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Making billions of units from mining in NMSv4 (Oct 2022) with easier-to-use mine-based crafting.
By NZ.Zero
Since the Oct 2022 No Man's sky version 4 update (Oct 2022), rare metal mining is nerfed, so miners need other sources of income. Advanced crafting is a great alternative, but it's usually done using large plant farms, and the complex tech trees can be hard to use.

This is a guide to advanced crafting without large plant farms. In fact, you only need a single plant of each type. Instead it uses mines to drive the process. This method is aimed at people who have (or intend to have) mines for most resources, or who want to step up from farming to a more scalable process. With medium sized mines you can produce billions of units in a fairly short time without waiting for plants to grow.

The guide takes you through setting up an easy to use system you can use over and over again, which produces 600 million units each run and smooths out many of the complexities of advanced crafting. It does this by assigning an 'advanced crafting' ship and permanently laying it out with a special inventory that makes the whole advanced crafting process easier - you won't need to remember any tech trees, it’s easy to add resources any time, and you can easily stop and start the process any time you want.

This method takes a bit of time to set up, but after that it runs smooth as butter, especially if you never let any of the stacks get to zero.

If you like it, please give me a thumbs up to let me know I helped somebody. Thanks!
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Created by
NZ.Zero
Online
Category: Crafting, Loot, Secrets, Trading
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
8 Oct, 2022 @ 2:21am
7 Dec, 2022 @ 11:53am
14,206 Unique Visitors
418 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
Crafting fed by mines: Why? 
Before you start 
1: Prepare your storage area 
2: Input PLANTS & multipliers (yellow box on the picture) 
3: Input GASES (orange box on the picture) 
4: Craft directly from plants (Purple box on the picture) 
5: Simple gas crafting (Red box on the picture) 
6: ORES (Green box on the picture) 
7: ADVANCED CRAFTING (Light blue box in the picture) 
Running the process 
(Extra: Some tips on running the process) 
(Extra: Stasis-only variation for Pros who want to go crazy big) 
(Pro tip Extra: Tips for Oxygenating Carbon & Cobalt Ionisation) 
 
Comments
Crafting fed by mines: Why?
In the NMS v4 update (Oct 2022), miners will need new sources of income. Advanced crafting is a great alternative to Active Indium - a stack of Active Indium is worth under 2 million, while 10 stasis devices is worth 156 million units.

This is normally done using plant farms but using mines is a better method.

Benefits of mine-based crafting compared to huge plant farms
  • Picking the plants takes a lot of time and is boring and repetitive. Refining takes about the same time as picking, but refining is passive, so you can do other things. If you want to refine more actively, by running between big banks of refiners, this method is quicker than picking plants.
  • Mines use a lot less building parts than plant farms. If you use the '10 silos per pipe' build method, the difference is about 5 times as many parts for plant farms, otherwise about 3.5 times as many.
  • Mines are useful for lots of other things in the game, big plant farms are not.
  • You don't have to wait for the plants to grow, you could actually make billions of units in a single sitting if you really wanted to - with even medium sized mines.
  • Mines scale better than plant farms - huge mines take no more effort to collect than small mines.

Benefits of assigning a ship to crafting
This method also assigns a ship to make the process easier.
Advantages:
  • It's ready to craft at any time and you can start and stop when you want.
  • It's easy to remember what to do so you dont have to remember the crafting tree.
  • Once set up, it's quick and easy to use, you just hover over an item and press 'E'
  • If you keep a small amount in each stack, you can send topup resources to the ship any time and they automatically go into the right slots.
Before you start
Before you start, you need:
  • Mines for: Pyrite, Parafinnium, Phosphorous, Dioxite, Uranium, Oxygen (large-ish), Ammonia, Magnetised Ferrite and any one of the 3 rare gases*.
  • Unlocked blueprints (at the anomaly) for stasis devices and Fusion Igniters and everything up to them in the advanced crafting tree.
  • A decent refiner setup with several medium or large refiners you can run in parallel. Can be planetside or freighter.
  • A small amount (1 or more) of Cactus, Star bulb, Solanium, Frost Crystal, Gamma root, Faecium, Chlorine, Ionised Cobalt and Fungal mould.
  • A spare ship you can assign permanently to be your ‘advanced crafting’ area. The ship I used i this guide was fully upgraded before the update, i.e. 96 slots. If you have more slots, you can use them for extra stasis devices and Fusion Igniters, just leave one of each of those in so theyre not empty. If you have less slots it could still work down to about 76, just leave out row 2 and maybe also row 3.

