47 Comments / By Xaine / 28/02/2020 17/02/2021
No Man’s Sky Living Ship Locations are consistent & here’s how it works all. Hunting, Documenting, it’s all on the cards from here on in the Living Ship Update.
Ship Hunting in No Man’s Sky is a big deal, so I’m working on a database tool for mapping the Living Starships people find so that others can head out into the stars and get them to.
No Man’s Sky Living Ship Locations are consistent, you can hunt for living ships, you can note them down and other people can go get them. It’s just a little more complex than your average crashed S-Class, but less time investment than ship hunting an s class at a trading post.
As this is a controversial thing, I’ll just show some evidence immediately.
Here is a ship I found on PC Normal.
Here is a ship Darklord Xelrick found when rolling tests for me on PS4 Normal.
Note the last few characters in the name are different, this is very common in naming cross-platform, also the Damage Potential and Maneuverability on Darklord’s being different is due to a bug caused by the trading comparison screen.
I spent the last several days testing around spawning Living Ships, using the manual save method at the end of the Starbirth questline.
I’m going to go into a bit of detail on this, it’s the lowest detail possible, but mentions one or 2 mechanics from toward the end of the Starbirth missions, so you’ve been warned.
In the last part of the Starbirth mission, you are given a portal address from Voidy.
You go there, do some stuff and then go back through the portal.
The important thing here is what planet that portal is on.
The planet the portal is on is going to narrow your scope of hunting to that system, or at least without some trickery that I’ll go into shortly.
I’d love to say it narrows to that planet, but sadly this isn’t the case, so generally, it would be better to hunt ship finds from low planet count systems.
I did all my testing on Londinium, which is in a single planet system, so it didn’t take too long to map things out.
This manual save point will be our reloading base. I’d even suggest making a save backup of this manual save just in case.
Getting in your ship here isn’t the point of no return we originally thought it was, it can be put off indefinitely.
Simply “disconnect the broadcast”, and then keep doing that or ignoring the signal that will persist every time you get in or out of your ship.
By delaying this, you can do all kinds of things like heading to the station to teleport, or warping to get to where ever you wish to go to.
On top of this, there is another method of changing the system that you are in, and that is through portals.
You could, after returning through the portal, just go ahead and dial any planet in that galaxy and head through, then get in your ship and the quest will continue there, giving you a ship from that system.
You can extend this to any galaxy by having a base in another galaxy, teleporting to that base and then using a portal to dial wherever you wish.
You really can get any ship in the game as your first ship from this questline.
This method of portal travel to obtain the ship also works with the Egg and 10,000 Nanites, as pulsing when through a portal will initiate the hailing from the rogue alien ship.
Now you are set up, let’s cover how Living Ship spawning works.
Living Ships are essentially a secondary crashed ship.
Each crashed ship site now has 2 potential crashed ships, the standard kind that can be any class and type other than Living Ships, and then a Living Ship variant.
Crashed ships have quite a lot of consistency.
The slots are the same amount and the same arrangement, the class is the same, the stats are the same, even which slots are broken are the same specific to each crash site but consistent across all platforms and all difficulties.
It is the same with the living ships of those sites.
All of this means that if you go to the same crash site as someone else, and are both seeing Living Ships due to the Starbirth mission pointing to that specific location, they are identical in slot arrangement, stats and full appearance over all platforms and difficulties.
Sadly, it’s not as simple as just going to the same crash site, you must reload until you get it.
When you jump in your ship after that manual save-point, you do a little dialogue and upon taking off, the game will give you a waypoint.
The waypoint the game is giving you is to a random crash site in that system.
And yes, this does mean that we now have a pretty great new method of finding crash sites.
All of this means that if you go to the same crash site as someone else, and are both seeing Living Ships due to the Starbirth mission pointing to that specific location, they are identical in slot arrangement, stats and full appearance over all platforms and difficulties.
This means that to find the crashed ship you want, that you know is in that system, you will need to reload that manual save until you are sent to the crash site where it resides.
