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No Man's Sky Creatures & Companions Guide: Hub for pets, breeding, mounts, and discovery.

How to Get a Companion Pet: Adopt creatures before harvesting from them.

Quick Answer

Feed creatures Creature Pellets (biological) or Ion Batteries (mechanical) to tame them.
Once tamed, interact with the creature to harvest resources such as milk, eggs, or Faecium.
Companion creatures produce Faecium over time when their satiety is high.
Different species yield different resources. Predator creatures may not provide milk.
Harvested organics are used in cooking, crafting, and selling for Units.

Overview

Feeding is the entry point to taming, and it doubles as a renewable resource stream. Many herbivores can be milked on the spot, well-fed companions produce Faecium and eggs on their own, and everything you collect feeds cooking, farming, and trade loops. A planet with a healthy grazing population can keep a Nutrient Processor busy for hours.

None of it is gated behind late-game technology. Once Awakenings is done and you can craft pellets from Carbon, every biological creature in the galaxy is a potential supplier.

How Feeding Works

To feed a creature, approach it with the correct food in your inventory:

Creature Pellets for biological creatures
Ion Batteries for mechanical creatures

Select the feed option when the interaction prompt appears. If the creature accepts the food, hearts appear and it becomes tame. The food recipe for Creature Pellets unlocks after completing the Awakenings mission.

Pellets are crafted from Carbon, which you can strip out of any tree or shrub with the Mining Beam, so restocking costs a few seconds anywhere with vegetation. Carry a full stack before you set out. Finding the ideal creature two systems from home with an empty food slot is a wasted trip.

Reading Temperament Before You Approach

Scan the creature first. The Analysis Visor entry lists its temperament, and that single field predicts how the approach will go.

Temperament	Behavior on approach	How to handle it
Passive / Docile	Ignores you, stays put	Walk up and feed directly
Shy / Skittish	Bolts as soon as you close in	Stop sprinting, approach at a walk, retry after it settles
Defensive / Cautious	Tolerates distance, reacts if crowded	Move slowly, do not fire your Multi-Tool nearby
Unpredictable	Alternates between fleeing and standing ground	Be patient, it will hold still eventually
Hostile / Predator	Charges on sight	Feed it anyway to pacify it, or clear the area first

Feeding a hostile predator stops it attacking you. That is the cheapest way to make a dangerous area workable without killing anything, at the cost of a single pellet.

What Feeding Actually Triggers

A fed creature does more than stand there looking pleased:

Nearby members of the same species often wander over for a share of their own, which lets you tame a whole herd from one starting point.
Some creatures dig up a buried resource and leave it on the ground for you.
Others walk off toward a nearby point of interest, acting as a free scout.
The interaction menu gains harvest options and, on suitable body types, a ride option.

Watch the creature for a few seconds after feeding it. The dig-up and lead-away behaviors happen on their own, and players who immediately open the harvest menu tend to miss them.

Harvesting from Tamed Creatures

After feeding, many creatures can be harvested immediately. The option appears in the interaction menu. Common harvests include:

Milk: from herbivorous mammals and similar species
Eggs: laid by companion creatures over time
Faecium: produced by well-fed companions
Creature-specific items: some species drop unique resources

The exact harvest depends on the creature's genus and diet. Predatory creatures are less likely to give milk but may produce other useful materials.

Harvest	Typical source	Where it goes
Milk	Grazing herbivores and mammal-like body plans	Nutrient Processor recipes, resold as a cooked product
Eggs	Registered companions, laid over time	Cooking, or hatching into a new companion
Faecium	Well-fed registered companions	Farming and refining recipes, cooking ingredient
Species-specific drops	Varies by genus	Cooking, crafting, trade

Wild creatures and registered companions behave differently here, and the distinction decides how you spend your time. A creature you feed in the field gives you a harvest, then stops following once you move on. A companion stays on your roster and keeps producing indefinitely. If a species makes something you want in volume, adopt it rather than re-taming a fresh animal on every visit.

The harvest option grays out for a period after each use, and that cooldown is tracked per creature. A herd is therefore far more productive than a single animal: feed along the line, harvest each one once, and by the time you reach the last the first is usually ready again. Standing over one creature waiting for the timer is the most common way to waste a session.

