No Man's Sky NEXT: 15 Tips & Tricks The Game Doesn't Tell You

5. Know Every Refinable Element

All of this and we've barely touched upon base building or refinable elements.

Now, the game does tutorialise the idea of "Refining" by teaching you how to make a Portable Refiner, but once you embark on the questline towards building a sizeable base, you'll start crafting Medium and Large ones, too.

Refining is essentially to No Man's Sky what the Furnace is to Minecraft, and you can see a full list of which elements turn into what over here. It's a sizeable, impossible-to-remember chart, with many entries being refined multiple times over to get the best product to trade or use when crafting.

Keep this diagram handy though, because you WILL need it.