No Man’s Sky Star Silk is one of the game’s more elusive materials. Granted, it’s only used in a few Base building recipes, but if you want to get yourself some sweet, Star Trek-like chairs, you’ll need some Star Silk. Star Silk can only be found in one particular type of planetary economy, so in this No Man’s Sky how to find Star Silk guide, we’ll cover which economy Star Silk is available in, how to build an Economy Scanner, and some Star Silk crafting recipes.
No Man’s Sky Guide | What is Star Silk?
Star Silk is a second-tier trade item in No Man’s Sky. The game describes the item as threads of silk-like material “woven on enormous solar looms,” able to be used for advanced material processing because of its “cosmic ray impact”-triggered weave pattern. It is a trade commodity-type item that is valued at 6,000 units. As of the 2018 No Man’s Sky NEXT update, Star Silk can be stored in stacks of one to five.
ALSO: No Man’s Sky 2.08 Update Patch Notes (2.08a)
Star Silk can be used to craft the Chair (variant 1), Chair (variant 2), and Chair (variant 3) Base building recipes. These luxurious-looking, red-orange-backed chairs bring to mind those used in the bridge of Star Trek’s U.S.S. Enterprise. The Chair (variant 1) requires five Condensed Carbon in addition to one Star Silk, and both the Chair (variant 2) and Chair (variant 3) require five Pure Ferrite in addition to one Star Silk.
Apart from being used to craft nifty, sci-fi office chairs, Star Silk can also be sold for high amounts of units in Advanced Materials-type economies. We’ll cover how to find particular economy types further on in this guide.
No Man’s Sky Guide | Where can I find Star Silk?
As a manufactured item, Star Silk can’t be found naturally. It can’t be crafted, either, so your only option for obtaining Star Silk is to head to a Galactic Trade Terminal in a star systems with either a medium-wealth or a high-wealth Trade Economy. It can also be found in some low-wealth Trade systems, but your best bet is to head to a medium or high-wealth one. In order to do this, the first thing you should do is get yourself an Economy Scanner.
No Man’s Sky Guide | How to make an Economy Scanner
The Economy Scanner is a starship technology that allows you to see what type of economy a system has directly within the Galactic Map. This will save you loads of time and warping resources if you’re trying to look for items only available in certain economies, like Star Silk.
To get the Economy Scanner, you’ll either have to find a Gek Blueprint Vendor in a system space station that sells the scanner’s blueprint for 300 Nanite Clusters. Whether or not a space station’s blueprint vendor will have the scanner blueprint is up to random chance, so you’ll likely have to jump around to a few systems before you find one. Alternatively, the Economy Scanner blueprint can be found in the Space Anomaly, a Point of Interest introduced in the NEXT update. The Economy Scanner can then be built with five Microprocessors and one Wiring Loom.
No Man’s Sky Guide | How to find Trade and Advanced Material economies
Once you’ve got the Economy Scanner, you can get to silk searching. In the Galactic Map, you’ll now see systems color-coded by economy type, each with a corresponding icon:
- Red: Power Generation, marked with a Voltage Box icon
- Light blue: Technology, marked with a Nanites icon
- Orange: Mining, marked with a pickaxe icon
- Purple: Advanced Materials, marked with a double-helix (DNA) icon
- Dark blue: Scientific, marked with a beaker icon
- Yellow: Manufacturing, marked with a gears icon
- Green: Trading, marked with a stopwatch/pocket watch icon
Since Star Silk is only found in Trading Economies, you’ll be looking for green, stopwatch-marked systems. These systems will also include a description that lists them as Mercantile, Trading, Shipping, or Commercial. Additionally, each system has an economy wealth type. As mentioned above, you’ll want to look for medium- and high-wealth economies, labeled with the following terms:
- Medium-wealth economies:
- Adequate
- Balanced
- Comfortable
- Developing
- Medium Supply
- Promising
- Satisfactory
- Sustainable
- High-wealth economies:
- Advanced
- Affluent
- Booming
- Flourishing
- High Supply
- Opulent
- Prosperous
- Wealthy
If you’ve found a green, Trading-type economy with one of those wealth descriptors, you should be able to purchase Star Silk at a Galactic Trade Terminal there. As we mentioned before, Star Silk is in high demand in Advanced Materials-type economies, so you can make a quick profit if you purchase Star Silk from a Tradiny-type economy and sell it in an Advanced Materials-type one. To find an Advanced Materials-type economy, look for purple systems marked with a DNA symbol. These systems will also include a description that labels them as Material Fusion, Alchemical, Metal Processing, or Ore Processing.
Now that you’ve found all the Star Silk you could ask for, you can build fancy chairs to your heart’s content. For more No Man’s Sky, check our our No Man’s Sky Solanium guide or our where to find Deuterium guide.
