Part of the series:
- No Man's Sky Creatures & Companions Guide: Hub for pets, breeding, mounts, and discovery.
- How to Get a Companion Pet: Adopt your first companion before breeding.
Quick Answer
- Registered companions can lay eggs over time when well fed and cared for.
- Collect the egg, then hatch it or edit it first at the Egg Sequencer on the Space Anomaly.
- The Egg Sequencer lets you adjust weight/height, color, temperament, and splice genes.
- Each modification consumes an item and stacks with previous edits.
- Hatched creatures are tamed from birth and can be adopted as new companions.
Overview
Breeding companions adds a creative layer to No Man's Sky's fauna system. Instead of searching the galaxy for the perfect creature, you can grow your own. Eggs inherit traits from the parent companion, and the Egg Sequencer lets you push those traits in new directions, making creatures larger, smaller, calmer, more aggressive, or simply a different color.
How Companions Lay Eggs
A registered companion can produce an egg if its needs are met. Keep the companion's satiety gauge in the green by feeding it regularly, and spend time with it to maintain trust. Over time, the companion will lay an egg that you can collect from the ground near it.
Not every interaction guarantees an egg, but consistent care produces them reliably. Once laid, the egg appears as an inventory item.
Eggs come from sustained care rather than from a single action, which is the part most players get wrong. Feeding a companion once and standing around waiting will not produce anything. What works is keeping the pet summoned across normal play: feed it when you call it, pet it whenever you pass, and let trust build while you get on with mining, building, or exploring. Eggs turn up as a side effect of a companion that lives with you rather than one that gets summoned for photographs.
Two practical notes. Not every species lays eggs, so if a particular companion has never produced one after long stretches of good care, try a different genus rather than assuming your care routine is broken. And eggs drop on the ground near the companion, so watch where it was standing when the prompt appears. Walking away without collecting is an easy way to lose one.
Hatching an Egg
The simplest path is to place the egg in your inventory and wait. Eggs hatch after a real-time countdown. The resulting creature is automatically tamed and can be adopted as a companion.
If you want more control over the outcome, visit the Egg Sequencer before hatching.
The countdown runs in real time and does not care what you are doing, so an egg carried through a normal session hatches on its own while you play. Carry several at once if you are running a breeding project, since they tick down in parallel.
Clear a companion slot before the timer runs out. A hatched creature needs somewhere to go, and discovering that your roster is full at the moment of hatching turns a planned project into a rushed decision about which existing pet to release. Releases are permanent, so make that call in advance rather than under pressure.
Using the Egg Sequencer
The Egg Sequencer is located aboard the Space Anomaly. Interact with it to place a companion egg in the sequencing chamber. Four categories can be modified:
| Slot | Effect | Common Inputs | Trade-off to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weight/Height | Changes creature size | Growth-related items | Larger creatures move slower and clip in caves; very small ones are awkward to interact with |
| Color | Alters skin or pattern color | Dye-related items | The safest slot, though the result is not always the exact shade you pictured |
| Temperament | Shifts personality traits | Neural-related items | Pushing toward aggression trades scanning and prospecting behavior for combat behavior |
| Gene Splicing | Random or extreme mutations | Various biological samples | The least predictable slot, and it can overwrite the look you were trying to keep |
Each modification consumes the item you place in the slot. You can edit an egg multiple times, and changes stack. Be careful with overdosing. Too much of an item can produce unwanted or oversized results.
The Sequencing Procedure
The terminal is straightforward once you know the loop:
- Dock at the Space Anomaly and interact with the Egg Sequencer.
- Place the companion egg into the sequencing chamber. The panel shows a preview of what the egg will hatch into as it currently stands.
- Select a slot. The sequencer highlights which items in your inventory are compatible with it, so you do not need to memorize input lists.
- Add one item and read the preview again before doing anything else.
- Confirm to write the change into the egg. That consumes the item.
- Repeat for further edits, or take the egg back and let it hatch.
Step four is where projects succeed or fail. There is no undo, no reset to the original genome, and no way to strip an edit back out. Adding one item at a time and checking the preview after each one costs a few extra seconds and is the only way to stop before you have gone too far.
Planning a Breeding Project
Before editing, decide what you want:
- Riding mount: Prioritize size and speed-friendly genus. Avoid over-increasing weight, which can slow movement.
- Combat companion: Look for aggressive temperament and large size.
- Scavenger/helper: Calm or loyal temperament increases helpful behavior.
- Photo pet: Focus on color and a visually striking body plan.
