No Man's Sky Refining Recipes: Every Recipe That Matters (2026)

No Man’s Sky has two economies. The one you can see — units, ships, shopping — and the one that runs underneath: refining. Every serious unit or nanite income in the game passes through a refiner at some point, because refiners convert the cheap and abundant into the scarce and valuable while you are off doing something more interesting. The game currently ships with 358 refining recipes in its data, and almost all of them are intermediate steps. The ones with real leverage fit on this page.

Need the ones that don’t fit? The complete lookup lives in our refining database — all 358 recipes tabled and grouped by purpose, no interpretation.

Last updated: August 31, 2026, current through patch 6.50. The staged Cosmos rollout has not touched any recipe below. For what the money numbers mean, see money making; for nanites end to end, nanites farming; for the farm loops that feed off these tables, units farming.

The Three Refiners

Refiner	Power	Inputs	Role
Portable	Carbon fuel slot	1 input → 1 output	The field tool — deploy anywhere
Medium	Base power	2 input slots	The oxygen-catalyst loops
Large	Base power	3 input slots	Factory throughput

The portable refiner is a backpack appliance: craft it, drop it anywhere, feed it carbon, and it works through your input while you mine the next deposit. Medium and large refiners are base infrastructure — they need a powered base (the electrical guide covers that side) — and their extra slots unlock the real recipe book, because the strongest conversions use oxygen as a catalyst, and those all need two inputs.

Two mechanical notes before the tables. Refiners have input capacity limits per slot — load in batches and top up as they consume. And refiners pause, not fail: out of fuel or power they simply stop, contents intact, and resume when fed. A large refiner runs every recipe on this page; a portable only runs the one-input rows.

The Multiplier Loops

These are the recipes the whole refining economy hangs on. Each one returns more than it consumes, which means a stocked input grows every cycle:

Recipe	Output	The play
Chlorine x1 + Oxygen x2	Chlorine x6	The chlorine expansion loop — the classic unit printer
Ionised Cobalt x1 + Oxygen x2	Ionised Cobalt x6	Same loop, cobalt flavour — cobalt is in every cave
Condensed Carbon x1 + Oxygen x2	Condensed Carbon x6	Free fuel, sixfold — ends carbon mining forever
Carbon x2 + Oxygen x2	Condensed Carbon x5	The entry version, before you hold a stock
Salt x2 + Oxygen x2	Chlorine x5	Makes starter chlorine from beach salt
Cobalt x2 + Oxygen x2	Ionised Cobalt x5	Same, for cobalt
Di-hydrogen x30	Di-hydrogen Jelly x1	Half of the di-hydrogen cycle…
Di-hydrogen Jelly x1	Di-hydrogen x40	…and the other half: 30 in, 40 out, +10 free launch fuel per cycle
Platinum x1 + Oxygen x1	Magnetised Ferrite x10	The platinum trick — the best ore multiplier in the game
Any ore x1 + Chromatic Metal x1	Ore x2	Chromatic expansion duplicates copper, cadmium, emeril, indium, quartzite
Any plant x1 + Kelp Sac x1 + Condensed Carbon x1	Oxygen x10	Artificial photosynthesis — the refiner farms its own catalyst

The common thread: oxygen is the catalyst of the entire economy. Every x5/x6 loop burns it, so the real setup cost is an oxygen supply — a hotspot, the red oxide plants that grow everywhere, or kelp sacs refined with anything. Since stations stopped selling the stuff, the loops that farm their own oxygen are the ones that survive. What the output sells for per hour is the units farming question; the recipe never changed.

Nanite Refining: Every Source

One input each, so all of them run in a portable refiner. The ratios below are the complete list of nanite sources:

Input	Nanites out	Notes
Runaway Mould x5	1	~100 nanites/min/refiner community-tested; the mould loop is the passive king
Salvaged Data x1	15	From buried technology modules
Tainted Metal x1	2	From dissonant and corrupted worlds
Pugneum x25	1	From killing sentinels
Platinum x35	1	The slow way to spend a platinum surplus
Corrupted Ichor x5	1	From corrupted worlds
Larval Core x1	50	From whispering eggs at abandoned buildings — cores decay on the ground, grab fast
Hadal Core x1	50	The underwater twin of the larval core
Vile Spawn x1	50	Harmonic camp loot
Flesh Rope x1	50	Abandoned building loot
Radiant Shard x1	50	From crystalline entities
Inverted Mirror x1	95	Corrupted sentinel drops
Hyaline Brain x1	230	The harmonic brain — the biggest single refined payout
Silver x15 + Gold x15 + Platinum x25	1	An emergency valve, not a strategy
Faecium x1 + Hexite x1	1	Niche — only if you already hold both

The mould loop deserves its reputation: a full 9,999 mould stack becomes roughly 2,000 nanites per refiner, mould respawns when you teleport away and back, and the whole thing runs unattended. The nanites guide ranks refining against scrapping, packets, and derelicts; the sentinel multitool loop is where the corrupted-world inputs come from.

Alloys, Pearls, and Exotics Into Metals

The trade-desk section: turning crafted or looted valuables into base metals a recipe actually wants.

