Update 8/25/2016: Added pages on Finding Trade Posts, Sentinels and Wanted Level, in addition to Shielding, Power, and Unstable Plasma Items. Also see my guide to Making Money in No Man's Sky for some tips on the best methods for earning cash, what crafting items are most profitable, and a list of all resources in the game.
No Man's Sky: Beginners Help
Understanding the HUD, Game Interface and Menus
No Man's Sky is one of those games hyped to the point that many people inexperienced with games may get into it for the exploration. This is for total beginners to the game, and should help a few people figure out what they're seeing in the game. We're going to focus on symbols, the various areas of the HUD and the game's three main menus in order to help you find things.
HUD on a Planet
This is the HUD, sometimes there's a lot happening on the screen so it's useful to know what everything means.
This is the HUD with everything present. Here are the elements you'll see on a planet, all at once. Things hide when they're not relevant, like if you're not in combat the health bar will disappear (on PC you can bring it up at any time with the 'h' key). The only thing missing are the symbols from using a scanner, which are detailed below.
This is your health in the top left. The bar is your shield. When your shield is depleted, you start to take damage. Those little health packs reaching 0 means you're dead and will respawn. The shield is very important, as you'll die within a few good hits without it. But not to worry, that's not going to happen often.
Bottom left, we have life support (bottom) and any hazardous conditions above it. That bar isn't present unless the conditions on the world are rough. This is an extreme planet, and will make use of the exosuit's environmental hazards protection. You can recharge it with zinc, titanium, or shielding shards made of iron (when you have the blueprint).
Top center of the screen is the compass. You can use this if you get lost. If I point a little to the left, I'll be directly facing my ship. Any discovered buildings are also marked. Note the greyed-out building, this means it's been visited.
The bottom right contains the exosuit backpack meter (full, red), the jetpack's charge, and my ability to sprint. The jetpack and sprint meter always refill and do not require fuel.
The top right features your wanted level. One to 5 stars. Additionally, I have 1 grenade and my mining beam is at 14%. Grenades reload, but need recharged sometimes. Both of these will require me to go to my exosuit inventory and supply resources to recharge them.
This is a Sentinel, the most basic kind. Above his head is a circular meter (and a health bar). If it fills, I'll have a wanted level 2 after a short period and more sentinels will come. At rank 3, harder ones attack and so on. They're not a threat unless you let them get out of hand or are on a high security planet. They don't like it when you take too many resources, but they happen to be great sources of titanium and you'll farm them later. Combat with this variety becomes routine. You only bump into the hardest type, walkers, if you want to or are not very good at shooting them/one gets stuck in a mountain where you can't kill it. In that case, just run away!
Interface in Space
There is one more HUD, that when you're in a ship. Many of the same principles apply. This ship has engaged its pulse drive to fly toward a destination on a planet, and is one second away at current speed. If the ship is pointed directly at something while using the pulse drive it will automatically stop when it gets close. On the ship navigation panel you can see the distance to the planet (5,390ks which is close) current speed (9999 from the pulse drive), shield strength and selected weapon. The shield and weapons appear top left/right just as they do when on the ground.
Inventories
You have 3 inventories. The ship and exosuit can hold loot, the multi-tool cannot but all three are capable of housing upgrades. If a piece of equipment is in that inventory, it automatically works. Should two pieces be of the same class (like two stamina upgrades) they'll link and produce a more powerful effect. It's worth planning your inventory to take advantage of this feature. You don't need to worry about putting the wrong piece in the wrong inventory, you can only build items from blueprints in the correct inventory slot.
This is where you manage your exosuit. For the most part, it will be used to carry items though you may want to upgrade your stamina, deflector shield, or make your character more resilient against specific types of environmental damage on extreme planets. The slots here stack up to 250 items, but the ship can hold 500 in one slot. It's good to transfer to the ship any things you know you'll keep.
This is the ship inventory. Either it's loot, or it's equipment. Most of the top row is equipment. In this case I'm working on installing a Warp Reactor Theta and need a bit more Emeril. The ship has plenty of empty slots. Note it has three hyperdrives already, these combine to give it enhanced maximum warp distance.
As stated before, the multi-tool can't hold loot. Everything inside is a tool or improvement to a tool. There are many blueprints to be found. Group similar blueprints to get a linking bonus. See more about that on my mining guide.
Scan Symbols
You'll eventually have these memorized, but they're useful to know early on - particularly so you don't miss a couple of the really good ones. You have two types of scans. One is to zoom in and discover creatures and plants. The other is a scan of your surroundings for resources and landmarks. The scan range can be improved by adding things to the multi-tool. You can similarly scan in space, and sometimes find destinations like the building we were warping to in the picture above.
This symbol is always present, whether you've done a scan or not. If you're at or below your ship's elevation it may be hard to see (look up/down). You can also rely on the compass to at least know the general direction if you've wandered off and got lost. It displays with infinite range.
This is a red isotope symbol, usually Thamium9 (a flower you harvest) or Plutonium crystals which can be blasted with the mining laser.
This is a yellow oxide. It's almost always Zinc, which has its uses in crafting recipes.
Platinum will appear as the blue silicate symbol, and a few others may as well. It is a flower you pick, like with zinc and thamium9. Other silicates appear in crystal form.
The grey treasure chest symbol is one you don't want to miss, most of the time. This indicates a neutral or otherwise rare element.
REALLY Rare stuff will appear with a green exclamation mark symbol. Sometimes you run across a planet that has many deposits of something valuable or otherwise used in crafting advanced recipes. Watch for this symbol.
Ore deposits that can be broken down will appear with this grid. It is reserved for elements that will take some time to gather, as you must gradually blast away with the mining laser.
This is the symbol used for a signal scanner, it can be helpful but doesn't appear very often and may require you to have already visited...
These symbols denote Knowledge Stones. They'll let you learn alien words, sometimes a larger monolith is nearby. They're worth visiting, there are over 1600 words to learn from alien languages in No Man's Sky. These words are helpful when you must make choices in dialog.
There are a few other symbols, but none so common as these. You'll learn what isn't interesting as you play. Many of these are essential to getting started, so I hope this guide has helped you in some way.
See my Walkthrough to No Man's Sky for advice on getting from the first planet, repairing your warp drive, making antimatter and reaching your first Anomaly where you will receive an AtlasPass V1. You may also be interested in the Controls page.
Other No Man's Sky Guides
- Guide to Ships in No Man's Sky
- Making Money & Crafting for Profit in No Man's Sky
- Walkthrough Part 1: Leaving first Planet
- Walkthrough Part 2: Warp Drive
- AtlasPass V1 & Anomalies
- Finding AtlasPass V2 and V3
- Discovering Plants an Animals (Scanning)
- Antimatter
- How to Buy Better Ships
- Signal Scanners, Monoliths, Outposts, and Crashed Ships
- Best Elements to Recharge Gear
- Multi-tool and its Functions
- Mining in No Man's Sky
- Sentinels and Wanted Level
- Where to Find Better Warp Reactors
