Make sure there’s no inventory and you might also be able to dismantle some of the tech and get some decent items to sell.
Found one finally and picked up my first glyph. Of course, I only found them while I was doing something else and not looking for them on purpose. Looks like I need to find 15 more Travelers, as opposed to getting all the grave markers from this one Traveler? Inconvenient, but makes sense I guess.
The way it works is thus;
Each system essentially has a unique pool of ship templates that were randomly rolled for it and every ship you see in a system comes from the pool for that system. The pool never changes, even if you leave and come back. The ship templates do not change either (including the colour). What can change is the quality. Fly around a system long enough and you’ll see C,B,A,S versions of any ship template in the pool. Albeit with the following caveat: A/S ranks are much more likely to spawn in systems that have a ‘rich economy’ as according to the galaxy map.
So there exists a metagame in NMS: people fly around to various rich economy systems trying to find cool looking ships. It doesn’t matter too much if when you find one it isn’t S rank as there is a trick you can use to essentially re-roll the dice quite quickly.
Simply find one of those plantside landing pads as they tend to get a lot of traffic. Slap down a mobile save point and look around at ships coming into land. Not the ship you want or not S class? Reload, rinse, repeat.
P.S. there also exist certain ‘special’ ships in some pools which I think are only ever S class.
P.P.S. you can abuse this same mechanism to get a cool S class freighter since the game will throw that ‘rescue the freighter’ mission at you every hour or two iirc.
And I believe those same ship pools include crashed starships. (Edit: great summary, btw.)
Skipper
4859
It’s time for a money tip to some of you newbies but it’s a bit overpowering (at scale) so I’m going to spoil it.
Eventually you will find Indium and mine it from a planet/moon. Take this Indium back to base. You’ll also need power and at least a medium refiner. Take half your Indium and refine it to a decent amount of Chromatic Metal. This is a 2:4 conversion, so a small amount of Indium will make a large amount of Chromatic Metal. Now take all of your Chromatic Metal and put it into one slot of the refiner with Indium in the other slot. This will refine back to Iridium, but at a 1:2 conversion rate. It takes time, unfortunately, so it is better doing this over multiple medium or better refiners. You can use this to literally MAKE more Indium than you started with, and slowly build up an amount to go sell for decent money. Eventually you can speed this up by setting up Indium mining, but that’s for a different kind of tip. Try to teleport and sell this at a different rich starbase each time. Selling it in the same system will slowly crash the market for Iridium and you’ll make less and less each time. This sloooowly will even back out, but you’ll need to teleport around or carry it with you to another system to sell and make more money from it. Pro tip: be wary of carrying a large amount of this between systems. Pirates will gladly take some off your hands if you aren’t careful.
Skipper
4860
Good tips, all of them. Thanks for these, @fox.ferro.
This is a good tip. Note that you can also obtain easy chromatic metal from freighter cargo pods and (usually) salvaged starships.
Skipper
4862
You can refine it from any number of things as well. It’s thankfully easy to come across because, at least for me, I never have any when I need it.
Okay, for all you newbies (or returning players) who don’t want to do wacky stuff like in Skipper’s spoiler comment, here’s the easy and simple way to make money: scanning.
Go to the multitool vendor on space stations. Buy the S-Class Scanner upgrade and install it to your multitool- you might have to search a few stations before finding one who sells the S-class. Do not buy one that is lower class- it isn’t worth it. Make a note of where you found it, because you’ll want to come back in a day or two when the stock refreshes for you, as you can install up to 3. They cost around 500 Nanites. Once you have at least one installed, scan plants and animals. That’s it. You get plenty of cash from it. They stack their bonuses, so the more you have the better (again, up to 3 or 4). I think I have 2 installed, and I get 150k+ for every plant and animal. So, land on a random planet, scan everything you can see, which generally makes you $600,000+ credits. Rinse, repeat. You don’t even have to focus on doing it, just make a habit of scanning a bunch of stuff every time you land on a planet. You won’t make the sort of mad cash it takes to buy a Hauler or Freighter (40-150 million) quickly or passively, but it’s an easy way to always have 15 million or so on hand for whatever. Then you have the disposable cash to just buy most resources you need from the Trade network, etc.
