No Man's Sky 100% guide

No Man's Sky has 27 Xbox achievements worth 1,000G on its shared Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S achievement list. The same Microsoft ecosystem supports Xbox Play Anywhere, and there is no separate Series X|S achievement stack.

As of 2026-10-13, no achievement is CURRENTLY CONFIRMED UNOBTAINABLE or CURRENTLY CONFIRMED DISCONTINUED. The current free-update era, including the Cosmos-era game, has not added a separate DLC or expansion achievement pack. All 27 achievements remain on the same list.

Only Reunion requires access to another player's base. The other 26 achievements can be earned solo. There are no story-ending achievements, mutually exclusive achievements, New Game+ requirements, or permanent missables. There is also no achievement-specific point of no return in the main save.

The practical route uses two saves:

• Main Normal or Custom save: earn the 25 non-galaxy-centre achievements while combining exploration milestones instead of grinding each one separately.
• Permadeath save: reach the galactic centre once. A Permadeath centre completion also satisfies the Survival requirement, so Take a Deep Breath and To Live Forever can unlock from the same final jump.

Normal is the simplest choice for the main save. Custom also awards the 25 non-centre achievements, but keep Space Combat at Normal or higher for reliable pirate encounters: None disables them and Minimal reduces how often they happen, which slows the Ships Destroyed achievements. Do not use Creative mode for the main save; whether Creative awards achievements is disputed.

The Xbox descriptions preserve several legacy Journey milestone rank names even though the modern in-game Milestones screen has changed labels and thresholds over the years. Use the numerical requirements in this guide rather than waiting for an old rank name to appear.

After the tutorial opens interstellar travel, combine almost everything into one repeating system loop. Warp to a new system with the Galaxy Map, visit its Space Station, talk to new countable NPCs, learn words, fight pirates when convenient, then explore planets on foot while scanning fauna and activating Knowledge Stones.

Do not use teleporters for forward progression until A Space Odyssey is complete. Teleporting is useful for returning to old systems, but it does not advance the Space Exploration warp milestone.

Keep at least 2,000,000 Units on hand once you approach that amount. The Units Accrued achievements are based on the highest amount held at one time, not lifetime income.

Use the in-game Catalogue and Guide milestone counters to monitor progress. Several Xbox milestone achievements do not provide useful percentage tracking in the Xbox interface.

Follow the opening objectives until your starship is repaired and the base-building tutorial gives you access to a Base Computer. Scan fauna whenever you are already walking past it, activate any Knowledge Stones you see, and avoid making long detours for cumulative milestones yet.

The opening planet can contribute to every exploration counter, but there is no need to force a full fauna survey if it has many difficult species. Low-fauna planets are much faster later.

Once you can fly freely, visit the Space Station in your system. Start talking to distinct standing NPCs and use dialect-help options when they are offered. Shopkeepers and several special NPC types do not count toward the alien-encounter milestone, so prioritize ordinary station inhabitants.

From this point forward, activate Knowledge Stones on planets whenever they are close to your route. Each newly learned word contributes regardless of whether it is Gek, Korvax, or Vy'keen.

Do not attack random traders just to grind kills. Pirate encounters, bounty targets, and hostile Sentinel interceptors are safer sources because the target is already hostile and clearly belongs to a combat encounter.

Make sure your ship lands the finishing blow.

Continue Awakenings until the Hyperdrive and Antimatter systems are available. From here, use the Galaxy Map to make actual interstellar warps to new systems.

Do not count station teleporters, base teleporters, or portal travel toward these achievements. The reliable progression method is a normal Hyperdrive warp through the Galaxy Map.

Continue the early main objectives until you can summon and enter the Space Anomaly. This is the best point to clear the two one-off utility achievements and prepare for the Extreme Survival grind.

Look for a planet with genuinely extreme environmental weather. Activated stellar-metal resources are a useful clue, but verify the planet after landing rather than trusting the resource list alone.

Open the in-game Journey or milestone screen shortly after exposure and confirm that Extreme Survival is increasing. Aggressive Sentinels by themselves do not satisfy the modern requirement.

