No Man’s Sky: Getting Nanites Quickly

Nanite Clusters are a valuable resource in No Man’s Sky used to upgrade your gear. Harder to come by than Units, the game’s primary currency, Nanites are what most mid-game and late-game players are searching for.

Nanites are used to purchase blueprints and upgrade modules for your Exosuit, Exocraft, and your various starships. You’ll also need Nanites to upgrade your multi-tools to the highest tier available. How do you get loads of Nanites quickly? Here’s a quick guide on one of the easiest ways to earn thousands of Nanites: scrapping ships, also known as “flipping.”

Updated October 15, 2024 by Sean Murray:No Man’s Sky is a constantly shifting universe, and recent updates have added new ways to gain nanites. There were also a few ways to get nanites we might have missed the first time ’round, so we’re updating this guide with every way to find tons of nanites.

How To Farm Nanites Via Curious Deposits

A simple and effective method to get Nanites in No Man’s Sky is to hunt for Curious Deposits. These Deposits come in clusters that be refined into hundreds or even thousands of Nanites at a time.

• Curious Deposits spawn on all types of planets. Hot, cold, dangerous, whatever. If you find a planet with Curious Deposits it’s likely that other planets in the system will also have Curious Deposits on the surface.
• You can find Curious Deposits via your Analysis Visor. You’re looking for a Gold pop-up icon, like the one shown in the image above.
• You can destroy Curious Deposits with a mining laser, Optical Mining laser, or a Plasma Cannon. When you shoot them they do roll away, so build a little sort of fence area around them to make it easier to mine them.
• Curious Deposits drop Runaway Mould which then refines into Nanites.

Some general tips for finding and mining Curious Deposits include setting up a save spot to reset the spawn for Curious Deposits, you can find the Deposits by scouting close to the planet surface with a fast ship or Exocraft with a scanning ability.

You should
optimize your mining laser
to get better yields with the Optical Drill. That’s a 50-percent bonus chance to get extra Runaway Mould.

Finding And Using A Nanite Farm

Finding Curious Deposits on your own can be a bit tedious. A far faster method is to simply travel to a known location where Curious Deposits spawn. Like crashed ships, Curious Deposits will always spawn in the same location, so once you know where they are, you can keep returning to farm more Nanites.

Some people even go a step further and set up a base near a Curious Deposit location, and then share that location online. These bases are often called Nanite farms as players can go there to farm vast quantities of Nanites.

These Nanite farms can be found in multiple ways. Sometimes you’ll see them listed at the Station Terminus Teleporter, and some can be found on social media sites like YouTube or TikTok, but the fastest and easiest way is to head to the No Man’s Sky Coordinate Exchange Subreddit and search for “Nanite Farm.”

Locations will be listed with portal glyphs, so any traveler can portal to the planet. Search the horizon for a base marker or a message beacon, then head there and start farming those Curious Deposits.

Some player-made Nanite Farms also have multiple refiners on site
to quickly refine Runaway Mold into Nanites. Feel free to make use of these facilities if they’re available.

How To Earn Nanites By Flipping Ships In A Space Station

Scrapping ships for Nanites, or flipping, is a mechanic players have been using to make Nanites for a while now. The method is pretty simple: you buy a ship, scrap it, and then sell the various Upgrade Modules for Nanites. Rinse and repeat.

No need to refine lots of materials, no need to do any cooking… scrapping and flipping ships is another very efficient way to farm Nanites in No Man’s Sky.

Of course, if you want to maximize your efficiency (and your Units) you’ll probably want to make sure that you’re scrapping the right ships, at the right station, for the right price. For a full set of Exocraft upgrades, for example, you’re going to need a lot of Nanites. Here’s what you need to know.

The Best System To Look For Ships To Scrap

You’re on the lookout for ships that are at least B-Class, typically Shuttles and Fighters, although Explorer ships can also be worth your time. These are common in systems that are at a Tier 3 economy rating.

This includes any system with these terms attached:

• Wealthy
• Opulent
• Prosperous
• High Supply
• Flourishing
• Booming
• Affluent
• Advanced

It also helps if the combat level is low, as these areas typically have busier space stations with more frequent ship arrivals.

What Ships Should You Scrap For Nanites?

Not every ship is going to worth scrapping for Nanites, either because the price is too high or the chance of a decent amount of Upgrade Modules is much smaller. Here’s a rundown of the kind of ships you’re looking to scrap.

• B-Class or above
  • These are more likely to have expensive Upgrade Modules that will net you more Nanites.
• Ships that cost three million units or below
  • Even if you’re the richest citizen in No Man’s Sky, the Unit to Nanite Cluster conversion isn’t worth it on very expensive ships, unless that ship is an S-Class, in which case you should always make the purchase, whatever the price.
• Ignore Haulers/Transport ships.
  • Focus on ships like Fighters and Shuttles, they have a better chance of more expensive Upgrade Modules.

