the goal. This means taking all factors into account: these are:

1. Finding a 3 star booming, prosperous, wealthy..etc Solar System

2. Check the Galactic Map Solar System specific 'Sell' & 'Buy' percentages. Here are three examples from prosperous 3* systems:
1. Sell 62.5% Buy -14.9%........................ Differential = 77.4
2. Sell 51.7% Buy -28.3%........................ Differential = 80.0
3. Sell 68.5% Buy -22.6%........................ Differential = 91.1

If you are buying goods, no. 2 is best as goods are 28% under priced, and cost less to buy. Selling them, no.3 is best as goods are 68.5 overpriced, and your profits are up. HOWEVER, in systematic trading you are in a System to BUY & SELL at the same time. You need the Differential price. This is made up by adding the Sell + Buy together to get the magnitude variance. Highest Differential is the optimum for buying/selling, ie here No.3. Note the difference between the worst- no.1 and the best. It's: 13.7 %. If you traded 10 million, you'd lose 1,370,000 just from picking location No.1- despite it being a 3* prosperous economy. You can, but it ain't optimal.

3. Location 'In System'. This has been discussed by others but I recently noted the difference between selling percentages at the usually optimal on planet Trade Post of 60.4%, and my freighter's Galactic Trade point [GTP] of 60.3%. 0.1% difference isn't worth the ride down in my opinion, so sell bulk and 'buy' anywhere and everywhere you can in-system.

4. Buying Trade goods locations: Freighter/Base (install your own GTP). Space Station- usually two GTP's. Planet Trade posts. Planet building locations GTP's. Random hovering GTP sites on planet.

5. Selling. Sell all the same items from one inventory location (exosuit/cargo is one location) in one go to get the best price. You have potentially 9 ships. You can fill 5 up with 48 slots of one trade good in theory. Land at a trade post and call them in one by one. Should be about 100 million profit per buy/sell event. A well augmented Exosuit Cargo inventory helps considerably here. On entering a system and pulsing, be aware that the pulse interruption ship to ship trade event, often gives a +100% selling factor- the best available, so arrange your highest value trade good into your exosuit cargo before lift off from the final buying point.

6. If operating at lower bulks- one or two ships cargo filled, skip the two lesser value cargo types for sale, and buy the more expensive at other In-System locations.

7. Goods. Find the two Trade Route Maps, one of 4 linked Systems, the other of just 3. Study them and plan where to start. Thereafter it's just following the clockwise cycle of buy/sell. The maps are in the 'Naming Stuff' Section below.

8. Now you know what to buy, from where, and where you are going to sell it. But that's just tactics. Now some strategy...!
NMS has a dynamic economy that lowers prices the more you sell in bulk. It's not permanent, just with a cool down. How to optimise from this?
Begin with your 4 destination Trade Cycle map, start at one location, warp from one 3* system to the next buying/selling at optimal differential locations(as above). Complete a full cycle. If you repeat it, the prices all start to look far less attractive, as you have saturated this trade route for now.
So... move on to the 3 Destination Trade Cycle, repeat as per the 4 Cycle. Now, both cycles are saturated with your goods and profits are far less high. Assuming you have renamed these Systems for future trading reference, high differential, and ease of identification, you now give up trading and go do something else, while the Economy cools down. Once it has- repeat the previous cycle using the same locations or enter a Spiral Cycle.
A Spiral Cycle is effectively a continuous use of the Galactic Map to find new 3* High Differential Sell/Buy Systems for every Buy/Sell event. You repeat the 4 and 3 cycles as before, but find new locations. This has the advantage in that you are constantly looking/finding higher differential locations, for future reference. Ideally after the first 4 & 3 cycle, do Spiral Cycles until you have found the ideal highest differential 3* systems, and then stick with those.

Tip;
At a GTP, to buy goods in bulk, don't use the right hand arrow for 1+ no. of goods and have it slowly accumulate up into the thousands. Use the left arrow and go backwards from '1' goods straight to the maximum- say 26500 for example.

And keep out of the Second Hand Cake & Pie Trading Mart... or Aunty Margey'll send her boys round.

Naming Stuff. (+Trade Route Diagrams)

There are various reasons for renaming Systems, planets, bases, locations, aminals, flora and minerals...

For fun is my favourite, but there are some extremely good practical reasons too.

1. Trade Routes. As mentioned above, there is an order on entering a System to be able to rename that system, and have that renaming work on the warp gate destination options. Basically it is: DON'T GO TO THE SPACE STATION FIRST. Land on a planet and get it mapped by some basic format- scanning something should do it, or find and interact with a settlement beacon. Then you can go to the Space station.

Why is this important?

Take your new System's existing name: "Plivintoe Aximin IV" for example. This tells you nothing about it. So for renaming you want to have some extra data included in the name for future reference assuming the System has bases or resources you want to return to.
1. First give it any name that may more likely stick in your own memory- say "Margarinia"
2. Second, you'll want to have a quick reference to its Trading status, so you need a 4 or 3 value for the two trade cycle types. "Margarinia 4".
3 Which Trade good type specifically is this system offering? If its the 4- Cycle its one of Energy, Mining, Industry or Tech. Or in the 3-Cycle, Alchemy, Scientific, Commercial. So we have 4E, 4M, 4I, 4T, and 3A, 3S and 3C options eg:

"Margarine 4M" This isn't exactly intuitive, so lets assume you consider your 4-Cycle Trade to be:
Energy, Mining, Industry, Tech; in that trade route/ max profiting order. Lets call these E1, M2, I3, T4, and the 3- Cycle A1, S2, C3 instead.
Hence :
new planet name is Margarinia 4T4.

Still not very intuitive. Lets call the 4-Cycle and 3-Cycle A & B instead, and consistently swop the first letter of the planet name for the Trade type. In addition- only name planets using this format if they are Trade route significant, which in practise means you've pre-selected them for their Hi-Supply status. Giving:

"Targarinia A4":
"Targarinia A4 now tells you its Hi Supply Tech System of the 4-Cycle, and the fourth destination in that cycle.

"Cargarinia B3" by contrast now tells you its Hi Supply Commercial System of the 3-Cycle, and the third destination in that cycle.
"But Aunty Margarine..." I hear you say, "... my 'alchemy trade location isn't called alchemy- it's called Ore Processing or Material Fusion... I don't understand and **sniff sniff** I'm likely to cry unless I'm appeased...!"
Well that's because each of the star colour based systems also have four different names and a single symbol just to confuse you. Look for the symbols/star colour and ignore the other names.
Oh allright... Aunty Margarine's on the case y' li'l faecium. Here- have some nice jpeg sweetie's [NFT's in Olden Day's Speak] and hush up y' whining.





Nice and easy.... OH yessss it isss!

