# Multi-tools

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/

Sentinel and Voltaic Staff tie for the best damage in the game at +50%; Atlantid owns mining at +50%; Experimental and Royal have a fixed +100% scan. Pistols have no damage bonus at any class.

## Types

| Type | Damage | Mining | Scan | Slots at spawn | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Pistol | +0% | +20-35% | +40-50% | 9-18 | Your starter. Literally no damage bonus at any class - that is why it feels the way it does. |
| Rifle | +15-20% | +0% | +15-20% | 13-30 | No mining bonus at all. |
| Experimental | +15-25% | +25-30% | +100% fixed | 9-30 | Scan is always exactly +100%, whatever the class. |
| Alien | +25-35% | +15-20% | +50-60% | 9-30 | The best scan outside the two fixed-100% types. |
| Royal | +15-25% | +25-30% | +100% fixed | always 20 | Only type with a fixed slot count. |
| Sentinel | +25-50% | +10-15% | +40-50% | 17-30 | Best damage in the game, tied with the Voltaic Staff. Carries the Hijacker Laser; only two design variants. |
| Atlantid | +10-20% | +35-50% | +40-50% | 17-30 | Best mining in the game. The Runic Lens triples mining beam efficiency and grants temporary invisibility. |
| Voltaic Staff | +25-50% | +10-15% | +40-50% | 17-30 | Ties the Sentinel for best damage. |

## Weapons

| Weapon | Like a | Best hit | Good | Bad |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Scatter Blaster | shotgun | 2,170 | Excellent damage, one-shots some enemies; the pick for derelict freighters | Almost useless at range, hard to control held down |
| Neutron Cannon | charge cannon | 1,600 | Area of effect, hits several enemies, charges with Carbon rather than ammo | Must hold to charge for real damage |
| Blaze Javelin | sniper | 1,184 x2 | 1-2 second stun, charges with Carbon | Slow between shots, poor close range against groups |
| Bolt Caster | burst fire | 657 | A great all-rounder, good at all ranges, excellent reload. The only weapon Sentinel and Autophage upgrades work with | Lowest damage per shot |
| Pulse Splitter | full auto | 284 | Fire rate shreds, bonus fire damage | Chews through ammo, kicks on trigger pull |
| Paralysis Mortar | secondary - stun | - | Strong against big enemies like Sentinel Walkers; its one upgrade also works with the Blaze Javelin. Reloads with Unstable Plasma | Only one upgrade helps it, and it takes no adjacency bonus |
| Plasma Launcher | secondary - explosive | - | Great against groups, and it does take adjacency upgrades | The explosion is timed, not on impact - it bounces back at you. Mid-to-long range only |

## Getting one

- **Sentinel** (free): Harmonic Camp on a dissonant planet. Solve the sealed-cabinet puzzle at the camp terminal. Best tool available early.
- **Royal** (free): Sentinel Pillar terminals. Always spawns with 20 slots.
- **Atlantid** (free): Korvax Monolith Discordant Interfaces. Charge with Atlantideum. The interfaces ignore you until the mission They Who Returned is complete.
- **Voltaic Staff** (Void Motes): Autophage Synthesis Terminals. Buy the parts and assemble. The same head at the same terminal always produces the same class and colour - to reroll, assemble at a different terminal.
- **Alien / Experimental** (units): Space station cabinets in wealthy systems. Wealthy systems have the highest S-class chance, and every station has two cabinets. Use the rotation trick.

### The free S-class Sentinel tool, step by step

1. Go to the camp's terminal, not the container.
2. Choose Scan Memory Registers - you get three addition problems, e.g. 4+11, 2+7, 3+1.
3. Choose Input Override Glyphs and enter the three answers (15, 9, 4). The glyphs are numbered.
4. Order does not matter - only the three correct numbers.
5. Deactivate the multi-tool seal, then take the tool from the container.

- It arrives with broken nodes: repair with Radiant Shards and Atlantideum, the purple crystals on the same planet. Radiant Shards also refine to 50 nanites each.
- At the 6 active tool cap you must exchange, not acquire - decide which one dies before walking in.
- Strip the old tool first: Y (Xbox) / Triangle (PlayStation) on installed tech picks it back up, Terrain Manipulator included. You lose nothing by swapping.
- The same dissonance spikes also mark crashed Sentinel ships, so stack the trip.

### The cabinet rotation trick

1. Visit a planet in the system.
2. Save and reload on the planet's surface.
3. Return to the space station - both cabinets have changed.