I know some people have touched on this, but that was the distinction I was trying to make about the selling/trading on a station vs at a Trading Post. You can’t summon a ship using the quick menu on a station, so you have to repair the pulse engines and fly it there. You can do that on the ground planetside, though.
To start the whole base-construction questline, start talking to folks in the bar behind the multitool vendor on any space station. You can just bypass the whole questilne buy just buying the blueprints on the Anomaly using Salvage Tech, but you should do the questline at least the first time. It keeps you moving, gives you purpose and focus, and teaches you how stuff works. That said, unless it’s changed, the vehicles are the last part of the quest, which is a bummer. I think it’s Basic Base Stuff=>Multitools=>Farming=>Vehicles, or at least was way back when I did it.
For those who haven’t realized it yet (not saying you, Skipper), Chromatic Metal is called that because it’s refined from the various base metals in each color of planetary system, at better and better yields. Copper (Base systems), Cadmium (Red Systems), Emeril (Green Systems), Indium (Blue Systems). Each time you upgrade your jump drive to reach new systems, you get access to better sources of Chromatic Metal, basically. Of course, it’s better to just make money and buy it, in 2k lumps at vendors, heh.
I completely forgot that the vehicle station is the final base construction quest. I’m really glad you caught that.
Just now I was working on my base construction quests (mostly just to to get them out of my quest log, since I have just about everything they can provide), and I found that HG has not fixed the issues that annoy me every time I get to the last part of the armoror quests. I don’t want to spoil anything by describing my annoyance in great detail, so I’ll just make a few recommendations that will probably minimize potential frustration.
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Do the mission on a planet that doesn’t have dangerous weather. You’re going to be out in the elements, and won’t want to be fighting the weather as well as the sentinels.
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Do the mission on a planet that has sentinels everywhere. They don’t have to be super aggressive (this might help the mission, but I haven’t tested that) but you are going to want to be able to find them easily because this mission is a little quirky/buggy w/r/t keeping their aggro; each time you lose aggro, their search stops and your mission timer (kill # of y) might reset.
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You’ll probably want to have a plasma launcher for the final part of this mission, or at least an upgraded pulse splitter. I can’t remember if the armorer gives you these in advance, but keep that in mind.
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Do not use your ship for the fighting. Climbing into your ship will affect sentinel agro. Don’t use the Minotaur either, if you somehow already have it.
jpinard
4867
Holy crap. I e been needing to make some serious money for a while now. Thank you so much for these tips!
Another one that requires only gritting your teeth a bit: look for Abandoned Buildings and steal the eggs. Those are worth a ton.
Velegon
4869
What is a lot of money in NMS these days?
When I stopped playing I had just over 1 billion units (in the days just before power was required for your bases) - admittedly I hadn’t upgraded to a large freighter from my original free one yet - so that would have cost me a decent chunk of that money.
A billion is probably still a lot. Like I said, though, 15 million is fine for ‘walking around money’, and it’s easy to get to a point where you always have that much, if you know what to do (ie scanning). With that much, you can buy whatever resources you need, can trade up most ships, etc. The top tier Haulers cost 40+million. The top freighters 100+, and I think that’s the most expensive thing in the game?
Starting over again for the fourth time feels rough. All those quests…
Is there an option to upload all your discoveries all at once yet?
Yup, under Discoveries there should be an upload button per system/planet.
If you like to explore and poke around while making cash, take a look for planets with Ancient bones. I just found one and dug up two specimens for 77K and 115K respectively in about 15 minutes. There’s also venom sacs and whispering eggs scattered all over for a little extra dough.
jpinard
4874
Can I warp to any space station I’ve previously visited? And is my freighter supposed to follow me where ever I go?
Also I want to setup a base that has a farm and all that stuff. How do I determine a good planet for such a thing?
Thanks for all the help. Would have been so confusing and frustrating otherwise I think.