Big Circles are coloured as per their star colour in the Galactic Map with Economy Scanner selected, and contain the 4 Trade System names, with their icon in little rectangles. The boxes with lettering are the trade goods in their coloured box to match their System's selling origin. Move round clockwise to buy and sell.

"Targarinia A4" is A=4-Cycle- ie first image, and Tech, ie bottom left blue.

"Cargarinia B3" is B = 3-Cycle, ie second image, and Commercial, ie Trade top.

RENAMING BASES

This is useful, because on the Discovery tab and at the Warp gate destination options, you'll have your bases come up, but there are probably too many to recall exactly what each do. So ... da da da daaaah- Rename them. Who saw that coming???

What type of Bases are there? Depends on your game play style really, but there are some basic types:
1. A Base- a focusii for doing/storing stuff.
2. A manufacturing location
3. A mining resources pick up
4. A farm
5. A landscape viewing platform
6. An exocraft exploration site...
And so on.
So.... give them a memorable name: I don't know- something like 'Margarine Base 1', or 'Margarine Mine 6', or 'Margarine Farm 2', and so forth. A sequential numeral after the name is useful, as it helps provide recognition.
With Mining and others that have specific qualities, add these afterwards:

"Margarine Mine 6 Ag Cu O2 Suf (N FM)"
This tells you its a mine for silver, copper, oxygen and Sulphurine, with unmined but available Nitrogen and Fungal Mould plants. Since you can't rename a planet once uploaded its worth adding the optionals in brackets at this point.

RENAMING AMINALS

There are usually between 1 and 11 aminals on a planet, that, the more there are the more nanites you get for discovering the lot, plus a few extra for renaming them. It can be about 2500 nanites for the bigger numbers, so its normally worth it if just standing at your first landfall you have 6 already. With this proviso, if the 2 or 3 left undiscovered are sky one's they are very easy to find, but you may have to fly to a new location just to get them to spawn in. If they are land ones, slightly more difficult but same relocation applies. Sea ones are usually fairly easy to add. Underground ones are very not easy to find, I usually don't bother anymore.
The Subnautica Zero Giant Ice worm thing doesn't contribute to fauna scan totals, and I haven't managed ever to scan it despite about 20 quick fire attempts.

Mun

MAKING MONEY

I like to keep a ship slot free for picking up broken ships. Repair them to the bare minimum (umm actually, that's not quite accurate- you get more mun, if you repair all the broken inventory stuff- its the repairing that counts not the items themselves , some can be dismantled after repairing) and scrap them. Make sure you have also removed all cargo, AND dismantled all upgrades that can be broken down (the basic ones can't). These have no affect on the price you get for scrapping the ship, and do not affect either the possibility of getting storage augmentation or upgrades from the scrapping process. They are randomly allocated- they do not reflect the state/contents of the ship. Relatively easy early money. Otherwise money can be gained from more systematic processes in this order of gain:

1. Mass chlorine manufacture with an oxygen mine.
2. hydroponics production to make one/two stage manufactured goods
3. Industrial production stage 1- eg fusion reactors, cryo-pumps that require about five mines and four plants en masse from a large hydroponic farm. 10,000 + items for some raw ingredients
4. Industrial production stage 2. This is principally putting processed goods valuing at about 1.5 million gold each from stage 1 together- for the 15 million + each.
5. Industrial production Stage 3. The top manufacturer good... forgotten its name worth about 50 million each. NB, worth considering with this top tier, is that you won't be needing it much. apparently there is a upper wealth limit of about 4.6 billion golds, so making 100 of these is more than can be sold in one go.

MINING

Don't build anything just yet- not even the base blob. First find a 'leccy source, preferably an A (Built about 20 mining bases over 500 hours- never found an S 'leccy yet). Its worth moving around a planet to get this, if you have a good resource planet. Once you have your A leccy, then tag it from a distance, and head off for you first resource- usually non gas, get that found, then tag that, then repeat till you have 2 or three immediate resources. Retag the leccy, and find the sweet spot that might just include all three within 300 metres (in one of the Scanner options you can see all resources identified on the HUD). Put the base blob there. This makes life a lot easier in connecting them all up. The leccy will always be the principal construction resource for location. Then once all connected, you can go further afield with the usual 300m tricks- the storage tanks are the most useful for expanding the perimeter, as they provide a dual function. Usually I only have one colour coded storage tank at the Base, the rest out of sight for that resource, for simplicity. Once you get 5+ mining bases, and periodically warp between them to gather resources, you'll see why colour coding and minimal storage tanks in the actual vicinity of your base helps. Max out the leccy pylons on the exact max output spot, and put them on top of each other for best output. See Section above for optimal Extraction construction methods

When subsequently wiring and piping, be consistent. If they don't work- you've probably screwed it up- its not the game. I'd avoid crossing leccy and pipes over though... Same with pipe runs. One sure fire way to make your storage tanks 'fail' is to put them too close to each other. Different resource types should never be closer than 3 storage tank diameters to each other.

One tip for mining money making. An Oxygen planet is ideal for Chlorine making. Once a bit of chlorine is got, it becomes 6x with oxygen, so for max chlorine income, have all the medium and large refiners possible in one location, and then use the teleport rig, to make and instantly connect multiple refiner/chlorine making locations. I think its five in each max- ie 5 x 4095, so with four locations, you can make 60,000+ chlorine in one fill up, and pick it up later. Mining and simple processing together make the trips back to each mine site far more efficient timewise.
[edit] 'pick it up later'. Don't, just stay with it, the refiner 'bug' may remove all contents of the refiner if you leave].

The chlorine 'cheat' is to find a Space station (nothing else), that is SELLING chlorine, buy that chlorine, and sell it and a full inventories worth of your own made chlorine. Then goto 'buy' and buy all of it back. Then if it is sellable at less than -79.9% value, resell it, and buy it back until it reaches -79.9%. You still make a profit even at these large minus values- it's the difference that counts. Do this multiple times in different Systems that sell Chlorine, zipping quickly from one system to another via the Space station warp sometimes out-runs the price devaluation. If you do it anywhere else other than a space station it normally does not give you the option to buy it back. It may take while for the Galactic economy to reset from -79% though.

Making Mun off Processors

Early game stuff, acquire or buy rusty metal/ferrite dust from every available source, process it up to Magnetised and sell it at the bigger + values. . Cobalt to Ionized cobalt appears to make a good processing profit- but it takes 1:2 in processing so its profit margin is actually negligible.

Use oxygen wherever possible to improve processing yields. A medium processor is the first really useful upgrade here- but is dependent on getting to the Amoninally, so not necessarily 'early game'.