One cabinet pulls from the planetary pool, the other from the station's own rotation, which scales with the planet count. A six-planet system can offer up to 12 designs at one station.

### Hunting a specific tool from a location guide

1. Get to the right galaxy (for Eissentam: featured bases at the Anomaly, a hub player, or the Artemis questline's green choice).
2. Turn multiplayer OFF before you portal - the tool instance is shared, and if someone else grabs it first it is gone for everyone.
3. Dial the portal address.
4. Look for a communication station marking the spot, or navigate to the published coordinates.
5. At the settlement, get out of your ship and reload the autosave that just triggered - the tool appears in the cabinet after the reload.
6. You still pay for it. The worked example cost 7.5 million units.

## Tips

### Damage Potential is not damage output

It rolls up the installed weapons and damage tech, including the mining beam, and you can only fire one weapon at a time. There is no DPS readout anywhere in the game; the only real measurement is shooting something and reading the numbers. It is still the best measuring stick you have - strip the loadout to one thing and add pieces one at a time to watch the delta.

### Adjacency runs horizontally and vertically, never diagonally

Group same-weapon-type upgrades together; a coloured border means the bonus is live. The bonus takes the class of the lowest member of the pair, so an A next to an S gives an A-class bonus. Some upgrades give no adjacency at all - no border ever appears, so stop trying to fit them into the block.

### Supercharged slots want to be a 2x2 block

Four in a square all feed each other because adjacency is horizontal and vertical only; four in a line or scattered do not. This is fixed at spawn and is the single thing that separates a great tool from an average one - it is what to look for when hunting.

### Supercharge the weapon itself

The weapon shows no visible stats, so the slot looks wasted. Swapping the weapon out for an A-class upgrade dropped a loadout from 24,000 to 14,000. Worth testing yourself: this rests on the Damage Potential number, and part of the community argues the opposite.

### Put the Optical Drill in a supercharged slot

It boosts efficiency by 88%, nearly doubling mining output - one of the strongest early upgrades in the game.

### Add the ordinary Mining Laser to a Sentinel tool

Alongside the Sentinel's own laser it takes Damage Potential from 469 to 1,164 with no weapons installed, slows overheating and massively boosts mining.

### Scanner Range above ~700 is wasted

The game does not display critical survival resources beyond roughly a 600-unit radius even with Scanner Range over 2,000.

### You do not need X-class

X-class rolls come from pirate/outlaw station vendors and are a lottery - they can come out worse than C. The right tool with a good supercharged arrangement and the best S-class upgrades handles anything the game throws at you.

### Do not rush slot expansion

Each slot costs progressively more, eventually 600 million units, and filling one tool with units alone runs past 10 billion. Saved Multi-tool Expansion Slots are worth hundreds of millions each. Upgrade class with nanites first: max slots are C 21, B 30, A 45, S 60.

### There is no need to chase a natural S-class

Any tool upgrades to S at the station Upgrade Station with nanites. Pick a design you like and upgrade it yourself.

### You can hold 6 active and 18 archived

The archive is reached through a Weapon Rack - buildable on a base, a corvette or a freighter. Salvage unwanted tools at the Anomaly's Decommissioning Terminal, which can even return Expansion Slots.

## Where upgrades come from

- **Craftable**: Blueprints learned at the Anomaly. Max 3-4 per weapon; some add utility rather than damage
- **Purchased**: Multi-tool vendor at any space station. Max 3 per weapon, C to B to A to S
- **X-class**: Space stations in pirate/outlaw systems. Random roll - can beat S-class or come out worse than C
- **Sentinel / Autophage**: Extract Components on Salvaged Glass from dead Sentinels. On the multi-tool side these only work with the Bolt Caster

## Upgrade order

1. Mining beam first: Advanced Mining Laser (unlocks advanced deposits and Radiant Shards on dissonant worlds), then Optical Drill.
2. Scanner upgrades - they directly improve exploration income.
3. One main weapon with proper upgrades, for when fighting is unavoidable.
4. Stick to one primary and one secondary; spreading upgrades across weapons wastes slots.

Portal addresses for these tools: [portals](portals.md). Source: Hand-written from the Suika Box guides 05.multi-tools.md and 21.multitool-damage.md, which in turn come from OODA Looper, Shirty, Jason Plays and Xaine's World. None of this is in the recipe tables the rest of the app is generated from.