The path to Circuit Board riches is fairly simple. You’re already there really since you can craft the Circuit Boards. Now you just need to sell them at any Trading Post or Space Station that buys them at better than -9.0%. I usually try to find ones that are paying around -5.0% of Galactic Average. You will never find anyone paying MORE than (positive percentage) Galactic Average because Circuit Boards are components, not trade goods, so they don’t do the positive/negative price fluctuation thing. Trust me, at a cost of less than $50K per Circuit Board to make, and a sale price of around $1.2 mil units each (if you can sell at -5%)…you will make serious profits even selling below GA.
Also note, Circuit Board and Microprocessors have very similar icons, but are completely different items. The Microprocessor is only used as a build component, and you will never be able to buy/sell them for profit anywhere. Circuit Boards are profitable because they cost far less to make than they sell for, but the vast majority of the “yellow” components are not profitable to trade or build/sell.
What ARE profitable to buy/sell are the “white”/“grey” trade items, always listed at the top of any trade terminals inventory. There will be 3-5 of these usually, depending on the economy of the system. You’ll only want to trade in the top value ones, as they offer the highest profit. You’ll need an economy scanner on your ship to trade in this manner, as it tells you the economic information of the systems on the galaxy map AND it can be used to quickly locate a Trading Post once you are in a system, and Trading Posts always have better buy/sell prices than Space Stations.
Also a big money maker, as mentioned above, stacking your scanner mods. You can stack up to 3 mods for any ship/suit/tool component, and if you place them so that they connect on at least one side in the “grid” of your suit/ship/tool then they will light up, indicating that they’re giving a slight bonus to their stats. Your goal here is to secure 3 S-Class mods to install for your scanner, as each S-Class mod will give one of those ridiculous “X000%” increases to scanning value for flora and fauna. Once you’ve connected three of them, and the connection bonus kicks in, you can receive $250K units for scanning common creatures, and $50K units for common fauna, more for uncommon and rares, or if you luck into 3 S-Class mods with top percentage numbers (there seems to be a bit of variance across the mods). Nothing quite like making $1mil units in the first two minutes you’re on a new planet just by pushing the scan button.
So I have yet to encounter the inventory issues many folks here and elsewhere have reported, and I have added several cargo slots to my exosuit since the update. I wasn’t maxxed out pre-update though, so I only crossed over the 25/48 line post-update, which makes me wonder if the bug is only happening to people who had the maximum 25 already pre-update? Very odd.
What I did run into post-update, and it’s extremely frustrating, is that my BASE is gone. Before last week’s update I had restored my pre-NEXT base on planet, visited it several times, run a few quests from the base NPCs, built some new stuff, and generally everything behaved as it should. Post update, my active base quest is still there, and my base icon shows in the star map, but my base no longer appears anywhere in the list of destinations at space station teleport gates. In fact, NONE of the worlds I visited pre-patch are appearing.
So I tried warping directly (several jumps) to the system where my base was located (according to the icon on the galaxy map). It is NOT the same system my base was previously in, the planets are all different and the system is in the wrong place. There is also no base icon anywhere on any of the planets, despite the fact that the map tells me that’s where mine should be. As of right now, I have essentially LOST my base and all the materials stored in the 9 storage containers there…which is dozens of hours of NMS play time. I am not at all happy.
I wonder if the base permissions patch “ate” my base? Maybe it was there post-patch, and someone else landed there, claimed it and changed the permissions, locking me out of it? If that happened though, you would think the icon would still take me to the correct system, and I would just be unable to access my base. It’s more like either the system my base was in has somehow been destroyed and recreated, losing my base in the process, or the base was destroyed in the patch process and I need to recreate it from archives somewhere else.
I have not tried recreating it from archives because my current quest involves popping around the galaxy via black holes, and I want to find a nice planet closer to the galactic hub before I relocate my base. It would be nice to have access to all those resources again though…but I can manage without them for now. Perhaps the next patch will fix the issue…
When you build a new base and place your 9 (actually 10) storage containers, they’ll still have the stuff you placed in them. So at least that stuff you didn’t really lose. Small consolation, I know, but there you go.
I think that bug only affects players who’ve unlocked between 31-36 slots. Once I unlocked my 37th slot, the issue appeared to subside a bit or go away.