Aminals and Scanning

To get maxed nanites from discovering all the aminals on a plannit, and increasing your Aristotelian/Linnaen taxonomy honorifics, check the 'fauna' data in 'Discoveries' tab to see which are missing and what environment they exist in. If the last one or two are 'rare underground...' honestly, go to the next planet and start again. Unless you're willing to spend hours searching for caves and then slogging multiple empty versions of them. My best breaks with this have been the caves adjacent a 'boring' site, one with a location flag and a couple of chests, but, importantly next to a hill with two entrances. Identical to the first 'your ship' location in the game in terms of features. The 'rare undergrounds' were just walking about next to the entrance! This type of location seems to generate 'more' stuff in my experience.

Minerals and Flora Scanning is less profitable, but upgrading the Multi-tool will give scanning profits of up to 250,000 for fauna (aminals) about 75,000 golds per flora. Never seen above 200 for minerals. I believe the game is a bloody cheat when it comes to flora at least. I've had two missing on a planet I know backwards. I think they are the yellow sodium plant and the blue booster plant. Neither of which- unusually is on planet. So its impossible to get the lot.

Rare Underground/ Rare Underwater- A Solution at last!

Choosing to give up trying to scan all the aminals on a plannit has been probably the best solution to date when a 'rare underground' or in fewer cases- 'rare underwater' remains the last one to find. Alternatively a half day spent trolling about under ground/water was the only option.

A half way house idea- to look around certain types of cave entrances -ones where the underground stuff 'spills out' in the immediate vicinity of the entrance for the underground ones was promising.

Now there is a better way to do this!

Drop-pods.

If you buy drop pod maps, and use the construction menu scanner booster to find drop pods on a plannit, they more often than not turn out to be the precise environment where 'rare underground' aminals hang about on the surface. So you can kill two flyey things with one stone. Add inventory space to your exos suit with the drop pods, and find that last 'rare underground'. I'd suggest about 12 drop pod maps. And probably optimal to do this on the 12-15 aminal plannits for maximum nanite return. Additionally, I find that scanning for local sites from a drop pod location more often than not gives a similarly suitable twin cave hole location to explore too. Even if you don't need any more invemtory slots, this is still the best way to find the right environments for the rare undergrounds hanging about on the surface. Its a waste of time trying to find them underground. I haven't seen/discovered a red dot rare aminal underground for about 3 months now- so I think its been broken by updates gone wonky. [First one last night... 48 metres away, so terrain tunnel'd to it, and re-scanned- it had disappeared. Big Fat Bums. Went to the surface , turned around and the lil' faecium appeared behind me! And the moral is.... ummm dunno!]

With regard to underwater, I had a 'rare underground' AND a 'rare underwater' yesterday on a 15 aminal plannit- most I've ever encountered, and 3750 nanites worth. Potential Looking until Doomsday combination. But it was a plannit with lots of smallish lakes. These were useless for the 'underwater rare'. It had to be a big lake, large enough for multiple 'spawning in' events. About the size that would take about 8 seconds to fly over. Then it was just a matter of going round and round until it spawned in. They always seem to come from behind, so turning often is critical. The 'rare underwater's' tend to be a fat pike like fish or crabs.

But watch out for those crabs- they can jump ten feet...

Faaaarmin' doahn Sau Wes' Galaxie free li' yeer pas' Briistul

Farming. 'No Man Sky' or 'Space Doughnut Making'...?

***Hexaberry Farming Update April 2022- see NEXT Section***

When processing a basic item like milk or hydroponics for a complex multi ingredient recipe, try and do them with all 9 food processors, with 4 or so loaded up with max basic ingredients for the 50 or 5 products. If ingredients are max'ed- and say there are two of them, it's a lot easier if you just have to go back and forth a row of processors, taking out 'product' and rehitting the 'make' or whatever it's called button. Nine processors gives a 'finish at the end, immediately start again at the beginning' cycle. Aim for a full 50 at a time in making and shifting basic ingredients- it makes the final stages far more cohesive to do.
If you're about to be making 1000's of cakes etc in one session, have your freighter 'In System', clear its 'General' storage bay, and use that for dumping stuff in and out, and periodically dump finished product in the tab to the left of 'General'- as it has double storage per square. You can use a hauler's inventory too. Cake making is storage intensive, so... do it if you must, but remember... Auntie's are vengeful, viscous... vicious creatures when it comes to getting in the way of them makin' or takin' cakes.
Then put on your most borederest look and head out for Charon/Neutron Boy or whatever he's called (Podge probably) at the Amonaly and gather those nanobites... nans... from him for nosh. Ignore his comments and concentrate on speed, its random nanites giving him food. It goes up to about 550 nanites per item fairly frequently, and an hour slog can give you about 20,000... and carpal injuries.


Farming Layouts

Fauna attraction units and fauna milking units- there's an optimum distance and layout, but FIIK what it is. The milking spray works visually up to about 20 metres, but whether that's significant is difficult to tell. The only layout I've sussed is to keep predators and herbivores separate, as you'll end up with lots of dead moos [equivalent may be substituted on non Terran type planets] otherwise! One other thing is to place farm layouts on flat land, fauna gets stuck in very little bumps quite easily. One reasonably effective layout is a milking machine and 2/3 feeders about 20 metres from it. Four of these at a distance around a base, maximises the fauna uptake. Add two teleport booths to each location, and zip from one to the next location rapidly when filling feeders and doing you best milk maid gathering impression. (See teleport layout for Fungal Mould harvesting below- its the same layout)... AND this lovely new diagramme.



How to Farm
1. Go to Farm (Base)
2. Make Food Pellets from Carbon (see below) in Food Processors
3. Go to Teleport 1, Teleport to Teleport 2.
4. Exit Teleport 2, and walk to Red Feeder immediately in front of you, and fill it with food pellets. Walk to green Milker on same straight line, and pick up products. Walk to next feeder, fill, etc and walk to Teleport 3, teleport to next group, and repeat. Exit via Teleport 9 which takes you back to Teleport 10 and your Base.

I think there are only 4 max, milkers and 9 feeders, so one group gets 3 feeders. Remember to 'Go' in a teleport, place the bracket on your right as you enter it. Why so many teleports? Try it without them...! The four Milking groups are each about 200m apart from the nearest (or further if you want- see new Teleport Section below), so that's a lot of pointless running around otherwise.

[Edit: there seems to have been a recent nerfing with the practical distance between 'milking groups' now. Too far apart and they simply stop working when you are not physically present. The farms that still work are the where the four milking groups are around a base, and not further than 100m from it.]

A couple of other aspects with farming: bung a feeder down where there are a lot of aminals preferably herbivores wandering about. Some places are teeming. Bigger aminals are best too, they yield more milk than littler ones. Build nearby lots of the upright ivy shelf hydroponic things that give carbon. They are good for making feeding pellets. Also, you can shove Oxygen and Condensed Carbon (CC) in a processor, to get loads more CC, then put 2/3 of that CC in another processor to make Carbon. Put other 1/3 back with the Oxygen, to make more CC. In 5 minutes or so, you get about 4000 Carbon- enough to keep 4 Feeders constantly full.