(* Note: You can get away with less mines by refining from other materials - e.g. Uranium from Phosphorous and Pure Ferrite - there are thousands of possibilities, see other guides for how to do this. Anyway, mines are quicker.).
(* Note: If you go to the Anomaly Teleporter, one of the current 'community favourites' is a floating base in Galaxy 42 - this has silos which produce 10k Pyrite and 10k copper, so you dont currently need a pyrite mine).
1: Prepare your storage area
  • Start with a starship that’s been upgraded fully (or close to fully) and empty it.
  • Your aim by the end of this guide is to create the inventory in this picture, worth over 600 million units.Gather resources from your mines and plants and put them in the correct slots like in the picture. There will be lots of gaps, especially towards the bottom.


Notice I’ve added boxes around some areas:
Yellow = Input plants and their multipliers
Orange = Input gases
Purple = Crafting direct from plants
Red = Crafting direct from gases
Green = Ores and their multipliers
Light blue = Advanced Crafting
The following phases cover each of these.
2: Input PLANTS & multipliers (yellow box on the picture)
  • Use the mined elements from rows 1 and 2 to expand the plants in rows 3 and 4. (For example, add pyrite to cactus to make more cactus).
  • Each column can be refined together - each element can be used to multiply the plant below it.
  • *Note: Faecium and Mordite are slightly different. Faecium refines directly to Mordite. Faecium and oxygen refine to a lot more Faecium.
  • Refine each plant and element to make more of the plant until the stacks are full.
3: Input GASES (orange box on the picture)
Fill up all the gas slots by adding oxygen. Any gas of the three + oxygen = another gas.
4: Craft directly from plants (Purple box on the picture)
  • Click the first slot (under solarium) and craft the heat capacitor, like in the picture.
  • Press ‘E’ over any item to craft more, and keep going until you have 10 of each item in the first row of the purple box (as shown).
  • When you are hovering you can see the shortcut keys to increase the amount and craft more in one go.
  • As you craft items, they will use up plants or other crafted items. Try not to let any item run out (refilling using ‘E’), because it’s easier to use that way.
  • Keep going and fill the bottom row of the purple box too, with 10 of each all the way across.
5: Simple gas crafting (Red box on the picture)
  • Create condensed carbon by refining oxygen into carbon then carbon into condensed carbon.
  • Add more oxygen to the condensed carbon to expand it very efficiently.
  • Craft the three elements into 2 stacks of each
6: ORES (Green box on the picture)
  • Gather the 3 input elements - Ionised Cobalt and Chlorine can each be expanded using Oxygen, and Pure Ferrite refines from mined Magnetised Ferrite.
  • Craft each ore in the green box, working from left to right, and refilling stacks as they empty.
7: ADVANCED CRAFTING (Light blue box in the picture)
Now for the part you've been waiting for - crafting the big money items.
  • The items in the light blue box are crafted using materials from the other boxes.
  • Start from the top left (the conductor - a cream coloured circle) and work from left to right, row by row.
  • As you craft items, keep an eye on the other boxes as they are used up, and keep replenishing them so they don't run out.
  • Keep crafting items and refilling stacks all the way to the bottom until you have 2 stacks of stasis devices and 2 stacks of fusion igniters.
  • These 4 stacks of 10 are worth :nmsunits: 156 million each, so 4x156 = :nmsunits: 624 million units. Now go sell them!
  • If you want to make more, just refill everything and start again.
  • With big enough mines, you can easily make billions in a day, just with resources from the mines.

Running the process
The first time you run this process you'll probably use up all the input resources and not get as far as the stasis devices and fusion igniters. Thats OK. Whenever your mines fill up again, just refill all the inputs and carry on crafting to fill the other slots until they're full. Keep refilling your inputs and crafting til everything's full like in the first image.

Once it's all ready you can start removing stasis devices and Fusion Ignitors to sell. Leave one in each slot - this makes it easy to press E to add another without having to remember the tech tree.

