No Man's Sky

No Man's Sky

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Extraction Bases, Which Resources to Focus on
By Zesty
How to get started with automated resource extraction.
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Intro
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If you're brand new and want a couple resources to focus on first, try Gold and Oxygen. Gold is valuable and Oxygen is probably your most used resource.

If you're a returning player, you might be under the impression Activated Indium (165 units/ea) is the most valuable resource. It was nerfed and now worth about half as much as Gold (353 units/ea).

As you continue to progress, you should focus on making extraction bases to collect what you need to make more extraction bases. Here's a quick list of those resources:

Resources Needed
Gold
Chromatic Metal
Carbon
Condensed Carbon
Ferrite Dust
Pure Ferrite
Magnetised Ferrite
Metal Plates

To Make
Solar Panels
Batteries
Supply Pipes
Supply Depots
Cylindrical/Square Rooms

+ a little Carbon, Sodium, and Metal Plates for a Teleporter.
Hotspots
Finding Hotspots requires a Survey Device tech in your multi-tool. You can research it in the Anomaly.



When looking for mineral/gas hotspots, you really don't need a high class or "potential" for most extraction bases. C-Class will do in most scenarios.

You can make searching for hotspots be an active task or do it alongside other tasks you're already working on. If you happen to notice a hotspot for a resource you want a base on, just put a Base Computer on it and you can teleport back to it later.

Planets have three minerals and up to two gasses available for hotspots.

Mineral 1 (Random)
• Cobalt
• Salt
• Silver
• Sodium
• Magnetized Ferrite

Mineral 2 (Biome)
• Ammonia (Green, Toxic)
• Basalt (Lava)
• Dioxite (Blue, Frozen)
• Faecium (Swamp)
• Gold (Exotic)
• Mordite (Swamp)
• Paraffinium (Lush or Swamp)
• Phosphorus (Lava, Red, Scorched)
• Pyrite (Barren, Lava)
• Rusted Metal (Dead)
• Uranium (Irradiated)

Mineral 3 (Star Color)
• Copper (Yellow)
• Cadmium (Red)
• Emeril (Green)
• Indium (Blue)

Gas 1
• Oxygen (always)

Gas 2 (Biome)
• Nitrogen (Blue, Lush, Swamp, Toxic)
• Radon (Frozen, Green, Irradiated)
• Sulphurine (Barren, Lava, Red, Scorched)

Base Design
2 Solar Panels
1 Battery
1 Extractor

Scale up for more. I recommend 3 extractors per resource for most situations. But feel free to experiment for whatever meets your needs.

9 Supply Depots + your extractors will get you just under 9999 resources stored, which is a stack. Scale this up as much as you like.

Placing Solar Panels on top of Cylindrical (or Square) rooms provide power to that room and all connected pieces. Batteries/Teleporter inside the room will automatically be charged. The only wiring you need to do is between the extractors and to the power node on the side of the building, but avoid connecting wires to the doorways because those will cause problems to your door.

You might find it helpful to have a supply depot you can reach from inside your room to save time.

Networks and Diminishing Returns
After your extraction network at a base is collecting more than 1,000 per hour, it will start to see diminishing returns on more extractors added to that network.

For most resources, you do not need more than 1,000/hr to maintain your stocks. But if you wanted more, say, gold, you might make multiple networks on the same hotspot to get way more than 1,000 gold per hour from that base.

Just keep power and supply separate to maintain multiple networks. Also keep in mind that supply depots might merge their networks if they're too close together even if they aren't connected by supply pipes at all. Just eyeball them 10+ feet apart.



In this ugly base of mine, each row of extractors is part of it's own network, connected to its own cylindrical building with solar panels and batteries, and to it's own string of supply depots, which are kept a little bit apart from the other strings of supply depots.
Resources needed to build Extraction Bases
Gold
• for Solar Panels

Chromatic Metal
• for solar panels, Extractors
• lots of refining options, but Silver/Gold/Indium has a 1:30 ratio.

Ferrite Dust
• For Supply Pipes

Carbon
• For Supply Pipes

Condensed Carbon
(Oxygen -> Carbon -> Condensed Carbon)
• for batteries.

Magnetised Ferrite
• for Batteries.
• Can set up a mining base for it, or craft it in Ferrite chain.

Pure Ferrite
(Rusted Metal -> Ferrite Dust -> Pure Ferrite)
• Cylindrical/Square Rooms, for ease of power moving. You can place solar panels on top, and batteries/teleporter inside and not have to wire any of it.

