No Man’s Sky – Perma Death Mode Guide

The masterclass in perma-death mode play. Learn how to use the terrain-manipulator, exocrafts-specially the minataur.

Why solar ships are critical? Why phase beam is the weapon? Why scatter blaster is important? How to build a quick, fast and easy base. And more.

Start

Сrеdit gоеs to V#J# !

• You’ll always start on a extreme weather planet. And have a few minutes at best to get things together. There’s a secret I’ll share at the end which trivialises this, but for now, Get Going.
• Find some Sodium or better still a Cave. Mine as much Cobalt & Ferrite Dust. (10xCobalt+5xFerriteDust = Ion Batteries that recharge the Hazard Protection). Find you ship and start running towards it – don’t melee boost, as yet.
• If you find a cave, don’t forget the Marrow Bulb – that refines into Sodium in the portable reactor. Sodium is the only thing that recharge Starship shields – you can’t ever have enough.
• After you’ll reach the ship and are tasked with getting the hermetic seal there’ll be a scripted storm. Make sure you’re prepared – Atleast 10+ Ion batteries. ProTip: Use 1 (one) battery at a time manually – it recharges worth 80% so you’ll save one. The game defaults to 2 at a time, same for Life Support Gel.
• Optional: Mine as much carbon/condensed carbon as you can. And get some oxygen. Everything else like scanning animals/plants/admiring the vista = drop it. Be quick.

Awakenings

• The minute you can – get off the planet. The second you’re asked to test the drives, do it. Don’t delay. Pirate Attacks are real. The biggest risk is a random attack.
• You’ll get a signal to get the terrain manipulate and base computer. Boom, rush to it.
• Don’t linger in space. Random pirate attacks are every few minutes – and it can get very risky.

Base Building & Terrrain Manipulator

• Build a simple base. Don’t unlock any unnecessary parts. ProTip: the STONE base is what you should be aiming to get and when you get enough data the prefab. Stone is the best with the restricted inventory limits. Anytime you run out of materials just blast the ground and voila.
• Stone + Prefab Cube with corridor is the way to go. Everything else consumes too much resources.

Terrain Manipulator

• There are many modes and one of them makes hazard protection a joke – the create mode.
• Switch to create – scroll to cave – make the size bigger. Build.
• Switch to mine – create a small hole in the base – enter it. Hazard Protection recharges.
• I never use sodium or ion batteries after I find the terrain manipulator.

Enter and sit in that cave: your hazard protection will recharge. No sodium or ion batteries needed.

Missions + Bases + ExoCrafts

• Do the Base Computer Missions asap – they are easy and you get some critical blueprints.
  
• At every space station talk to everyone to learn a word – this way you’ll fulfil your quota for progression.
  
• After getting the Roamer Exocraft blueprint unlock the Minotaur. This is a bigger game changer than the terrain manipulator.
  
• Unlock Exocraft Summoning Station next. This allows you to summon any owned exocraft anywhere in the game – any galaxy, planet, everywhere.
  
• Minotaur comes with hazard protection and you can just summon it the minute you land: via the summoning station and then go exploring and call it again on the same planet. Pop into it for full hazard protection.
  
• If you want/can: upgrade the Minotaur Engine/Cannon/Mining Laser – any ground fight is a breeze.
  
• Get a decent Multi-tool and upgrade scatter blaster + boltcaster combo. Do not, under any circumstances, install any grenade launcher. Its suicide.

Units + Nanites

• The easiest and fun way to earn units is storm crystals. I’m assuming you’ve unlocked the Minotaur – head over and collect. Each 10stock is worth 2.1Mil. I got 15 stacks in any one sitting.
  
• After you’ve unlocked a few systems and have an economy scanner – do a loop or two at max. Its quite tedious and risky (space fights).
  
• Forget farming – requires a lot of resources and time to make it worthwhile. You’ll always have full inventory – won’t be possible.
  
• The easiest and maybe not so fun way to earn nanites is to scan animals on a planet to completion. Choose only those planets that don’t have underground fauna. Underground spawns at Monoliths/Minor Settlements/Alient Structures – which are a pain to traverse to. But sometimes its doable. Be careful of underwater scans – you’re default oxygen is barely 60seconds, very risky without any supreme upgrades.

I ended my game with 100mil and 25k nanites all from the above methods.

Ship + Freighter

• Two words – Solar Ships. You need that auto launch recharge and pulse fuel economy – no two ways about it. And it helps that solar ships are cheap and have good stats for their price.
  
• PHASE BEAN Forget Dps, forget cool, forget who said what – get the phase bean on your first trip to the nexus/anomaly. Trust me on this one. The shield recharge is god sent. You’ll be accosted by pirate attacks everytime, in every systems within a few minutes of idling. This weapon will seriously cut the risk down.
  
• Photon Cannon + Rockets = Stick with these for secondary weapon for when the phase beam knocks out the enemies shields.
  
• Carry 2 full stocks of Sodium = 500×2. Because sodium is 1st in the quick charge menu, in the heat of the moment you need this. It’s easy to screw this up.
  
• Once you unlock the auto recharger in the anomaly you can go with fighter/explorer. I prefer explorer for the jump range or interceptor if possible.
  
• Don’t linger in space. Random attacks are very common and every few minutes. Don’t engage sentinel fighters. I ran from every fight – very risky with their shields recharges and god forbid if they ganged up on you. Sure death.

Freighter

• Take the first free one offered. Leave the good stuff for other modes. Use ship to jump.

General Info

• The game can and does bug out: specially when loading a save at your base of freighter. If you fall and die, can’t be helped.
  
• Forget farming – requires too many resources and too much building. Very tedious with limited inventory.
  
• Build a base with a single extractor for Oxygen, Gold, Silver – all you need. The planets elements can be bought out. You can only store so much so why build more.
  
• I played a few nexus missions – earned 3000 quicksilver. Once was with a very cool random dude/dudette. Very fast paced, I was at a lower level but with S class rifle and scatter blaster + boltcaster and pacifist minotaur for hazard. The second time was funny – the other party called their freighter and boom objective completed. (had to mine indium). Headed back to nexus – got a interceptor crash site signal thingy – got my interceptor. All reward no work. Generally avoid nexus mission – you could come across some scummy people. I didn’t, but who knows.

Achievement + Final Thoughts

The fastest way to get the achievement is through the story-line – or via unlocking the first portal glyph and entering it 12 times. Gets you within 5k of the centre. Another way is to sit in the anomaly and when someone comes along, whose base in close to the centre, hop on.

Thoughts – I woudn’t play PD again and will delete my save.

• Perma death is not a good mode for your primary save, or any save. The inventory restriction add nothing to the game. NMS is an chilled-exploration game with a bit of dash of everything. Inventory is the backbone of exploration. Without a good inventory exploration becomes moot. I didn’t collect any bones or any of the other cool stuff.
  
• Astute reader would have noted that I’ve said avoid to a lot of game-play elements. Are you really playing a game if you’re avoiding most of it? No. In PD mode, the fear of dying keeps you out from playing the game and taking risks: you hide every-time from everything. For some people its cool but if you’re putting in more than 25hrs into a save, building bases, doing missions and you die you’re bummed out so you play extreme risk averse. The whole point of games is to take risk you wouldn’t take in real life and you won’t get that in PD mode.
  
• Base building is a no show – one of the coolest aspects is very tedious/cumbersome/no fun. Farming become problematic. Harvesting hadal/larval cores ( another super fun activity) remains out of bounds. I did zero sentinel fights.
  
• Didnt happen to me – but glitches can occur and that’s just a very bad feeling. I did glitch twice through the floor, had presence of mind to boost the jet-pack, fortunately zipped into ship at the prompt.
  
• All in all: do it for the achievements and a bit of the wild stuff. I played around 50 hrs before I jumped to the centre. Ended up with an Exotic, Simple Freighter, S Rfile, A Pistol maxed out exosuit, scanner, scatter blaster, boltcaster. Maxed out Exocrafts. 100million and 25k nanintes. But don’t make this your make save.
  
• The ideal gameplay, according to me, is Custom = Survival + Relaxed Inventory limits. You”ll be able to do everything while having fun.

Best Kept Game Breaking Secret

This is not one you should know about – its a cheese. But since nobody’s spoken about it – here goes.

Right in the beginning when you’re told to mine ferrite dust to repair scanner. Dont. Mine carbon, get 2 carbon nanotubes and make the visor. Walk at leisure pace to your ship. Find sodium, recharge.

The game’s hazard protection counter doesn’t start until you repair the scanner. It defaults to normal mode drain. So dont reapair it till the very end.

Its possible to complete the whole mission with the hermetic seal etc without repairing your scanner and the hazard drain remains in normal mode. You’ll get upwards of 10minutes after recharging with sodium.

I found it too easy so repaired immediately.

If you skip the tutorial (in the custom options section) you’ll still get the achievements (select perma death and tutorial off – don’t touch any other options), so maybe no need for all this. I did not skip the tutorial to be on the safe side – the tutorial is not really fun though. Haha.