Yeah, I noticed by accident that once you have the 10 containers in place at the new base, you can safely dismantle the old containers without fear of losing what’s inside, and you don’t have to actually empty them out and haul the stuff over to the new base.
Thanks for all this cool info. I’m working on my farm now, using 4-6 biodomes. How many of each plant do you maintain?
Freighter mission question: How long is the cooldown between missions? In the beginning when I had just the one frigate, I didn’t notice any cooldowns but once I built up my fleet a bit (I have seven now), the cooldowns have become very noticeable.
Oh and while I’m asking that, is it possible to replace frigates? Most of mine are Class C.
Honestly, I’ve done all my Circuit Board profiteering by purchasing the plant-based components directly from alien traders at Trading Posts and then selling at said posts. I’m not sure a Circuit Board farm would be very efficient, given that you will need (per Circuit Board):
Solanium x 200
Frost Crystal x 100
Cactus Flesh x 100
Star Bulb x 200
Star Bramble plants yield 25 Star Bulbs every 3 hours
Cactus plants yield 100 Cactus Flesh every 16 hours
Solar Vine plants yield 50 Solanium every 16 hours
Frostwort plants yield 50 Frost Crystals every 1 hour
So per Circuit Board you need:
8 Star Bramble Plants
1 Cactus Plant
2 Frostwort Plants
4 Solar Vine Plants
That’s basically 15 of the 16 slots in a Biodome. So each Biodome can only make 1 Circuit Board per daily play session. That’s only a 5mil unit take with 4 Biodomes per daily play session. You can put together 4-5 Circuit Boards from the materials purchased from alien traders at a busy Trading Post in maybe 10-15 minutes of interacting with their ships, no gating back to your base or expensive farming outlays required.
Living Glass is actually a more lucrative component to farm, and you should know the recipe if you’ve completed all the base building quests. You can harvest the resources for Living Glass once every 4 hours (vs. 16 for Circuit Boards), and all you need are:
Glass x5 (which is a total of 250 Frost Crystals, so 5 Frostwort plants)
Coprite x50 (which is 2 Coprite Flowers)
Gamma Root x400 (which is 8 Gamma Weed plants)
So you’re still at 15 of 16 slots, or 1 Biodome per Living Glass, but at a rate of 1 Living Glass per 4 hours. They only sell for $700K, but assuming max harvesting you’d make $2.8mil units in the same 16 hours it would take to make $1.2mil farming Circuit Boards. You can dramatically increase the number of Living Glass per harvest if you build your base on a world where Frostwort is native and you find a spot between two decent-sized wild patches of Frostwort, as they will provide a boost to Frost Crystal Harvesting, allowing you to plant additional Coprite and Gamma Weed, in turn making it possible to create as many as two Living Glass per biodome.
Nice! That’s extremely helpful. I chose to locate my new main base on a planet with good weather, so that I’m not battling attrition while doing stuff at base or elsewhere on the planet. But there is a Frost planet in the same system. I’ll probably set up a small outpost there with a Teleporter, since Teleporters are so cheap.
Also going to have to do the math on which systems will offer the best price for my new product, assuming the one I’m based in doesn’t.
Do the NPCs who land at stations typically carry that stuff, and does what they carry depend on the planet you’re on currently? It always seems like the first two items they carry are the same every time, which is annoying when they only ever carry 6 or 7 items for sale. It would also be nice if not EVERY NPC who landed were Korvax in a Korvax system, etc.
It varies. Sometimes you’ll find a high traffic Trading Post or Station where the variety of items on offer is pretty good. Other times only a handful of ships will land. The Star Bulbs, Frost Crystals, etc. are only available from aliens who land planetside. The aliens who land in the space stations will carry other materials like Radon, Phosphorous, Nitrogen, etc. which can be used to construct components like Thermic Condensate and Nitrogen Salt, used to create more expensive components like Semiconductors and Hot Ice. Problem is, it takes 250 Nitrogen and 50 Condensed Carbon to make ONE Nitrogen Salt. The ingredients sell for far more than the finished product, so there is no profit in it.
