No Man's Sky Base Ideas - Ready Games Survive

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Arron is a featured team writer and lifelong gamer. Ever since he started playing games on his old SNES, and has been hooked ever since. He has a particular love for games like Pillars of Eternity, Skyrim, a variety of beloved indie titles, and also a few online shooters to serve as a means of avoiding open-world fatigue. Outside of gaming, he enjoys watching arthouse movies, playing Dungeons & Dragons, and writing fiction.

Key Info Up Front

When starting to build a base there are two approaches that one can take. The first is to decide on a type of base and then search the galaxy for a prime location to do so, while the second flip the order and sees the player having a particular spot in mind and then picks a type of base that works well for that specific location.

Thanks to the procedural generation mechanics in No Man’s Sky, there are countless options, so don’t be afraid to spend some time looking for the exact location for your base that you’re hoping for. You can’t beat a great view.

Base Overview

Players are not restricted to having a single base and can have up to 449 bases on planets and one in a freighter ship above. However, I don’t recommend having that many unless you plan on spending an incredible amount of time in the game, as each base will take considerable resources to build. It may seem that one of the primary functions of bases in No Man’s Sky is giving players something to sink resources into, but they can also serve other handy purposes.

The first of these is expanding the player’s storage options. Building a solid base will allow players to drastically increase the number of resources they can hold on to. Bases also open up more mechanics for players, such as setting up farms and taming animals. Building a planetary base also allows players to establish more hands-off refineries and other money-making methods, allowing them to afford more expensive purchases like a freighter in the future.

So, once you’re ready to build a base, you’ll need to craft and place a Base Computer. These can be crafted from your inventory with 30 Chromatic Metal, and once it is placed, it will claim the surrounding area for your base, preventing other players from building on it unless you permit them to.

Apart from the Base Computer, there are some other general aspects that you’ll want to make sure to have as well, like a Research Station, a Base Teleport Module, and a Generator. Apart from that, you have complete freedom over what you put into your base. However, I highly recommend keeping in mind that you’ll need to build components to keep out hazardous planet environments and generate oxygen in your buildings.

Interesting read: Guide to No Man’s Sky Planet Types.

what are no man's sky bases — Image by Aaron Kluz

Finding the Right Base Location

Before you can start building a base, however, you’ll need to find some land. You can claim any area in No Man’s Sky that captures your fancy, as long as another player hasn’t gotten to it first, but I do have some tips for making sure your base-building adventure is as stress-free as possible. The first aspect of your base location to consider is the topography of the land.

You can always flatten or raise sections of the world if you want to take the time to, but make sure to imagine just how big of a base you want to build and find a location with enough flat ground to support it. However, building a base in a more varied area can also be very interesting so that it blends in with its environment more organically.

It can also be very helpful to build your base near as many resource hotspots as possible. These can be a Glass Cloud, Electromagnetic Power, or Deep-Level Minerals. Having as many of these close by as you can manage will make your base as profitable and helpful as can be.

When picking your base location, you should also consider what activities you expect to get up to there. If you don’t plan on leaving the base while you are visiting, you can place it anywhere. If you plan on doing more exploring or traveling, however, you should make sure that it is easily accessible so that you don’t get irritated with the lengthy process of reaching the base or leave.

Underwater Base

Building an underwater base is a great way to give your base a lot of character and the potential for incredible surroundings. If you end up following this route, however, I highly recommend using many glass components to take full advantage of the interesting underwater environment. When building an underwater base, I also recommend taking inspiration from iconic underwater locations like Rapture from BioShock or the Gungan city from Star Wars.

This tends to mean using halls or walkways to connect buildings to one another. Making the hallways entirely out of glass is a great way to showcase the underwater surroundings, especially if you build them around any interesting features of your build territory. This also allows you to spread your base out over a larger area, allowing you to place your base in the most exciting area possible without worrying about finding a large flat area.

When it comes to the rooms that are spread out across your base area, I also recommend using plenty of glass. This can be either making massive domes or more traditional rooms with a lot of windows in critical areas. If you want to make your base stand out, however, I highly suggest incorporating the underwater theme into your base’s interior.

This will help make it feel more at home in the water, rather than just seeming like a base that could have been built anywhere but dropped into a lake. You can do this by having a lot of blue colors or using decorative items to make features similar to kelp or seaweed in some of your larger rooms.

