No Man's Sky: How to Unlock the Agricultural Terminal and Hire a Farmer

To hire a Farmer in No Man's Sky, you must advance the "Expanding the Base" mission line until your base Overseer provides the Agricultural Terminal blueprint. Once unlocked, construct the terminal inside an enclosed planetary base room, warp to a Gek-controlled star system, and speak to a candidate in the space station's side lounge to recruit them.

Unlocking and Constructing the Agricultural Terminal

The Agricultural Terminal is not available at the start of base building. You must first complete the early stages of the "Expanding the Base" secondary questline:

1. Place a Base Computer and build a basic shelter to trigger the base expansion objectives.
2. Build a Construction Terminal and hire a Gek Overseer from a space station.
3. Complete the Overseer's initial tasks until instructed to build a Science Terminal and hire a Korvax Scientist.
4. Finish the early research assignments given by the Scientist, then report back to your Overseer. The Overseer will grant you the Agricultural Terminal blueprint.

Constructing the terminal requires refined resources:

• Chromatic Metal (40–50): Refined from stellar metals (Copper, Cadmium, Emeril, or Indium) in a refiner.
• Magnetised Ferrite (25–30): Refined by processing Ferrite Dust or Pure Ferrite.

Place the terminal inside a fully enclosed prefab structure, large room, or cuboid room. Placing the terminal outdoors on uneven terrain can cause collision glitches or prevent the NPC from pathing properly once recruited.

Finding and Hiring a Gek Farmer

Specialist roles correspond to specific alien factions in No Man's Sky, and Farmers are always Gek.

1. Board your starship, enter space, and open the Galactic Map.
2. Filter the map by lifeform and select a system controlled by the Gek. If "Expanding the Base" or "Agricultural Research" is selected as your active log quest, an objective marker will typically indicate an eligible system nearby.
3. Warp to the system and dock at the Space Station.
4. Walk up the ramp to the commercial platforms and enter the side rooms and social lounges (located near the technology vendors and trade terminal).
5. Speak with unassigned Gek NPCs in the lounge. Locate the candidate who references botany, soil cultivation, or agriculture, and select the dialogue prompt to hire them.

The Gek specialist will immediately accept the post, disappear from the station, and transfer directly behind the Agricultural Terminal at your base.

Setting Up Cultivation Equipment

Return to your base via the Space Station Teleport Terminus to find your Farmer stationed at the counter. Before starting your first crop assignment, you need planting infrastructure.

Ensure your base power grid has sufficient surplus wattage from solar panels, electromagnetic generators, or batteries. Hydroponic trays draw constant power; if your electrical grid fails overnight, crop growth timers pause until power is restored.

Starting Agricultural Research

Interacting with your hired Farmer begins the Agricultural Research quest chain. The Farmer directs you to cultivate specific plants in exchange for new domestic farming blueprints:

• Gutrot Flower: Requires Faecium to plant. The Farmer provides instructions on collecting Faecium from wild creatures or refining it by combining Mordite and Carbon.
• Frostwort: Unlocked early to yield Frost Crystals, providing a reliable domestic source for crafting Glass without mining Silicate Powder.
• Solar Vine and Star Bramble: Later assignments provide access to biome-specific flora (Solanium and Star Bulbs), allowing you to grow planetary resources indoors in any biome.

Crop growth timers run in real-time and continue to count down even while you are logged out of the game. Once your first crops mature, harvest them and speak to the Farmer to receive the next crop blueprint in the sequence.