Because gene splicing can produce unpredictable body parts, save interesting eggs before editing if you want to preserve a specific look.
Written as a plan, the four projects pull in different directions:
| Project | Prioritise | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Riding mount | A rideable body plan, moderate size, calm temperament | Weight increases, and splicing late in the process where it can break the body plan |
| Combat companion | Aggressive temperament, a larger frame | Extreme size, which slows it down when you need it to reach the fight |
| Scavenger / helper | Calm or loyal temperament, a species native to biomes you visit | Aggression, which shifts behavior toward fighting instead of scanning and digging |
| Photo pet | Color edits and an unusual base body plan | Nothing in particular, since this is the one project where splicing is an asset |
Note that mounts and combat companions want opposite things from the size slot, and helpers and combat companions want opposite things from temperament. There is no single egg that does all of it well, which is the real argument for running separate projects on separate eggs rather than trying to build one perfect creature.
Genus matters more than any edit. The sequencer adjusts an existing body plan and cannot turn a non-rideable species into a mount, so a mount project starts by breeding from a parent that can already be ridden. The planet types, biomes, and hazards guide helps you work out where to look for the parent you want.
Editing Tips
- Start with small doses and check the preview before committing.
- Color changes are usually the safest edits.
- Size changes affect rideability and movement speed.
- Temperament edits influence how often the companion attacks, scans, or speaks.
- Gene splicing is the most random slot: use it for experimentation, not precision.
A workflow that avoids most wasted eggs:
- Bank a spare first. Wait for the parent to lay two eggs and leave one untouched. That gives you a fallback if a project goes wrong, and there is no other route back to the original look.
- Change one axis at a time. Adjust size until you are happy, then move to color, then temperament. Stacking edits across several slots in one visit makes it impossible to tell which change produced the result you disliked.
- Stop early on purpose. Overshooting is unrecoverable, undershooting is not. If the preview is close to what you wanted, take the egg and hatch it rather than adding one more item.
- Splice last, or not at all. Gene splicing can rewrite proportions and body parts, so any careful size and color work you did beforehand may be undone by it.
The expensive lesson most players learn once: deciding halfway through what the creature is for. Edits stack and cannot be removed, so a pet you started shaping into a mount and then decided should be a fighter carries both sets of changes and does neither job properly.
FAQ
Can any companion lay eggs?
Most registered biological companions can lay eggs. Mechanical creatures do not lay biological eggs and have a different customization path through standard companion interactions.
Do edited eggs keep the parent's species?
Eggs hatch into the same general species as the parent, but edits can alter appearance significantly. Gene splicing may introduce unexpected body parts or proportions.
Can I trade eggs with other players?
Eggs can be transferred between players in multiplayer, allowing you to share unique pets or collect creatures from other galaxies.
What happens if I overdose an egg in the sequencer?
The creature may become extremely large, misshapen, or develop unintended traits. The egg is not destroyed, but the result may not match your goal.
Is the Egg Sequencer free to use?
There is no direct usage fee, but each modification consumes items from your inventory. Some rare inputs can be expensive or time-consuming to gather.
Can I undo an edit I regret?
No. Edits are written into the egg and stack on top of each other, with no reset to the original genome. The only protection is holding back an unedited spare egg from the same parent before you start.
Do I need a free companion slot before hatching?
Yes. The hatched creature has to be adopted into a slot, so clear space before the countdown finishes. Otherwise you are choosing which existing companion to release on the spot, and releases cannot be reversed.
Keep Exploring
- Turn creature products into valuable dishes with the cooking and Nutrient Processor guide.
- Find the biomes your target species live on in the planet types, biomes, and hazards guide.
Key Takeaways
- Decide what the creature is for before you touch the sequencer. A mount, a combat companion, a helper, and a photo pet pull size and temperament in different directions, and because edits stack, changing your mind halfway is expensive.
- Put the care in first. Eggs come from a companion whose satiety gauge stays green and whose trust you have kept up over time, so a single feeding will not produce one.
- Hold back a spare unedited egg whenever you like the parent's look. Gene splicing can introduce body parts you did not ask for, and there is no route back to the original.
- Dose small and check the preview before committing. Overdosing will not destroy the egg, but you can end up with something extremely large or misshapen that misses the point of the project.
- Go easy on weight if you are breeding a mount. Extra size slows the creature down, which is the opposite of what you wanted from it.
- Treat the four slots by risk: color is the safe edit, temperament changes behavior predictably, size has real consequences, and gene splicing belongs on eggs you can afford to lose.