Breaking alloys — every latticed alloy refines back down into its precious-metal components at aggressive ratios:

Alloy	Refines into
Herox x1	Silver x250
Dirty Bronze x1	Silver x250
Aronium x1	Silver x250
Lemmium x1	Gold x125
Magno-gold x1	Gold x125
Grantine x1	Gold x125
Geodesite x1	Platinum x250
Iridesite x1	Platinum x250

Making alloys — the same trades in reverse, all large-refiner recipes. One row stands for the family (the third slot takes Tritium x20, Silver x20, Gold x10, or Platinum x5 interchangeably):

Alloy	Cheapest recipe
Herox	Ammonia x30 + Ionised Cobalt x30 + Tritium x20
Aronium	Paraffinium x30 + Ionised Cobalt x30 + Tritium x20
Dirty Bronze	Pyrite x30 + Pure Ferrite x60 + Tritium x20
Lemmium	Uranium x30 + Pure Ferrite x60 + Tritium x20
Magno-gold	Phosphorus x30 + Ionised Cobalt x30 + Tritium x20
Grantine	Dioxite x30 + Ionised Cobalt x30 + Tritium x20

Geodesite and Iridesite sit at the top of the tree, built from the alloys above. When a station terminal sells alloys below their refined-metal value, the break-down table is arbitrage; when you hold surplus local elements, the make-up table turns them into tradeable metal. Either direction, the refiner is the exchange desk.

The exotic conversions — looted valuables into base metals:

Input	Output
Living Pearl x1	Gold x100
Crystal Sulphide x1	Sodium Nitrate x50
Hypnotic Eye x1	Living Slime x50

Gases: The Exchange and the Components

The three atmospheric gases interconvert freely, which means no gas is ever the wrong one:

Recipe	Output	Notes
Any gas x3	Next gas x1	Sulphurine → Radon → Nitrogen → Sulphurine, in a wheel
Any gas x1 + Oxygen x1	Next gas x1	Oxygen halves the cost of the exchange
Any gas x1 + Chromatic Metal x1	Next gas x1	The chromatic-catalyst version
Any gas x100 + Carbon x20 + Salt x10	1 component	Enriched Carbon, Thermic Condensate, Nitrogen Salt — the craft-chain components

That last row is where refined gases leave the refiner and enter the crafting economy: one gas per trade good, consumed by the high-end craft chains in the money making guide.

The Everyday Conversions

The small stuff that smooths every session — all one-input rows, all portable-able:

Recipe	Output	Notes
Ferrite Dust x1	Pure Ferrite x1	The most-used conversion in the game
Carbon x2	Condensed Carbon x1	Denser fuel — before you run the x6 loop
Copper x2	Chromatic Metal x1	The metal that builds everything, including the Base Computer
Cadmium x2	Chromatic Metal x1	From red-star systems
Emeril x2	Chromatic Metal x3	From green-star systems — better yield
Indium x2	Chromatic Metal x4	From blue-star systems — best yield
Activated Copper / Cadmium / Emeril / Indium x1	Chromatic Metal x1 / x2 / x3 / x4	The activated variants are self-sufficient
Frost Crystal x40	Glass x1	The cold-planet crop’s whole purpose
Silicate Powder x40	Glass x1	Same ratio, diggable on any planet — no cold world needed
Any farmed plant x1	Carbon x2	Star bulb, gamma root, cactus flesh, solanium, fungal mould — all burn alike
Di-hydrogen x30	Di-hydrogen Jelly x1	Compress for storage, cycle for profit (see multipliers)

Yield note: the farther down the star-colour ladder your ore comes from, the more chromatic metal each refined batch pays. Ore never depletes, so an indigo/blue-star mining claim compounds forever.

Turning Recipes Into Units

Refining alone is a decent income. Refining feeding crafting is the real one: raw materials → refined components → crafted trade goods, each step multiplying value. The three classic loops all ride the tables above:

1. The chlorine loop — salt to starter chlorine, then the x6 expansion until the refiner bank is full; sell in three-star systems.
2. The chromatic ladder — blue-star ore into chromatic metal, chromatic expansion to double the ore, ore into metal again.
3. The component factory — gas collectors feeding sublimation components feeding the stasis-device chains.

The consistent theme: never sell what a refiner can upgrade first. Raw ore sells as raw ore forever; the same ore walked two steps down a recipe chain sells as technology. The full strategy, with the farm-base setups that feed it, is in money making.

Building the Refining Base

The refinery base has a shape, and it is the same for everyone:

• A powered room — medium and large refiners on the grid (power guide).
• Storage adjacency — inputs and outputs beside the machines, in the numbered containers: ores in one number, refined goods in the next.
• A teleporter at the door — the base is a stop on your loop, in and out in minutes.
• An oxygen hotspot nearby — the catalyst for every multiplier loop on this page, piped in through supply pipes if you can.
• Optional: cultivation — frost crystal and other growable inputs within walking distance of the refiners.

Three large refiners, a teleporter, and a full storage wall is the entire factory, and it fits in one cuboid room. The returns compound for the rest of the save.

Rules of Thumb

• Never idle a refiner at your base — power is free once the grid is up; an empty refiner is an unused income.
• Refine before selling, always — the two-step rule that separates rich saves from busy ones.
• Batch, top up, collect — respect the slot limits; top up inputs as they drain rather than babysitting.
• Collect before you log off — refiners pause safely, but the habit removes the risk entirely.
• Run the multiplier loops before the mine runs out — a x6 loop doubles down on itself; a deposit does not.

Refining is No Man’s Sky’s quiet answer to “how do I afford all of this”: a system that works while you don’t. Set up the room once, keep the machines fed, and the unit and nanite problems quietly solve themselves in the background of every expedition.