This could take a while, but anyone who has sat at a trading post hunting that perfect S Class ship knows, the best ships are ships you invested your time into obtaining.
And with the slot arrangement, stats and class a certainty, this will in many circ*mstances be better than doing the trade post shuffle.
One more note of consistency is that the end of the Starbirth questline and getting any further ships through a Void Egg and 10,000 nanites are both fully consistent.
Think of both of those moments as picking a random crash site and assigning it the Living Ship Variant that is seeded to that crash site.
When you are reloading, the 6th or 7th reload may result in sending you to a site that has a standard ship there, this will be the normal crashed ship, but it will be bugged.
To get around this, just exit the game fully and load it back up, and when you load into the autosave it made as you exited your ship at that site, the ship will now be a Living Ship and you’ll be able to reload another 6 or 7 times before it happens again.
Also, when you are getting your nth Living Ship by buying another Void Egg and getting your 10,000 nanites ready.
You should buy your Void Egg from the nexus and also have at least 10,000 Nanites prepared.
Get to where ever you need to go, the correct Galaxy and either to the system or to a portal where you can dial a planet in the system where the ship you want resides.
Any hailing you get from the rogue alien ship should be ignored until you are in the correct system.
Make a manual save on a planet in the correct system and then just pulse until you are hailed.
The hailing appears to be on a timer, as I have done this in succession several times now and it always burned through almost exactly 37% of my fresh Aliens Pulse Drive before the hailing occurred.
Also, this manual save isn’t completely required, it just makes things easier, you should be able to decline the ship that you find instead of paying the 10,000 nanites and receive your Egg back.
But bugs can happen, so I would always recommend making that manual save.
Doing this you can then use that manual save to reload on the Egg and Nanites method of gaining a Living Ship, the Nanites are payable upon getting to the Ship itself.
Once you get to your new Living Ship, you can call in any of your other ships, unless they are without launch fuel and in your system, so if you are having to trade your current ship, then be sure to switch your current for the one you wish to trade.
- Living Ship models are not tied to specifically your save.
- Living Ships are not tied to the specific egg you purchased.
- Living Ship models are fully tied to the Crash Site they are found at.
- Both the Starbirth Origin Questline and Buying another Egg do the same thing.For the Questline the moment is when you enter your ship after the grave planet in the final part, for the Void Egg afterwards, it’s when you pulse and accept the hatching request from a living ship in space.
- These 2 moments will just roll a random Crash Site for you and activate it’s Living Ship variant which only you will be able to see, or of course, anyone else who has somehow just activated theirs and is being sent to the same spot as you.
- Living Ships can be obtained through portals with both methods.
This new world of Living Ship hunting discovery needs a database, so I’m building one, an offshoot from a very very longterm project I’ve been working on in the background, with lot’s of planning but no action, mainly as I had to learn 5 coding languages first while also running a channel and all else, but I’ll finally be rekindling the Farmer’s Market of sorts with the first of many No Man’s Sky documentation databases through a very easy to use web app on xainesworld.com.
If you want to get involved, here are the data points that need to be collected for it..
Galaxy Name
Portal Address of Planet
Number of Planets in System
Lat/Long Coordinates
Damage Potential Stat (After Purchase)
Maneuverability Stat (After Purchase)
Hyperdrive Range
Photomode Shot of Ship
Screenshot of Main Inventory
Screenshot of Tech Inventory
Now it is very important to note that the 4 stats that are to be noted need to be when the ship has been purchased, and never when the ship is still in the available to purchase state, this is due to an odd bug that causes the damage potential and possible manoeuvrability stats to be incorrect when in the trade screen.
I’ll also add a whole bunch of other info fields for the systems and planets as optional for any who are fans of some hardcore documenting.
I do say some nerdy things sometimes.
Big thank you to the UAS Council, who helped me test this all out for consistency, specifically lavalamp64 who’s thoughts on a separate potential consistency got me testing in the first place to find this out, Darklord Xelrick and KJ PC Gaming who were rolling reloads and gathering data for me and a few others who were racing to get to the point in the questline so they could help on the testing.