As you use up items, I recommend keeping every slot in the ship occupied, even with just a small amount of resource. This way you can top up any resource by sending it to your ship and it will go into the correct slot for the next time you want to make some more units.

Once you're done, refill what you used, and do it again and again. Now you can leave this ship in place and craft those high value items any time you need another half billion units.


You are now 624 million units richer. Keep doing it til you have billions if you're mines are big enough, otherwise go spend it :) Have fun!


If you liked this guide, please give me a thumbs up to let me know I helped somebody. Thanks.
(Extra: Some tips on running the process)
Some tips:
  • Have a seperate 'crafting slot' -
    If you want to craft quicker, a handy tip is to leave the last slot empty, and craft 9 or 10 of each item in one go (using the A and D keys) in that slot, then drag each stack to where it belongs. When youve finished crafting for the day, just leave a small bit of resource in that stack to block it so you can still use the 'send to ship' tricks above any time you like.
  • Fill from mines directly
    You can refill the stacks directly from mines. Just 'send to star ship' straight from the silo. This is super useful when youre filling from mines. Zero inventory management!
  • Carry ship fuel in your suit
    Dont forget you'll need ship fuels and sodium in your suit because they're not in your ship.
  • Refill at the end
    I recommend refilling everything at the end of the process. Up to you but it seems easier.
  • Beef up your mines, especially gases
    Add silos to your mines to beef up parts of your production process which arent producing enough. (In particular, you might find that Ammonia and Oxygen need higher volumes).
  • Go faster
    There is a 10x refiner speed mod (on nexusmods) which I highly recommend .. life's too short to sit waiting 15mins for a game to refine virtual stuff :) The mod also works with NMS.v4 (currently anyway).
  • Play passively
    This method is really easy to do while watching TV because its fairly brainless once youre running. Almost as good as *actual* passive income.

(Extra: Stasis-only variation for Pros who want to go crazy big)
So that was the end of the guide, but here's an extra idea if you want to scale up to even higher levels.

You can shift to just one device (eg Stasis) and beef up your mines just like you did with Active Indium (except with more clicking while you craft stuff). A billion units worth of Stasis devices is 70 of them, rounded up to the nearest stack, and needs the following inputs:

- 50K Nitrogen
- 50K Sulphurine
- 25K Radon
- 21K Oxygen (for 25K CCarbon (from 10K Oxy), 15K ioCob (from 6k Oxy) & 5K Faecium (from 5K Oxy & 1x Fae))
- 40K Uranium (& 1 Gamma)
- 35K Dioxite (& 1 Frost)
- 25k Phosphorous (& 1 Sola)
- 25K Parafinnium (& 1 star)
- 10K Pyrite (& 1 Cactus)

This is more intesive so you'll probably need to beef up production in key resources, but with big enough mines you could probably build a method that could drop several billion units per run. The max units in the game is just over 4 billion, so there doesnt seem much point in going so big, but if you want to try it, there's probably enough info there for you to know what to do, if you've got this far.

Just be aware that filling up the 'pipeline' on this method takes 6 times each input, so it takes 300K Nitrogen for example as the 'seed capital' to build a full stack system. You will therefore end up with a 'pipeline' in the ship worth over 6 billion if you total everything!
(Pro tip Extra: Tips for Oxygenating Carbon & Cobalt Ionisation)
Turning Oxygen into Ionised Cobalt (IoC) or Condensed Carbon (CC) has a knack to it.
The ratios are the same for both:
2 Oxygen + 1 IoC = 6 IoC and
2 Oxygen + 1 CC = 6 CC

To do the Carbon, throw a stack of Oxygen in first and refine it to Carbon (4k stack) , then refine that to 2k of CC. You can then mix that with 4k of Oxygen to make 12k of CC (from 8k total input) and from there it only gets more efficient. 20K total input of Oxygen = 48k of CC using this method.

To do the IoC, the method is slightly different. If you just have one starting unit of IoC, put that in with Oxygen, and you'll get 6 out, put that back in the refiner input with the Oxygen and you'll get 36 out. The runs are fast and it grows a lot with each run, and it only takes 5 runs til you are hitting full stacks. 20k of oxygen (and 1x IoC) will make 60K of IoC.

