Biology

The biology of No Man’s Sky relates to its living organisms and their ecology. This section describes general principles and only uses specific species as examples. This wiki does not offer lists of individual species' details. More details can be found on the Fauna and Flora pages.

Exclusions

• Human characters are not known to be endemic in any of the biomes in this universe.
• Neither are the game's NPCs (sentient aliens).

Creation

All life is spawned initially by a process called procedural generation - a rules engine underlying the production of most natural features in the game to create ecosystems that are cohesive. For creatures, basic templates of creatures that exist on the Earth were created and then manipulated by the system, changing everything from height, weight, bone density, voice pitch, what it eats, and its behaviors, even creating variation within the species.

Replacing the genetic code on Earth with this rules engine, what we are looking for in NMS biology is emergent phenomena – often quite unpredictable, and as we are already discovering, beautifully strange. But in addition to direct observation, there will be some intuitive clues to behaviour using what Grant Duncan has called a ‘tagging system’ involving colours, body parts or combinations. He went on to tell Gameinformer, “If you see a creature that looks aggressive and a little bit scary, chances are it's going to behave in that way.”

Whilst procedural generation will start from scratch for any new visitor to a planet, the initial factors being fed into the algorithm should be identical, such that each character will see the same types of creatures and behaviours, if not the identical individuals (unless two characters are close enough to each other to be placed in the same game lobby); indeed it appears that species extinctions are not possible.

Research

Resources

Exosuit

As well as survival functions for temperature, radiation and toxicity (along with replenishment requirements and upgrade options), you can use your suit for moving both on solid ground and in liquids. The jetpack portion can help with steep terrain, overhead visual surveys, crossing liquids, and escape.

Starship

Your ship’s scanner is very powerful and can help you locate likely places on a planet, or even in your galaxy, to find life, which could otherwise only turn up on 1 in 10 planets you might visit randomly, and be prolific in only 1 in 10 of those. A more advanced ship can also travel further enabling you to explore more NMS biology.

Multi-tool

You might learn about some aspects of NMS Biology by using your weapon on wildlife – although good luck with the sentinels which are likely to start to hunt you down. They may be more forgiving if you are simply using your weapon in self defense; they also do not always seem able to connect dead flying animals with the shooter. Before update 1.07, aside from the extremely rare occasion when a high flying animal appeared to fly stationary, the most viable way to direct the scanner towards it long enough was to shoot it and scan it where it fell. Since the update, look amongst the flocks for individuals or bands flying in leisurely circles which are easier to track with the analysis visor.

Large circle highlights the tumbling creature in the sights of the guilty boltcaster; the small circle highlights the start of a minor carbon credit cascade.

Scanned where it fell (sentinel activity helping to find it in the long grass).

Death in 30 seconds Zunumulchica Aablar Female

Three hits to disable a shield, four more critical hits to oblivion: yours in under 30 seconds on planet Nacantionazz-Libin in the Bamatokinos-Acce system of the Euclid galaxy

More constructively, you can use different multi-tool configurations to scare creatures, both for self defense and to learn about behaviour (best if then used in a structured and proportionate way, as sentinels don’t like to see ecosystems too stressed). Oh, and try to find a high rock to shoot or scan from in dangerous conditions. (See how quickly you could die if you can't defend yourself from a vicious carnivore, in this video.)

The scanner function is vital and can be upgraded in the game. As TheSeaOfThySoul asks, “...find that you can’t scan a creature? Perhaps it’s too big for your scanner to recognise, perhaps your scanner won’t work in the dark, or underwater, etc.”

Compass

Learn to use this, and to use keypoints, so as not to get lost in your explorations.

Beacons

These are places where you can upload discoveries; do it regularly or you will lose any made if killed since the last upload.

Encyclopaedia

This is where you can find details of all the creatures you have come across.

Money

Discovering new species also earns you Units – and rare or nocturnal species earn more – which can be put to use upgrading your suit, multi-tool, and spaceship, each of which can then enable more advanced, safer, or more long distance research.

Biochemistry

Certain elements are known to cycle through living organisms in NMS:

• Carbon is available from most binomial^def plants^def.
• Oxides and silicates are available from other binomial plants (although unlike mineral deposits, it is not yet clear if the proportion of these varies with the planet's specific geology).
• Carbon cycles through animals^def, some of which appear to liberate small quantities when they die.
• Some geovores^def eat mineral deposits directly and may liberate small quantities when they die.
• Some animals defecate certain minerals after being fed.

Physiology

Liquid medium

Terrestrial

We have already been presented with examples.

Aquatic

We have already been presented with examples.

A semi-aquatic animal

Semi-aquatic

We have already been presented with examples.

Nutrition

Carnivores

Before the game was released, we anticipated carnivorous energy derivation from both animals (including fishes) and plants.

Herbivores

Before the game was released, we anticipated herbivorous energy derivation, given multiple pre-release videos.

Geovores

Patch 1.03 introduced the ability for some animals to eat minerals.

Defecation

Patch 1.03 introduced the ability of some animals to defecate minerals.

