No Man's Sky Units and Nanites Economy

The economy in No Man’s Sky has three currencies: Units for buying ships, storage, and trade goods; Nanites for buying upgrades, modules, and high-end blueprints; and Quicksilver for seasonal cosmetics at the Synthesis Companion. There is no microtransaction shop. You earn everything in-world. This page covers the loops that fund a long save, from the first visor scan to billion-unit Stasis Device factories.

If you are still on the first planet, finish Getting Started and come back here once the Pulse Engine is running. If you want to understand what to sell rather than how to earn, check resources for the material table.

The early loop: visor scanning

The Analysis Visor is the honest first-economy tool. Hold it, tag unknown flora, fauna, and minerals, then upload discoveries from the pause menu. Each discovery pays Units. A complete fauna set on a single planet pays Nanites. This is not a glitch or an oversight. Hello Games left it in because it teaches the core scanning habit that makes the rest of the game legible.

Upgrade the visor with S-class scanner modules as soon as Nanites allow. A fully upgraded scanner triples or quadruples payouts. A planet that paid 5,000 Units per plant before the upgrade might pay 20,000 after. That multiplier is why scanner upgrades are the correct first Nanite purchase, not a prettier Multi-Tool.

The same principle applies to the ship scanner in space. Upgrade it. Flying over an undiscovered moon with an S-class ship scanner is a unit-printing moment that requires no base, no farm, and no refiner.

How to Make BILLIONS - Ultimate Stasis Device Guide

Units: the honest methods

Scanning flora

The fastest early Units method. Walk a new biome with the visor up. Every plant you tag pays. Complete sets pay Nanite bonuses. This works on every planet, including the ugly one you spawned on.

Scrapping crashed ships

Claim crashed ships on the planetary surface, fly them to a space station, and sell the hull at the scrap vendor. A C-class Fighter with broken slots still pays in units and installed modules that recycle into Nanites. Do not repair the ship. Sell it as-is. See Ships and Corvettes.

Storm crystals

Walk into an extreme-weather planet during the storm, grab the crystal, walk out. They sell for solid Units or refine toward Nanites. Pair with Sodium and hazard protection. See resources.

Salvage and scrap

After Cosmos 7.0, space hulks and Deep Space Outposts added a salvage economy. A Corvette with a Tractor Beam hauls hulk chunks to outposts for processing and sale. This is covered on space hulks. It is not a day-one method — it requires a Corvette, a Gravitino Coil, and the star system map.

Units: the industrial methods

Stasis Device factories

A Stasis Device is a high-value craft that sells for millions of Units at a Galactic Trade Terminal. The factory requires multiple resource chains: cultivated plants (frostwort, gamma root, gutrot, cactus flesh), refined metals, and crafting time. Once running, a well-fed Stasis Device farm prints money on a cycle.

The setup is not a first-week project. It requires multiple bases on different planets with different hotspots, a working knowledge of refiners, and the patience to feed the chain. But the payoff is billions, not thousands.

Fusion Ignitor factories

An alternative high-value craft with different resource requirements. Some players prefer the Fusion Ignitor chain for its sourcing simplicity. Both chains lead to the same galactic trade economy — pick the resources you can source locally.

Activated Indium farms

Once you can reach blue-star systems (or purple-system quartzite after Autophage access), Activated Indium deposits on extreme worlds pay well per mine. The extraction is hazardous. The payoff is steady.

Nanites: the fast methods

Upload discoveries

The single fastest Nanite method for a new save. Scan every unknown creature and plant on every planet you visit. Upload from the pause menu. The Nanite drip is slow but cumulative.

Scrapping ships and Multi-Tools

High-class ships and Multi-Tools installed modules recycle into Nanites at the appropriate vendor. An S-class scanner module removed from a ship you are about to scrap returns a meaningful number of Nanites. Keep this in mind when swapping to a better hull.

Runaway Mould

Refine Runaway Mould from Curious Deposits (the bouncing ball resources). It is a slower Nanite farm than the above, but available on ordinary worlds without extreme conditions.

Refining shortcuts

Some refining chains produce Nanites directly or indirectly. Check current recipes against the Anomaly vendors. The meta shifts with patches; what was slow in 2024 might be fast in 2026.

Quicksilver

Quicksilver is earned only through Nexus missions on the Space Anomaly. There is no other legitimate source. It is spent at the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion on capes, trailers, staffs, and seasonal cosmetics.

Do not buy Quicksilver from any third-party seller. It is not sold. It is not tradeable between accounts. Anyone selling Quicksilver is scamming you.

The economy after Cosmos 7.0

Cosmos added salvage as a new Unit income path. Deep Space Outposts now have a Galactic Trade Terminal in the Quartermaster room, making hulk salvage sellable without flying to an NPC station. Station claiming and decoration costs Units, but also generates reasons to earn them.

The core advice has not changed: scanner first, then industrial farms, then hulk salvage. The numbers have grown because the galaxy has more to do. A Corvette with a Tractor Beam is now a unit-generating tool alongside the visor. See Ships and Corvettes.

Common mistakes

Reversing the upgrade order. Buy scanner modules before class upgrades for Multi-Tools or ships. Unit income from scanning funds everything else.

Hoarding raw resources. Ferrite Dust and Carbon are crafting inputs, not investments. Sell surplus or refine it. A warehouse of unsold Ferrite Dust is not wealth.

Marrying the first ship. A crashed C-class is a source of Units and Nanites, not a project. See Ships and Corvettes.

Ignoring standing. Faction standing unlocks better dialogue, better prices, and language that opens story content. A Gek RELIC or a Korvax TRANSMISSION is worth 100 Nanites for the word alone.

The Units and Nanites page covers the specific numbers and the first-ten-hour habits. This page covers the longer loops. Run the scanner until the habits are boring, then build the factory, then strip the hulk. That order works in every patch Hello Games has shipped.