No Man’s Sky – How the New Economy Works (Atlas Rises Update)

Obtaining an Economy Scanner

The economy scanner is a new piece of technology in the Atlas Rises 1.3 patch it is the center piece for traders to plan their trade routes.

The in-game guide briefly explain the economy scanner but not into much depth for the last hour I’ve been trying to figure out how the equipment actually works.

Firstly, you’re going to want to find a blueprint vendor actually selling the blueprint to build one. It should cost around 400 nanite clusters to buy one however I’m not sure if this canges depending on the solar system you’re in.

Once you have the blueprint you going to want around 200 Thamium and Heridium to build the tech. (I advise building it in a tech slot onboard your ship to avoid wasting cargo space.)

When you’ve installed it to you’re ship go into space and go onto your galactic map and look change the filter using the up or down arrow to “Economy”. This will change the colours of the systems, the colours stand for the type of industry of that specific system.

The Galactic Map Economy Filter

The colours are as follows:

  • Red = Power Generation (I guess fuels and Isotopes are the key item to be sold here)
  • Orange = Mining (Ores are cheaper to buy here but they do not sell for much)
  • Cyan = Nano Construction (I believe certain crafted products sell for more here)
  • Green = Trading, Shipping / Mercantile (Trade goods and commodities sell better)
  • Yellow = Industrial / Manufacturing (Raw materials and ores sell much better here)
  • Blue = Science (Not entirely sure what the difference is between cyan and blue systems)
  • Purple = Ore Processing / Material Fusion (I believe this is a mix of Raw and crafted products that sell better in these systems)

These systems work hand in hand, meaning systems like orange work better with red and yellow systems. You can buy ores cheaply in orange systems and sell them for much higher in the red and yellow systems meaning you can set up trade routes using a base terminus or by warping between systems.

General Advise About the Wealth of Systems

There are new trade goods that sell extremely well such as circuit boards and liquid explosives which can sell for well over 1 million units in certain systems.

I heavily advise hanging around in a wealthy system because the ships that spawn have high stats and capacity and tend to sell for cheaper.

The wealth of systems determine how many goods are sold there and how good the ships are that fly around and land at stations.

I warped into a wealthy system, landed at the space station and then I bought one of the new “Exotic” S Class ships.

Farming plants is a very lucrative method of making money now. Combining plants and ores to make new trade goods is a ridiculously effective way to make a LOT of cash.

System Economy / Conflict Levels

Viewing system economy/conflict information before warping in requires scanner(s) tech to be installed in your active ship or freighter.

The Economy Scanner and Conflict Scanner blueprints can be purchased from Hyperion at the Space Anomaly, for 150 Nanites each.

You may also unlock the blueprints by completing the Weapon Research secondary mission.

  • The Economy Scanner costs 5 Microprocessors and 1 Wiring Loom to install.
  • The Conflict Scanner costs 1 Walker Brain and 1 Wiring Loom to install.

The Living Ship’s Wormhole Brain can be acquired by installing the Wormhole Brain Implant, which you can get from Psychonic eggs, a random drop from fleet expeditions with at least 1 Living Frigate.

Freighter:

The Interstellar Scanner blueprint is available at the freighter upgrade terminal for 4 Salvaged Frigate Modules. It costs 160 Chromatic Metal, 70 Magnetized Ferrite and 2 Wiring Looms to install.

With the scanner(s) installed, open the Galaxy Map and highlight a Star System. The Economy and Conflict levels are displayed under the name of the Star System.

All Economy/Conflict levels and names are shown in the image below.

I sincerely hope this was helpful. Good luck to you!

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 8040 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices. My first official job in the game industry started back in 2005, and I'm still doing what I love to do.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*