Indium Drive is easy to miss entirely and awkward to look up once you have, which is a common combination in No Man's Sky.

Short answer

Short version — it is exactly what it looks like, and the confusion comes from a similarly named thing nearby.

  • Ask what it is for before asking how to get it.
  • Note where it first appears, so you can go back if you need to.
  • Prefer the in-game option over an external tool when both exist.

No Man's Sky has been rewritten by updates so many times that old guides describe a different game. The wiki entry is thorough and buries the actually useful part six paragraphs down. Its role has changed across updates, so older discussion describes something slightly different.

What to do once you have it

It helps to understand why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation is slightly different. The game introduces it quickly and assumes you picked it up, which is where the confusion starts. The name is descriptive if you already know what it does, and opaque if you do not. There is usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing.

It is more consequential in the late game than the early one, which is why first impressions mislead. Early impressions of it are usually wrong in the same specific way. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it.

Why people keep asking about it

The in-game description is technically accurate and practically useless. Its practical value is narrow and real, rather than broad and theoretical. Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see.

  • Do not build a plan around it before you have seen it work.
  • Do not confuse it with the similarly named thing — that mix-up drives most bad advice.
  • If a menu path does not exist for you, your build is older or newer than the one described.
  • Read the in-game description once, then ignore it.
  • It rewards attention rather than preparation.

How it connects to the rest of No Man's Sky

Most guides mention it in passing and none of them stop to define it. Two similarly named things exist, and mixing them up explains a lot of contradictory advice. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds. It rewards understanding rather than grinding, which is unusual for No Man's Sky.

Knowing this does not make you better at No Man's Sky, but it does make the rest of it legible. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on. It became noticeably more relevant after a change the patch notes barely mentioned.

Common misunderstandings

If you only remember one thing about it, remember where it appears. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why. Community shorthand around it has drifted far enough from the original meaning to cause arguments.

Whether it is worth going out of your way for depends entirely on how you are playing. Everything below is framed around the current state of No Man's Sky rather than a launch-week impression. It is the kind of thing veterans forget they ever had to learn.

What it is

It shows up in more places than its introduction suggests, once you know to look. A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later. It appears in supplementary material in more detail than it does in the game itself.

Where people go wrong

  • Treating a rare edge case as the normal behaviour and planning around it.
  • Skipping the prerequisite because it looked optional in someone else's summary.
  • Downloading a helper tool for something the game already does in its own menu.

No Man's Sky FAQ

Where can I read more?

The official material covers it in more depth than the game does, and considerably more reliably than aggregated fan pages.

Why do people disagree about it?

Usually because they are describing different versions, and occasionally because a similarly named thing exists alongside it.

Has it changed recently?

Its role has shifted across updates more than once. Anything you read without a version attached may describe an older form of it.

Is this still accurate after the latest No Man's Sky update?

The method is; individual numbers may not be. If a value on your screen differs, trust the screen and keep the sequence.

If you only take one thing from this: the answer near the top is the part that matters, the rest is context.