The No Man’s Sky Trade Rocket offers a new way to sell your items on pesky planets. Added in Update 4.0: Waypoint, the new rocket is also one of the only truly new items added with the patch, but it’s both visually eye-catching and very useful. You might want to unlock, craft, and use it for yourself soon! So, let’s take a look at exactly that. Here’s how to get the NMS Trade Rocket!
Despite its name and even visual design, the Trade Rocket is not a consumable. It’s a piece of equipment tied to the Technology category at the top of your Exosuit inventory. Similar to a Personal Refiner. Due to changes in the Waypoint update, the Trade Rocket can only be installed in this section. It’s impossible to craft in the newly condensed Cargo category.
Of course, you first need to unlock the Trade Rocket blueprint. As is so often the case you can mostly easily find this on the Space Anomaly: in the backroom containing various NPCs that sell blueprints for your Exosuit, starship, and more. You want to speak with Iteration: Selene, otherwise known as the Exosuit upgrade vendor. They’re the blue, reptilian character standing to the lefthand side of the room as you enter.
Selene will sell you the Trade Rocket blueprint for a pittance of 90 Nanite Clusters. Though you first need to have unlocked the Haz-Mat Gauntlet. I highly recommend doing this even if you don’t want the Trade Rocket; you need the Haz-Mat Gauntlet to gather various useful materials. Perhaps most notably Storm Crystals.
Constructing the Trade Rocket in your Exosuit suit will set you back two Wiring Looms, 90 Di-hydrogen, and 120 Tritium. All of which are exceptionally easy to get. Wiring Looms are sold at Galactic Trade Terminals pretty much everywhere in the game while Tritium can be mined from asteroids. You can get Di-hydrogen from any planet, in the form of blue crystals on the ground.
Tritium can also be refined directly into Di-hydrogen (though not vice versa). This will save you a trip if you already have a Personal Refiner or a Refiner Room on your freighter.
In fact, it’s not a bad idea to have a Personal Refiner anyway. It’s always been a very useful device, but that goes double with the Trade Rocket installed. The reason being: the Trade Rocket uses Tritium as fuel. Just as your Hazard Protection can use Sodium and your Life Support can use Oxygen. Tritium, however, cannot usually be found on a planet’s surface. Di-hydrogen, as I already explained, can. Meaning you can save yourself the hassle of carrying Tritium around. The resource is mostly used to refuel starships and craft Frigate Fuel — not something you need on the ground.
This all becomes a bit moot once you build a Matter Beam for your freighter and store some Tritium there. That takes time, however, so newer players (or those on newer saves) can rely on the Personal Refiner instead. Like I said: it’s useful anyway!
Back to the subject of the Trade Rocket itself, using it is fairly simple. You “summon” each rocket the same way you call your starship or any other vehicle. Just open the Quick Menu (X on a keyboard or down on the D-pad with a controller) and pick the “Summon Vehicles” icon. Then scroll from left to right until you see the Trade Rocket for selection. It should be the option farthest to the right — past the “Select Other Ship” button.
Finally, pick an appropriate Trade Rocket landing zone. The holographic image of the rocket should turn from red to green when it can land somewhere safely. Just like in the screenshot above.
It takes a few seconds, but the NMS Trade Rocket will eventually land exactly where you put it. Though it might fall down in the process… That’s fine! You just have to be able to interact with it using the action button like you would any cargo container. Doing so opens up a new menu — one in which you can place up to 10 stacks of items for sale. Put whatever you want on the rocket and, finally, press the “Launch Rocket” button beneath the inventory menu.
The device will drunkenly fly off into space to sell your products at this point. You don’t need to wait for the animation to play out, though. The cargo’s total value in Units, which is listed in the “Launch Rocket” button when you press it, should deposit into your inventory instantly.
And that’s it! You’ll be just a little bit richer in No Man’s Sky and, more importantly, make room in your inventory without needing to just discard unwanted goods. Congratulations on your new Trade Rocket skills!
