Nanite Clusters — Uses and How to Farm Them
Nanite Clusters are a second currency, separate from Units. If Units are the money you buy with, nanites are the money you get stronger with — technology blueprints, upgrade modules, and starship and multi-tool class upgrades all come out of this pool. From the mid-game on, nanites effectively set your pace of progress.
Note that nanites are a currency, not an inventory item. They don’t take a slot or stack; refined nanites go straight to the counter, and there’s no practical cap to worry about.
What they’re spent on
| Use | Cost |
|---|---|
| Technology blueprints (station blueprint traders, Space Anomaly research terminals) | varies |
| Upgrade modules (technology merchants) | roughly C 65 / B 150 / A 300 / S 500 — varies by system |
| Starship class upgrade | C→B 10,000 / B→A 25,000 / A→S 50,000 |
| Multi-tool class upgrade | same as starships |
| Additional Living Ship | 10,000 |
| Companion pet slots | 2nd 500 · 3rd 1,000 · 5th 5,000 · 6th 10,000 · then 20,000 each |
| Freighter squadron slots and pilot ranks | slots 800–10,000 / pilot C→B 1,200 · B→A 4,100 · A→S 9,500 |
| Freighter paint blueprints | 5,000 (permanent unlock) |
Class upgrade costs scale with your game’s “purchase cost” difficulty setting. The figures above are the Standard values — check the terminal for your actual numbers.
Two things that are easy to get wrong:
- Your first Living Ship isn’t a nanite purchase. You get it from the Starbirth questline (the Void Egg is bought with Quicksilver); the 10,000 applies to additional Living Ships after that.
- Inventory slots cost Units, not nanites. Exosuit, starship, and multi-tool slots are all expanded with Units (or free items like Storage Augmentation). Nanites buy blueprints and modules.
How to farm them
The safest early method — refining Salvaged Data
Salvaged Data ×1 → Nanite Cluster ×15. Salvaged Data comes from Buried Technology sites (1–4 each), which exist on most planets and often sit near Damaged Machinery.
It needs no capital and carries no risk, making it the most reliable early option — and you’ll be collecting Salvaged Data for blueprint unlocks anyway.
The standard loop — scrapping starships
The most widely used method:
- Buy the cheapest ship at a station (shuttles are cheap, and bigger hulls aren’t better for this). A free crashed ship works too.
- Scrap it at the Starship Outfitting Terminal.
- Sell the upgrade modules to a technology merchant. Module grade follows the ship’s class, and they sell for roughly 30–1,300 nanites each.
Each ship yields 1–5 modules, and much of the Units you spent comes back as sellable goods. Wealthy systems roll better classes, so they’re more profitable. Just don’t dump scrap repeatedly in the same economy — prices drop sharply, so rotate systems.
Refining Runaway Mould
Long the signature method, and still viable.
- Runaway Mould ×5 → Nanite Cluster ×1 (0.6 seconds per unit).
- Mould comes from Curious Deposits. Mark them with the Analysis Visor and mine them — the spheres roll around when struck.
- Every planet in a system shares the same deposit type. So if one planet has them, the others do too; if not, warp to a different system rather than searching.
- Deposits respawn if you leave the planet and return, or save and reload.
One common misconception worth clearing up: you cannot place a Mineral Extractor on a Curious Deposit. Extractors only work on deep-level mineral deposits, and only mining, gas, and electromagnetic hotspots exist. So mould farming can’t be automated — you run multiple refiners manually.
Items left in refiners have long been reported to disappear if you leave the system and return. “Leave it running while you’re away” isn’t a supported mechanic — collect your output as you go.
Other methods
- Derelict Freighters — 1,500–4,000 nanites in a run, plus an Engineering Control terminal option worth 500–600. Very efficient.
- Dissonant planet refining — Hyaline Brain ×1 → 230, Inverted Mirror ×1 → 95, Radiant Shards and similar ×1 → 50. The best per-item ratios in the game.
- Suspicious packets in Outlaw systems — buy with Units, unpack into upgrade modules, sell to normal technology merchants. A combat-free way to convert Units into nanites.
- Killing Sentinels — drops combat supplies and Salvaged Glass.
- Damaged Machinery — roughly 25–34 nanites at a high drop rate.
- Uploading discoveries — scanning and uploading fauna and flora pays out; cataloguing every animal on a planet gives a large bonus (up to around 4,750), though it takes a long time.
- 6.x additions — Swarm’s Corrupted Ichor ×5 → Nanite Cluster ×1, and Remnant’s industrial waste collected with the Gravitino Coil and processed at a Waste Processing Plant.
A practical order for beginners
- Start with Salvaged Data (15 nanites each). No capital, no risk.
- Move to the ship-scrapping loop once you have some Units — starting from free crashed ships needs no seed money.
- When you find a system with Curious Deposits, set up several refiners and run mould (no automation available).
- Derelict Freighters pay out in big chunks once you can access them.
- Spend in this order for the most impact: blueprints → starship and multi-tool class upgrades.