Cliffside Base

If you’re a bit fan of sprawling views or the secret lairs of James Bond villains, you should consider building a cliffside base. These bases work exceptionally well on planets with very stark topography differences that allow your base to tower over the surrounding area, or ones with a stunning vista to look over. If you can find a plateau with a waterfall nearby, or perhaps a cliff overlooking a colorful forest, a cliffside base is a perfect approach.

Before you start actually building your base on a cliff, however, you need to decide how to approach it. One option is to build it directly on top of the cliff, while another is to actually dig into the cliff itself and have only one wall of your base exposed to the wider world. Building on top of the cliff will be easier and allow the appearance of your base to have a greater impact, but building inside of the cliff brings a unique flavor to your build.

Whichever method you ultimately go with, I have some similar recommendations when building to make your base as strong as possible. Firstly, I recommend directing attention from inside the base toward the best view as much as possible. You can do this by making the wall facing the view almost entirely glass or by using lights and decorations to draw player attention.

This will highlight the gorgeous surroundings of your cliffside base as much as possible. I also suggest having at least some of your base actually suspended off of the cliff with supports. This can be an important room in your layout or even the landing pad for your ship. This helps draw attention to your base’s location and adds fun character to part of your build.

Dome Base

Doom Base No Man's Sky — Image by Aaron Kluz

I believe this base design works best in very flat and universal locations. Not only will that make building it easier for you, but it also will ensure that its unique shape has as much of an impact as possible. I have also found that this base type works best on hazardous planets in a location like a large tundra or desert. Running across the planet, struggling to see from whipping winds and particles to come upon the massive rounded silhouette of this base type, always feels very cinematic.

Theoretically, you can choose to have your domes arranged in any layout, but I’ve found that having one larger dome in the center with smaller domes circling it. You can then create a circle of pathways connecting the smaller domes and spokes that lead from each smaller dome to the larger one. This not only makes your base easier to navigate but is also visually impressive and can help you organize the utilities of your base to different domes.

Visually, you can take numerous approaches with a dome base. You could opt to have the central dome be made entirely of glass and filled with plant life to give it a greenhouse theme. Or, you could keep it all made of stark metal with small windows that offer a peek at the outside environment if you want to highlight just how hostile a planet it is built on. Finally, you could opt not to use domes, but instead use a similar layout with pyramids or obelisks if they look better in the environment.

Regardless of which design you choose to follow, I recommend giving each dome its purpose in the base and keeping them as uniform as possible. This will help you stay organized while also allowing you to design each building around its meaning. You can have one for farming with more wooden components or plants around.

You can have a dome that is for crafting and has a more industrial or pragmatic interior. You could even have an opening at the top of the central dome to serve as the entry to your landing pad within.

Castle Base

No Man’s Sky is a sci-fi game filled with strange alien creatures, spaceships, and lasers. However, a good castle never goes out of style, and you have some great options available if you want to build a castle-like base to house your terrestrial efforts. You can create a castle base nearly anywhere in the game, but I recommend trying to make it blend into its environment as much as possible.

I’ve always found that castle bases in No Man’s Sky look best when it looks as if they were created with resources from the surrounding area.

Since No Man’s Sky is home to a wide range of different environments, plants, and creatures, you can still design your castle base in a wide range of themes. I prefer a more historical-themed castle that draws on the stoned walls and old wooden gates, but making a castle of alien origin is also a good approach here.

Regardless of your castle’s visual style, some elements are important to preserve so that it still reads as a castle to visitors. This means you’ll want towers, an outer wall, a great hall, and a moat if you can manage it. Beyond those components, you have a lot of freedom and wiggle room when it comes to your castle. You could put in a contemporary throne room, fill space with a beautiful garden, or create a small village just outside the wall filled with peasants.

I also think it is excellent to have ships land outside the walls of your castle base. I recommend taking this approach because of how well it presents the theme of your base. Walking through a wall’s open gate and seeing the massive castle appear as you do is a great way to present and slowly reveal the base.

I also recommend placing at least a significant room or two at the top of your base’s towers. This will ensure your base is fully functional and will make sure you go up the towers to capture the natural feeling of living in a castle.

Culture Inspired Base

No Man's Sky Mos Eisle Base — Image by Aaron Kluz

This type of base can be an incredible number of different things, and the idea that you end up following will largely depend on your tastes and interests. If you’re having a hard time thinking of an original base, making one that takes inspiration from a building or location from a show or other game can be a big help. There are a ton of options here and examples that you can find online as well.

