No Man’s Sky: How to Fly Faster

Flying Faster – No Man’s Sky

Flying in No Man’s Sky can be really fun, but it can also be very time consuming. To make the prospect of exploring space a touch more realistic, Hello Games placed planets hours apart. And we don’t mean video game hours that pass in a matter of minutes. We’re talking legit, real world, set your alarm hours. Thankfully, there are ways to speed up your ship and fly faster so you can get to your destination in seconds rather than hours.

The first is to use your thrusters as you fly. Holding R2 will increase your Starship’s speed. You won’t suddenly teleport or anything, but its substantially faster than your base speed. Still, it’s pretty darn slow when you’re out in the great expanse of the universe, even if it gets the job done when you’re planet side. For that you’ll want to use your boost.

Holding down Circle activates your Starship’s boost, drastically increasing your speed. A trip that would have taken hours will now only take a handful of minutes as you send your bucket of bolts hurtling towards an unknown planet without a care in the world. You need to be careful though. Your ship is harder to steer when using boost and you can do some serious damage to your hull if you run into any obstacles.

While boost is several times faster than your max thrusters, there is one final option that leaves the other two eating its space dust. Activating your Pulse Drive (pressing R1 + L1) will get you to your destination the fastest, although there are a few rules. It cannot be used while on a planet or too close to a planet, it cannot be used when too close to a Space Station, and it cannot be activated while in combat. As long as none of the above is stopping you, though, you can cut every trip down to a matter of seconds.

Need more help with No Man’s Sky? Check out our robust wiki full of guides and tips!