The start of No Man’s Sky is pretty abrupt; it merely drops you on the surface of an unknown planet, amidst the wreckage of your small personal spacecraft. After a brief intro bit, you’ll be instructed to repair your ship and launch off the planet’s surface into the skies. But what it doesn’t tell you is exactly how you should go about doing so.

Never fear, aimless adventurer...we’re here to help. Here’s a quick guide to repairing your ship so you can successfully launch into the universe.

Gather Resources

First things first, you’re going to need to gather up some items in order to successfully make repairs on your little vessel. Both the Launch Thrusters and the Pulse Engine need to be repaired and recharged, so you’ll have a decent-sized list of stuff to collect.

To repair the Launch Thrusters, you’ll need:
-4 Carite sheets (each crafted from 50 iron)
-Plutonium (for recharging/refueling)

As for the Pulse Engine, look for:
-200 Heridium
-2 Carite sheets (same as above)
-20 Zinc
-Thamium9 (to recharge/refuel)

Iron is easily found in rocky formations scattered across a planet’s surface, regardless of the environment in which you might be stranded. To mine iron, hold down the right trigger (or right mouse button) to bring up and activate your mining beam, then direct it at the object. It will break apart as you do so, and the pieces will automatically gather on you.

Plutonium is an isotope and will likely be red in color. It can be found in a number of different formations, although one of the more common ones you’ll find will be a cluster of crystals jutting out of the ground. Use the mining beam on this as well.

Zinc can be found on plants scattered around the planet’s surface. It’s a rarer item, so you may have to search a bit. Thankfully, you can always hit the scan button to locate the little yellow markers that ID where it is.

Thamium9 is also found on plants and is harvested via a button prompt instead of mined like iron and Plutonium. Look for red plants with egg-shaped buds growing on top. It can be tricky to find, but a little bit goes a long way.

Heridium is relatively rare, and it took a while to find for those of us in the Shacknews guides room. That said, everyone’s planet will be different, so there’s a chance you’ll stumble across it faster than we did. It’s a blue element and can be mined off of rock faces in big, dark blue columns.

Make Your Repairs

To craft Carite Sheets, go into your ship inventory screen and select an open slot. Choose to craft an item from the dropdown menu, and then select the icon with the silver diamond and the yellow background. Crafting a Carite Sheet only requires 50 iron and should be pretty painless. Craft six of these (two for the Pulse Engine, four for the Launch Thrusters), attach them to the ship via button prompt in the same inventory menu. To charge up the Thrusters, hover the cursor over its icon and select recharge, then select plutonium from the dropdown menu.

To finish repairing the Pulse Engine, put your 200 Heridium on it, then recharge in the same manner as the Thrusters, this time selecting Thamium9 instead of Plutonium. And...voila! You’ve fixed your ship! Enter the cockpit via button prompt and hit the right trigger to activate the thrusters (you may have to hold it down for a few seconds to get things moving), and you’re on your way to the stars.

BONUS: It's recommended that you also fix your Scanner, which, when used, will send out a pulse and highlight a lot of these elements on the map around you. Fixing the scanner will only require a small amount of elements and can be done in the Multi-Tool inventory screen. This will make things easier to locate and give your search a bit more focus.

Visit our full No Man's Sky guide and walkthrough to learn more, and check out the video below to see some of the crafting and repairing in action.