However, these bases will also require very specific area requirements to ensure they feel like they belong. If you find an ice planet, you could build the wall from Game of Thrones. On a desert planet, one could build a section of Mos Eisley from Star Wars or a spice miner from Dune. Or, if you want just to build a single building you could do the Planet Express building from Futurama or even the Avengers Tower from the MCU.

Cave Base

If you aren’t looking for a very flashy base, a cave base is a great approach. These bases can either be built in a pre-existing cave you’ve found or in one you build yourself if you don’t mind taking the time to do so. From there, you should also decide on a theme for the base or think of a story behind the base being there. It could be an abandoned mine, a research statin, or a hidden lair for spies.

Regardless of your cave base’s theme, there are some elements that I recommend incorporating to help make it as beautiful as possible. Firstly, you should try to have at least one massive cavern that extends high above the player’s head. This is especially great because it helps give your base more character and impact without requiring any building components or resource investment.

However, you should decorate the ceiling with lights or plants to make it more than just plain rock. You could even have the entire base built around one large cavern with a spiraling walkway running its perimeter with smaller rooms and caverns branching off it.

Otherwise, you can also have the base be an interconnected web of smaller caves connected with winding tunnels. You can have a building or two constructed with standard building components but make sure to have at least some of the base barer to get the most out of the cave base theme.

I also recommend incorporating the environment on the planet your base is on and include that as well. Decorating the interior of your cave will keep it from feeling lazy or underdeveloped, and having the plant life and colors inside of it match the outside environment will make it feel as though it belongs there.

Floating Base

If you want to build a unique base, you can construct one floating in the air the surface of the planet. To do so, you’ll have to make a series of platforms where you want the base to float before building on top of them and deleting them all. However, if you’re building in a mode other than creative, I recommend waiting to delete the platforms until the entire base is done and creating them like a staircase.

This will ensure that if you fall off the base while building it, you can climb up the platforms. If you delete them too soon, you’ll have to call your ship down and fly back up to the base every time you fall.

When building your floating base, you should make sure it is above an entertaining area with some good vistas to see in the distance while you’re on the base. This can make being on the base a lot more visually interesting, and you can show the area off with walls of windows or even glass flooring to walk on.

When designing your base, you also have the freedom to design it however you want. I recommend incorporating a lot of open-air parts of your base, however, whether that be walkways or entire platforms filled with stations. This will emphasize the base being up in the air and give you some great views of the surrounding area.

Freighter Alley

When players eventually get a freighter, they have the option of building a base inside of its massive hangar compartment. Since this area is completely encased inside the freighter building, there is a bit more restriction than on a planet. For this reason, I prefer taking that into account and building a freighter base with an industrial theme. In particular, I like using confined space to make an alleyway in an industrial city.

For my own freighter, I made a cyberpunk alley filled with neon signs, small rudimentary buildings, and storefronts that act as its different rooms. For example, you can make a storefront that resembles a restaurant to store your food, cooking station, and ingredients. You can also set up the alley to resemble any type of city you prefer and add appropriate features.

However, you should also feel free to dedicate some resources and items to complement the base’s feels. Pulling off a city alleyway will take a lot of help, but if you put in enough signs and elements, it can have a unique and magical feeling to walk through. If you have a group of friends that you play with, you can also use some of the extra space in the freighter to add small apartments or living quarters for your friends, giving the base an even more city-like quality.

FAQs

Question: Where should I build a base in No Man’s Sky?

Answer: The placement of your base will depend on two primary factors. First, the type of base you want to build, and second, having a lot of resources nearby.

Question: How many bases can you have in No Man’s Sky?

Answer: You can have up to 449 planetary bases and one freighter base on a single save file.

Question: Can you build a base underwater in No Man’s Sky?

Answer: Yes, underwater bases were added to the game with the Abyss update, so you can now build bases anywhere on planets.

simple base no man's sky — Image by Aaron Kluz

Conclusion

Building a base is one of No Man’s Sky’s most rewarding and excellent parts. However, doing so requires a lot of resources, time, and effort. So, it is best to devise a plan for what type of base you want to build so that you can start strong and build in a location that will work well with what you have in mind.

Having an idea when you create will also help ensure that you are happy with the final product so that you don’t waste time building a base and changing your mind halfway through or having to restart completely.

No Man’s Sky Base Ideas