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Building bases is such a big part of No Man’s Sky that it’s easy to forget we weren’t always able to. Giant updates like Foundation and Atlas Rises paved the way for today’s base system. Now you can create an endless chain of tiny outposts as you leapfrog your way through the stars. Or you can focus on building the perfect palatial mansion to live out your years in quiet solitude. You can master industry and mining like a Deep Rock dwarf or ignore planetary bases and live on your own customizable freighter. No matter which direction you take base building in No Man’s Sky, we have you covered.
Survival, Resources, and the Terrain Manipulator
Your first base will probably be a ramshackle cube thrown together to save you from the elements, as the red heat effect eats its way across your screen. After surviving your first encounter with Incendiary Dust or Extreme Acidity, however, you’ll have a moment’s peace to plan your real base. Although elevation matters, you can use your Terrain Manipulator to level or destroy the land as necessary. That said, it’s not perfect, so if the location would require tons of effort just to make work, look elsewhere.
Resources like Carbon and Oxygen are essential for your survival, but you don’t need to build next to them the way you’d build next to water in other survival games. Even the harshest Infested world contains plentiful amounts of the essentials. Settle your base wherever is closest to useful POIs such as settlements and trading posts or just wherever you think looks the coolest. You can build multiple bases in No Man’s Sky, so you lose little if you change your mind about where to lay your head.
Laying the Foundation
There’s no mechanical difference between Timber, Stone, and Alloy structures, so pick whatever you have plenty of and enjoy looking at. After picking your construction site and flattening the land if necessary, here’s what you need to do:
- Place a Base Computer to claim the territory
- Open the Build Menu
- Navigate to part selection
- Select your desired Floor Panel
- Select where you’d like to place the Panel (rotating the piece if necessary)
- Place the Floor Panel
- Use auto-snapping to fit other panels, walls, and roof pieces
- Add a door
A simple Timber 2×2 won’t win any architectural awards, but it’s a fine start. Expanding bases is quick and cheap, so experiment with different layouts to find what works best for you and your playstyle.
Essential Technologies
There are a ton of technologies to unlock and install in No Man’s Sky, but your base doesn’t need all (or even most) of them. Which technologies you should prioritize depends on how much you’ve already unlocked, what your financial needs are, and how you want to use the base. Here are some units every base should have:
- Portable Refiner
- Construction Research Unit
- Signal Booster
- Save Beacon
- Teleporter
You’ll need some form of energy to supply your base’s growing demand for electricity, so that comes next. For reasons it’s best not to think about, a Biofuel Reactor is cheaper than biscuits. It requires just Metal Plating x1 and Oxygen x25 to build, and it can run multiple devices for a long time. It’s recommended to move from Biofuel to a Solar Panel and Battery as soon as you can, however. Sunlight’s free, and with enough Solar Panels and Batteries, you’ll never have to think about harvesting Carbon for Biofuel again.
Teleportation Time
The Teleporter is arguably the most important piece of tech in your base. It doesn’t matter in the beginning, when you have a single outpost, but once you’ve expanded across dozens of star systems, you won’t want to fly everywhere. Every base should have a Teleporter with an endless power supply. That will prevent you from getting stuck on a planet and forced into an impromptu supply run for fuel. You can even teleport back and forth between your settlement and your Freighter, allowing you to live in space and warp planetside only when you need resources.
Leave Room for Landing
Your ship is as much of a part of you in No Man’s Sky as your own body. It’s a door that opens onto 18 quintillion worlds. So be nice to your ship and give it a nice landing spot. Living on a jagged mountain peak sounds great. That is until you realize there’s nowhere to park your shiny new Interceptor. If you’re designing your forever home in space, leave adequate room for multiple landing pads for your growing fleet. Make sure, too, that they’re easily accessible. Your hauler might look cool perched atop a tower, but you’ll regret the 20 floors you have to climb to reach the cockpit.