Build a small base or save point nearby, then install the hazard-protection upgrade on a land Exocraft that matches the planet's hazard type. Do not use the Minotaur for the idle method.

If the counter does not move, exit and re-enter the Exocraft and check again. Remaining outside with your environmental protection below 100% is the fallback that directly satisfies the condition.

The game must remain actively running. Do not assume progress continues while the game is suspended or backgrounded. The timer also stops while menus are open, while you are inside caves, and while you are inside closed bases or shelters.

To check the counter, note its value in the Journey screen, close all menus, wait several minutes in active gameplay, then reopen it and compare. The counter does not advance while the pause or Guide menus are open, so checking without closing them first will look like a stall.

Now run the same completion loop until the major cumulative milestones are finished.

For each new system, Hyperdrive there through the Galaxy Map. Visit the Space Station and talk to distinct ordinary NPCs. Ask for dialect help when available. Accept pirate or combat opportunities when they fit the route. On planets, walk rather than fly for short distances, activate nearby Knowledge Stones, and scan fauna.

For zoology, prioritize planets whose Discoveries page shows only one or a few fauna species. Exotic or anomalous worlds often have a single fauna species, which makes them the fastest completed planets. Avoid spending an hour searching for one rare underground or aquatic creature when another low-fauna planet can count as a full completed world much faster.

When you have scanned every fauna species on a planet, open Discoveries, enter the Fauna page, and claim the completed fauna set. Always do this: older builds required the claim for zoology milestone credit, and it costs nothing.

These achievements may unlock in a different order depending on what you prioritize. Keep the system loop intact and let each threshold trigger naturally.

By this stage the route should already have supplied most of the required progress. Finish whichever categories remain instead of continuing to perform every loop action after its category is complete.

Create a separate save using the Permadeath preset with no custom edits. An existing save cannot be converted to Permadeath later, and easing settings turns the save into a plain Custom save that cannot earn To Live Forever. Turn multiplayer off for this run. Treat it as a focused achievement run rather than a second full playthrough.

Death deletes the Permadeath save, so the opening hours are the genuinely risky part of the completion. Hazard protection starts nearly empty, the Launch Thruster gets only about two take-offs per charge, and hazards and enemies hit harder than on Normal. Walk rather than sprint on the starting planet, and prioritize hazard protection, Sodium or Sodium Nitrate, Oxygen, Condensed Carbon, safe caves, and basic ship repairs over optional exploration. Avoid pirate-controlled and Dissonant systems. Do not count on Xbox cloud saves to restore a Permadeath save after death; cloud sync is not a reliable rollback.

You do not need to repeat the other 25 achievements here.

Once the Hyperdrive works, start buying Hyperdrive range upgrades at Space Station technology merchants whenever you can afford them, and keep a stock of Warp Cells. The basic Hyperdrive reaches only about 100 light years and only yellow stars, so it is far too short for the final approach. Upgraded runs typically reach several hundred to over 1,000 light years per jump.

Progress far enough to leave the starting system safely and use Space Stations.

Look for a Traveller NPC at a Space Station, Trading Post, or settlement. Travellers are random; if none appears, warp to another system. Continue the conversation until "Ask where they came from" appears, then pay the 100 Nanites. This marks a Traveller Grave in the same system. Travel to the grave and interact with it to learn a Portal Glyph.

Only one grave can be marked at a time, and a Traveller who has already given you a grave stops offering the option. Some Travellers only offer small Nanite or element exchanges; move on from those.

Glyphs are reported to unlock in a fixed order, so your first grave should teach the first glyph, the sunset glyph. Check Catalogue and Guide, then Collected Knowledge, then The Atlas, then Portal Glyphs, and confirm the first glyph is learned. If a different glyph was learned instead, keep visiting Traveller graves until the first glyph is known. You need only the first glyph; do not spend time completing the full 16-glyph set.