Faecium. Processing milk products sometimes requires faecium for yeast, but aminals on your farm no longer drop faecium when they stop feeding from the feeder machines. You can either process 1 Dihydrogen + 1 Carbon to make 1 Faecium, or hand feed an aminal and wait for the facium to magically appear in due course. More often than not it is now impossible to pick it up- as the aminal stands on top of it, so shoot the little f******, and gather it's... ( jeezz sometime I wonder about this game...!) [Edit: to get the faecium a little less vilently, face the aminal from the side, interact with it, and it'll turn towards you, allowing access to the faecium... 'Scuse me 'secund...

"Bleuuuurkkk!!! Huerp...huerrrp .Hauuuuughpppp.... uh... euhhhh. "

Where were we....?]

Farming gives milk, eggs and... ueeerggg Cysty-pig tumour things (Outer Worlds) that get scraped off certain types of aminals. Not the proper cute furry ones....the eeuuuwww- disgusting insecckty ones. YUKKK. (Note to Hello Games- please introduce ship napalm drops as a farming utility... Y'know, like we have in the real world- it's called 'Round Up').
Milk and eggs are extremely useful, the tumours less so. [There are other products- honey, leopard fruit, hexaberries, etc] Keep the feeders full of pellets when you are farming- you get about 200 milk eggs tumours per full feeder. The aminals will wander away when it runs out, although they'll spawn back in quickly each time you refill a feeder. If you fill feeders from exosuit-cargo the first attempt often lets you put 50 in- as occasionally so with food processors too. If you have sussed the systematic mechanism for achieving this- please put it in the comments below and Aunty Marge'll praise you on high!
Once collected, plan what you want to make, otherwise you'll run out of cream, butter etc. Pastry pies are great for general emptying a full 'Ingredients Store'. Virtually everything can be put in a pie. Doughnuts are good too, as they include various jam types to keep Gutsy at the Amonillilly happily fed. For efficiency Cake batter + cactus product = Esophagus Suprise at 5.5 million golds/50. Simplest and best price I've found so far. Traditional cake: cake batter with jam is a bit more involved but gets 6 mil gold/50. Toppesterest price I've seen for cake.
Never farmed birds... don't know if you can. Be useful for eggs... Oh.. bit of trivia. Why can you put Chrom metal in the food inventory? Cos you can make silicon eggs with it. But for limited recipes- ice cream for instance. Its not an egg substitute generally unfortunately. Probably a game residual of something planned but not included.

Farming & Polyfibre.

(contd from Faaarming Section)

Might just be me, but the biggest headache in setting up industrial scale farming is getting the 2 poly fibres for each of the four aminal product collectors. 800 starbulbs/400 cactusisis required.
You could just fly around appropriate plannits and pick them up individually, each group of starflowers has about 100 starbulbs product. Meh. I want to GROW them. Additionally, since Frost Crystals are the simplest source of flour for cakes, these three- starbulbs, cactusisis, frost crystals are best planned ahead. For power purposes, farmed on a Freighter is easiest, but your farm will need a 'hotspot' leccy source anyway, so it makes little difference. Once you have all the starbulbs and cactoosis for this farm (and for industrial farming say 4 other farms to cover all the various products- 3200 starbulbs and 1600 cactootsis more needed), make the 32 polyfibres, store them, then convert the hydoponics for starbulbs and cactushis, into frost crystals, for their food processor processed flour product (via glass baubles or what ever they're called).

HEXABERRY FAAARMIN'...

HEXABERRY FARMING... my weirdest experience to date in NMS.

I like making Galactic Cakes, and aim to be the Pie Mistress of the Universe. So ingredients is a thing. One particular aspect is the flavouring of cakes, and you often need to collect these by hand individually- berries particularly. I hate doing manual labour myself when I can have a factory doing it for me.
So I found a Fractured plannit that has a single fauna- a floaty crystal creature that has as its 'product' - hexaberries. You can also 'companion' it.
If you can feed 'em, and get the product, presumably you can use the auto feeder & auto collectors to harvest them en masse. Just find a location where they hang out, set up... and await the free hexaberries...?
Nope. These lil ' faeciums don't work like other creatures. First they all f.off and find a new hangout spot 100m away from your farm. Second, even if you can tempt them over, they either eat the auto pellets then don't get harvested, or they amble off a few minutes later. I got 6 hexaberries from farming in an hour. Normal harvest for 6 feeders and 2 collectors would be at least 100 product in that time.
One trick that normally works is to leave the farm - all full of food pellets; and go on a local fly-about. See what's local, and come back in about quarter of an hour. The pellet distributors should be empty, and the collectors full. Tried that with floaty crystals... nuffink.
Then I hit on a new trick! Most creatures will follow you for a short distance once you have fed them a pellet by hand. You can then instantly get a product from them. So I did this in a well populated area, and with the respawn of product being every 45 seconds, I went and fed 3 more, and they gathered around me. First one respawned a product 45 seconds later, then the rest shortly thereafter giving 2-4 hexaberries each time. Once all had been product extracted, I then nipped off and fed two more creatures. I had six! That with 45 seconds product respawn is pretty much continous hexaberries. Several creatures wandered off, and I replaced them, keeping 6 on the go. In about 10+ minutes, 200 hexaberries!



The best bit is the weirdness! Surrounded by humming crystal creatures on a fractured plannit, and farming by them hand! Oddest thing I've done in NMS so far!

And it gets better...



Here's a Bubble Farm, also hexaberries. The bubbles are more cooperative, will follow you longer distances once tempted by food pellets and are much easier to farm. They produced about 50 hexaberries in 20 minutes. Still slow. I tried hand feeding them, 6 seems to be the maximum, before the extra wander off. 50 hexaberries in about 10 minutes, these give 2 berries each time not 1-4 as crystals above. You can't farm and hand feed to double the output, because if you go far enough away to get a new group of Bubbles, the farm stops working once its out of field of vision [FOV].

Another Hexaberry Monster, a flying rectangle.



This has a spawn of hexaberries every 30 seconds- 2 each time. It is fairly mobile in dirt landscape but when the ground gets busy, it gets stuck. They are fairly well spread out, making farming/hand feeding difficult. Pretty much as per Flying Crystals, and sub Bubbles.

More Exotic Aminals Products- *updating* (subject to rocket peterol prices...)

Following on from the hexaberry producing Floaty Crystal thing, it seems likely that the other '1 fauna per plannit' weirdy aminals might also have useful products.

Aunty Margey The Explorer (I locked Dora in the Basement, she won't be out for a long time unless some pesky kids in a hippy van turn up...), is off to find out. Lets see -got me purse, 'em-beg, sweeties, puzzle mag, couple o' miniatures, bicycle clips and.. ummmmmm...?? Oup silly me, - Rockit Ship!

