# How to read NMSii

Generated 2026-10-17. Data: No Man's Sky Cosmos 7.06 (build 180836), extracted from the game files on 2026-10-17. Interactive version: https://nmsii.dlu.one/

NMSii, the No Man's Sky Items Interface, is one dataset with several ways in:
the website (installable as an app that works offline), a terminal app, an MCP
server for AI assistants, and markdown.
All of them read the same data: every recipe, batch time and base value comes
from the game's own recipe table, not a wiki. These markdown pages are the
site's content as text; item IDs are the game's own, and every item has a page
at `md/items/<ID>.md`.

## Reading the columns

- **Mult**: units out per unit in. `x6 loop` means the recipe feeds itself:
  1 Chlorine + 2 Oxygen -> 6 Chlorine multiplies the seed six times, the only
  kind of recipe that grows a stack out of nothing.
- **Time**: one batch, from the game files. The in-game display is often wrong.
- **Machine**: Portable/Personal refiner (1 input), Medium (2), Large (3); the
  Nutrient Processor ("Processor") cooks.
- **Rate**: units of output per hour with one machine kept fed.
- **Profit**: the base-value difference across one batch, in units. It says
  nothing about nanites; those get their own page.
- **Gettable**: how reachable the hardest ingredient is. `T0/T1/T2 +n` means
  refinable from the Tier 0 / 1 / 2 source set, n refining steps away
  (`T0 raw` is something you pick up). `needs seed` means refinable, but
  wanting a material none of those tiers contain, typically a stellar metal you
  need two units of, ever. `loot (easy|medium|hard|unknown)` means no recipe
  makes it, with how much of a detour the guides make it sound.

## Source tiers

What the chain planner and the Gettable column count as free:

- **Tier 0 - any planet**: Carbon, Di-hydrogen, Ferrite Dust, Oxygen, Sodium
- **Tier 1 - + asteroids**: Carbon, Di-hydrogen, Ferrite Dust, Gold, Oxygen, Platinum, Silver, Sodium, Tritium
- **Tier 2 - + harvester**: Carbon, Di-hydrogen, Ferrite Dust, Gold, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Platinum, Silver, Sodium, Tritium

## The chain planner

It works backwards from a target item to a source set. The recipe table is an
AND-OR graph: an item can come from any one of several recipes, but a recipe
needs all of its inputs. The planner runs Knuth's generalisation of Dijkstra
over it: settle the cheapest item, then relax every recipe whose inputs are now
all settled. Cost is **refiner-seconds per unit of output**, with source items
free, so for each item it keeps the one recipe that ties a machine up for the
least time, not the one with the fewest steps.

The plan for N of an item walks those choices from the target down: batches =
ceil(need / units per batch), each ingredient needed batches x its count, until
it reaches a source item (gather it) or an item nothing in the set makes (find
it). Machine time is the sum of batch time x batches over every step, on one
refiner, unattended. By default it uses refining recipes only; allowing cooking
adds the Nutrient Processor's.

Each item page shows the cheapest chain for one unit, from the narrowest tier
that reaches it. On the site, `https://nmsii.dlu.one/#/chain/<ID>` plans any quantity from any
tier.

## Nanites

Nanites (item `TECHFRAG`) are the second currency, and a units column misleads
about them. The nanite page ranks every route by nanites per hour on one
refiner kept fed; "per item" is nanites per unit of input consumed, and "value
spent" the base value of one batch's inputs.

## Cooking

Every cooked product grants a temporary buff and multiplies base value, so the
dish you eat is the dish you sell: cook the batch, eat one, sell the rest.
Potency is the game's own 0-1 quality rating for the buff; uplift is what one
batch adds over its ingredients' value.

## Storage

From the storage guide's section 10: ten numbered containers plus single-purpose
stores, one home per item, so the game's auto-routing ("send to storage") sorts
everything once one of each item is in its container. The rules match the
guide's named items first, then families by the game's subtitle and type; the
first match wins, and no match means 9 - Inbox. Some items are better sold,
junked or used at once.

## Inventory

The site's inventory page (kept in the browser only) lists what the items you
carry make right now, and the recipes you are one ingredient short of. It has
no markdown version: it depends on what you type in.

## Data

- `https://nmsii.dlu.one/data.json`: everything above as one JSON bundle, described by
  `https://nmsii.dlu.one/data.schema.json`.
- Source and issue tracker: https://github.com/rdlu/nms-items-interface