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

How to Scan for Units with the Analysis Visor: Earn Units from scanning.

Quick Answer

Use the Analysis Visor to scan every creature, plant, and mineral you encounter.
Fully scan all fauna on a planet to earn a Nanite reward and progress toward milestones.
Rare creatures are often tied to specific biomes, extreme planets, or underwater environments.
Some unique creatures appear only through Expeditions or special events.
Upload discoveries from the Discoveries tab to claim rewards.

Overview

Discovery is among the most satisfying long-term activities in No Man's Sky. Every planet has its own ecosystem, and some creatures are genuinely unusual: tiny floating blobs, giant crabs, glowing predators, or biome-specific megafauna. Completing a planet's fauna catalogue not only pays Nanites but also contributes to community knowledge.

Scanning Basics

Equip the Analysis Visor and aim at a creature, plant, or mineral. Hold the scan button until the analysis completes. Each species you fully scan and upload rewards you with Units; fauna scans pay the most.

For detailed scanning income strategies, see the how to scan for Units guide.

Two visor behaviors save a lot of walking. The visor tags creatures with markers well before you can see them with the naked eye, so sweeping a horizon from a ridge tells you whether a biome is worth landing in. Species you have already logged are marked differently from ones you have not, which means you can pick unscanned targets out of a mixed herd at a glance instead of scanning every animal in it.

Scanning has a range limit and the creature must stay roughly centered until the bar fills. That is trivial for grazing herbivores and awkward for anything that moves. For flying species, stand still, lead the creature slightly, and start the scan as it passes across your view rather than chasing it with the reticle.

What the Scan Entry Tells You

Every completed scan writes a data card into your Discoveries log. The fields are not decoration, they change how you approach the animal:

Field	What it records	Why it matters
Genus	The body-plan family the creature belongs to	Predicts whether it can be ridden or milked before you spend a pellet
Diet	What the species eats in the wild	Flavor detail only. Every biological creature still takes Creature Pellets
Temperament	How it reacts to your presence	Decides whether you can walk straight up or need a slow approach
Height and weight	The size of the specimen you scanned	Unusually large individuals stand out against the rest of the herd
Gender	The variant marker for that individual	Alpha and similar variants are the oversized specimens worth photographing

You can also rename any species you discovered first. If someone else got to the system before you, the names are locked, but your own scans still pay out normally.

Completing a Planetary Fauna Catalogue

A planet's discovery page lists how many species of fauna and flora exist. To complete the fauna section, scan every creature type. The reward scale depends on the planet's complexity:

Planet Type	Typical Fauna Count	Difficulty
Dead / Airless	0	Trivial
Barren	Few	Easy
Lush	Several to many	Moderate
Exotic / Weird	Variable	Variable

Rewards are paid when you upload the completed catalogue from the Discoveries tab.

The species counter is the tool that makes completion practical. Check it before you start sweeping a planet: a world showing a low total is a quick clear worth finishing, while a high total on a planet you do not intend to revisit is a long job for the same style of payout. Players chasing catalogue bonuses efficiently pick small counts deliberately rather than trying to finish whatever planet they happened to land on.

The last one or two species are where the time goes. Everything on open ground gets scanned in the first pass almost by accident. What remains is nearly always in a habitat you have not searched yet, which is why the section below is organized by habitat rather than by species.

Where to Find Rare Creatures

Rare creatures are not distributed evenly. Use these guidelines:

Extreme planets often host unusual fauna adapted to harsh conditions.
Underwater regions contain species not found on land.
Caves hide subterranean variants.
Exotic / Weird biomes can produce highly unusual body plans.
Night spawns differ from day spawns on some planets.

If you are missing one species on a planet, try searching at a different time of day or in a different terrain type.

Habitat Checklist for a Missing Species

Work down this list in order. The first three habitats account for most of the entries players cannot find:

Habitat	What hides there	How to search it	What you need
Water	Aquatic species that never surface	Swim down from a shoreline or dive from a submarine	Underwater oxygen and life-support upgrades
Caves	Subterranean-only species	Follow cave mouths down and scan in the dark	A light source and hazard protection
Night side	Species that only spawn after dark	Fly to the unlit hemisphere instead of waiting out the cycle	Nothing extra
Sky	High-flying species	Stand still on high ground and scan as they cross your view	Patience with the visor
Distant biomes	Micro-biome fauna on mixed planets	Fly a few minutes in a straight line and land somewhere visually different	Nothing extra
Extreme worlds	Unusual body plans adapted to hazards	Land and sweep on foot between storms	Hazard protection upgrades

Flying to the night side is the tip that saves the most time. Waiting out a planet's day-night cycle takes a long real-time stretch, while boosting to the dark hemisphere takes a minute or two and puts you in permanent night for as long as you stay there. The planet types, biomes, and hazards guide covers which worlds carry which hazards before you commit to a landing.

