This guide will show you a simple way to find settlements, distress signals/crashed ships and minor small settlements in No Man’s Sky.
To start, you will need to head to the space station in your system.
You will either need some navigation data or a good amount of nanites.
Once you are in the space station, you will need to go to the left of the hangar and find the cartographer vendor. He is the last vendor on the right next to the portal, and you’re going to talk to him.
When you talk to the cartographer, you’ll have two following options.
1. You can exchange specific charts, which means that you can buy the charts you are looking for using the navigation data.
2. You can buy random maps using nanites, so there isn’t going to be a guarantee that you’ll get the maps you are looking for each time since you’ll be relying on rng to get the settlement, distress signal, and inhabited settlement maps. That is why it is highly recommended to have some navigation data, so you don’t end up wasting too many nanites, but you can do whichever options you prefer/choose.
You will need the specialty settlement chart, the emergency/distress signal chart, and the commercial/inhabited outpost chart.
Once you have the maps you want, you have to go to your inventory and use the maps in the system/planet you are on. You have to look for a signal that says the planetary settlement for the settlement map. For the distress map, you need to look for a single that says distress signal found, and for the commercial/inhabited outpost map, you have to look for a signal that says minor element.
Also, there isn’t a guarantee that you’ll get the signal you are looking for on your first map, so unless you’re looking for multiple settlements for ships, you can buy a map that you need at a time if you don’t have a lot of nanites or navigation data. Use that map to see if you get the desired signal on the first try to save your resources.
If you want, you can go down to any planet in your system and use a signal booster on different parts of the planet to find the settlements, minor settlements, or crashed ships. It can take quite some time considering how big the planets can be, so if you’re up for it, you can grind locations out that way if that’s your thing.
When going to distress signals, there’s a chance that you can’t claim the ship. Instead, you’ll see someone walking around/nearby the ship, and they’ll ask for your help repairing the ship, so you can either go to a different distress signal, or you can help the person repair their ship as they will reward you for doing so.