Companion Production

Registered companions produce Faecium regularly when their satiety gauge is in the green. This makes companions a passive source of an organic material used in farming and crafting. Higher trust and a suitable native climate improve the frequency of helpful actions.

Keep companions fed and pet them occasionally to maintain production.

Satiety and trust are separate gauges, and they respond to different things:

Action	Raises satiety	Raises trust	Notes
Feeding pellets	Yes	Slightly	The core maintenance action, and cheap to repeat
Petting	No	Yes	Costs nothing, so do it every time you summon
Playing	No	Yes	Slower than petting, but stacks with it
Time spent summoned	No	Yes	Trust builds while the companion is out with you

Satiety drains whether the companion is summoned or not, so a pet you have not called in days arrives hungry. Feed it once when you summon it and once more before you finish a session, and it will stay green through most of your play time.

Trust is the gauge that actually pays out. A low-trust companion mostly trots along behind you. A high-trust one scans, digs, warns you about predators, and produces more often. Native climate matters too: a companion kept on the kind of world it came from acts more frequently than the same creature dragged onto a hostile planet.

Cooking and Crafting Uses

Harvested organics have several uses:

Nutrient Processor: Milk, eggs, and Faecium feed into cooking recipes.
Farming: Faecium is used in some agricultural recipes and refining loops.
Trade: Cooked products sell for more than raw ingredients.
Bait: Some harvested items can be added to the Fishing Bait Box.

Cooking is among the most profitable ways to use creature products. A stack of simple cooked meals can be worth significantly more than the raw ingredients.

The value comes from stacking steps rather than from any single recipe. A raw ingredient is worth little, a one-step processed version is worth more, and a finished multi-ingredient dish is worth more again. Milk sits near the start of several of those chains, which is why players who farm creature products keep a Nutrient Processor in the base instead of hauling raw goods to a trade terminal.

Two habits turn this from pocket change into real income:

Guess at unknown combinations. The Nutrient Processor accepts inputs it has no recipe for, and stumbling onto a new recipe is how you extend the chain.
Take new recipes to Cronus on the Space Anomaly. The chef pays Nanites for recipes he has not seen, so kitchen experiments produce upgrade currency alongside the Units. The how to get Nanites fast guide shows how that compares to other Nanite sources.

Full recipe chains, processor mechanics, and ingredient tiers are covered in the cooking and Nutrient Processor guide.

FAQ

Can I milk every creature?

No. Only certain species, generally herbivorous mammals, provide milk. The interaction menu will show the harvest option only if the creature produces something.

Do I need a companion to harvest resources?

Some resources can be harvested immediately after feeding a wild creature. Others, like consistent Faecium production, require the creature to be registered as a companion.

What is Faecium used for?

Faecium is used in farming, refining, and some cooking recipes. It is also a tradable product.

How do I know what a creature eats?

Scan the creature with the Analysis Visor. The scan data usually indicates diet and temperament, which helps you predict whether it can be milked or harvested.

Can mechanical creatures be milked?

Mechanical creatures do not produce biological milk, but they can be fed Ion Batteries and may drop other resources. They follow the same taming rules as biological creatures.

How often can I milk the same creature?

The harvest option goes on cooldown after each use. Rather than waiting it out, move along a herd and take one harvest from each animal. By the time you reach the end of the line the first is usually available again.

The creature ran away before I could feed it. What now?

That is a shy or skittish temperament reacting to your approach speed. Stop sprinting and close the last stretch at a walk. If it still bolts, feed a calmer member of the herd instead: other creatures of the same species often come over to investigate, including the one you were chasing.

Do I have to keep feeding a creature to keep it tame?

A wild creature you feed stays friendly for that visit only. Adopt it as a companion if you want the relationship to survive across sessions, then keep its satiety topped up so production continues.

Keep Exploring

Cook the milk and meat you collect into high-value food with the cooking and Nutrient Processor guide.
Convert creature discoveries into upgrade currency with the how to get Nanites fast guide.

Key Takeaways

Feed biological creatures Creature Pellets and mechanical creatures Ion Batteries.
Tame herbivores to harvest milk and other organics.
Register creatures as companions for passive Faecium production.
Use harvested materials in cooking, crafting, and trade loops.
A well-fed companion is a productive companion.

No Man's Sky: How to Feed & Milk Creatures