If you have run into Join Friend in No Man's Sky and moved on without quite understanding it, this is the explanation.

Short answer

It is worth understanding once properly, because a lot of other things in No Man's Sky refer back to it.

  • Expect its role to have shifted at least once across updates.
  • Check which version of No Man's Sky any discussion of it is describing.
  • If a menu path does not exist for you, your build is older or newer than the one described.

No Man's Sky has been rewritten by updates so many times that old guides describe a different game. It became noticeably more relevant after a change the patch notes barely mentioned. It is more consequential in the late game than the early one, which is why first impressions mislead.

Why people keep asking about it

There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you. If you only remember one thing about it, remember where it appears. It is the kind of thing veterans forget they ever had to learn. It helps to understand why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation is slightly different.

It rewards understanding rather than grinding, which is unusual for No Man's Sky. The name is descriptive if you already know what it does, and opaque if you do not. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it.

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

Early impressions of it are usually wrong in the same specific way. It shows up in more places than its introduction suggests, once you know to look. Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration.

  • Treat wiki trivia sections as trivia rather than mechanics.
  • Read the in-game description once, then ignore it.
  • Expect one number in every guide to be out of date; the method is what matters.
  • Do not confuse it with the similarly named thing — that mix-up drives most bad advice.
  • Ask what it is for before asking how to get it.
  • Region and platform change more than people expect, so confirm both.

Common misunderstandings

Most guides mention it in passing and none of them stop to define it. The wiki entry is thorough and buries the actually useful part six paragraphs down. Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows. There is a persistent myth attached to it that has never been true in any version.

It appears in supplementary material in more detail than it does in the game itself. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about. Knowing this does not make you better at No Man's Sky, but it does make the rest of it legible.

What to do once you have it

Two similarly named things exist, and mixing them up explains a lot of contradictory advice. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first. The game introduces it quickly and assumes you picked it up, which is where the confusion starts.

Its practical value is narrow and real, rather than broad and theoretical. Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. Whether it is worth going out of your way for depends entirely on how you are playing.

How it has changed over time

Community shorthand around it has drifted far enough from the original meaning to cause arguments. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over. The in-game description is technically accurate and practically useless.

Where people go wrong

  • Trusting a video thumbnail that promises a result the video never actually shows.
  • 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

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.

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.

Do I need any mods or third-party tools for this?

No. Everything described here works with the base game on any supported platform.

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 join friend stops being a question you have to look up again.