Units (2024)

The subject of this article is from the Outlaws update. The information from this article is up-to-date as of 19 July, 2022.

The subject of this article is from the Outlaws update.
The information from this article is up-to-date as of 19 July, 2022.

Units are the main form of currency in No Man's Sky.

Summary[ | ]

Units are the primary currency in No Man's Sky, with Nanite Cluster and Quicksilver being the secondary.

Units can be used to purchase new starships, freighters and frigates from aliens; resources and products from the Galactic Trade Terminals; exosuit and multi-tool upgrades; and occasionally in interactions with aliens. The player can earn units in a variety of ways:

• Scanning newly discovered species of flora and fauna or rock formations with the Analysis Visor.
• Uploading newly discovered Waypoints, star systems, planets, or moons
• Selling and trading resources mined, collected, or scavenged from planets or Space Fleets.
• Interacting with certain devices in alien buildings
• Completing missions (usually from the Mission Board) which reward units
• Collecting bounties on fugitive Pirates
• As a reward from certain interactions with aliens

How to profit[ | ]

Mining[ | ]

Mining rare Resource Deposits using your multi-tool or mining asteroids with your starship's weapons is a good way to make money, especially for starting players. Combining the minerals into alloys can raise their value. Harvesting Storm Crystals can be extremely lucrative (with a base value of 156,950.0 units and can be stacked up to 10), but because they only appear in extreme weather planets while a storm is raging, a Minotaur is highly recommended for both shelter against the elements and reaching the next deposit as quickly as possible before the storm ends and the crystals disappear. Caves also provide a place where additional profit may be found; cobalt sells for a good price; you also have a chance of finding gold, silver, or platinum. Finding Salvaged Data can be very lucrative, as each Salvaged Data sells for 50000 units and they usually come in groups of 1-4.

Hotspot Mineral Extraction[ | ]

Installing a Survey Device allows you to scan for Hotspots. The most lucrative by far is Activated Indium which requires upgrading your Hyperdrive with an Indium Drive. See Mining Hotspot for more details.

Note that raw ore prices have been lowered significantly in the Waypoint update. It is advised to craft raw materials into more advanced Tradeables for profit if possible.

Hunting[ | ]

Hunting local fauna is a quick and easy way for starting players to make money, as a stack of Meaty Chunks sells for 50000 units. Additionally, it can be performed as soon as the game starts, using the Mining Beam to kill creatures. Certain creatures may drop different resources such as Raw Steaks, Leg Meat, Feline Livers, etc., which are worth even more than Meaty Chunks. It quickly becomes much less viable than more lucrative methods of earning money, as there is no easy way to make creatures spawn faster or drop more.

Scanning[ | ]

Scanning undiscovered fauna and flora is a viable way to make money once the Analysis Visor upgrades have been installed. Unfortunately, the rewards for uploading discoveries and discovering all fauna on a given planet are not increased with the upgrades.

Farming[ | ]

Farming is possibly the most profitable activity in the game. Harvestable substances can be combined to craft expensive tradeables.

Commodity Trading[ | ]

Selling common goods found in canisters is an easy way to make money. It's also possible to trade marketed tradeables between systems of different economy types. See "Trading in-depth" below for more details.

Missions[ | ]

Completing missions can reward the player units, Nanite Clusters, tradeables or blueprints. Higher standing with the Guilds can unlock missions with higher, more valuable rewards.

Fleet Expeditions[ | ]

Sending frigates out on expeditions can reward the player with units, tradeables, valuable metals or metal alloys upon their completion. Trade-focused and Exploration-focused expeditions are more likely to have unit-rewarding encounters than other types of expeditions.

Salvaging[ | ]

Artifacts can be found as a resource on certain planets, and can be found with the use of the Analysis Visor when nearby, or can be found at Artifact Sites and Ruins. Some more common types of artifact will be listed as a resource when scanning planets from orbit, and can be found in large numbers throughout a planet. While unable to stack, higher value Artifacts can sell for up to 2,000,000+ units and can be sold in any system as they do not greatly vary in price based on system economy. While not as consistent of a way to gain units as some other methods, salvaging and foraging can be great ways to make large chunks of cash quickly, assuming you can find the right kind of planets.

Galactic Trade[ | ]

Take many stacks of a valuable natural resource like cobalt and sell it in bulk at the nearest space station. Then buy it back in bulk for a discounted price that varies by the amount of items sold. Repeating this in multiple systems will result in the exact same amount of cobalt (or even more) and extra units. Since Outlaws 30,000 is the minimum amount recommended; that is you will gain units by selling it and buying back (see Crashing the market).

Trading in-depth[ | ]

All products and resources have two values: Base Value or BV (written in the product's description) and Galactic Average or GA (reference point for trading). GA is always slightly above BV. The trading interface will show the difference between GA and local price:

• green means local price is 10% or more better than GA
• white means between 10% better and 10% worse
• red means 10% or more worse than GA.

Selling trade items and resources in bulk is more profitable than selling them in small chunks as the price of the items will be altered after a sale or purchase is completed.

For every unit sold, the following adjustments are made for that system's economy:

• general commodity or craftable item: price reduced by 0.3%
• natural resources, harvestable plants, or junk items: price is reduced by 0.03%
• market items:
  • supplier system: price is reduced by 0.34%
  • demanding system: price is reduced by 0.25%
  • neither supplying or demanding: price is reduced by 0.3%

That being said, the price of any product will eventually go back to its original value after an unknown period of time. (More research needed)

Additional Notes[ | ]

• If a player dies, the penalty loss that applies to resources carried by the player, as well as discoveries that the player did not upload, will not apply to the units the player already owns.
• The maximum number of units that a player can accrue is 4,294,967,295 (approx 4.3 billion) (being FFFFFFFF in hexadecimal, thus being an overflow error) after which the number will not rise any further. It will NOT wrap around to zero.

External Links[ | ]

An in-depth spreadsheet with data about trading on star systems of different economy types and its effect in the price of specific products.^[1]

Gallery[ | ]

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  No Man's Sky Units transparent symbol

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References[ | ]