No Man's Sky features Portals that can be used to travel to any point in the universe. This is facilitated by a 12-digit Glyph address being assigned for each planet, with the ability to share a planet's address for later travel. Here's how to find and unlock No Man's Sky Portals and Glyphs.
You'll need to find a Portal first, which isn't as simple as it might sound. Once you get there, you'll need to have unlocked the 16 Glyphs to have access to all possible locations. In this guide, we'll lead you through the process of finding a Portal, how to get a Planetary Address, and how to unlock more Glyphs.
With No Man's Sky finally available on the Nintendo Switch, check out some more guides to help you travel the galaxy on a new platform - here's where to find Tritium, and Paraffinium, and how to increase your ship's storage.
How to Find No Man's Sky Portals and Glyphs
To find a Portal, you want to make sure you have some Navigational Data. This can be found at Ancient data Structures. Now, fly up to a Space Station and visit the Cartographer at the far end of the merchants on the right as you are facing into the station. You'll want to select the 'Exchange For Maps' option. From this menu, trade Navigational Data for 'Alien Cartographic' map data. We recommend getting anywhere between 5 and 10 of these.
Once you have these in your inventory, fly down to any planet in your system. Go into your inventory and hold interact to open one of the maps. An alien structure will be displayed. The one you are looking for is 'Alien Monolith'. If you get something else, head to the structure you've unlocked, clear it and then try again. You'll eventually find a Monolith. Exit your ship to create a save point and approach the Monolith.
Interact with the Monolith and you will be given a riddle to solve. There are generally three options to choose from. You can work out what answer is the correct one by looking at what the dominant race is in your system. If it's the Korvax, go for more passive options, if it's Vy'Keen, go for war or combat action, if it's Gek, look for anything pertaining to space or trade. If you get this wrong, just reload your autosave and try again until you select the correct answer.
Once you've completed the riddle, you'll get either a Korvax Casing, Vy'Keen Dagger or Gek Relic to use. Select 'Locate a Portal' to mark one on your map. Fly over to it and approach its front side. From here, you will need to charge each of the 16 Glyphs with common elements like Copper, Di-Hydrogen and Sodium. The Portal will activate once you've charged all of them. From here you can input a planetary address and step through to warp.
Getting a planet's Portal Address
After you've activated the Portal, you can select 'Request Planetary Address'. This will display the Glyph sequence for the planet you are on. Take a screenshot of it to use later if you'd like.
Unlocking more Glyphs
There are 16 Glyphs to unlock in No Man's Sky, and two main ways to unlock them. The first is done by completing the main Artemis quest. This is the recommended method, as you'll unlock all 16 in a sequence at the end by warping 16 times. If you'd rather unlock them at your own pace, you'll need to speak to Travellers at Space Stations. Each station has a chance to have a Traveller on it. They will show in your suit scanner. Speak to them until you can select 'Ask where they came from'. This will mark an Unknown Grave on your map. Interacting with this object will earn you a Glyph.
Glyph names
The names of the Glyphs in No Man's Sky are barely referenced at all. According to the No Man's Sky Wiki, the names are as follows:
- Sunset
- Bird
- Face
- Diplo
- Eclipse
- Balloon
- Boat
- Bug
- Dragonfly
- Galaxy
- Voxel
You can check which Glyphs you have at the bottom of the Catalogue section in your menus.
That's all you need to know about using Portals in No Man's Sky. For more on the game be sure to visit our guide on getting Cadmium. Once you're done there check out our page on making Deuterium.
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