No Man's Sky: Essential Early Progression Priorities

Once you repair your starter starship and leave your initial planet in No Man's Sky, your immediate objective is building a safe, sustainable foundation for exploration. To minimize early setbacks, disable player-versus-player damage in your settings, purchase Exosuit inventory slots at every new space station, mount procedural Scanner upgrades on your Multi-Tool to generate Units, and continue the main story until you unlock the Space Anomaly and earn a free freighter.

Secure Your Network and PvP Settings

Turn off player damage immediately to avoid losing your inventory to hostile encounters or accidental crossfire. No Man's Sky enables friendly fire by default across standard game modes. In multiplayer environments or crowded hubs, other players can eliminate your character, which can permanently delete your items on Survival or wipe your file on Permadeath.

To adjust these permissions:

Pause the game and open the Options menu.
Select Network.
Set Can damage you to No one.
Set base-editing and terrain-manipulation permissions to Group & Friends or No one.

Restricting these options prevents griefing and protects your bases from unauthorized edits while leaving multiplayer matchmaking fully functional.

Purchase Exosuit Inventory Expansions

Early gameplay is constrained by limited carrying capacity, often forcing you to discard basic crafting resources like Ferrite Dust, Carbon, and Oxygen. You can purchase two guaranteed Exosuit slot upgrades in every newly visited star system:

Space Station: Walk up to the technology merchants on the upper mezzanine. Interact with the holographic Exosuit capsule beside the suit vendor to buy a technology or inventory slot.
The Space Anomaly: Summon the Anomaly in that same system, enter the technology room behind Nada and Polo, and interact with the Exosuit terminal to buy an additional slot.

Because each purchase increases the cost of the next upgrade, prioritize expanding general inventory slots first to support larger resource stacks before buying excess technology slots.

Install Multi-Tool Scanner Upgrades for Units

Basic planetary scanning awards negligible Units, making starship and component purchases slow. Installing procedural Scanner upgrade modules on your Multi-Tool dramatically increases payouts for discovering flora and fauna.

Module Class	Typical Nanite Cost	Discovery Payout Increase
B-Class	~150–200	+1,000% to +3,500% Fauna and Flora
A-Class	~300–400	+4,000% to +6,500% Fauna and Flora
S-Class / X-Class	~500–650	+6,500% to +10,000%+ Fauna

Purchase these modules from the Multi-Tool merchant on Space Stations using Nanites. Installing up to three compatible upgrades directly adjacent to your Multi-Tool Scanner creates adjacency bonuses, boosting creature scans from hundreds of Units to over 100,000 Units per animal.

Use the Terrain Manipulator and Photo Mode for Survival

When severe weather, environmental hazards, or aggressive Sentinels threaten your shields far from your starship, use the Terrain Manipulator to bore an angled tunnel into the ground. Stepping a short distance into the excavated shelter immediately halts hazard drain and begins recharging your protection shields. Sentinels will also lose line of sight and de-escalate their search timer.

In single-player sessions, entering Photo Mode freezes the game and gives you a free-floating camera. You can safely scout ahead from full cover to locate resource deposits, cave entrances, or predator movements without expending life support or hazard shield power.

Follow the Story Quests for Blueprints and a Free Freighter

Avoid prolonged free-roam exploration until you complete the opening "Awakenings" storyline. Advancing the narrative provides necessary Hyperdrive blueprints, warp fuel crafting recipes, and access to the Space Anomaly, where you can buy advanced tech using Salvaged Data.

After learning to warp, jumping to new star systems will trigger a space rescue event where you must defend a civilian fleet from pirate starships. Destroy the attacking fighters without shooting the cargo pods or defense turrets. Once the battle ends, board the capital ship and speak to the captain to claim the freighter for free. Acquiring this ship unlocks mobile base building, large storage rooms, and the ability to dispatch frigate fleets on automated missions.