Part of the Exploration & Endgame series:

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Planet Types, Biomes & Hazards: Which worlds to search.

Quick Answer

Planet surfaces are populated by a fixed catalogue of structures. Once you know the catalogue, every marker on your visor tells you in advance what is inside.
Drop pods give exosuit slots, monoliths and ruins give alien words and artifacts, manufacturing facilities give blueprints, depots give bulk resources, and crash sites give ships and salvage.
The Signal Booster is the main targeting tool. Place it, pick a search category, and it plants a waypoint on the nearest matching structure.
The Cartographer on any space station trades Navigation Data for charts. The Exosuit Upgrade Chart is the one that points at drop pods.
Navigation Data itself comes from the small terminals inside minor outposts and shelters, so the loop feeds itself.
Anything you have to shoot open (depots, sealed doors, cargo pods) will usually summon Sentinels, so clear the area or plan an exit first.
Flying low and slow with the ship scanner, or pulsing through low orbit, reveals structure markers across a wide radius for free.

Overview

Structures in No Man's Sky are procedurally placed but not procedurally invented. Each planet draws from the same list of building types, and each type has a fixed job: it either hands you a permanent upgrade, a blueprint, a chunk of resources, a piece of language, or a ship. Learning which is which turns wandering into shopping.

The table below is the reference. Below it are the tools that let you request a specific structure type instead of hoping one appears over the next ridge, plus the Sentinel rules that apply to the noisy half of the list.

Every Surface Structure

Structure	What is inside	How to find it
Drop Pod	A damaged pod holding a single Exosuit slot. Repair the broken systems with crafted parts, then pay the slot fee in units. The fee climbs each time you buy a slot in that save.	Buy an Exosuit Upgrade Chart from the Cartographer and open it on the planet surface. Also visible as a lone pod marker on ridges and plateaus.
Shelter / small outpost	A sealed room with a supply crate, a shielded door, and often a terminal that dispenses Navigation Data. Hazard drain stops while you are inside.	Signal Booster set to search for shelter. They are dense on most worlds and are the cheapest source of Navigation Data.
Minor settlement / outpost	A landing pad, an NPC alien, a trade terminal, and frequently a Navigation Data terminal. Talking to the alien can raise standing or teach a word.	Signal Booster, or the ship scanner while flying low.
Abandoned building	Dark, unlit interiors with Whispering Eggs outside. Breaking an egg yields a Larval Core and wakes Biological Horrors. Inside are lore logs, salvage crates, and a terminal chain that tells one long story.	Marked as a building with no power. They appear on most biomes and cluster on dead and infested worlds.
Ancient ruins	A ring of pillars around a central plinth. Each pillar teaches an alien word. The plinth offers a choice that can yield an artifact, standing, units, or a penalty.	Signal Booster, monolith directions, or a chart bought from the Cartographer.
Monolith	A large alien structure that poses a question in its race's language. Answers reward words, artifacts, knowledge, standing changes, or coordinates to nearby sites. Wrong answers can cost standing.	Visible from a long distance because of their size. Also flagged by ruins, charts, and the ship scanner.
Knowledge Stone	A single alien word from the system's dominant race, one per stone, free and instant.	Scattered densely across surfaces. The Analysis Visor tags them at range.
Manufacturing facility	A sealed blast door hiding a terminal that poses a puzzle. Correct answers reward a blueprint or salvage. Blowing the door open triggers a Sentinel response.	The secure site Planetary Chart from the Cartographer, bought with Navigation Data and activated on the surface.
Operations centre	The same format as a manufacturing facility with a different exterior. Sealed door, puzzle terminal, blueprint reward.	The same secure site chart. It returns either facility type or a depot.
Mineral / gas depot	Tall cylindrical containers holding a bulk stack of a refined resource. Shooting them open drops the contents at your feet.	The secure site chart, or the ship scanner. Distinctive silhouette from the air.
Crashed starship	An abandoned ship you can claim for free. It arrives damaged with broken slots, but the class and slot count are yours to keep.	Distress beacons, transmission tower puzzles, and Emergency Signal Scanners recovered at crash sites.
Crashed freighter	A debris field of hull sections, Rusted Metal, and sealed cargo pods you open with grenades or the Boltcaster. Pods hold tradeable goods and salvage.	Signal Booster and charts. From the air, the wreck field is long and unmistakable.
Transmission tower	A terminal with a short number-sequence puzzle. Solving it plants a waypoint on a crashed ship or another signal source.	Tall thin antenna, visible at range. Also returned by Signal Booster searches.
Distress beacon	A small emergency marker that leads to a crash site or a stranded pilot's ship.	Signal Booster, and the red distress markers that appear when you fly low over a region.
Trading post	Four landing pads and a galactic trade terminal. NPC ships land and take off continuously, so you can inspect and buy ships without hunting for them.	The ship scanner from low altitude. Trading posts sit on flat ground and are among the largest surface builds.
Harmonic camp	Found on Dissonant worlds. Contains Autophage technology and a terminal used to produce an Echo Locator, which points to a Sentinel Pillar.	Dissonant planets only. Signal Booster and low flying.
Sentinel Pillar	A tall pylon that can be shut down to end the planet's Sentinel aggression, and that gates Autophage and Atlantid content.	Use an Echo Locator built at a harmonic camp.
Buried technology	A shallow underground cache containing Salvaged Data, the currency for base blueprints.	Equip the Survey device on your multi-tool, sweep with the Analysis Visor, and dig with the Terrain Manipulator.