1. Flippy Floppy Flyey Creatures- like a group of butterflies- Nope- No nuffink.

2. Star Creatures. On plannits with the ossified stars you can pick up, there are virtually identical aminals like them. One below, and its post feed attendant faecium... wot it trodded in. Cretinous sub-viral neo-mineral.



These have 'Fiendish Roe' , which can make 'Haunted Pie' Didn't bother trying to farm them, they get stuck in the terrain very easily, and are difficult to group for hand feeding. i managed 3, but quickly got bored...! Product was about 50 in 5 minutes though.

Paradise Plannits

According to NMS, paradise plannits are ones where there are:

Breathable air
Few if any storms
No Sentinels
Lots of aminals and predators...

According to Aunty Margey, Paradise Plannits are those without anything else on but her...

For example a nice Moon with no aminals, flora, minimal minerals, lo to no colour saturation; just a low gravity and a wind that goes "woooooo...ooooohhh...hhhhhhh"

And maxx'd storage gold and silver mines for to go:

"Miiiiine, miiiine, miiiiine. HaHah harr harrrr...! All Mine!"




AUNTIE MARGEY'S SPACE MENTAL HOME FOR SPACE MENTALISTS ON A LUNE'Y LIKE MOON.

Note Mines and high tension electric cable pylons in background. Function, Form & HIgh Fashion, in mining me dears. No need to visit an 'art' gallery ever again!

Double note, that the relevant second piccy has been evasporated by Steam cos I'm up to 28 pikkachures- presumably that's tops.


..........................................................Paradise is soooo personal.....................................................


"....Take me to the mooooon...pom pom, pom ti pom....!"

{POM not p*rn- stupid Steam script salaciously sullying my sordid free scribbles, AND stealificating my pikkachurs}

Lovely lovely Nanites.

So many 'best ways to make nanites'. Yaaaawn.

Aunti Margii knows best, me darliiin's.

Fungal Mould balls on planets. Its a newish thing in NMS. They appear on the HUD as three crowns, and look like a man size diameter ball. They appear from 6 to 12 normally. If you find a nice big group- Build a base quite close immediately!

This isn't a secret- its fairly common knowledge. What is probably less well known though is how to get them to re-spawn extremely quickly!

The FM balls usually appear on a slope. First use Terrain Manipulator 'Create' to make a low wall on the three downhill sides around the balls. A single press on 'Create' is all that is necessary. Then build a two storey platform so you have clear access to mine lazer all the balls. On that platform also place all 5 processors, and a teleport nearby on the ground, or a floor directly on the ground.
The teleport should connect to another teleport about 200 m away. Explore the 1000m radii region around your base if possible first- if there are one group of fungal mould balls here, there are likely to be others... If there are, the optimal is to have: (teleport to teleport) four times minimum, with each location having the teleport upright on the right hand side for 'going in' and 'coming out' [it should only be on your left when you use a teleport for a return journey]:

Like this:

Base T (in).....................<200m...................... T (out)..T(in)..............<200m............. .....................T(out)..T(in).............<200m.............T (out)..T(in)........................<200m.........
.............T (out) ***

[See new Teleport details in next Section for a diagram of this]

The end of the route is at ***, which hopefully is a second mould ball location, but if not, it doesn't have to be anywhere in particular- the important thing is that it is a minimum of 4 'in/out's of the teleports. Once you arrive at ***, (by simply coming out of one teleport and entering the next one- placed about four teleport widths distant), turn round and return to the base (unless you have the lucky mould ball location there too- then blast these and then return!). By the time you have returned, the original base mould balls will have re-spawned, if you had blasted them before leaving. The teleport journey there and back takes about 20 seconds to do.
NB... it is worth pausing a second or two after leaving one teleport before entering the next- to avoid occasionally falling through the landscape mesh. If you do- use rocket boost instantly to return to the planet surface. For the same reason, place the Base teleport on the ground- not above ground. This prevents glitching through the floor. Its probably worth putting all the middle teleports on four lined up stone/alloy large floor sections, with the teleports at either end, to prevent this glitching. Two floor sections are sufficient at either end.

Once you've gone out from your base via the teleports, return, mine the balls, add fungal mould to processors in equal amounts, teleport, return and repeat til awash with nanites. I wouldn't actually advise doing this beyond a few tens of thousand nanites even if you can- its the last big challenge the game has, and there's nothing harder afterwards- it quickly looses its interest if you've got no more targets to achieve. Its actually too easy now.

The end result of this can be 12 fungal mould balls processed every minute. They amount to just over 9999 FM's each time- or 2000 nanites once processed. That why you need 5 processors! You could even built a small secondary base at the end of the teleporter's route at ***, and add 5 more processors here, to spread the processing load.

And that is by far the most efficient way to get nanites.

Edit. On returning to my Nanite Farm, half the teleport route and the second Fungal Mould location have disappeared... Booo! BUT, the respawn of the original location now works at only two teleport group jumps... Rah Rah!

Teleporting is Reeel...

The future as everybody knows- failed miserably to be worth going to. No aircars by 1960, No fusion by 1970, No Leisure Society by 1980 and no Moon Base by 1999. And that's all the Boomers fault.

In Victorian times teleporting was done by 'Fzoooming' as in 'Dishonoured'. In the Future as per NMS, you have to use a clunky annoying teleport open telephone box like thing, exposed to the poisonous elements and generally frustrating as hell to set up and get to work as intended.

So Aunty Marge has simplified it a bit for your convenience and sanitation... and hopefully no ending up with house flies insides decorating your external features.

This is for long distance, there are other methods- a cheat where you do something under them- didn't really understand it- but UTube tells all...

Here's a simple way:



There are two components:

1. Entry & Exit, single teleports (1 & 6).
2. Double teleports: (2 & 3, 4 & 5) exit the first, walk about 3 or 4 teleports booth widths, to next teleport , and enter it.

Repeat Component 2 as much as you want.

Construction Details:

Component 2 is five small floor pieces in a line corresponding to the journey direction. Place the two teleports at either end of the floor. The brackets of the teleports have to be on your right with respect to the direction you are 'going'. Ignore 'coming back'- if 'going' works- so will 'coming back'.
Components 1 is 3 floor sections with the teleport in the middle.

The floor sections are necessary, because you can exit and enter teleports in Component 2, very very quickly. The game does not respond that fast sometimes, and you will fall through the landscape mesh occasionally. If that happens- just jet pack up to the surface immediately. The flooring should stop this.
The teleport bracket position is critical, as this indicates the direction of travel. If you reverse one, you end up backwards, and its confusing!

In my first set up of this, with about six Component 2's, when I exited and came back a few (real) days later, two sets had disappeared- but it all still worked.

