Inventory space is at a real premium in No Man's Sky, even if you aren't tormented by the same hoarding demons that plague our own journey across the galaxy here.
Once you're up and running inventory management will likely be a central part of your experience, and actually expanding your inventory isn't as easy as you might originally expect for a game that's so heavily built around it. Still, it's simple enough when you know what you're doing, so below we've put together a few pieces of advice on how to expand your ship, Exosuit, and multi-tool inventories as quickly as possible.
Please note that our No Man's Sky guides are in the process of being updated after the launch of No Man's Sky BEYOND - for now, this page may still have plenty of useful info, but bear in mind it's due a refresh! If you're looking for more on that big update though, our guide to what's new in the No Man's Sky BEYOND update and its release time on Xbox One, PC, PS4, our big list of No Man's Sky patch notes, or our guide to the new No Man's Sky multiplayer and Nexus hub are the best places to start!
How inventory space works in No Man's Sky and maximum inventory sizes
Before we dive into a full explanation, a quick warning: always transfar your inventory's contents to the new one you're buying, before you buy it! This is mostly for ships and multi-tools - you can't buy a new Exosuit - but it's worth remembering, before you swap your ship with an alien and they fly off with all your stacks of gold!
The maximum number of inventory slots possible for each of you starship, suit, and multi-tool are:
- Starship maximum inventory - 48 slots
- Starship technology maximum inventory - 8 slots
- Multi-tool maximum inventory - 24 slots
- Exosuit maximum inventory - 48 slots
- Exosuit cargo section maximum inventory - 48 slots
- Exosuit technology section maximum inventory - 14 slots
That Exosuit inventory is worth explaining a little more: whilst you have the standard up-to-48 slots in your normal Exosuit inventory (which starts at 24 slots), there's now a Cargo section and a Technology section in it as well.
The Cargo section lets you store more items in a single stack, and costs the same to upgrade, so it's actually worth expanding slots there ahead of your standard inventory space, although it costs significantly more than a standard Exosuit slot to upgrade.
Likewise, the technology section only allows you to store technology, so it's best to upgrade that as much as you can and use the slots there to place all your various exosuit technology upgrades.
Finally, on the point of technology, it's also worth noting that you get a small percentage bonus to the efficiency of your technology when you install tech of the same kind next to each other. No Man's Sky redditor xiaoxiao14 has put together a great example of how to do this for maximum efficiency (assuming you have the required space like they do!)
How to increase Exosuit inventory space
Your suit inventory space is increased in just two ways: buying an upgrade, or finding one.
How to buy Exosuit inventory space
Buying upgrades is by far the easier option, at least at first. To purchase an upgrade, head to the a Space Station and go to the vendor closest to the appearance customiser (on the left hand side as you fly into the station).
The place where you buy the upgrade is actually right behind that vendor - you have to interact with the spinning blue hologram behind them (sometimest he hologram doesn't show up, so it's just the structure where the hologram would normally be), in their little nook at the end of the room.
The first upgrade you buy will cost 5,000 Units if it's for your standard Exosuit inventory, it appears to double in price each time you buy one, and you can only ever upgrade by one slot at a time. The problem here is that at that rate - we haven't bought every single upgrade yet so we can't confirm it doubles every time - the total amount you'd spend on 24 upgrades for your suit inventory is 83,886,075,000 (that's over 83 billion units).
Basically, unless you become highly proficient at using the methods we outline in our guide to making money in No Man's Sky, it's going to be pretty implausible that you purchase every single upgrade - and what's more that's only the cost to upgrade your standard Exosuit inventory - not the other 48 slots of Cargo inventory and Technology inventory that is has too!
How to find Exosuit inventory upgrades
If money runs dry - which it probably will - then you can find Exosuit inventory upgrades out in the wild.
This involves the same method as before the NEXT update, only it's a fair bit harder to actually achieve. You need to find a structure on planet surfaces called a Drop Pod, which is simply a small, slightly bigger than human-sized pod with nothing but an Exosuit inventory upgrade inside.
The problem is, you now have to fix a few broken components on the Drop Pod to access the inventroy upgrade, and they usually require some pretty hard-to find resources. In our experience the resources required to unlock a Drop Pod include:
- Antimatter
- Ionised Cobalt
- Sodium Nitrate
- Oxygen
- Chromatic Metal
- Deuterium
None of these are impossible to find, but they are awkward. Oxygen and Sodium can be found from red and orange glowing plants respectively (put Sodium through the Refiner to get Sodium Nitrate). Ionised Cobalt requires you to put Cobalt through the refiner too, and you can get Cobalt from the short pillars inside most naturally-forming caves.
Antimatter is the hardest to get, but we detail how to get Antimatter and our Antimatter recipe in our guide to that, so read more there! Deuterium is similarly awkward, but can be crafted using a Refiner (a permanent one in your base, not a portable one) by combining Di-hydrogen with any Catalyst.
In brief then, the best way to expand your Exosuit inventory is to spend money on upgrades in each Space Station you encounter, and then once it gets prohibitively expensive (or even once it's just more expensive than the total cost of the required ingredients above), start hunting for Drop Pods!
Take a load of the above materials with you as you hunt, and use these free slots on either the high-capacity slots in your Exosuit, or the more expensive slots once you've paid for a few upgrades with cash!
How to increase Starship inventory space
From our experience in the NEXT update so far there's still no way to actually add to your current ship's inventory space. Call it wanton consumerism, but ship storage is instead expanded by simply buying yourself a new one. Just about any ship you come across - be it at a space station or an in-atmosphere point-of-interest - can be purchased from the game's NPCs, provided you have the required currency and standing with that sector's predominant race.
Crashed ships are still in the game - but there's now no guarantee that they'll have more inventory slots in them than your current ship. Instead it's a lottery, and you'll have to spend a fair amount of resources repairing them, too.
In our experience, if you find one it's always worth looking at - you may get lucky - but really if you want to reliably increase you ship's inventory space, you're just going to have to pony up and buy a bigger one.
Cycle back to our main hub for what's new in what's new in No Man's Sky Beyond and more basic info on the big update, otherwise take a look at our deep dive on No Man's Sky multiplayer explained for more on teaming up, our guide to base building, an introduction into electrical wiring and powering your base, to how to expand your Exosuit, Ship and Multi-tool inventory space, and Freighters and Frigates explained. Plus other handy stuff like how to repair your ship and get the Hermetic Seal, Pure Ferrite, Metal Plating and Di-Hydrogen Jelly, locations of theAtlas Pass v1, v2 and v3, a guide to No Man's Sky money and how to earn Units fast, plushow to get Antimatter and the Antimatter recipe, and even how to save the game in No Man's Sky, too. Finally, we have pages on how to reach the centre of the galaxy, how to get Chromatic Metal, and a Journey Milestones list, too.
How to increase Multi-tool inventory space
Increasing Multi-tool inventory slots works the same as doing so for your ship - there's no way to expand the current one that you have, so instead you're going to need to find a new Multi-tool altogether.
There are a few ways to do this. Most reliable is the standard method of buying new ones in Space Stations - head to the vendor that sells Multi-tool upgrades and look in the red locker next to them, and they'll have new Multi-tools there for sale.
You can also talk to members of the Vy'keen race, and occasionally one will offer to inspect your Multi-tool. Let them do it, and they'll offer you an upgrade - it often has a couple of parts that need repairing, but is usually an upgrade on what you have.
Finally, on planet surfaces, the odd building will have some NPCs inside and one vendor. At one end inside the small building is a single Multi-tool in a cabinet on the wall, which you can buy as an upgrade for yours if you wish.
