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

Other NMS Guides:

• Tips and Tricks.
• How To Start Your First Base.
• How to Remove Base Building Limit.
• How to Make Money (Units).
• What to Expect from a Discovered Planet Based on the Name.

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. I’ve seen a lot of reddit posts and chatter in the No Man’s Sky Discord with people asking how it 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.