Buy Planetary Charts (Alien Cartographic Data) from the Cartographer at a Space Station using Navigation Data, which you earn by flagging outposts and abandoned buildings. Use charts until one marks an Alien Monolith. Uncharted systems have no Monoliths.

Make a manual save before interacting with the Monolith. Answer its vision correctly; a wrong answer means reloading or finding another Monolith. Then interact again and choose to locate a Portal. This consumes one relic matching the system's dominant race: a Gek Relic for Gek, a Korvax Casing for Korvax, or a Vy'keen Dagger for Vy'keen. Relics are sold by pilots landed at Trade Outposts or aboard freighters, not by Space Station vendors, so carry the right one before you go. The marked Portal is on the same planet.

At the Portal, all 16 glyph buttons must be charged once, regardless of the address you will dial. Charging does not require learned glyphs. The buttons come in four groups of four, and each button accepts any one option from its group:

• Earth: 20 Di-hydrogen, 20 Deuterium, 20 Cobalt, 5 Ionised Cobalt, or 50 Salt per button.
• Fuel: 20 Carbon, 7 Condensed Carbon, or 10 Oxygen per button.
• Catalyst: 10 Sodium or 4 Sodium Nitrate per button.
• Stellar: 20 Copper, 10 Cadmium, 7 Emeril, 5 Indium, or 10 Activated Copper per button.

For example, 80 Di-hydrogen, 28 Condensed Carbon, 16 Sodium Nitrate, and 40 Cadmium charge the whole Portal. It stays charged afterward.

When the address screen opens, enter the first glyph in all 12 address positions. An address-error message is normal; wait a few seconds and the Portal opens to the nearest valid system. This address lands roughly 3,000 to 5,000 light years from the centre of your current galaxy.

After stepping through the Portal, return to space, open the Galaxy Map, choose the Galactic Core route, and Hyperdrive along it. Each warp uses one Warp Cell, which is 20% of a full charge.

Purple star systems and the Atlantid drive are not required to reach the centre. If the Galactic Core route loops between two systems or points you at a purple system, switch to Free Explore, warp to a non-purple system around a different side of the core, a few thousand light years away if necessary, then select the Galactic Core route again. It redraws toward another gateway system.

The final jump can only be made from a gateway system, at the edge of the empty core roughly 3,000 light years from the centre. Before jumping, fill the Hyperdrive to 100%, which takes five Warp Cells or one Warp Hypercore.

The galaxy transition breaks your starship technology, your Multi-tool technology, and most Exosuit technology, all of which then need repairs. On this dedicated achievement save there is no need to protect equipment, but if you plan to keep playing, swap to a cheap ship and Multi-tool first and store removable Exosuit technology as items. Either way, carry repair materials, Oxygen, and Sodium for the arrival.

In the gateway system, with the Hyperdrive at 100%, open the Galaxy Map, select the Galactic Core route toward the centre, and hold the select input until the warp begins.

Do not quit or reload during the transition. You wake on foot on a random planet in the next galaxy with your damaged ship nearby, and the arrival planet can have extreme weather, so deal with hazard protection immediately. Both achievements unlock on arrival.

Confirm that the Xbox list shows all 27 achievements and 1,000G. If one of the milestone achievements is missing, compare the relevant in-game Journey counter against the numerical thresholds in this guide before repeating work.

For zoology, confirm completed planets were claimed in Discoveries. For warps, confirm you used the Galaxy Map and Hyperdrive. For Units, confirm the required amount was held simultaneously. For Extreme Survival, confirm the in-game counter was actively increasing on a qualifying extreme-weather planet. For Reunion, confirm you interacted with the other player's Base Computer as a guest; use an ordinary player-owned planetary base rather than a Featured Base, and if one will not download, try another listed base, a friend's uploaded base, or a base found during a Nexus mission session. For the galactic-centre achievements, confirm the save was created with the Permadeath preset and that the jump was made from a gateway system with a full Hyperdrive.

No Expedition, Atlas ending, Artemis ending, settlement storyline, freighter campaign, fishing chain, Corvette activity, or other later free-update content is required for the 1,000G.