That's because its set in Future Light, and, as we all know- the Future is shi...

Cakes Cakes Cakes & Hunting Cake [& Tracking Cookies].

Marie Antoinette- 'er of Bastille/M'dam Guillotine fame was misquoted. "Let them eat Cake' is the usual nicey nicey historian's lying version.

What she really said was:

"Gimme ALL the Cake, everything, **scoff scoff myyumm myyum** Morre morrr, gimme morrr cake, uuuhrrrr delicshious. MORE!"

'Cept she said it in French probably, and of course that makes it sounds loads more romantic.

In fact... your ol' Tauntie Margarinee just happens to of have a C30/60/90 cro bootleg tape of Marie's actual speech off Paree Aujor'dwee Radio. Well some of it anyhoos, that naughty Annabelle Lwin from the laundry up Exeter borrowed it, and put some music she done on it, to send up to that wazzuk MacClaren up Lun'non. "Burmese Giirls go 'round the outside...' or somethin'. Idjut. But without more ado... what Marie said... in french... ish... she WAS from Quebec,

"J' veux du gateau, donne moe toute le gateau... mioumme mioume, plusse plusse, donne moe plusse de gateau, c'est ecoeurant, c'est trop"

And she had some lovely frocks too. Yellow ones..... heh..... heh...... heh!

So in fond memory of my princessly Bourboness [de Trois Riviere et Deux Rives] cakey-flackey predecessor, I shall be baking a special B-T cake on 22 August 2022 to 'remember' 60 years since the 'being really mean to M' A...rie, trash last nearly got taken out.

Back to the cake. If you like cake making in NMS, behold you lucky li'l faeciums, from whence on high or something, cometh a guide to massive amounts of cakeifickating. Mountains of the stuff.

Aunty Margey is proudly bursting at the seams with pridely, to present... in association with Uncle 'Gobbly' Nobby Unenterprises

.....................................................tah dah dah dah DARRR!...........................................


..................................................................GUIDE No. 2....................................................


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2809373890

And if cake's not your thing, well at least we've got past all that now without scraping the bottom of the vomitarium with the 'exciting' or 'passionate' verbal drivel of our friends in advertising!

Vive Le Cakey Contre-Revolution! Max backwards revolution whisking at 30 revs/second for Delightful Meringue required.

Aww bloody 'ell..................Goggle's tracked you here- personalised sort of, 'not quite there yet cut 'n' paste mostly c.2004 algorithm' ADVERTISING!

Kernow King, 'im off Utube telly has the following message:

"Arr Bollix to Jethro, Y'mmm waanting a fiione Cakey Tea? Y'mm naat do bettter than go down Tea Shop in Fowey. Natt got 'er from Cambon' doing 'er dancing, which is right bleddy shame, but they scones is well fresh mind yoo. Thass it, Oi'm done, put National Amfem on, cos oi'm buggerinov yome. Eahrr, nearly forgat, if'm you'm wantin' mermaid, Debbie up Portreath do kids parties for fifty quid. Her tail cossie's getting a bit tight now, but she's cheap 'n' cheerful.."

" Tinkiiy pliiinkii diiing doon dooo... Yoo like cake an' exotik place, but Tire' out a' Juan Le Pins? Ha' you fought of Horirdays on Sakhalin Island? It verry nice. Wegula' Fli' wans evri monf' Bring you childrens, bears mostly not being to eat them. Forget not to bring a clourliful camera for to take memories home of the Tundra peat bog. Plenty room available near flap in Big Hut... Hutel. Look out to Sea. Look at Elks. Look at Sea again. "Sakhalin, where it non stop something to do." Tinkiiy pliiinkii diiing doon dooo...

"Hungry? <hsss crackle...>We all get hungry form ti <issss...ss> to time. Well now <crackle>ere's a great new solution!!
Go out to a restaurant! There's one not <ssshss ...crackle>inutes from this cinema"

"The Phishing is Grate at Lake Chad!"

"There's Million dollars in a Nigerian Bank account with YOUR name on it... just send pin and mother's maiden name for full details."

"Sea Monkies are brill, buy 40 gross of Sea Monkie eggs if you like small shrimps and the less engaging crustaceans that is." T&C's: Sea Monkies may die before you get round to flushing them down the toilet."

"Buy your own spider monkey, send no money now... umm actually if you could it'd help, they're eating me out of house and home...I'll chuck in a free fez. Yes they do smell a bit. Not really, I don't think you ever do, I've had them for a year and I still retch constantly."

Free stamps! !!! Just send me some stamps, and I'll send you some stamps, and some more stamps on approval. The sky's the limit! Money? Did you say MONEY?? You insult me sirrah! I am no petty merchant, I, sir, deal only in stamps. Begone, and never darken my PO Box No. again!

"Do you get sand kicked in your face by muscle bound bullies? Well, call them rude names when they're out of hearing, duhhrr! Oh, and buy this badly photocopied pamphlet, about muscles.. or changing an 1948 Armstrong Siddeley gear box, or possibly overclocking in Windows 98, its a bit hard to tell."

"Bullies? Bored- nothing to do? Subscribe to new "Beach Bullies" weekly magazine with free alphabetical list each week of notorious wimp hanging out locations. Buy 'A' and get 'B' free! Free gift of sand for 2 week limited period."

"Are you embarrassed by the size of ....."

FFS CLEAR YOUR COOKIES OR THIS SECTION'LL NEVER END...!

Little Tips. Updated When I Remember Them

1. Plant pots appear to have been recently upgraded to have 1-3 carbon extraction potentials. Each pot used only to have 1. Some pots still have just 0. NMS is 'Cakes in Spaaaayce', so why not a little gardening too?

2. In a space fight, use 'reverse' button to keep baddy space ships in your screen much more.

3. Attracting more aminals to your farm? Feed 'em a food pellet, then ride them back to the farm area.

4. Watch out for underwater ghosts! These spawn in from shooting underwater plants about 1:5 deaded plants, and need to be shot before they attack you.

5. An upgraded mine beam is quicker and more predictable than an upgraded gun for shooting Monstrosity eggs into larval cores at Abandoned Buildings. To prevent the eggs disappearing into the mesh of the 'nest', as they usually do, shoot them from inside/the other side of the nest and make them roll outwards (and downhill if relevant) from it. You have about 3 seconds to pick it up...! Once you pick one egg up, fly to the opposite corner of the building quickly and get another, the monstrosities tend to congregate where you last were.
If they are moving away from you, don't hesitate, fly down (shooting the egg with your mine laser) and pick up an egg, it takes them about 4-5 seconds to react, longer than you think. You are most likely to get attacked by ones you don't see right up against the building, or the 'aggressive facing you' stance ones, not the ones moving around.

