How to visit an Atlas Station in No Man’s Sky

When No Man’s Sky first launched, it was easy to find an Atlas Station. All you had to do was travel through three systems, and you’d be greeted by one. After several major updates, though, it’s now a bit more complicated. This guide explains how you find and visit an Atlas Station.

How to visit an Atlas Station

While you can stumble across Atlas Stations randomly around the galaxy in No Man’s Sky, there’s also a clear path that results in you visiting one. First, you need to fly around systems scanning for incoming signals. Eventually, you’ll be greeted with a distress signal from Artemis. This is the start of the Artemis questline. Follow the location you’re given for Artemis’s ship, and soon you’ll be contacted by some mysterious beings, Nada and Polo.

As soon as you fly back up to space, the Anomaly will warp into existence before your eyes. Fly to the Anomaly and talk to everyone you can. At the top of the stairs, you’ll find Nada and Polo. Follow the Artemis questline for a little longer here and visit the required vendors. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be tasked with speaking to Nada once more.

The conversation you have leads to several choices. First, you must choose to ask about the “Crimson Liar” and then ask about “Atlas.” After this, you’ll be told to go back to your ship and out into space. When you do, enter the galaxy map, and you’ll be given a new waypoint, one for an Atlas Station.

From here, you’re free to do what you want. If you want to get to the Atlas Station as soon as possible, warp directly to the system in the galaxy map and fly to it. Atlas Stations are different from Space Stations and have a red indicator while you’re flying around in space. You’ll be able to spot one because it looks like a black diamond in space with a red opening.

To successfully visit the Atlas Station, fly to it and enter it. Once inside, you can interact with the station, get some warp cores, and choose whether or not to follow the path of the Atlas. If you do, you’ll be given a Captured Nanode, the blueprint for an Atlas Seed.

Once you’ve visited the Anomaly, you’ll be able to summon it from the in-game menu. You can also do this if you’re playing on a save file that was started for a past Expedition. So don’t worry about finding the Anomaly. If you can summon it, you’ll still be able to advance this questline.

What are Atlas Stations?

Without spoiling the game’s story too much, Atlas Stations house one of 11 Atlas Interfaces. You’ll need to interact with all of them to complete the Atlas questline, the result of which allows you to travel through black holes.

There are two main reasons to visit Atlas Stations. The first is obviously to progress and complete the Atlas questline. The second is as part of an Expedition. For example, in No Man’s Sky Expedition Beachhead, one of the milestones required players to visit an Atlas Station. Therefore, knowing how to visit one quickly will help you progress in future Expeditions with similar milestones.