However, planetary outposts sell more advanced components, and aliens and trade terminals sometimes sell the second tier components, so if you’re lucky and have inventory space available, you can keep an eye out for the occasional handful of Semiconductors or Hot Ice for sale at outposts, then combine them with Enriched Carbon or Thermic Condensate you find for sale from aliens or possibly as loot, and make the combine to things like Superconductors and Cryo Pumps, which sell for $2mil per unit. It’s not an easy way to make money though, as you need to know the blueprints involved. It can pay off though, as just this weekend I realized I had all the components for a Stasis Device in my inventory between my Exosuit and my Freighter…all I needed was to create a Living Glass, then combine a bunch of inventory items, and BAM, an instant $16mil units created out of misc. inventory items. Score.
Of course, I spent hours over the past two weeks raiding planetary ops centers and manufacturing plants to learn every available recipe blueprint…so that helps a lot. GO HERE to see an updated crafting tree for NEXT.
I unlocked my first exocraft earlier today. I don’t get the hate- especially when you have it at your base planet (assuming you built your base on a place with reasonable resources). I only have the buggy one, but it’s basically the Halo Warthog, in both controls and handling. I especially appreciate that you don’t get hung up on any world-objects (resources, plants, etc.)- you just plow right through them and they blow up. That timed mission they give you was fun figuring out how to drive it- my first run at the target was across a big body of water, and I just decided to drive straight through. Not the most efficient (and I failed the mission by 30 seconds or so), but I saw a bunch of plants and animals down there I didn’t even know existed, and it was kind of hilarious trying to drive it at the bottom of the sea. On my second attempt I drove around the water, and learning how to boost right at the top of a hill to get MASSIVE AIR was a hoot. Like I said, it brough back memories of the first Halo, which is a Good Thing.
I’m mostly just happy that I have a way to move around middle-distances (more than 400m, less than ‘1 hour away’) without the sprint/melee-jetpack shuffle. And it seems like you can build the platform anywhere, even if you don’t have a full base. Awesome.
Looking forward to finding out what the other two vehicles bring to the table, and getting upgrade mods for this one. Just when this game seems to be more-of-the-same, it adds in more fun stuff.
Since I plowed through the base missions in my impatience to unlock everything, I have all three exocrafts. I don’t dislike them, but I still use my ship for planetary expeditions because it’s more convenient. But I agree, they’re super fun to ride around in. How is the mining laser?
Here’s my first screenshot of the new base (sorry, it’s nighttime). Still working on the farms, and plan to add more glass when I can afford to. There’s a trading platform behind me in this picture, just out of visual range when at base but noisy just the same.
Yeah, I’m just an idiot. I was looking in the craft menu through inventory, not the build menu, which I’d forgotten about since I hadn’t used it in a while. I should be good to go now, thanks.
The Crafted Products section is worth familiarizing yourself with. I realize built-in guides in most games are not all that helpful (I usually ignore them completely) but this one is super worth checking out, IMO.
Recent example why: The base building quests include a step where you’re supposed to craft a circuit board. The quest hint tells you to talk to your base Scientist, but he’s no help at all, and there’s no recipe in the interface’s crafting menu (when you click on an inventory slot to craft). Baffled, I finally started poking around in the guide, and although I didn’t see it there I did see recipes for the two things required to build the thing. So I crafted those components and then I could see the circuit board in the recipes, and clicking on it gave me a directive to craft one, and then I finally got me past that hurdle in the quest chain.
Thanks again for the suggestion. My new system happens to have an arctic moon and an isotropic planet, so I did exactly as you suggested and dropped beacons near pairs of Frostwort and Gamma Root patches, even though the Gamma Root patches aren’t super important since I’m planting them as well. Also set up a tiny outpost with a teleporter at one of the Arctic moon patches. As it happens, both Frostwort patches are in the base perimeter, although that wasn’t intended. Wasn’t too difficult or expensive.
Now I have another odd issue and I’m not sure its a bug or me being a numbskull. I remain a new system, not the one I started in. I remember completing the Awakenings storyline and building a hyperdrive in order to get to that new system. And now my hyperdrive is gone. I have the blue print for it, but my ship no longer has that drive. I know I had one, otherwise how could I have gotten to this other system?
And the Awakenings storyline is still there, even though I completed it. The storyline says I have to build warp fuel, even though I have one completed warp fuel in my inventory
It’s very strange. I know how to build a new engine, but I’m not sure why I have to.
