How to Get Nitrogen, Sulphurine and Radon in No Man's Sky

Nitrogen, Sulphurine and Radon are the three compressed atmospheric gases in No Man’s Sky. You can’t mine them off a rock. You pull them out of the air with a machine, scan them out of a few plants, or refine one into another. If you’re wondering how to get Nitrogen in No Man’s Sky specifically, the short answer is a Lush or Toxic planet and an Atmosphere Harvester.

All three have a base value of 20 Units, so nobody farms them to sell. You farm them because they’re the start of the Semiconductor chain, and that chain pays very well.

Which planets have each gas

The gas you get depends on the planet’s biome. The in-game descriptions say this, with the Fandom wiki’s extras in brackets:

Gas	Symbol	Rarity	Planet types	Base value
Nitrogen	N	Rare	Lush, Toxic	20
Sulphurine	Su	Common	Scorched, Desert (Fandom adds Volcanic)	20
Radon	Rn	Uncommon	Radioactive, Frozen	20

The Nitrogen text is my favourite: “a reactive atmospheric gas found wherever there is organic life.” Lush and Toxic worlds are where you’ll see it. Exotic planets don’t give any of the three. The Fandom wiki says an Atmosphere Harvester there pulls Oxygen instead.

How to get Nitrogen with an Atmosphere Harvester

The Atmosphere Harvester is the cheap, early option. The blueprint costs:

• 100 Ammonia
• 2 Metal Plating
• 2 Hermetic Seal

The game describes it as “an automated siphon unit” that condenses gas from the air and stores it until you come back. Drop it on a Lush or Toxic planet for Nitrogen, a Scorched or Desert one for Sulphurine, or a Radioactive or Frozen one for Radon.

A few things the Fandom wiki adds that the game doesn’t spell out:

• The blueprint comes from the Scientist quest line once you’ve built a Science Terminal at your base.
• It runs on a fuel slot that takes 80 Carbon or 27 Condensed Carbon to fill.
• A full tank harvests up to 250 units over roughly an hour.
• You can only set up three per planet.
• Picking one up destroys any fuel and gas still inside it. Empty it first.

Three harvesters on one planet gets you about 750 of one gas an hour. That’s slow if you’re building a Semiconductor factory, so most people move on to gas extractors.

Gas Extractors and gas cloud hotspots

The Gas Extractor is the late-game answer. It costs 5 Metal Plating and 100 Chromatic Metal, and it sits on a Concentrated Gas Cloud hotspot. Find hotspots with the Survey Device upgrade for your Analysis Visor.

Per the Fandom wiki, extractors run on power instead of fuel, so pair a gas cloud with an electromagnetic hotspot and the whole thing runs itself. Pipe them into Supply Depots for extra storage. Hotspot class matters too. Fandom lists a C-class cloud at 250 max output and an S-class at 625.

Fandom’s hotspot list matches the biome rules above: Nitrogen clouds on Lush and Toxic, Sulphurine on Barren, Scorched and Volcanic, Radon on Frozen and Irradiated.

Other ways to get the gases

You don’t always need a base. These come from the Fandom wiki:

• Some flora drop the gases as a secondary element when you harvest them. Fandom also lists Sulphurine from Mutant Plants on Frozen worlds and Radon from Mutant Plants on Irradiated worlds.
• Raiding Resource Depots can turn up all three.
• On your freighter, a Stellar Extractor Room pulls a resource based on the star you’re parked at. Red and orange stars give Nitrogen, green stars give Sulphurine, blue stars give Radon. Yellow gives Chromatic Metal and purple gives Methane.

One thing you can’t do is buy them. NPCs stopped selling compressed gases in NEXT 1.57, according to Fandom.

Refiner recipes that swap the gases

This is the trick that matters. The three gases convert into each other in a loop: Sulphurine becomes Radon, Radon becomes Nitrogen, and Nitrogen becomes Sulphurine. So if you only have one gas biome nearby, you can still make the other two.

