How to repair your starship in No Man's Sky

Best answer: Repair your scanner and mine for Ferrite Dust, Di-hydrogen, Oxygen, and Carbon before you go looking for your starship. These are the materials you'll need to fix it and getting them first saves time.

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Your journey into No Man's Sky will end as quickly as it begins if you don't fix up your starship. The game generally does a good job at guiding you towards your goal, but it will be a lot quicker if you immediately know what you're doing and what materials you need without going through a time-consuming tutorial. As you progress through the game, you'll come across bigger, more advanced ships that require rare materials to fix up.

First, find your starship

For those beginning a new game, once you've followed the on-screen prompts and repair your scanner and hazard protection suit, you'll receive a signal that points to your starship. Just follow the waypoint to your destination. If you want to get a step ahead of the game, look for and mine Ferrite Dust, Di-hydrogen, Oxygen, and Carbon beforehand.

If you're just jumping back in and have no idea where your ship is, pull up for analysis visor and its icon will pop up when you look around the environment. Worse comes to worst, you can call your starship by pressing down on the D-pad and summoning the vehicle. You'll just need to make sure that you place it in an area that is clear and it has room to land.

Next, repair your Pulse Engines and Launch Thrusters

To repair your Pulse Engine on your ship you'll need Metal Plating and a Hermetic Seal. Metal Plating only requires 50 Ferrite Dust to craft, so mine a few nearby rocks and open up your inventory once you have enough materials. Getting a Hermetic Seal is a bit trickier. For this, you'll want to follow the quest instructions on-screen before coming to an area where you can request assistance from a beacon and obtain a Hermetic Seal

The Launch Thrusters will need to be repaired with Pure Ferrite and Di-hydrogen Jelly. Getting Di-hydrogen Jelly is as simple as collecting 40 Di-hydrogen and crafting it in the menu. As for Pure Ferrite, you'll have to build a portable refiner first. Press up on the D-pad to build a portable refiner once you have 30 Oxygen and one Metal Plating. Then power it up with Carbon as fuel and add 50 Ferrite Dust to it. This will yield the 50 Pure Ferrite you need to fix the Launch Thrusters.

Late game repairs

Any starship, regardless if it's the one you started out the game with, will need to be repaired eventually. If your starship becomes damaged from battle or hitting one too many asteroids, you can enter the starship menu to see what exactly needs to be repaired. Collect the required materials and you'll be good to go.