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.
The Mechanics Of It All
Now you are set up, let’s cover how Living Ship spawning works.
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 circumstances 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.
Few Notes:
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.
To Clarify
with Voidy
- 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.
Hello, so I’ve got a ship and required data (not purchased), where do I upload it?
Working on the database at the moment, will be up as soon as it’s ready, for the moment, just collect the data in a folder/spreadsheet, whatever is easiest for you, i’m working as fast as I can to get it done
Oh yeah sure, I just thought you need these for the database itself. GL then, can’t wait ’till it’s done, I got a ship for it.
Xaine,
1) Great content, all around. Thanks!
2) Following up on that Living Ship DB. Any progress? Need any help? I’m a software dev and I’ve put stuff like that together before.
Hey sooooo question did you ever get this set up? Im running into an issue where every ship has the same colors including ones that i used coordinates for so i wanted to try some of yours
Through a lot of trial rejecting every ship in a given star system, I’ve determined that once you get a standard ship spawning instead of a Living ship, it means that you’ve exhausted all crash ship sites. I actiavted the beacon at each site to be able to better track the sites I’ve already visited. Once I got a regular ship spawned, I noticed that the beacon was one I had already activated. I believe that this means that you’ve exhausted every living ship variant in that system, provided only one living ship alternate is assigned to each spawn site. This appears to be the case, as when you reset the game the same living ship models spawn again at their same locations.
Once this happens, it’s best to go to another start system, unless you want to go through the process again to get a ship you had already passed up.
[Addendum] This was done using a second void egg, tested in several star systems, on XB1
Hi. I really like how well you explained all of this. How many crash sites are there likely to be in a 1 planet system? I found a living ship I liked, didn’t get it because I wanted to see what else was available (my mistake) and have now catalogued the coordinates for 55 crash sites on this planet without finding the first one again.
Thank you :) and potentially hundreds, I really don’t know unfortunately, 55 is a lot though in my experience for no repeats unless it was just no original, but other repeats
I’ve seen maybe 3 or 4 more than once, but that’s about it (1 of which has turned up like 4 times). Unfortunately I haven’t been collecting the stats on all of them, just the coordinates. I’m hoping I’ll stop finding new ones soon here. Thanks!
How do you want us to transmit the data to you?
Also, what is the desired screenshot resolution? I did the 3 demanded screenshots for 50 ships, and this is already at 600MB in total. That might be a little too much.
And the last one: Do you want us to document additional model stats as well so the users can search for that in your database? Like color, head type (eg. small / whale premature / hammerhead premature / whale mature / hammerhead mature), top fin type, landing gear, thrusters, etc…?
Have you released the list yet?
Still working on it unfortunately, its a big project with keeping the channel going
Hey just wondering how much you have done and if u have done a decent amount would you consider doing it in parts so like couple of ships here and there
How much longer will it take for the database to be up, I really want that ship on the thumbnail
Great write up! I’ve hit a snag, though. Do you know if pulsing through a portal still triggers the alien ship event after buying more eggs? Tried for several hours last night. I could warp to a system and have it trigger almost immediately after beginning to pulse, but when in a system I reach through a portal, I could pulse for minutes on end and never saw the event trigger.
Apologies for this incredibly late reply, but not really certain, but each system does have timers for when events occur and this includes the mothership popping in to give you a location, so a good test would be to check the system that it was working in well, also try save and reloading when through the portal as the reload resets the timer
Any more luck with this? I’ve got a certain ship from the NMS coordinates exchange and not getting anything after going through a portal. 20-30 seconds for every other galaxy.
Great initiative mate!
So is it going to happen? :)
Why not just make a form (kinda like the one I’m using right now) where ppl are required to upload pictures as well? Don’t really see why it needs to be more complicated than that. :)
I could ofc be missing something?
Is the database available yet?
Hello, is the database up yet? If so, where is the link?
Hey Xaine! I have an offer about something to help you youtube channel and also to connect people! Is there a way I can contact you?
Heya bud, the contact email is xainesworld@gmail.com or you can DM me on discord :)
Hi Xaine,
I got my first void egg, finished mission and got a basic living ship (all white). Is there a way to exchange what I have for a different living ship?
Thanks,
Redarrow127
It doesn’t look like anyone replied to this so if you didn’t get an answer, the method is to get another void egg and 10,000 nanites and then pulse for a while in your ship until you get a transmission which will be from another living ship that will give you the co-ordinates of a living ship (this is the one you will choose whether or not to get). You can take a look at it and decide not to get it if you don’t like what it looks like and it’ll give you back the void egg. If it’s one you like the look of you can pay the 10,000 nanites and it’ll swap the ship you currently have equipped (can be a regular ship or the original living ship) for the living ship.
Hey Xaine, i have be reloading and restarting my game a lot to try and get a specific green ship that the RNGods seemed to have deemed me unfit for. but i noticed that in my last bit of attempts i can only get 1-2 living ships to load in before i have to restart. Did i break my save file or something?
I have made over 30 attempts to get a specific living ship to spawn using a second void egg. I have marked each site and each site was different and none of them was the site where I knew the ship that I wanted was located. This is a one planet system so all 30 different ships spawned there. I saw no end to this so I terminated my search. I do not think it is possible to exhaust all locations on one planet reasonably. The planets are too big and have too many iterations of crashed ships apparently. In light of this, I do not think that it is possible to get a specific living ship using a second void egg. If I am incorrect in this, I would love some direction. Cheers.
Yep, have done over 200 reloads and it hasn’t selected the crash site I want yet. This is not feasible.
I have to ask. Is that purple and green living ship in the picture up above and the thumbnail of the video modded? I’ve been hunting for that shade of purple flesh for 5 days now in euclid and haven’t seen anything even remotely that deeply colored and especially not purple, everything seems to have very light pigments for me though the carapace has been several shades of every color.
It was alterred in photoshop just the match colours for the thumbnail, I do that with a lot of thumbs just to make them pretty. I wouldn’t do that of course if the ship etc in the thumb is what im showing so folk to get it.
is there a list that i can look at or some gate key codes XD
Sadokuv-Sucene (3 Planets/1 Moon)
Portal address in screenshots currently. Contact me if you need them or let me know when the database is up.
Sadly Lat/Long were not recorded as I did not think they would be important as the egg tells you where to go.
DMG Potential – 265.5
Hyperdrive – 161.3
Maneuverability – 209.4
Thanks for your guide! After looking at 6 or 7 ships, the normal crashed ships showed up (as expected), HOWEVER, after restarting the game I would just fly over the prospective living ship and go into photo mode to check it out, not landing at all.
NO regular crashed ships have showed up, so I haven’t had to restart the game a single time in 6 hours worth of searching!! (I need a some sleep lol).
Bad part is that I don’t know the ships stats unless I land, but at this point I’m only going after looks…. Will report all pertinent info for the single perfect ship I find… If and when…
Hopefully others can confirm if this works for them…. I’m playing on Xbox 1, offline while I search. End of rant. Continue on.
Disregard above comment, some planets start showing crashed ships quicker than others, maybe?
You no longer need to restart the game when the regular ships show up, a simple reload will work. However it happens more often now, usually every time, if not every other time.
Some Youtubers say to fly in slow so the game will render the correct ship on arrival. Hope this helps.
Goto the base of the ship, use the analyzer and wait while its on. It usually takes about the time to write the coordinates down and the ship will change.
The other way is to ‘fix’ the ship then goto compair like your going to buy it but back out. If you buy it you will get the wrong ship.
CAN YOU UPLOAD THE DATABASE NOW PLEASE THANK YOU VERYMUCH IM WAITING STILL ITS BEEN 8MONTHS.
I have catalogued 30 (-1) ships on a single planet in my system. Not all have photo mode pictures but I have turned the ship to get front / side images in the pics of the storage / tech pages.
Where do I send this info?
I have 30 ships for 1 planet on a two planet system for your database.
So stupid
I have done 5 days worth of testing on multi planet systems (starbirth method) and have gleamed what I hope is some very useful info.
1 the place you” hatch” the egg dictates the planet of the crash site. The planet you hatch the egg on will always lead you to the same planet, but never the one you are currently on. (Hope that made sense)
2 during testing there was a time when the non-living ship encounter bug happened at a ratio of 1/20. This stoped after activating the transmission just outside of the atmosphere.
This only applies to the starbirth method and multi planet systems.
Hope this helps
Hey Xaine,
I have gotten a void egg, but I did not get the starbirth mission!?!? Is there something I need to do to get this mission so I can go through the 4 days of maturing all the items and then do what you have suggested above. Please help me with a clue on what to do next to get this mission so I can start getting my living ship.
Thanks in advance!
I’m way too late on this, so big apologies. But just in case you still need an answer.
After getting the Void egg you just need to pulse in your ship, after not too long, a living ship will approach you and kick off the mission.
I still can’t find where the database is. Could someone help.
Did something interesting and went to an uninhabited star system to hatch the egg. There were only 2 planets there and every time I chose to hatch (during Starbirth) it sent me to a random star system elsewhere. One was next door within jump range, the other star system was 4 or 5 jumps away.
Is there any way to k omw where that orange and black ship pictured in this article was found? It’s exactly the appearance I’ve been looking for, so of anyone had portal coords for it I’d appreciate it!