The Best Method To Use When Scrapping Ships For Nanites

Working through scrapping ships isn’t too difficult. You need a starting bank of probably close to 70 or 80 million Units in total. This means you can sit in the hangar for a long time and scrap ships for hours if you want to. However, you can start with less and work your way up slowly.

Most of the ships you’ll be buying will be around two or three million units. You can sell the various materials you scrap from the ships, but overall you’ll be losing Units, turning them straight into Nanites via the Upgrade Modules, hence the preference for a decent starting bank.

Eventually, you’ll run out of Units scrapping ships and be forced to either make more money or switch to an alternate method of farming Nanites.
The more money you have to start, the more Nanites you’ll get
by the time you run out.

Head to a Space Station in a wealthy system and make your way to the hangar. Ships arrive in waves. You want to check each ship as it arrives. The visor on your Exosuit can tell you what class the ship is. You’re looking for B-class or above ships. When you see one, jump down and purchase the ship from the pilot who steps out.

Scrapping ships gives you a bunch of different resources. You should scrap everything inside, holding onto items and materials you want to keep and getting rid of anything else to mitigate your monetary loss.

For farming pure Nanites all you need to hold on to are the Upgrade Modules. These will be worth various amounts of Nanites, ranging from 200 to 3,000 and beyond.

Sell them at the station to the Technology Merchant​​​​​​. This will be under the “Purchase Upgrade Modules”, but switch to sell and then get rid of everything.

On a good day, at the right station, and with decent inventory management, you can make tens of thousands of Nanites every 30 minutes or so.

Selling Suspicious Packages From Outlaw Stations

Another method of farming Nanitesi is by purchasing Suspicious Packets from Outlaw Stations and then selling their contents to the Salvage Dealer.

First, head to an Outlaw Station. Finding one requires a Conflict or Economy Scanner—you’ll see a skull on the system’s analysis in the galaxy view screen. This indicates a system that’s controlled by pirates.

Once you’ve found an Outlaw Station, head to the back and speak to the Contraband Agent and purchase as many Tech and Arms Suspicious Packets as you can afford (or they’re selling). Open each of them in your inventory. Some of these Suspicious Packets will contain X-class upgrade modules which can then be sold at the Salvage Dealer nearby for Nanites.

Continue flying from Outlaw Station to Outlaw Station, purchasing Suspicious Packets and selling their contents to the Salvage Dealer to accrue Nanites.

The Contraband Agent sometimes also sells Larval or Hadal Cores
, which can be refined into Nanites. More on that below.

Scanning All Planetary Fauna

Scanning flora and fauna is also an excellent way of gaining Nanites as well as Units. Scanning flora and fauna with your visor immediately provides Units, while uploading your data provides Nanites.

Head to the Discoveries screen on your current planet and check the fauna. Each fauna scanned provides a small amount of nanites, which can be acquired by pressing the ‘upload’ button.

However, a much larger quantity of Nanites can be acquired by scanning all fauna on a planet. Doing so can yield anywhere between just a few hundred Nanites to several thousand, depending on the number of fauna which inhabit the planet.

Scanning every fauna on a planet can be a time-consuming process if there are many fauna to find. Look for planets with just a few scannable fauna—between five to ten or so. These can be scanned relatively quickly before moving onto the next planet.

Some fauna are easier to find than others.
Air and ground-based fauna are usually easy to find, even if they’re listed as rare. Underwater fauna is more difficult, and underground fauna is extremely difficult to find. If you land on a planet that has a rare underground fauna, you might as well give up and try again on the next planet.

Refiner Recipes That Make Nanites

There are a lot of ways to make Nanites using items you find in your travels. Here’s a rundown of every source of Nanites in No Man’s Sky.

Radiant Shards
,
Inverted Mirrors
, and
Hyaline Brains are some of the biggest returns on Nanites available
in No Man’s Sky. Finding these items means finding Dissonant Systems,
which you can learn more about here
.

Other Methods To Farm Nanites In No Man’s Sky

There are lots of other methods for farming Nanites in the game.

• You can find Nanites lying around while you’re exploring, like searching for abandoned buildings and various other PoIs on planets.
• Always search through Damaged Machinery when you see it while exploring, it has a chance to drop Nanites.
• Sentinels can drop Nanites when they are destroyed. Check out our guide for dealing with Sentinels here.
• Nanites are rewarded for completing certain missions.
• Useless Residual Goop? Nope. Through multiple refining processes of Goop > Viscous Fluids > Living Slime > Runaway Mould, you can turn that Goop into Nanites.
• Cooking items and giving them to Iteration Cronus on the Anomaly is a great way to get Nanites. A good recipe for Nanites is making Herb-Encrusted Flesh made from Mystery Meat Stew and Flavoursome Sauce. Doing so provides you with roughly 100 Nanites.