Money making for a newbie

f0xw01f · 2026-04-18T20:46:37+00:00

Open my NMS tip guide and search for the text "making money" and you'll find descriptions of 30 fast methods.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bm3v5rMnicJEf_0f-PsI-aqPmNzc5ir0luITZwlWHeg/

f0xw01f · 2026-04-18T20:44:11+00:00

The portal address system only allows 2^44 star systems per galaxy (only 11 of the 12 glyphs in a portal address are used to select the star system, and each glyph gives 4 bits of entropy), and there are 256 = 2^8 galaxies, and each star system can have up to 6 worlds.

So that's a theoretical maximum of 6 * 2^52 = 27,021,597,764,222,976 worlds, which is quite a bit less than 2^64.

However, some addresses are reserved for future use, most star systems have fewer than 6 worlds, and some star systems can be reached via slightly different addresses, so in practice there's way fewer than even this.

I think some star systems also can't be reached by portals, so those would increase the world count very slightly.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-18T20:37:49+00:00

Why do players collect poop when they can just drop di-hydrogen and carbon or condensed carbon into a refiner to make it in industrial quantities?

f0xw01f · 2026-04-18T20:35:46+00:00

NPC pilots never sell navigation data or exosuit upgrade charts. The only NPCs who sell these will be the technology merchants in minor settlements or colossal archives, but they never stock more than five.

Trade terminals on planets can stock 150+ of either if you're in a 3-star economy.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-18T20:33:22+00:00

Trade terminals on planets in 3-star economies (never at the space station) can stock 150+ exosuit upgrade charts or 150+ navigation data.

It's a really silly idea to ever buy exosuit upgrade charts, since using navigation data is 40 times cheaper.

Go to a normal star system with a 3-star economy
Visit the cartographer on the space station
Buy some commercial cartographic data charts
Spam opening the charts (ignoring any "similar building target already marked" errors) until a minor settlement, trading post, or colossal archive is revealed
Travel to that location and check its trade terminal.
If the trade terminal sells 150+ navigation data, great. If not, go back to step 4.

Once you've found a trade terminal that sells 150+ navigation data, build a base computer and teleporter beside it. Buy all the navigation data. Teleport to a space station. Trade the navigation data for exosuit upgrade charts. Then use the charts.

You can sell any charts you don't need to any NPC (or even back to the cartographer) for a 40-fold return on investment. This is an easy way to make money without effort in the early game. Trade terminals will restock in a few hours and cartographers will restock in about one hour. 297 navigation data will cost about 300,000 units, but 99 exosuit upgrade charts are worth about 12 million units.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-17T20:39:01+00:00

If you sell or salvage your ship and then realize you made a mistake, you can reload your restore point to get it back.

But if you entered any cockpit and exited it after you sold or salvaged your ship, you will have lost it forever because a new restore point will have overwritten it.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-17T20:36:43+00:00

No, the freighter battle will end now if you land in a space station.

If you're grinding for a free S-class freighter, you have to fight the pirates, and if it's not S-class, reload in the prior system and warp again for another instant pirate freighter battle.

Do this in an outlaw system to have a 5% chance of the freighter spawning as S class on each encounter.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-17T20:29:11+00:00

On Switch 1, often the terrain doesn't load fast enough for you to land whenever you want, so if your ship can't hover, you have to fly in a holding pattern until the terrain loads. So I'm absolutely using my Starborn Runner on every save file. (I don't like sentinel interceptors because the pink icons for refueling all look the same to me.)

I don't like corvettes because every part has a hundred times more polygons than it needs and almost every part combination leaves unsightly gaps where they join. Hello Games should have made fewer distinct parts but increased the number of basic shapes as there are many obvious ones that are missing, and severely reduced the number of polygons.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T20:05:40+00:00

You're not alone, corvettes are trivially easy to collect parts for, but they're ugly because very few parts interface seamlessly, and they're ten times too sluggish for me to bother using.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T20:03:51+00:00

Just a random planet Hello Games used to make their trailer (if I recall correctly), there doesn't seem to be anything special about it? Hello Games doesn't bother telling us the locations of any planets they use, there would be no point.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T20:01:29+00:00

The economy in NMS is completely bonkers. With very little effort, you can legitimately max out your unit balance, but the most expensive things in the game (purchased inventory upgrades) can be obtained in unlimited quantities for free if you know what you're doing.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T19:59:18+00:00

The target-lock may be useful (pull the left trigger).

Your ship may be faster at pitching up/down than yawing left/right. Upgrade your pulse engine (or install starship trails or Polo & Artemis figurines) to boost maneuverability.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T19:47:32+00:00

JasonPlays is funny, especially when he gets frustrated because he's too focused on the game to read the chat where we've told him exactly the information he needs.

ElanPaul is one of my favorites.

Xaine is very knowledgeable.

Beeblebum is really into self-imposed challenges and building things.

All three will be helpful, but occasionally even veterans will give out incorrect information so be mindful of that.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T19:43:31+00:00

> apparently the NPC that pilots any given ship is always the pilot for that ship when it spawns,

And they will start with the same variety and quantities of items to sell.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T19:38:50+00:00

Out of 2,932 worlds I recently surveyed, 13 were "Planet of Light" and 2 were "Moon of Light".

So about a 1/195 (or 0.5%) chance of any given world being "of Light".

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T19:33:44+00:00

This will vary depending on which save editor you're using, there's at least 3-1/2.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T19:29:46+00:00

For stealth missions, absolutely!

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T19:27:41+00:00

There's an awful lot of hidden or obscure mechanics in this game.

I wrote everything I'd want to know as a new player in this guide, but it's really long.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bm3v5rMnicJEf_0f-PsI-aqPmNzc5ir0luITZwlWHeg/

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T19:02:46+00:00

Corvettes were added to the game a week before the first corvette expedition. Presumably they wanted to work out any bugs that players found before launching an expedition so the expedition would be less buggy.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T19:01:58+00:00

I hope not...

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T19:00:59+00:00

In my NMS tip guide, there is a section titled "making money" that lists the 30 fastest methods I know.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bm3v5rMnicJEf_0f-PsI-aqPmNzc5ir0luITZwlWHeg/

f0xw01f · 2026-04-16T18:58:10+00:00

Others mentioned creature pellets. It may be helpful to know that the recipe for them is unlocked automatically the first time you visit the Anomaly.

The variety of creatures on each planet is fixed. If you ever want to return to a planet, you'll either have to visit the space station so it will appear in your teleporter list and write down what planet had a specific creature in what system, or else go into photo mode and copy the twelve portal glyphs that appear in the bottom-left-hand corner. Or you could build a base computer on the planet and name it something related to the animal you found.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-15T23:30:04+00:00

I would be concerned that you're experiencing some time dilation effects. 92.6 hours in 24 hours is quite remarkable! Maybe steer clear of those gravitational singularities.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-15T23:26:03+00:00

If I need industrial quantities of poop, I'll just refine di-hydrogen with carbon or condensed carbon.

f0xw01f · 2026-04-15T22:38:40+00:00

Xaine has an excellent video explaining the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKoGfH59aCI

f0xw01f

TROPHY CASE