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Pets in No Man's Sky: How to tame them, raise eggs and change genetics

 We teach you everything you need to know to get pets in No Man's Sky; how to register them as companions, give them orders, use them as mounts raise eggs, and modify their genetics.


The No Man's Sky Companions update added a very special feature to Hello Games' game: pet taming. What does this mean? Well, players can get companions for their adventures by taming wild creatures found throughout the galaxy and even incubating eggs. This entire system is deep and has many details, so if you are just starting to play, you will surely be interested in knowing how to take advantage of it.


Next, in this entry of our guide, we are going to reveal to you the method to domesticate animals, which ones you can turn into companions, what characteristics they have, and how to obtain eggs from your creatures or how to modify their genetics to personalize them exactly to your liking and much more. further.


How to get and tame pets?

Thanks to the Companions update, wild creatures can now be tamed in No Man's Sky. This means that during your travels across planets when you come across an animal, you can interact with it to make it your companion and thus go on adventures together.

What exactly has to be done for an animal to become our companion? The mechanics are very easy, you just have to keep these steps in mind :

  • Visit any planet in the galaxy and look for a wild animal you want to tame.
  • Approach the creature in question until an interaction button appears that says "Offer food".
  • You will need to have "Creature Feed" in your inventory to be able to give it to the animal (feed can be created with Carbon).
  • After feeding it, a button will appear above the animal that allows you to interact with it.
  • After opening the interaction menu, you will see several options, one of them being "Adopt as a companion".
  • Choose this option mentioned and you will adopt the creature to follow you around the world.

After carrying out all these steps, you will have duly registered the wild animal in your collection so you can call it whenever you want, wherever you are. You can open the quick access menu and enter the "Creatures" tab to consult details about your new creature and the others that you also tame.

Remember that in total you can register a maximum of 18 creatures as pets (at first only two, the rest of the spaces you must acquire). This is the limit of companions allowed, so if you reach it and want to save more, you will have to get rid of someone from your list first.

On the other hand, we do not forget to point out an important fact, and that is that not all types of wild creatures are domesticable. For example, animals from anomalous planets, creatures that travel underground or flying animals cannot be domesticated, but in general, there is a huge number and variety of animals that can be domesticated.

Characteristics of pets and what they are for

The domesticated animals you register as pets in No Man's Sky can be your friends. In fact, you can order them through the "Pets" quick menu to do some actions such as go to a place or come to your position. In turn, they themselves can defend you from dangers, mark locations of interest to you on the scanner or collect raw materials to save you work, among other activities. It is even possible to use them as a mount to move faster through the worlds.

In addition to what has been said, it is important to emphasize that each creature has its own unique characteristics. Some of the most notable are the following:

  • Current Mood: Mood determines your partner's happiness and whether they will help you. Whether you pet him or give him food, you will keep him elevated so that he is not hungry and remains happy.
  • Native Climate: The climate varies depending on your native planet; a creature outside its native climate will not be able to spawn eggs.
  • Age: As the creature gets older, its size and maximum weight increase. Furthermore, an animal in a breeding state cannot yet give you eggs.

Apart from these mentioned, every creature has three fundamental personality attributes. First, one of these determines your willingness to perform tasks; If this attribute is high, the pet will be more likely to perform tasks on its own such as resource gathering, scanning, etc...

Another attribute is his affability or aggressiveness. The larger this is, the more easily the animal will confront your enemies and protect you in combat. And finally, we find the attribute of independence or obedience, which basically determines how easily the pet will listen to your commands.

All of these statistics are random in the case of each pet, although some of them can be genetically altered through eggs, as we will explain below.

How to raise pet eggs and hatch them?

Of course, taming pets in No Man's Sky also allows us to obtain eggs from the creatures. Players can hatch these eggs so that a baby of an animal that we have already registered is born, or genetically modify this egg to apply characteristics that we like to the baby.

First of all, how do you get eggs from an animal? It's very easy, through interaction with your pet you will see that there is an option that you can choose that allows you to "induce egg laying", which means that you will obtain an egg from your creature for your inventory (you can accumulate up to a maximum of 5 eggs in total).

But be careful, the following conditions must be met in order to obtain an egg from a creature:

  • More than 24 hours must have passed since you adopted the child.
  • The creature must be on a planet that has its native climate. Whether it is your home planet or another that has the same favorable climate.
  • The animal cannot be too young, that is, it cannot be a baby. It has to be older to lay eggs.

If your creature meets these three conditions, then you can induce its egg-laying. This will cause the animal to immediately lay an egg and you can collect it for a free slot in your inventory. Next, open the inventory and select the egg. Here you will see the "Hatch Egg" action.

In the description of each egg you can check how much time it takes to hatch (24 hours from when it is laid) and also what its genetic potential is, with a brief indication of its size and personality.

How to modify the genetics of eggs?

A very interesting detail about breeding eggs from domesticated animals is that we can really play with the genetics of each egg to modify them according to our tastes and so that the offspring is born with specific characteristics. This can be done with the Egg Sequencer, a machine that you will find in the Special Anomaly, near the Iteration: Cronos booth, and which looks like this:

How to modify the genetics of eggs

By interacting with the egg sequencer, you can place an egg you have in your inventory into the "Genetic Input" slot. Once an egg has been placed here, you will now be able to vary the percentage of the following catalysts by adding resources in each space:

  • Growth hormone: This determines the weight and height the creature will reach. You can either increase or decrease it (and you can repeat the process several times on the egg to increase or decrease its growth to the top).
  • Gene Separator: This modifies the creature's anatomy randomly, so the animal may be born with more legs, a very small head, etc. (the higher the dose, the more likely unexpected results will occur).
  • Pigment Injector: This parameter is used to change the color of the creature. Depending on the resource you use, it may adopt one color or another (not all animals can be born with different colors, it depends on their species).
  • Neural calibrator: this attribute will vary the personality or usefulness of the animal to make it more obedient, more aggressive, etc... With different resources you will increase or reduce these characteristics.

As you can see, depending on the resources you use in each catalyst and how many amounts of materials you invest, the percentages of the embryo state will vary as we have explained. That is, the doses influence each attribute by increasing or reducing it, while if the attribute indicates the text "Inherited", it will mean that it does not change with respect to its parent.

Basically, tinkering with these parameters and applying different doses helps you modify the genetics of the egg to result in an offspring that, for example, is very large in size, has a certain personality (more friendly, more aggressive, etc.), or a different color than its parent. All in order to have a creature according to your tastes and desires.

You can modify the genetics of eggs in practically dozens of ways, however, you like, and as many times as you want. Experiment without fear and make different combinations, you will get different results every time.

How to customize pets?

Finally, to finish reviewing everything related to pets, we want to mention that you can easily customize the appearance of your pets. This can be done by interacting with the animal when you have already adopted it as a pet, and accessing the "Customize appearance" section.

Through this menu you can choose various aesthetic accessories for your animal, and also their colors. Some of these accessories go beyond the visual, since for example certain lasers will be used by the pet to collect raw materials when traveling around the world, just as you would do with your Multitool.

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