Learn how to build a base in No Man's Sky. Discover the best planets, consider sentinel activity, flora/fauna, and find electromagnetic, mineral, and gas hotspots for optimal construction.
The base building process in No Man's Sky offers a great deal of freedom in terms of the kinds of structures that you can create, and even where you can build them. You can choose pretty much any area on any planet to build your base, aside from a few minor restrictions such as nearby Planetary Settlements. You won’t be able to build inside these without mods, but you can still build just a few hundred metres away from them, allowing you to quickly get to your settlement while working on your base to ensure that you can attend to every new settlement event as quickly as possible.
Guide to the Best Planets for Building a Base
One of the most important things that you should consider before you choose a planet to build a base on is the exact nature of the planet. You will need to consider the type of atmosphere, the flora and fauna that live there, sentinel activity level, and whether or not there’s a space station present in the star system. There will always be a space station in the early star systems, but as you improve your starship’s Hyperdrive capabilities, you’ll eventually reach planets with pirate stations, or no station at all. In general, you should probably build your base within a star system which has a space station, as this will make acquiring specific ingredients much easier before you have a Base Teleport Module.
The Sentinel Activity Level is usually shown on the info box when you scan a planet while in your starship. If the sentinel level is low enough or if there are no sentinels at all on a planet, it won’t show when you scan it. It isn’t always the best option to choose a planet without sentinels, especially once you’ve upgraded your Multi-Tool. The majority of sentinels that you encounter can be defeated fairly easily, so they become more of a nuisance than a danger. However, they can still drop some useful items when you kill them, including Forbidden Upgrade Modules, so if you want a reliable, nearby source of these, a planet with high sentinel activity may be the way to go. If you’d rather be left in peace, go with a planet with low sentinel activity.
In terms of flora and fauna, this won’t usually be a factor that you need to consider with much importance outside of your aesthetic preference for the type of life that you’ll have present, roaming around (and sometimes within) your base. If you want to take some snazzy screenshots of your base, it definitely helps to have a planet with lush vegetation. You’ll find that Paradise planets often have flora which light up at night, making the scenery even more beautiful regardless of the time of day. The green fields which are also usually present on Paradise planets will help to bring light to your screenshots as well, whereas dark, barren planets can make even the best bases look dull by comparison. In terms of fauna, you may want to consider a planet which has species that you would like to adopt a pet from, although you can easily find a pet on any planet and summon them to your base at any time. To learn more about this, see our page on how to adopt a pet.
The Nautilon Exocraft will allow you to explore underwater much more efficiently.
Electromagnetic Power, Mineral and Gas Hotspots
Once you have access to the Mineral Extractor and Gas Extractor, the blueprints for which can be purchased from the Construction Research Station on board the Space Anomaly, you can build these in your base so long as the base is located near a mineral or gas hotspot. To identify these hotspots, you’ll need the Survey Device upgrade for the Analysis Visor. This can be purchased from the Multi-Tool upgrade module merchant on board the Space Anomaly. It’s possible to find both a mineral and a gas hotspot in the same area, allowing you to setup extractors for both within the same area as the rest of your base, but it may take some searching before you can find a spot like this. Either way, it’s worth considering whether you want to have these extractors as part of your main base, or whether you’d rather have small outpost-type bases located at different mineral and gas hotspots across a planet.
The hotspots for Electromagnetic Power sites can also be identified with the Analysis Visor once you have the Survey Device upgrade. You will need to enter Power Survey Mode while using the Analysis Visor to locate them. It’s a good idea to find one of these hotspots first before you begin building a base, since they can provide a constant source of efficient energy at the heart of your base if you build structures around them once they’re placed on a suitable site.
Building on Land
Once you’ve found an appropriate planet for your base building, the next thing you’ll want to consider is the exact location in the landscape. This can be important because you want to make sure that you have enough space to expand your base later on. The Terrain Manipulator function on your Multi-Tool can be incredibly useful to flatten or raise different parts of the landscape depending on how you want your base to sit in it. It’s a good idea to plan roughly where you want specific types of rooms, landing pads, Exocraft bays, cooking and farming equipment, storage containers, power generators and other industrial equipment before you construct the rooms for them. You can always edit the structure of the base itself after you’ve built parts of it if you need to, but it’s much more difficult to adjust the height of the landscape itself without distorting the visual appearance of your base structure once significant parts of it have been built.
In some ways, the benefits of building on land far outweigh those of building underwater. You can construct more things on land in general, including all the main Exocraft bays for the Roamer, Nomad, Pilgrim, Colossus, and Minot
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