6. Auntie Margey's BFF Auntie Moira's Best Tip 4Evva: "Tryyy not to diiiiyy". Well worth considering.

7. In order to go faster in jet pack... lean forward and fly with your body as near to horizontal as possible.

8. Space Battles-(post Pirate Update). Change weapons to suit hitting baddy-face's shields or ships? Don't bother. Far more effective is rapidly scrolling through the 'change weapon' type as much as pressing 'shoot'. Particularly if you have a rockets and short range/ high cool down weapon inventory. I used to specialise with one/maybe two weapon types, now with lots of pirates, the non specialised route is far more effective at killing baddy ships. No subtlety- just bang them shoot/ change weapon buttons as fast as you can! I call it 'Westmoreland's Wastage' technique.... just watch that bodycount climb! And make sure you have a Space Station Piratey quest 'live' when doing it, to get those easy promotions and rapid turnaround back... to The World... deary-me I'm getting flash backs from my ESO days... There's M. Charlyvietminh in the Trees... Watch out- we got ST's all over that Protected Settlement- haveta destroy it to save it... Hell- why don't OUR squadron's fight like THEIR squadrons's ???... . "Swauuzuuuungh...swazuuungh...swazuuungg...

9. Oh no... one of your frigates is damaged, and its a pain to go and repair it....! Are you gon' cuurrmpleeetly bonkaz???? Outside in Spaaaayce, exploring your fleet, ship by ship, and climbing/jetting all over each one, with plannits and suns all around you, is probably THE most dramatic visual experience in NMS. Play around with the camera- especially the 'alter sun position' for space snaps you and every H.o.m.o-sap.sap [♥♥♥♥ gets hearted by Steam] will 100% NEVER experience in real life, but look pretty near perfect in game. Hard save, jet off a frigate deck and hurl y'sel' into the dark yonder...! Can you make it to your Freighter, or another Frigate [No, but its fun to try!]. Play 'Name that Frigate' type... Kamikaze an asteroid... Feel vertiginous nausea looking down... down.... doooooown to a plannit...


Then go back and get the materiel you forgot to repair the frigate. Play time's over!

10. You like kittens? Every alien loves kittens [just don't enquire what for... different DNA = different cultural/cuisine values]. To hear kitten's miaow, go to a Korvax ship upgrades'er on a space station, and interact. 'Myyew!" Little kitten noise! Same with interacting with any korvax in the back room on the same side, and picking up navigation data from the Ship Upgraderer's desk.
Hello Games...Hello Kitty...? Secret corporate cogs and hidden wheels within wheels there, a conspiracy of silence (apart from the 'meeww') preparing to unleash hybrid Big Farma Lake Vostok amoeba like living fossil's from the prehistoric Plastocene Era to come and get us -you mark Aunty Margey's words.

11. Any frigate missions available? If the 'missions available' is highlighted in yellow- there are, if its in white -unhighlighted. there aren't.

12a. I thought this one was obvious, but talking to a Pillar pilot [STILL] last night, who's name will not be mentioned to avoid incidents (12b 'never wantonly irritate a trained nice cup of tea provider'). You can still warp your freighter in when you are walking around on a plannit. 12c avoid co-op with people like Uncle Nobby who have been in the game 200+ hours and still don't know this. 12d(i). Break it to them gently, and obvusciscate... where possible. 12d(ii) and Never forget where that next cup of tea is coming from.

13. Posters and icons/transfers can be placed on most not flat buildable objects too. The green and yellow blobs can be hugely increased in size for nice bright colours. (See Paradise Plannit illustrations above). Script can be laboriously made using 1 & 7 numbers. You get 50 of each. You can colour these too. I recommend colouring them first, not afterwards, as the script layering will prevent some components from colour change, post-placement.

14. Want to 'ten times' your Frigate industrial expeditions income? Well close anyway. The industrial expeditions usually bring back Hot Ice, Nitrogen Salt, Thermic Condensate, and similar ingredient that combine to make Fusion Accelerant. If you go to the Amomilly and learn Fusion Accelerant and the contributory recipe's- that's a 5 million golds item. Store the ingredients from a couple of Industrial expedition, until enough to justify the effort, then make the missing parts for about 50+ million. If you do this regularly, it minimises the initial set up effort required, and makes this a better bet than £50 squids on Uncle Nobby rolling back ratted from the pub after midnight on a Dart's Tuesday.

15. Tip for Steam Guide makers... 28 max pikkatures- it seems. Poo Bah. Auntie Margey always has a 32 roll in her DDR Practika , when picnicking next to advanced aeronautics testing sites.

16. Tempting aminals? This is for the highly unusual situation where you have 6 aminals near you and you're harvesting them each every 45 seconds or so (as per Hexaberry Farming, where I guess this tip should be- oh whatever). When you are about to harvest an aminal... and have just its 'dialogue' options opened, it can be manipulated to follow you. When its in the best place for multiple aminal harvesting, then 'dialogue option' it to harvest. Doing this you can create a convenient circle around you where an aminal is harvested every 8-10 seconds. 6 aminals max though. If you try for more- others you already have will leave. I think with No. 1 Tip about plant pots that ties head to head with 'most pointless tip' yet! Hoorah for us!

17. My fav recipe evvvaa. Sh*t to Gold. I kid theee not. There's a lot of latencies in NMS, the good type - that stay hidden but affect the game indirectly. This is one that rises above the surface slightly and is a danger to shipping! Faecium + Residual Gloop = Gold. The two lowest status items- gloop and crap... ONE of each too, make Gold. I think there's intended to be a point in that! If you haven't done this recipe at least once- just for the kudos, consider yourself a mere amateur... a dull herbivore companion to the traveller not the T. themslef. Themslef... I like that. Themslefs it is from now on. I'll drag this stalled language kicking and screaming back into constant change, even if I have to do it all myself!

Maximising Utility

Space Station Work

In the Spaaaayce Station on the side with the Warpy thing, the alien booth to the far left provides work. Every time you go to a Station pick up all the non location specific work, and dump off completed jobs. You can have multiple jobs for say 'kill 3 sentinels', and you have only to do it once to fulfil ALL those jobs. Hence actually do work as little as possible and max out the rewards... (life lesson from the aforementioned Boomers to all you kids out there!)
Avoid the location specific jobs as much as possible, as these mean you have to go to specific places for a single job. However I'm pretty sure even these get lumped together as 'done', when you do one, and the rest are for the same thing.

Integration Activety

Its too complicated to do all the time, but try and maximise the utility of where you are. On a Station for example, buy moulds, buy ferrite dust, trade, sell/buy upgrades, learn words, dump off race gifts, pick up jobs, search the Atlas pass 3 area, pick up nanites from the machines, pick up nav datas, check available upgrades, pick flowers for carbon, scan ships for class upgrades, buy basics from all the pilots, and avoid work station layabouts!
On a planet base, farm outside, hydroponic inside, have mines, have refiners processing basics for more expensive items, make food, upgrade equipment, inventory manage, etc etc. Done in a coherent order- say set up refining first as it takes the longest, you can have multiple tedious processes going on at once- reducing the time impact of them all considerably. Doing five things at once removes a lot of grind time.