Reading the List

The structures split cleanly into four jobs.

Permanent upgrades. Drop pods are the only surface structure that raises your exosuit capacity, which makes them the highest-value marker on any planet if you are still short on space. Pair them with the other slot sources in the inventory slots guide and you can go from cramped to comfortable in a single planetary sweep.

Language and lore. Knowledge Stones, monoliths, and ruins all feed the same system: word-by-word translation of Gek, Korvax, and Vy'keen. Ruins and monoliths also carry standing consequences, since the choice you make at a plinth or a monolith terminal can raise or lower your reputation with that race. The alien languages and Knowledge Stones guide covers the ordering that gets you to fluency fastest, and the monoliths, ruins and artifacts guide covers what each ancient site actually hands over.

Loot and materials. Depots, crashed freighters, and abandoned buildings are the bulk-material tier. Depots give refined resources with no processing, freighter fields give Rusted Metal and cargo, and abandoned buildings give Larval Cores if you are willing to fight what comes out of the eggs. Buried technology is the outlier here because Salvaged Data has no other reliable ground source. See the Salvaged Data farming guide for the efficient sweep pattern.

Ships and blueprints. Crash sites, transmission towers, and distress beacons form one chain: a tower or beacon points at a wreck, the wreck yields a free ship plus another scanner, and the loop repeats. The free ships from crashed salvage guide walks that loop end to end. Manufacturing facilities and operations centres sit apart, since their reward is a blueprint or a stack of salvage that converts into nanites. The manufacturing facilities and operations centres guide covers how to chart them, breach the door, and read the terminal puzzle.

Searching On Purpose

Four tools remove the randomness.

The Signal Booster. A cheap deployable that scans the surrounding area and offers several free search categories covering shelters, habitable bases, and transmissions. Booster searches return the nearest unvisited match, so if you keep placing boosters after each site you can chain across a continent for free.

One correction worth making, because older guides and a lot of forum advice still repeat it: the Signal Booster no longer targets a specific structure type. The Secure Site option that consumed Navigation Data and returned a manufacturing facility, operations centre, or depot was removed in the Beyond update, and that job moved to the Cartographer's charts. If you are following instructions that tell you to set a booster to Secure Site, they predate Beyond.

