At the beginning of last week, Indian farming was one of the easiest ways to make a lot of money in No Man’s Sky. Players would find a depot, drop a bunch of simulacrums, and surround it with storage containers. The sci-fi ore entered. All they had to do was exchange it at a terminal for about 1,000 units a piece. But no more. The last Waypoint update made commercial farming a thing of the past, and the robber barons of No Man’s Sky are pouring one over their now-useless monuments to interstellar capitalist excess.
“I spent a lot of time building AI mines that could give me completely unnecessary levels of income,” wrote a player named TheOneGingerman on the No Man’s Sky subreddit. “This upgrade has reduced the amount of revenue they generate, but I’m honestly fine with that. The mines I built were more of an exercise in what I could generate than what I needed to generate.”
No Man’s Sky is a beautiful space simulator that lets you explore millions of different worlds at your leisure. You can build bases, explore, fight pirates and even form galactic councils. While some players go to space to escape the shackles of the modern market, others venture there to embrace it. Some established lucrative trade routes. Others plundered rival frigates. And more than a few took to farming some of the most profitable materials in the galaxy.
For a long time, Activated Indium was one such reliable money maker. It could only be found on planets orbiting blue stars. It could be refined into a packaging material or sold as a commodity on the open market for a whopping 949 units. No Man’s Sky’s economy had unlimited demand, so players met it with an almost unlimited supply and shared images of their large farming projects on social media. They built everything from platforms shaped like nuclear reactors to giant floating space bridges.
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“[This is] my first pretty big activated Indian farm,” ItSmellsLikeJim wrote on the subreddit last month, sharing screenshots showing massive stacks of ore extractors attached to a series of large buildings and associated infrastructure. “20,000 h/ 120,000 of storage. The overhead supply line is operational. Just like performing surgery by running them, without diminished returns. Take one if you want.” Players were drowning in activated Indio, so they were generous and gave it away to random strangers. These new players could use the seed funds to upgrade their ship, travel the galaxy or build your own farms. Some farms produced millions of units every day. Others made billions.
A player who goes by nmskibbles built his “Fallout Farm” over two years ago on an “extremely radiated” and “brutal” planet. That’s usually where the good stuff is, he told Kotaku. No Man’s Sky didn’t have cross-play at the time, so he built the exact same farm on PS4 so players there could benefit as well. how long did it take “About 10 hours of cable failure,” he wrote on Reddit at the time.
That all changed when the “Waypoint” update streamlined much of the game on October 7th. Players soon discovered that the price of Indium had dropped to just 165 units per piece. Even more serious, the manufacturer Hello Games also reduced the efficiency of drilling. Where once players could stack hundreds of extractors on top of each other, they now suffered diminishing returns for each additional facility built on top of the same tank. Some players have estimated that their farming operations now take 50 percent longer to harvest the same amount of indium.
“Really disappointing since I’ve worked incredibly hard to make some absolutely massive AI farms that I guess are now useless?” GalaxyGalavander wrote in the subreddit. “Unfortunately, I built an activated indy farm a day before the 4.0 release, which nerfed it, so I’m only getting eight million units every 26 hours, which isn’t great considering I can get eight million storm crystal units in less than 25 minutes.” wrote Actual_Material_5915.
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Some of No Man’s Sky’s biggest employers are effectively treating the latest market crash as a massive reset. While some are mourning their now-almost-useless Indian farms, many are also relieved to have new worlds to conquer. “Indium prices activated after the update made other ways to make units interesting again,” KashKaroon told Kotaku. “Now I’m back to old school methods like gathering storm crystals and ancient bones, I’ve also gone back to farming plants to craft items like circuit boards, living glass, and liquid explosives. I used to really enjoy those aspects before Activated Indium made them a bit redundant. I’m glad they gave them some purpose again.”
However, money never sleeps, even in No Man’s Sky. Plenty of players who hit big in the Indian boom are already scrambling to find a new market to pour their billions into. While some lean heavily towards crystal, others look to stasis and chlorine devices. “You should do the chlorine scam,” Important-Position93 suggested on the subreddit. “Set up a couple of oxygen farms and expand the chlorine with oxy. I make about 1 billion a day with just a few hours of work.”
But the most lucrative mineral in the face of the fall in Activated Indium seems to be gold. At least until the next nerf. It’s currently worth about 350 units each, which is wracking some players’ brains because unlike Indium, which requires a “blue star” solar system, gold can be found anywhere. “They nerfed indi farms, so now everyone will have the not-so-fun job of rebuilding their farms as gold farms, since those are the best,” Redditor Lenat complained. “They should at least make the AI better than gold so people don’t have to rebuild. But it looks like this update is all about starting from scratch.”
Read more: Right now is a good time to jump into no man’s sky
Among its many changes and additions, the Waypoint update introduced a new Relaxed Mode that players can turn on to adventure with minimal danger and grinding. You can even drop the price of every item in the game to zero. While those who want a challenge can turn up the difficulty for a more survival-oriented experience, this “creation mode” backdrop has left some No Man’s Sky capitalists in search of a new reason to play
“Your incredibly hard work can now be replicated by anyone in minutes; for balance reasons they tell me,” wrote LastPint508. “Idk, the patch made one of my spare ships worth half a million, I sold the thing, the money is meaningless now.