Anemone Etiquette

The ariStocracy in NMS Universe always...

On Entree to the Amonally, flies to the top of the Swirly Whirly case thing, tosses a few carbons to those indigents lacking purpose below with a couple of kind gestures,('baisement mon derriere' is rarely considered appropo in polite company) before sublimely floating off to Nada's balcony, and visiting the new System's haute couture exo-suit tailor inside. A new pocket perhaps?

Exiting whilst avoiding revealing one's undergarments is achieved by leaving via the balcony adjacent the poor deformed wood creature thing, boosting to maximum height, then dropping at last boost power onto- and into, in one movement, one's selected mode of transport. Exiting the Amenilliy should be immediate and leaving a swathe of ferrite dust in your wake, unless you have the fashionable regal rainbow exhaust wake.

Please do not enter the Amonelly to the tune of dual tone 'Dukes of Hazard' style horn blasts. That is most certainly less than couth.

Don't feed the nasty rough man's 'live' ships, and avoid gawping and pointing at them like an irrational planet bumpkin, before returning to your quaint C Class fighter that strangely appears to bear a passing resemblance to the Space Cart from the beginning of the game suitable only for collection at one's Freighter's faecal matter outlet thereafter.

If flying is not appropriate, NEVER run in the Amonillaly. The correct posture and gait is: "I'm a little teapot' with the right arm raised with the wrist flat, and left arm curved with hand resting on the hip... Singing or if necessary- typing the 'Little Teapot' song immediately distinguishes one as being in the upper social echelons of NMS traveller society.

When interacting with others, please use pleasant phraseology: "Dooo please come to my soiree" is preferred to: "Oi... fancy a fight and pissup up Plimuff Plannit? bring bottil, bird, anna space ship."

Do dress up at the image rectifier machine thingy by Cakey Cronus, white is so last eon. [There was QUEUE at the 'Mommally transmogrificationer on Day 1 of Leviathan to dress up! Aunti Margey LOVES you all my fashion conscious darlings!] And do bring a pet, the more bizarre the better. But... please, do clean up after it, if you must bring a yet another Tyro.

If you are set on attemping to SELL items to Amenally Travellers, always- take your business outside the airlock, and leave your suit inside...

And if you see Aunty Margarine fly by, all in pink and a pugneum wake just wave and she'll send you cake!

Charm, daaarlings is just so...everything, isn't it!

"♥♥♥♥'s 'n' kissies"
Modom Margarine

Happily Ever After

... and went to the Centre of the Galaxie and got married and had disgusting green gloop shaped baby things that were highly virulent and killed off the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy population, and then got et by the Crimson Eye what lived happily ever after.

The End

Well... How many didn't you know?

Category 1. Loads, Ummm actually, I don't play NMS, I'm here by mistake.
Category 2. Some, Seen most of these elsewhere.
Category 3. A few, 2016... jeez has it been that long?
Category 4. One maybe two... Hellooo long lost twin auntie Erica!! Howziz youwse doin'?
Category 5. None, I'm 14 years old and have 200 ex girlfriends.
Category 6. I've forgotten the question/Don't know.
Category 7. I like tortoises...'Course you do, but it's not Thursday today is it? You'd better sit down and have a nice cup of tea, while we call the home'.

To qualify for your PRIZE, take you Category number and a Prime Number, divide category number by the Prime, unless its not a whole number result, in which case pick another prime, do it again, then look sternly at the original Prime, well not the original if you got a non whole number, the next one. Stand back a little, and re-do the stern look with added effect.
Mutter
"Mercy'... i' tisn't is it!" And challenge the authenticity of that Prime's claim to be absolutely fundamental in terms of a unit magnitude accretion sequence requiring: a basic prime Unit =1 and a systematic unit combination mechanism thereafter. Thus with the Unit 1 'point', and a linear mechanism joining the point units up, you're well on your way to proper Area based (energy apportionment) mathematics. Whence also comes the multi-vector, not point based vector premise for all Galaxies paths from point of origin. Which is why Galaxies do not originate at /near a single Big Bang point and spread outwards from it. They go in all directions.

Congratulations, you've just won the outline methodology for determining the basis of Grand Universal Theory! Bribing Aunty Margarine with cash, is THE surefire way to get more!

PS... Lots of cash...

PPS... No ...LOTS.... "L", "O", "T", "S". Lots.

"Nitey -night me l'il faeciums" luv y'Aunty Margie

[Myst Leissa]

What benefit could you possibly gain from this rubbish...all it happens to be is GenX references to how telephones worked before smart phones existed....

[ICountFrom0]

I had a rather enjoyable read while enjoying a nice pot of tea.

[Caramirdan]

Another tidbit I may have missed in here, that I just discovered after years playing, it's probably nothing new to everyone else: scanning your farming plants will give growth times!
(also, they fixed the freighter cargo bulkhead expansion-to-storage augmentation glitch)

[Fjarska]

Awesome post, just awesome.

[CaptainPhelps]

Well Done bud, I been playing this game since launch, about 5OOO hours total in Normal., Survival, and permadeath. There was some information there that I didn't know very helpful. Thanks.

[Lazarus]

I came here for the tips, and left feeling oddly....Wholesome.
Instructions were unclear, accidentally smiled

[Margarine Listless]

"Back in 50 hours- gone to see the Leviathan" luv Margey

[Margarine Listless]

Syd " I do hope we cross paths some time soon." It's a quite big Oouniverse out there. But if you see something in pink flash by, smell cake burning, get annoyed by a low flying Explorer buzzing you/doing Utterly Butterly aerobatics over your Base for no obvious reason, or cross the portal in the Blight Expedition to Paul XVI and find a surprise message 20 metres high directly opposite past the Comms- you're closing in on the pungeum hex trail of Auntie Margie!

[SydNyte]

Well I came here expecting a few tid~bits of information I may have missed being away from NMS, that I found. However, I was simply swept away in a quite entertaining way I might add, into Aunty Margie's world. Delightful clearly a quality being. I found myself instead caught up in your well described whimsical world only to wander here to the place I seldom visit the comments. BRAVO! I say! and my thanks!
... Although I have now forgotten why I entered and just want to play some more NMS. I do hope we cross paths some time soon.

Syd

[Margarine Listless]

***Sniff*** [paaaaarp] Don't mind me getting a little emotional & teary after that lovely last comment. Your Auntie Margey would like to be all blushy and modest, and say it was nothing really, but... she simply doesn't have an ounce of modesty in her, so she can only say she heartily and absolutely agrees with you!