Asteroid Larvae: the creature that is not on a planet

Not every rare creature lives on a surface. Asteroid Larvae are a space encounter: an enormous cylindrical organism, roughly the size of two Space Anomalies side by side, with an orange-red lizard-like eye at the front and small tendrils around it. They can appear in any star system, at a very low frequency, which is why most players never meet one.

They are also the rare case where the correct move is to do nothing. An Asteroid Larva ignores you completely as you approach. Fire on it and it turns hostile immediately. If you want the sighting rather than the fight, drift past, look, and leave it alone.

Discovery Rewards

Uploading discoveries earns Units and Nanites. The fauna and flora discovery rewards guide breaks down the exact payout structure, but the short version is:

Fauna pays more than flora.
Fully completing a planet pays a bonus.
Uploading all discoveries in a system pays an additional system bonus.

These rewards scale with milestones, making discovery a legitimate early-game income source.

The practical mistake is uploading piecemeal. Scanning records the data locally and costs nothing, so there is no reason to open the Discoveries tab after every animal. Finish a planet, then upload the whole thing at once so the completion bonus lands with the individual scans. Finish the planets in a system, and the system bonus lands on top of that.

Discovery income also stays useful long after you stop needing it for Units. Uploads pay Nanites as well, and Nanites remain the bottleneck on Multi-Tool and starship upgrades deep into a save.

Tips for Efficient Discovery

Scan from the air: Use your starship or a low-flying mount to cover ground quickly.
Listen for calls: Creatures often announce themselves with sounds before you see them.
Check water and caves: Missing species are often hidden in non-obvious habitats.
Visit multiple biomes: Some planets have micro-biomes with unique fauna.
Upload regularly: Rewards are only paid after uploading, so open the Discoveries tab often.

A repeatable sweep looks like this. Land, scan everything within walking distance of the ship, then take off and fly low along the terrain in one direction for a couple of minutes. Land again wherever the landscape changes, whether that is water, a cliff line, or a different color of ground cover, and repeat. Check the counter after each stop. When it stops moving, switch habitats rather than covering more open ground, because open ground has already given you everything it has.

Fauna scanning is also where the Analysis Visor pays best per scan, so a discovery sweep and a Unit-farming session are the same activity. Riding a tamed creature while you do it keeps the visor available and handles rough terrain that would slow a walk, which is covered in the creatures and companions hub.

FAQ

How do I know how many species are on a planet?

Open the Discoveries tab and select the planet. It shows discovered versus total fauna and flora. The total count is revealed as you explore.

Do I need to upload discoveries to get rewards?

Yes. Scanning records the data locally, but Units and Nanites are only awarded when you upload.

Can rare creatures be tamed?

Most rare creatures follow normal taming rules if they are biological and not classified as a special exception. Some unique creatures from Expeditions are automatically tamed when obtained.

What is the easiest planet type to fully catalogue?

Dead and airless planets have no fauna, making them trivial. Barren planets with only a few species are the next easiest.

Do discovery rewards scale with difficulty mode?

Difficulty settings affect many economy values. Discovery payouts may vary, but the relative value of completing catalogues remains strong across modes.

The counter says I am missing one species and I cannot find it.

Check water first, then caves, then the night side. Those three account for the overwhelming majority of stuck catalogues. If all three come up empty, fly several minutes in a straight line and land in visibly different terrain, since some planets carry micro-biomes with their own fauna.

Can I scan creatures in a system another player already discovered?

Yes. You cannot claim naming rights on anything already registered, but scanning and uploading species you personally have not logged still pays you.

Key Takeaways

Scan and upload every species to earn Units and Nanites.
Complete planetary catalogues for bonus rewards.
Search underwater, in caves, and at night to find missing species.
Extreme and exotic biomes host the most unusual creatures.
Discovery is a relaxing, profitable complement to combat and trading.

No Man's Sky: Finding Rare Creatures & Discovery Tips