Guide/Starships: How to find starships, including crashed ships and interceptors

Finding Exotics, Explorers, Fighters, Haulers, Shuttles, and Solars

First, make sure you are in the correct galaxy. Then locate a portal and enter the glyphs that are posted for the discovery. If galactic coordinates are posted instead of glyphs, you can convert them to glyphs at the No Man's Sky Portal Decoder.

The same ship models are available anywhere in the system. The space station is always an option for obtaining a ship, but the traffic at space stations varies heavily so it is generally better to find a trading post since they have constant traffic. Fly there and wait for the ship to arrive.

Note: Trading posts on infested planets have no traffic. Avoid these.

You may be waiting a long time as not all ship models spawn with equal probability. Exotics, in particular, are quite rare and you may have to wait for hours for one to land.

Unlike ship models, a ship's class is random and varies with each spawn, so the same ship model can spawn at any class (Exotics are the exception to the rule: they always spawn as S-class). C-class ships are the most likely to spawn, and S-class ships are the least. The higher the economy, the more likely it is for A- and S-class ships to spawn. In one-star economies, S-class ships have very little chance of spawning.

Some ships are designated as "first wave" spawns. This means that they are among the first few ships to arrive at the space station when the game starts (usually within the first half-dozen arrivals). To find a first wave ship, fly to the space station, exit your ship to create a restore point, reload your game, and then wait. Note: New releases of the game can and do change what ships land first at the space station, so older "first wave" finds may no longer be valid in newer releases.

Finding Crashed Ships

As with regular ships, ensure you are in the right galaxy, locate a portal, and jump to the target system.

Crashed ships always come with target planet and planetary coordinates (latitude and longitude). Fly to the indicated planet, and locate the crash site by its coordinates. A given crash site will always spawn the same ship at the same class. You can claim the ship, either to repair it or scrap it later.

Finding Interceptors

Each Dissonant system has one model of interceptor, and they are only found on planets with corrupted sentinels.

As with regular ships, ensure you are in the right galaxy, locate a portal, and jump to the target system.

• If the discovery includes planetary coordinates (latitude and longitude), fly to the crash site on the target planet and claim the ship. A given site will always spawn the same class.
• If coordinates are not provided, you will need to locate a ship. There are two methods:
  • Use an Echo Locator to find an Abandoned Encampment. Once there, solve the puzzle at the terminal and locate a Dissonance Spike. This will take you to an interceptor crash site.
  • Alternatively, you can use a Dreadnaught AI Fragment to directly locate an interceptor.

To claim an interceptor, you'll need to repair it with the indicated materials, examine the Hyaline Brain, and select "Probe Unconscious". This will lead you to a monolith. Interact with it and choose "Present Brain" to be given a Harmonic Brain in turn. You can then return to the interceptor and claim it.

Technical info, for the curious

Each system has 21 ships, not counting the interceptor:

• Seven shuttles and solars (total, not each). In "normal" economies, about 80% are shuttles and 20% are solars. In outlaw systems, it's the reverse.
• Three haulers
• Three fighters
• Three explorers
• An additional four ships depending on the system's primary race: haulers for Gek, explorers for Korvax, and fighters for Vy'keen.
• One exotic

To date, a given system's ships have not changed with game updates, so finds in older versions of the games are still valid. As mentioned above, first wave spawns can and do change, so a previously-posted first wave entry may or may not be valid after a game update (the ship will still be there, it just may no longer be a first wave spawn).

Is it better to have a "natural" S-class, or to upgrade?

A "natural" S-class spawn will have better base stats than a ship that is upgraded to S-class. The lower the starting class, the greater the disparity. So, yes, it is technically better to wait for an S-class to spawn than to upgrade a ship.

That being said, the difference in stats between a natural A-class that is upgraded to S and a natural S-class ship is small. If you have the nanites to spend and you value your time, an A-class spawn is probably "good enough".