Every recipe here comes from the site’s refining data:

Inputs	Output	Refiner
3 Sulphurine	1 Radon	Any
1 Sulphurine + 1 Oxygen	1 Radon	Medium or Large
1 Sulphurine + 1 Chromatic Metal	1 Radon	Medium or Large
3 Radon	1 Nitrogen	Any
1 Radon + 1 Oxygen	1 Nitrogen	Medium or Large
1 Radon + 1 Chromatic Metal	1 Nitrogen	Medium or Large
3 Methane	1 Nitrogen	Any
1 Methane + 1 Oxygen	1 Nitrogen	Medium or Large
1 Methane + 1 Chromatic Metal	1 Nitrogen	Medium or Large
3 Nitrogen	1 Sulphurine	Any
1 Nitrogen + 1 Oxygen	1 Sulphurine	Medium or Large
1 Nitrogen + 1 Chromatic Metal	1 Sulphurine	Medium or Large

Use the Oxygen versions. A 1:1 swap beats burning three gas for one, and Oxygen plants are easy to find. You can also farm Oxygen at a base.

The loop doesn’t run backwards in one step. To get Sulphurine from Radon you go Radon to Nitrogen to Sulphurine. Of the three, Methane from a gas giant only turns into Nitrogen.

What Nitrogen, Sulphurine and Radon are used for

The Semiconductor chain

Each gas has one high-value product. You can craft them or refine them, and the refiner is far cheaper on gas:

Product	Crafted from	Large Refiner	Value
Nitrogen Salt	250 Nitrogen + 50 Condensed Carbon	100 Nitrogen + 20 Carbon + 10 Salt	50,000
Thermic Condensate	250 Sulphurine + 50 Condensed Carbon	100 Sulphurine + 20 Carbon + 10 Salt	50,000
Enriched Carbon	250 Radon + 50 Condensed Carbon	100 Radon + 20 Carbon + 10 Salt	50,000

The refiner also takes Condensed Carbon instead of Carbon (10 instead of 20), or 5 Chlorine instead of the Salt. Either way, 100 gas beats 250. If you have a Large Refiner, stop crafting these.

From there:

• Thermic Condensate + Nitrogen Salt = Semiconductor, worth 320,000.
• Semiconductor + Enriched Carbon = Superconductor, worth 1,500,000.

That’s every gas in one item. A Superconductor then goes into the Quantum Processor, which is part of the Fusion Ignitor. For the money side, see how to make Units fast.

Nitrogen

Nitrogen gets the most extra refiner uses:

• Sodium Nitrate: 1 Nitrogen + 1 Sodium gives 1. With Ferrite Dust, Pure Ferrite or Magnetised Ferrite you get 1, 2 or 3. And 1 Nitrogen + 1 Sodium Nitrate gives 2.
• 1 Nitrogen + 1 Di-hydrogen gives 1 Ammonia.
• Plant materials, one each: with Ammonia for Fungal Mould, Paraffinium for Star Bulb, Cobalt for Marrow Bulb, Salt for Kelp Sac, and Sulphurine for Faecium.

The Sodium Nitrate recipes are handy when you need it for Large Refiners or hazard protection and don’t want to hunt for crystals.

Sulphurine

• Paraffinium: 1 Sulphurine + Magnetised Ferrite gives 3, Pure Ferrite gives 2, Ferrite Dust gives 1.
• 1 Sulphurine + 1 Di-hydrogen gives 1 Solanium.
• Plant materials: with Pyrite for Cactus Flesh, Phosphorus for Solanium, and Nitrogen for Faecium.

Radon

• Uranium: 1 Radon + Magnetised Ferrite gives 3, Pure Ferrite gives 2, Ferrite Dust gives 1. Radon + Di-hydrogen also gives 1.
• Plant materials: with Dioxite for Frost Crystal, and Uranium for Gamma Root.

All three at once

3 Sulphurine + 3 Radon + 3 Nitrogen makes 1 Methane in a Large Refiner. It’s a bad trade. Go to a gas giant if you need Methane.

Selling them

Don’t. At 20 Units each, a full harvester load of 250 is 5,000 Units. Put 100 of that into one Nitrogen Salt and it’s worth 50,000. Pair it with Thermic Condensate for a Semiconductor and you’re at 320,000.

If you want more refiner ideas, the best refiner recipes post has the rest.

Sources

• Nitrogen (Fandom)
• Sulphurine (Fandom)
• Radon (Fandom)
• Atmosphere Harvester (Fandom)
• Gas Extractor (Fandom)
• Concentrated Gas Cloud (Fandom)
• Stellar Extractor Room (Fandom)
• Extracted game data (7.10): Nitrogen, Sulphurine, Radon, Atmosphere Harvester, Gas Extractor, Nitrogen Salt, Semiconductor, Superconductor and the refining table