How To Cook In No Man’s Sky

No Man’s Sky has seen an almost alarming amount of new content, features, and entire gameplay systems added to it post-launch, with each new system carving out its own bit of the gameplay loop. It’s made for what truly feels like a universe full of options, and you can engage with most systems at your leisure.

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One of the systems added to NMS after launch is cooking. And, reflecting a universe full of unique plants and animals, there are a mind-boggling amount of recipes to cook. The process for all of this can be a little bit involved, so here are the basics.

Blueprints You’ll Want For Cooking

There is one blueprint available in the Anomaly that you’re going to need for cooking, and there are some other blueprints that you might want for cooking, depending on what exactly you want to cook.

Nutrient Processor

There is only one blueprint that you’ll truly need for cooking, though managing with just this would be less than ideal.

Blueprints To Consider For Cooking

There are quite a few more blueprints that aren’t technically necessary for cooking, but they’re going to give you a lot more options, and make the whole process a lot easier. All of these except for the last take Salvaged Data to purchase.

Building A Base For Cooking

Depending on the kind of output you’d like, you don’t actually need a ton of space to start cooking; you’ll just need a little time, and the resources to build a small internal area. The bare necessities of this operation are very low, and the bulk of the resource expense is going to come in trying to make it look nice.

Build An Interior Room

It doesn’t really matter how you build this room, as long as it’s got walls and a roof. Plants grown in the Hydroponic Trays all generally need to be inside to grow, unless they’re in their own specific, ideal environment. It’s impossible to grow multiple plants of different types in the same place because of this, so planting them inside is typically the way to go.

How To Grow Plants

To plant in the Hydroponic Trays, you’ll need to enter the build menu, just like you would to place a wall. From there, head to the Advanced Technology section, which is the same section the Hydroponic Trays are in.

You’ll need one associated resource alongside the plant you’re looking to grow, and each plant is going to have varying grow times before they’re ready, which are displayed in their description before you place them.

How To Harvest Plants

Once the grow period for each plant is over, you’ll be able to harvest it. This is going to net you a good amount of that particular resource, and restart the grow clock for you to rinse and repeat.

With a small farm, this isn’t going to net you an incredible amount of ingredients. But with a big farm, this is a great way to automatically gain a lot of them.

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Building Fauna Technology

Obtaining the resources to start automatically harvesting ingredients from fauna is going to be a bit more of an involved experience. Some of the items needed to make a Livestock Unit and an Automated Feeder need to be crafted, and the resources needed to do so aren’t going to be exceptionally common.

How To Build A Livestock Unit

The recipe for a Livestock Unit includes Poly Fiber, which is a blueprint you’re going to need to get in the Synthesis Laboratory in the Anomaly. Crafting Poly Fiber is going to mean getting Cactus Flesh and Star Bulbs.

This is why this section is listed underneath the plants section; it’s helpful to already have a supply of these two resources replenishable and on-hand in order to build at least one of these.

This Livestock Unit, when built, will automatically collect whatever resource the nearby fauna produces when fed. This will net you a constant supply of at least one resource, on planets that have ample fauna. Ideally, you’ll have more than one type of animal nearby, and be collecting more than one kind of resource.

How To Build An Automated Feeder

The Automated Feeder is going to be a bit easier to build than the Livestock Unit; the most difficult-to-obtain resource here is going to be Chlorine, which can be found fairly easily in an ocean, or created by refining Salt.

An Automated Feeder is going to need a constant supply of Creature Pellets with which to feed the nearby fauna. But, with those Creature Pellets, it’s going to attract nearby wildlife that, once fed, will deposit their resources into the Livestock Unit.

How To Use The Nutrient Processor

Once you’ve gathered the ingredients you’d like to cook with, it’s time to use the Nutrient Processor. Inside this machine, you can place up to three different ingredients, with the outcome of your ingredients displayed on the right side of the screen.

There are an incredible amount of recipes, but you don’t need to memorize them all. Many recipes have the same effects, and differ only in the ingredients it takes to make them.

Most Helpful Recipes

While most food has very minor effects that aren’t going to make a huge difference, they aren’t necessarily useless. Here are some of the more useful effects, and some of the dishes that provide them.

Many of the recipes in NMS require ingredients that are not raw on their own, and require cooking one or two items that are, themselves, ingredients in the dish you actually intend to make. This can make cooking certain dishes into a multi-step process.

Oftentimes, the dishes with these requirements have a higher monetary value. This is not necessarily true across the board, and if you’re going into this process looking to make money, it’s worth doing a little research beforehand to see exactly what dishes you’d like to make.

Why Cook?

Largely, the juice of cooking in NMS is not worth the squeeze. That’s not true for every dish, but if you’re looking at things from a purely logistical standpoint, there are far more efficient methods to make money, and to help keep yourself alive.

But, there is a joy to cooking in NMS. While it does not necessarily provide entirely worthwhile benefits, it is a game where the enjoyment comes out of what you put into it. Oftentimes, kind strangers in the Anomaly distribute delicious dishes to strangers they come across, and that kindness alone is worth the effort.

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