No Man's Sky Jetpacks — What It Does and Where It Fits

Jetpacks comes up constantly in No Man's Sky discussion, usually without anyone stopping to explain it.

No Man's Sky has been rewritten by updates so many times that old guides describe a different game. There is a persistent myth attached to it that has never been true in any version. Most guides mention it in passing and none of them stop to define it.

Whether it is worth going out of your way for

Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional. Its practical value is narrow and real, rather than broad and theoretical. It is the kind of thing veterans forget they ever had to learn. Everything below is framed around the current state of No Man's Sky rather than a launch-week impression.

It rewards understanding rather than grinding, which is unusual for No Man's Sky. Its role has changed across updates, so older discussion describes something slightly different. The developers have changed their mind about this at least once, which explains the older advice.

Where you encounter it

The in-game description is technically accurate and practically useless. The name is descriptive if you already know what it does, and opaque if you do not. There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you.

• Treat wiki trivia sections as trivia rather than mechanics.
• It rewards attention rather than preparation.
• Expect one number in every guide to be out of date; the method is what matters.
• Read the in-game description once, then ignore it.

What it is often confused with

It appears in supplementary material in more detail than it does in the game itself. The game introduces it quickly and assumes you picked it up, which is where the confusion starts. There is usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing. It shows up in more places than its introduction suggests, once you know to look.

Knowing this does not make you better at No Man's Sky, but it does make the rest of it legible. Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. If you only remember one thing about it, remember where it appears.

What it is

Early impressions of it are usually wrong in the same specific way. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds. Two similarly named things exist, and mixing them up explains a lot of contradictory advice.

It is more consequential in the late game than the early one, which is why first impressions mislead. Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. The wiki entry is thorough and buries the actually useful part six paragraphs down.

How it has changed over time

It became noticeably more relevant after a change the patch notes barely mentioned. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why. Whether it is worth going out of your way for depends entirely on how you are playing.

Where people go wrong

• Changing five things at once and then not knowing which one helped.
• Trusting a video thumbnail that promises a result the video never actually shows.
• Assuming a guide from an older season still describes the current version.

No Man's Sky FAQ

What if none of this works for me?

Then something in your setup differs from the assumption — version, region or platform. Check those three before anything else.

How long does this take?

Minutes if it goes cleanly, an evening if you hit the edge case in the caveats list. Neither is unusual.

Is it important?

More than its screen time implies, less than the discussion around it implies. Somewhere in the middle.

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.

Work through it in the order above and jetpacks stops being a question you have to look up again.