Temperature

Cryophiles

Before the game was released, we had already seen footage including animals and vegetation living in temperatures below -163 °C.

Thermophiles

Before the game was released, we had already seen footage including animals and vegetation living in temperatures above 750 °C.

Morphology

All life forms so far encountered in NMS are large enough to assume they are multi-cellular. There is no clear evidence yet of single-cellular life forms.

We’ve already seen a huge range of external structures in animals, from horns and hooves, to skin colour, to wings and fins; in flora it includes trunks, branches, leaves, colours; all of which in due course need some kind of comparative analysis. (Anatomy deals with internal structures.)

A note on terminology: NMS only uses Earth as an analogy, but biology differs significantly enough that modified terminology is adopted in this Wiki. See the Glossary for more details regarding this site's decision to use a single suite of endings (-ped) for vertebrates and another (-pod) for invertebrates.

Crypsis

This is the propensity for an organism to avoid detection. We’ve seen examples of disruptive colouration in terrestrial vertebrates.

Gender

Whilst gender is critical to reproduction, it also has morphological consequences in animals at times.

Pathology

Trauma

We know that animals can be killed, sometimes with an associated dying call, and sometimes liberating a small quantity of a mineral.

Behaviour

Temperament

A number of pre-assigned temperaments affect the ways animals interact with each other and game characters.

Aggression

We have seen examples of aggression, passivity, and fleeing.

Learning

We have seen examples of evasion increasing amongst survivor animals after a killing.

Groups

We have seen examples of larger, smaller, tighter, and looser groups, as well as lone creatures.

Reproduction

We know that the creatures we see will be able to reproduce, but what that might entail we don't know. However, we are aware of a number of genders amongst the animals.

Cave living

We’ve seen troglobites (which live outside fluids).

Locomotion

Carnivorous plants are sessile (fixed) but able to actively reach out to attack prey.

The scope and scale of animal movement is extensive.

Crypsis

This is the propensity for an organism to avoid detection.

Nocturnality

Apparently some creatures will only be visible at night.

Predation

We have been told that planets range from those with none, to those with only predators.

Domestication

Notes about the zero day update released by Sean Murray make the following points:

Feeding – creatures now have their own diet, based on planet and climate. Feeding them correctly will yield different results per species, such as mining for you, protecting the player, becoming pets, alerting you to rare loot or pooping valuable resources.

Evolution

Whilst there are no indications that we can explore any planet’s paleontology, it does seem that animals will be able to breed and evolve.

Classification

The discoverer of most animals and larger plants is able to rename them. However, they come with binomial^def names already, and given that either name may be repeated within a single planetary system suggests evolutionary links between species, so we need to retain the original binomial in our classification structure (or taxonomy) and not use our own familiar names here.

(NB: Don't confuse mononomial^def mineral specimens with floral fungoids^def or faunal coralloids^def - another reason to avoid renaming specimens required to aid our taxonomy.)

A number of criteria are used to devise our NMS taxonomy. Those for its flora and fauna are slightly different and are explained on their respective pages.

This table is only a structure and does not extend to the species^def levels (i.e. it focuses on the beta taxonomy rather than the alpha taxonomy which focuses on identifying individual specimens). Experimental additions to beta taxonomy can be done and discussed on this page.

More details, with examples, are given in the relevant flora classification and fauna classification tables. Anomial^def organisms also belong in our taxonomy, but they will need to be named and those pages are where it can be done.

Kingdon	Division	Class	Order	Family
Flora
	Plants
		Binomial
			Carbon
				Bananoid Tree
				Blade
				Blade shrub
				Conifer tree
				Fan
				Fern
				Fern Tree
				Floss Shrub
				Floss Tree
				Flower
				Leafless tree
				Lobed
				Lobed Shrub
				Lobed Tree
				Luminescent
				Succulent Tree
			Carnivorous
				Whip
			Isotope
				Thamium9
			Oxide
				Zinc
			Silicate
				Platinum
			Utility
				Health
				Protection
				Shield
		Anomial
			Terrestrial
				Flower
				Bush
				Sward
			Subterranean
				Fern
				Lobed
				Luminescent
				Succulent
	Fungoids
		Terrestrial
			Commensal
				Ball
				Bracket
		Subterranean
			Detritus
				Bubbles
				Toadstool
Fauna
	Animal
		Invertebrate
			Anomial
				Flying
			Binomial
				Hexapoddef
				Octapoddef
				Decapoddef
		Vertebrate
			Binomial
				Fish
				Zeropeddef
				Monopeddef
				Bipeddef
				Tetrapeddef
				Auxiliary-winged tetraped
				Limb-winged tetraped
				Mixed-wing tetraped
				Hexapeddef
				Flying fish
	Coralloid

Ecology

It appears that any given planet has only minor variations around a single biome, including prevailing weather. Hence, we might expect ecosystems to function at very large levels on any given plant (e.g. water, land, caves, and air), although exceptions are worth keeping an eye out for (e.g. any difference between 'sea' and 'lake', or inter-stellar life forms), and all liquids are not necessarily water.

Food webs

Carnivores

We were made pre-aware of the existence of carnivores, both amongst animals and plants.