Charts from the Cartographer. Every space station has a Cartographer NPC who trades Navigation Data for planetary charts. The Exosuit Upgrade Chart marks a drop pod, and the rest of the rotating stock covers crash sites, settlements, and similar targets. Charts are consumed on use and must be opened while you are on the planet you want to search. Buy them in stacks, since a single visit can fund a full afternoon of pod hunting.

The Analysis Visor. Holding the visor tags every point of interest inside its range with an icon that names the structure type before you commit to the walk. It is also how you spot Knowledge Stones and how the Survey device narrows down buried caches. If you are not already using it for scan payouts, it doubles as your primary search tool.

Scanning from the air and from orbit. Flying low across terrain triggers automatic detection pings that drop markers on buildings within a wide radius, and pulsing at low altitude on approach reveals the largest structures like trading posts and freighter wrecks. This is the fastest way to survey a new landmass, and it costs nothing.

Sentinels and the Noisy Half

Anything that requires force will call in Sentinels. Blowing a facility door, shooting open a depot, and cracking freighter cargo pods each raise an alert. On planets with low Sentinel presence this is a minor nuisance. On aggressive worlds it escalates quickly into drones, walkers, and eventually starship interceptors overhead.

Two habits keep it manageable. First, check the planet's Sentinel level on the scan before you land, and save the depot farming for low-activity worlds. Second, break line of sight. Sentinels lose track of you inside caves and buildings, and stepping into the structure you just opened resets the alert faster than fighting does. For the full escalation ladder and how to break each tier, use the Sentinels combat guide.

Dissonant worlds are the exception, because there the Sentinel presence is permanent rather than triggered. Harmonic camps and Sentinel Pillars only exist on those planets, and clearing a pillar is what quiets the region. The Dissonant and Corrupted planets guide covers the full loop.

FAQ

What is the fastest way to find a drop pod?

Buy several Exosuit Upgrade Charts from the Cartographer at a space station, land on any planet, and open one from your inventory. It marks a drop pod directly. Repair the pod, pay the slot fee, then open the next chart on the same planet.

Why is my Signal Booster not finding anything new?

Booster searches return the nearest unvisited structure of that type. If you have already cleared the local ones, fly a few minutes in any direction and place a new booster. Distance, not repetition, is what refreshes the results.

Are the Whispering Eggs at abandoned buildings worth breaking?

Larval Cores sell well and are used in several recipes, but every egg you break spawns Biological Horrors that keep coming until you leave. Break a few, grab the cores, and retreat to your ship. Do not try to clear the whole field on foot without a strong multi-tool. The abandoned buildings and Whispering Eggs guide covers the aggro rules, the safe farming methods, and what the lore terminals are saying.

Do I need Navigation Data for everything?

No. Every Signal Booster search is free since Beyond removed the paid Secure Site option. Navigation Data is spent only at the Cartographer, buying charts. You collect it from the terminals inside shelters and minor outposts.

Can I find monoliths and ruins reliably?

Partly. Monoliths are large enough to spot from the air, and they often give directions to nearby ruins after you interact with them. Charts and Signal Booster searches cover the rest. Both types are more common on worlds with an established alien race presence.

Key Takeaways

Run this routine on any new planet and you will strip it in one session:

Pulse in at low altitude on approach and note the large structures that pop onto the compass.
Land at the first shelter or minor outpost and empty its terminal for Navigation Data.
Activate a secure site chart if you want blueprints, or place a Signal Booster and run a free shelter search if you want more Navigation Data first.
Open an Exosuit Upgrade Chart while you are already on the surface, since drop pods are the only permanent upgrade on the list.
Sweep the drive between markers with the Analysis Visor up, tagging Knowledge Stones and buried technology as you pass.
Save the loud targets, depots and sealed doors, for last, so a Sentinel alert does not follow you through the rest of the route.
Fly a few minutes in a straight line and place a fresh booster to unlock the next cluster.

No Man's Sky Points of Interest: Every Planet Structure & What's Inside