What is the fastest nanite farm in No Man's Sky?

A Runaway Mould farm built on Curious Deposits can generate 20,000+ nanites per hour once set up. For a no-setup option, Tainted Metal from Corrupted Sentinels gives 2 nanites per metal in any refiner.

How do you farm Runaway Mould in No Man's Sky?

Find Curious Deposits on a planet (pulsing yellow nodes), extract the Runaway Mould, and refine it. 5 Runaway Mould = 1 Nanite Cluster. Build a base next to a cluster of deposits and you have a repeatable farm.

What creature drops give the most nanites?

Hyaline Brain gives 230 nanites per refine, the highest of any creature drop. Inverted Mirror gives 95. Both come from creatures on Dissonant or Corrupted planets.

Are Suspicious Packets a good way to get nanites?

Yes. Buy them from pirate station vendors, open them for upgrade modules, then sell those modules to Technology Merchants at normal stations. Each module is worth 300-1,100 nanites.

Best Nanite Farms in No Man's Sky | No Man's Sky Recipes

Nanites buy the tech upgrades that matter — ship class bumps, multi-tool damage modules, hyperdrive extensions. Here are the methods that produce them fastest, from no-setup options to the farms that run while you play.

Method Comparison

Method	Nanites/Hour	Setup
Runaway Mould farm	20,000+	Medium
Ship scrapping (A/S class)	10,000-15,000	Needs units
Suspicious Packets (pirate stations)	4,000-12,000 per run	Minimal
Tainted Metal (Corrupted Sentinels)	2,000-5,000	None
Creature products (Hyaline Brain etc.)	Varies	None
Fauna scanning (full planet, S scanner)	~3,000	Scanner upgrades

Runaway Mould Farm (Best Overall)

Runaway Mould refines at 5:1 (5 Mould = 1 Nanite Cluster), which sounds bad until you realize the Mould multiplies.

Bootstrapping the farm:

Step	Input	Output
Option A	1x Atlantideum + 1x Pugneum	3x Runaway Mould
Option B	1x Living Slime	1x Runaway Mould
Final step	5x Runaway Mould	1x Nanite Cluster

The real source is Curious Deposits — pulsing yellow nodes on the ground on certain planets. Walk up and extract them directly. Build a base nearby and you can farm the same cluster repeatedly.

Finding Curious Deposits: Use your ship scanner when flying low. They appear as resource hotspots and tend to cluster together, so finding one usually means several more are close by.

A base with good deposit density, running multiple refiners in parallel, can hit 20,000+ nanites per hour. Set it up once, then farm it on every session.

Tainted Metal (Fastest No-Setup Option)

1x Tainted Metal → 2x Nanite Clusters in any refiner.

Tainted Metal drops from Corrupted Sentinels on Dissonant planets (the ones with purple crystal formations on the surface). Kill them, collect the metal, refine it. A solid Sentinel combat loop can produce thousands of nanites per hour with zero base building.

Corrupted Sentinels also drop Pugneum as a byproduct. You can refine Pugneum directly for nanites, or use it to bootstrap Runaway Mould production via the Option A recipe above.

Creature Products (Best Per-Item Rate)

These have the highest nanite conversion rate in the game:

Item	Nanites	Source
Hyaline Brain	230	Creatures on Dissonant planets
Inverted Mirror	95	Creatures on Corrupted planets
Larval Core	50	Biological Horrors
Flesh Rope	50	Creature drops
Radiant Shard	50	Creature drops
Vile Spawn	50	Creature drops

One Hyaline Brain is 230 nanites in a single refiner cycle. If you’re already on Dissonant planets farming Tainted Metal, the creature drops from the same sessions are free nanites on top.

Suspicious Packets (Best Mid-Game Method)

Pirate space stations sell Suspicious Packet (Tech) and Suspicious Packet (Arms). Open them and you get weapon or tech upgrade modules. Sell those modules to Technology Merchants at normal space stations. Each module is worth 300-1,100 nanites depending on class.

The loop:

Travel to an Outlaw system (filter for pirate-controlled systems on the Galaxy Map)
Buy all Suspicious Packets in stock
Open them immediately
Teleport to a normal space station
Sell the modules to the Technology Merchant

One vendor with 10-15 packets typically yields 4,000-12,000 nanites per run. Rotate between multiple Outlaw systems to keep stock replenishing. You need units to buy the packets, but the conversion rate is very good.

Ship Scrapping

Scrap A or S-class ships and you get upgrade modules as part of the haul. Sell those modules to a Technology Merchant for nanites.

Each A-class module is worth a few hundred nanites. S-class modules can hit 1,000+. The catch is startup cost: you need units to buy ships before you can scrap them, so this is more of a mid/late-game loop. It also doubles as a unit farm, since scrapping produces tradeable goods alongside the modules.

Fauna Scanning

Scan every creature on a planet and upload the discovery. You get a nanite bonus per species, with a larger bonus for completing all species on a single planet.

This is worth doing if you have S-class scanner upgrades installed. Without good upgrades, the per-hour rate is low compared to the other methods. With S-class, a full planet scan can yield 3,000+ nanites for a couple of hours of work.

Good for early-game and for when you’re exploring anyway. Once you have a Mould farm running, don’t treat this as a primary grind.

What to Spend Nanites On First

In order of priority:

S-class scanner upgrades — boosts both nanite and unit income from scanning, pays for itself fast
Hyperdrive upgrades — unlocks blue star systems for Activated Indium farming
Multi-Tool damage upgrades — makes Sentinel farming and Tainted Metal collection faster
Ship weapon and shield upgrades — general survivability

Don’t spend nanites on base building blueprints. Use Salvaged Data for those instead — it’s the intended currency for base tech and saves your nanites for the upgrades that actually change your combat and exploration performance.

For the full recipe list covering Tainted Metal, Runaway Mould, and all the other refiner conversions, check the refining page.

Best Nanite Farms in No Man's Sky