Metal Plates
• for Supply Depots, Solar Panels, Extractors
• You can craft these with ferrite, but that's a lot of ferrite refining. Just buy them from space stations and pilots. You'll want a few hundred or so for an extraction base.

The teleporter also needs a some Carbon, Sodium, and Metal plates.
Importance of all Extractable Resources
Not the end-all-be-all, but it should give you an idea.

Important Resources for your Basics
Gold, Indium, Magnetised Ferrite, Rusted Metal, Silver, Sodium, Oxygen

Recharging Tech
Ammonia, Dioxite, Phosphorus, Pyrite, Uranium

Annoying to not have
Cadmium, Copper, Emeril

The Rest, but good to have
Cobalt, Faecium (can grow in farms), Paraffinium, Salt, Nitrogen, Radon, Sulphurine

Don't bother
Basalt, Activated [Metals]
16 Comments
Prodominate 6 Jul @ 8:35am 
Build a rusted metal base to fund the ferrite needed for other bases. I consider rusted metal one of the two most important resources or you will spend days gathering the needed ferrite for larger base projects like gold and silver into refine platinum to sell. 5 refiners at the base brings in 20k ferrite per full craft (needs 2k rusted metal each). I would move Salt to don't bother IMHO, it's readily available late game and I find I rarely use it.

Oxygen I would say is the 2nd most important base farm, as it combines into many other materials as a multiplicative refine

After that, I focused in on getting the resources to make stasis devices for huge profit and switch my platinum to refine into nanites if I don't need cash

Very accurate guide, thanks
Zesty  [author] 8 Jun @ 1:12pm 
To collect resources way faster than by hand.

And if you don't have resource needs beyond what you can reasonable gather by hand, then you aren't exploiting what the game has to offer you.

You're using phrases like "Sooner or later". How about sooner? Way sooner? You don't even mention nanites, which serve has a tighter bottleneck than credits. Or maybe you might need material for a creative project. Or maybe you don't want to go collect resources because you're always running on empty. Pop on over to your base and have tens of thousands of it ready to be used. Maybe people might be interested in a guide on outpost bases because they don't understand them and want to make decisions that fit their interests and preferences in regards to resource collection.

You are mistaken on the value of resource extraction bases. It is faster to make them than to collect by hand. They just take some initial startup before they go about saving that tremendous amount of time on the back end.
esturias 8 Jun @ 1:10am 
Collecting the needed ressources by hand is WAY faster than collecting the ressources needed for the extraction bases and then building the extraction bases.

It was a genuine question: What is the overall purpose?
Zesty  [author] 7 Jun @ 12:39pm 
If you want to collect everything by hand because it doesn't feel like a lot to you, that's cool. This guide must not be for you. It'll be here if you change your mind.
esturias 7 Jun @ 5:20am 
"you should focus on making extraction bases to collect what you need to make more extraction bases."

But what exactly would be the overall purpose?
So far, I see the whole extraction and manufacturing part of the game to be completely obsolete.
You don't need many resources to progress in the game and you'll drown in credits sooner or later anyway.
Zesty  [author] 23 Apr @ 4:00pm 
Coffeefreak,

As mentioned in the guide, Gold/Silver/Indium converts to Chromatic Metal at a 1:30 ratio. Activated metals do so at a much lesser rate. Activated Indium converts at a 1:4 ratio and Pure Ferrite + Activated Indium at a 1:8.

As for your point for value, Activated Indium value was nerfed quite some time ago. Gold is worth twice as much as Activated Indium (353 vs 165). This is mentioned in the second sentence of this guide.

Activated Metals aren't worth the effort in the current balance of the game.
Coffeefreak 23 Apr @ 2:14pm 
activated metals not only sell for a lot but also yield chromatic metal on the refiner indium gives 4x cm so it's worth to have at least one farm
I Has 2 Hairs 17 Feb @ 6:32pm 
really helpful, thanks
jimmineycrikit 9 Jan @ 12:48pm 
I wish so many things (looking at you basalt and activated metals) didn't just feel like dead-ends that they moved on from to add new never-fully-fleshed-out mechanics..

I think it's a common sentiment that people wish any aspect of NMS went just a little deeper than it does.
Frizi 23 Oct, 2024 @ 11:40am 
okay, its interesting :steamthumbsup: