Resource deposits in No Man's Sky offer a lucrative and reliable way of gathering materials for players who are short on Units, and one press of a button can allow players to extract far more from a single deposit than they might expect. The practically infinite universe of No Man's Sky is full of different components useful in constructing and upgrading starships, exosuits, bases, and more.
While No Man's Sky originally intended to foster a universe full of its own fictional elements to fit its sci-fi aesthetic, the course of the game's ongoing development has steered it more towards the realm of reality, at least in terms of resources. Elements as simple and common as oxygen, carbon, and sodium will be sought out by players at all times thanks to their utility in recharging survival equipment, and even rarer materials will be required for fans looking to upgrade their dream starship. Though No Man's Sky might make it too easy to acquire any sort of resource for players who have enough in-game money to spend, resource-rich planets offer an alternative for players looking to get their hands dirty and do the work themselves.
Mining in No Man's Sky makes for a viable playstyle in itself, and there's a whole array of mining equipment and upgrades that players can grab if they want to. One of the most basic pieces of multi-tool technology, the Terrain Manipulator, allows players to extract entire chunks of material out of planetary surfaces with relative ease. Though this technique is taught to players in the game's tutorial, a lesser-known detail is that the Terrain Manipulator will extract more resources per second when its mining size is set to the lowest setting, allowing players to grab over ten times the material they normally would from a single deposit. A demonstration of this was conducted and shared in a post on Reddit from the user mollyberry, who aims to help out fellow No Man's Sky players.
By default, the mining size of the Terrain Manipulator's laser can be switched between three settings, though each one affects the tool's power consumption accordingly. Using the small setting to mine deposits can evidently result in significantly better yields, but it takes more time to dig out the entire vein. The opposite is also true though, and while some players may try to mine resources as quickly as possible, doing so will put much of the deposit to waste. Base building in No Man's Sky also provides another easy way of mining resources.
With the developers at Hello Games still hard at work on improving the game even further, fans seem to have a lot yet to look forward to this year. The latest update for No Man's Sky allows players to make interesting discoveries on new worlds such as a new type of starship of Sentinel design and is freely available for all owners of the game.
No Man's Sky is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
