How to Make Units Fast in No Man's Sky

Units buy ships, freighters, and the bulk resources that speed everything else up. Some of these methods you can start today. The farms take longer to set up, but they’ll pay you hundreds of millions while you do other things.

Method overview

Method	Income/hour	Setup required
Stasis Device crafting	50M+	Extensive base infrastructure
Activated Indium farm	20-50M	Medium (build on blue star planet)
Nav data exploit	10-15M per run	Minimal
Chlorine loop	5-10M	Minimal
Ship scrapping	5-10M	Some units to start
Scanning	1-5M	Scanner upgrades

The Chlorine loop (best early and mid-game)

The recipe:

1x Chlorine + 2x Oxygen → 6x Chlorine

Every refiner cycle multiplies your Chlorine by 6 (net +5 after replacing your input). Run it again with the output. A full stack of 9,999 Chlorine sells for a few million units at any Galactic Trade Terminal.

To start the loop, you need a small amount of Chlorine:

Method	Output
Buy from pilots at space stations	Variable
2x Salt → 1x Chlorine	Direct refine
1x Kelp Sac + 1x Salt → 2x Chlorine	Better yield

Oxygen is the catalyst. Build Gas Extractors near Oxygen hotspots on a planet and let them fill your supply automatically. With a steady Oxygen supply, the Chlorine loop costs almost nothing to run.

The same multiplication trick works on Ionised Cobalt (1 Ionised Cobalt + 2 Oxygen → 6 Ionised Cobalt). Chlorine sells for more per unit, but Ionised Cobalt is easier to find in the early game. Either works.

Activated Indium farm (best passive income)

This takes a few hours to set up. After that, it makes hundreds of millions and you barely have to touch it.

What you need first:

• Indium Drive installed on your ship (blueprint from Iteration: Hyperion at the Space Anomaly)
• Survey Device on your Multi-Tool
• Mineral Extractors, Supply Depots, Storage Containers, Electromagnetic Generator (all from the Space Anomaly for nanites)

Setup steps:

1. Open the Galaxy Map and filter for blue star systems. Activated Indium only spawns there
2. Fly to a blue system and scan planets until you find one with Activated Indium deposits
3. Land and use your Survey Device to find the hotspot
4. Target S-class hotspots if you can, since higher class means more output per extractor
5. Drop a Base Computer and build your extraction setup

Place up to 3 Mineral Extractors per deposit. Beyond 3 you get diminishing returns. Chain Supply Depots from the extractors into a Storage Container. Power everything with an Electromagnetic Generator, which runs indefinitely without fuel.

A farm with 30+ extractors on S-class deposits can produce 100M+ units per collection run. Come back every few hours, collect, and sell. Activated Indium sells well in any economy.

Nav Data to Exosuit Upgrade Charts (best ROI)

Not many people seem to use this one, which is odd, because it returns about 40x what you put in.

The loop:

1. Find a space station in a 3-star economy where the cartographer sells Navigation Data in bulk (150+ in stock)
2. Build a Base Computer and Teleporter near that terminal
3. Buy all the Nav Data (around 297 costs about 297,000 units)
4. Teleport to a normal space station
5. Trade the Nav Data for Exosuit Upgrade Charts at the cartographer
6. Sell the Upgrade Charts to the Technology Merchant

297 Navigation Data (about 297k units) trades into 99 Exosuit Upgrade Charts worth 12 to 13 million units.

Note: space station economies are system-wide. Buying all the Nav Data from one terminal drains the whole system. Rotate between multiple 3-star systems to keep stock refreshing.

Ship scrapping

Find crashed ships on planets, repair just the launch thruster and pulse engine, fly to a space station and scrap them. Each scrapped ship gives:

• Trade goods you can sell for units
• Upgrade modules (sell to Technology Merchants for nanites)
• Storage Augmentations for your ship inventory

To find crashed ships, buy Planetary Charts (Distress Signal type) from station cartographers, or use your ship’s scanner when flying low over planets.

S-class crashed ships are rare but give much better returns. An A or S-class scrapped ship can yield multiple upgrade modules worth 300-1,100 nanites each, plus trade goods that add up to a few million units per scrap.

Ancient bones

Some planets have Ancient Bone deposits that you can dig up with the Terrain Manipulator. These sell well to traveling ship captains and some station traders. There’s no setup and no recipe. Find the right planet type and dig.

The hourly yield depends on the planet, but you don’t need any resources to start, so it’s handy early on before you have refiners or farms running.

Stasis Devices (end-game)

Stasis Devices are tied with the Fusion Ignitor as the most valuable craftable item in the game, at 15.6M units each. The recipe chain needs gas farming, plant farming, and several refining steps. Once your base can keep up, nothing else comes close for unit income.

The full chain is in the Stasis Device guide. I’d get Activated Indium going first, though. Stasis Devices only pay off once the supply lines that feed them are already built.

Where to sell

Sell to traveling ship captains (the NPCs that land at space stations) rather than the station’s trade terminal. Captains pay full price without crashing the local economy. If you sell bulk amounts to a trade terminal, that resource’s price drops in that system and you’ll get less for subsequent stacks.

For the full recipe list covering the Chlorine loop and other multiplication recipes, check the refining page.

Sources

• Extracted game data
• All refiner recipes
• Activated Indium
• Chlorine
• Crafting calculator