If you dont have much Oxygen, you can make the CC method more efficient (i.e. get 60K not 48K from a 20K input) by using the same method as the IoC, ie start with 1 only. It just takes a bit longer.
32 Comments
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NZ.Zero  [author] 21 Apr, 2023 @ 7:33pm 
you can do it wil less slots, it's just a bit more fiddly as you will need to replenish the slots more. Just try it and experiement, you will find what works for you. What you can cut out or manage differently will depend on the particular mine incomes you have, so just try it and see.
Vahnbels 7 Apr, 2023 @ 1:51am 
how many inventory slots does this actually take? Am I supposed to not put in the inputs and multipliers? My hauler only maxes out at 50 slots
NZ.Zero  [author] 17 Mar, 2023 @ 3:08am 
@leonissmith If you run into the 'number of refiners' limit (I assume you mean 'no more than 5 together', just put spaces between them. The groups of 5 can be pretty close - only one side of a landing pad length - and it works vertically too. My crafting base has 6 groups of 5 refiners. Yeah it's quicker than biodomes with multiple refiners, but ever with a few refiners, it has the advantage that it's passive time not active, so you can do other things while it refines (which you cant with biodomes).
IMO Gold is only good early-mid game or as a supplement, it's pretty low return, even with all the multiple mining systems. You'll find stasis etc give way bigger returns, especially once you've done it a few times as you'll have some of the intermediates crafted already from last time probably. But any way of making credits is good, right :)
NZ.Zero  [author] 17 Mar, 2023 @ 3:05am 
@RipinPieces Yeah the bones were always worth 100k but early game you just hammer a bones planet for an hour and you have 5-10 mill which is a lot at that stage in the game. Yeah trading is good in the midgame (but still cant scale like crafting for late game because you need it to replenish)
ohGr 12 Feb, 2023 @ 6:05am 
Setting up gold mining operations is the path of least resistance to amassing huge money in NMS
leonissmith 2 Feb, 2023 @ 12:30am 
The workaround to waypoint's ADDITIONAL diminishing returns nerf is simple.
Build multiple mines, with 1 or 2 miners (perhaps as high as 4) per line, and don't connect the lines.
You also need to keep BOTH the pipes AND the electric separate now (electric USED to be able to be common, that's the BIG nerf in Waypoint) - so IMO best bet is to just feed each miner with 1 solar panels through 1 battery separately.
You also need space separation - but stacking vertical, 2 "walls" apart between line, is plenty (and you need about that much space ANYWAY to be able to stack miner type stuff and depots anyway).

The only thing I ever use a power hotpoint for now is a large biodome setup - which this guide aims to replace.
leonissmith 2 Feb, 2023 @ 12:25am 
To RipInPieces - Any "lush" wold has oxygen spots all over the place.
I think I've had a few on other worlds as well.
Planet DOES have to have an atmosphere, though, I'm pretty sure.
You ARE doing the "concentrated gas" setting on your analysis visor when you look for them (just like for Nitrogen, Radon, or Sulpherine)?
leonissmith 2 Feb, 2023 @ 12:21am 
Interesting idea, but there's a LOT of refining involved which QUICKLY runs into "number of refiners" limits, or is slow if you don't build a huge place with a TON of refiners.
I'm NOT convinced this is faster than "harvest all" on biodomes.
RipinPieces 27 Dec, 2022 @ 2:39pm 
Hi NZ.Zero, thank you for this detailed guide. I'm in for 200 hours now, but I struggle to find Oxygen. I've been to countless systems, but I never found an Oxygen Mining Spot. All (older) guides tell you, that Oxygen is the easiest gas to obtain, but it's not - at least for me. I found another way to make Units very fast. I've set up trading routes, after installing the economy scanner in my ship. To establish a route I need no longer then 15 minutes, every route gives me between 25 and 50 million units. For now I have 6 routes, all connected with portals. I make 250 million in less then 20 minutes. The warping is repetetive, but hey, it's great money. You mentioned ancient bones, but I think these got nerfed, too. Most of the bones are worth less than 100k, it's super rare to find one that is worth a million. Anyway, great guide, keep it going, mate.
Digstar 4 Dec, 2022 @ 5:03pm 
Awesome guide very detailed and straight to the point :cozybethesda: