No Man's Sky: How to get Warp Cells for Hyperdrive Fuel

This key item can elude you if you don't pay attention, but we've got you covered.

No Man's Sky is a crazy, open experience and depending on if you take the Atlas Path or not in the game's opening it can become even more obtuse for players. That feeling of openness can be pretty damn amazing, but there's also nothing more frustrating than being stuck trying to craft a specific item.

Early on in the game nothing is more important than Warp Cells, the fuel that's used to fuel your faster-than-light drive. Given that FTL travel is your primary method to travel from star system to star system in order to try to reach the center of the universe, the ultimate goal of the game, it's arguably the most vital individual resource in the game.

No Man's Sky: How to Craft a Warp Cell

In order to craft a warp cell you'll need two key ingredients, both of which aren't necessarily available to you if you've been focused on mining resources on planets as many players are early on.

• The first key resource is Thamium9. This is actually fairly common but is much less so on planets. You'll likely find some of this when first getting your ship into space, but once you're up there you can find it far more easily by blasting asteroids out in space. You'll need 100 of this per warp cell you want to create.
• The second resource is Antimatter, an item you'll actually need to craft first. We describe how to tackle that below.

Once you have these two components all you need to do is craft the Warp Cell like any other in-game item, then whack it into your ship in the ship inventory to power your warp drive. Simple!

How to craft Antimatter

Your first ever Antimatter should be rewarded to you by a friendly alien as part of No Man's Sky's main story quest. After that however you're on your own - and you're going to need a heck of a lot of them for your journey. Thankfully an alien in your second system will also give you the crafting recipe so you can get making it.

For Antimatter you'll need:
• 1 Electron Vapour. This resource is crafted from 1 Suspension Fluid (Available for purchase from space stations) and 100 Plutonium (Readily available to mine on planets or also sold in space stations). The crafting recipe is unlocked from the moment you start the game.
• 50 Heridium. This resource is available planet-side but also happens to be frustratingly rare. It can be found as part of very large rock deposits, so fly low over a planet in your ship and keep an eye out for colossal rocks - if you find one, there's a strong chance it's an absolutely huge Heridium deposit. You can also just buy it from space stations, but it's comparatively expensive.
• 20 Zinc. This is another planet-side resource but is more common. It's found all over, though in the systems I've traveled so far it's most commonly extracted from certain types of plant. It's also available for sale in space stations.

No Man's Sky: How to find Warp Cells

If you don't want to craft your own warp cells or are struggling to track down the necessary resources in the system you're in, you're not exactly stuck: there is another option. Warp Cells are occasionally gifted to the player as part of quests or simply found out in the world. Here's where you're most likely to find them:

At Alien Monoliths

Alien Monoliths are points that you should always prioritize investigating since the rewards they offer tend to be pretty damn solid; they often teach you languages, expose new points of interest on the map and so on. Each interaction also contains a little bit of story.

Interactions with Alien Monoliths has a chance to gift you a warp cell at the end. Keep an eye out for monoliths - their icon is purple-ish and features a block with an inscription on it - as you fly around. They can also be found directly by hacking a beacon at a camp site with a bypass chip.

In Atlas Pass locked boxes on space stations and planets

One of the first frustrating wrinkles you'll encounter in No Man's Sky is the curse of the Atlas Pass. This key item levels up as you play the game through crafting increasingly better variants of it, but getting your first one takes a little time and effort. We've got a guide page all about obtaining that first Atlas pass, so be sure to check that out.

Once you have your V1 Atlus Pass you'll be able to open certain doors in the outposts you'll find on planets, or open containers that appear near beacons and so on. Many of these will contain Warp Cells or other fuel-related items. Space stations always have a higher level door with fuel items behind it too, but these require a higher level atlas pass and as such are off limits until later in the game.

From Atlas Interfaces

At a certain point early in the story you'll interact with a particular monolith that points you towards your first Atlas Interface out in space.

Each one you visit will offer up two warp cells as well as an Atlas Stone, which is extremely valuable but also has other uses as detailed in our Atlas Pass guide. Once you reach this point you should be approaching a time when warp cells are no longer a worry - thank goodness!