Part of the series:

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

How to Ride & Tame Creatures: Turn your companion into a mount.

Quick Answer

Complete the Awakenings mission to learn the Creature Pellet recipe.
Craft Creature Pellets from Carbon, then approach a non-hostile creature and feed it.
Once tamed, interact with the creature and choose to adopt it as a companion.
You start with two companion slots; more can be bought with Nanites at the Companion Registry.
Companions can be summoned from the Quick Menu and persist across play sessions.

Overview

A companion pet is among the most rewarding additions to your No Man's Sky journey. Beyond the novelty of having a custom creature follow you across planets, companions provide practical benefits: they can scan resources, attack threats, find structures, and even produce Faecium. Best of all, the adoption process is simple and available early in the game.

Step 1 — Unlock Creature Pellets

The ability to tame creatures is unlocked automatically after completing the Awakenings mission, the first chapter of the Artemis Path. You do not need to craft anything special beforehand; the Creature Pellet recipe appears in your build menu once the mission is complete.

If you have not finished Awakenings yet, follow the beginner's guide and the early game checklist until the recipe unlocks.

Step 2 — Craft the Right Food

Normal biological creatures eat Creature Pellets. The recipe costs Carbon, which is abundant in plants and trees on almost every planet. Mechanical creatures, added in later updates, require an Ion Battery instead of a pellet.

Carry a stack of Creature Pellets whenever you explore. They weigh almost nothing and let you tame creatures on sight.

Carbon comes off any tree, shrub, or fungal growth with the Mining Beam, so restocking is a few seconds of work on any planet with plant life. Craft pellets in bulk before a trip rather than one at a time in the field. The moment you actually want one is usually the moment you have wandered somewhere barren.

Step 3 — Find and Feed a Creature

Approach a non-hostile creature slowly. Hostile or skittish creatures may run away or attack; choose a calm herbivore for your first attempt. When close enough, the interaction prompt appears. Feed the creature one pellet.

After eating, hearts appear above the creature's head and it becomes tame. The creature will follow you briefly. To make it permanent, interact with it again and select the option to adopt it as a companion. This requires a free companion slot.

Choosing a Creature Worth Adopting

Slots cost Nanites and releasing a companion is permanent, so the first creature you tame is rarely the one you should keep. Scan candidates with the Analysis Visor and check them against what you actually want the pet to do:

Body plan. Walking quadrupeds and bipeds can usually be ridden. Rolling creatures, fish, and high fliers cannot, so a mount project starts by ruling those out.
Temperament. Calm species let you walk up and feed them. Skittish ones will make every future interaction slower than it needs to be.
Size. Very large creatures move slowly and clip badly in caves and around bases. Mid-sized animals are more practical day to day.
Native climate. A companion suits the kind of world it came from, so pick something native to the biomes you spend time in.
Bioluminescence. A glowing species doubles as a portable light source underground and at night.

Scanning candidates before you feed them costs nothing and tells you most of this up front, which is the same visor work covered in the rare creatures and discovery tips guide.

Step 4 — Manage Companion Slots

You begin the game with two companion slots. Additional slots are purchased from the Companion Registry in the Quick Menu using Nanites. The cost rises with each slot, so prioritize the creatures you genuinely want to keep.

As of the Xeno Arena update, the companion slot cap is generous, letting you maintain a full roster of specialized pets.

Because the price climbs with each purchase, slots compete directly with Multi-Tool and starship upgrades for the same Nanites. Early in a save those upgrades are the better buy. Fill your starting slots, live with them for a while, and only expand once you know which creature you keep summoning and which one you have not called in a week.

Roster mistakes worth avoiding:

Collecting duplicates. Three variations on the same quadruped fill three slots and do the same job. Spread the roster across a mount, a helper, and something you like the look of.
Adopting on impulse. A creature you tamed because it was standing nearby is the one you will want to release later, and releases cannot be undone.
Ignoring the ride check. If a creature was adopted to be a mount, confirm the ride option appears before you buy another slot on the strength of it.

Step 5 — Summon and Care for Your Companion

Open the Quick Menu and select the paw icon to summon a companion. Companions can be called on planets, space stations, and the Space Anomaly. They cannot be summoned inside player base buildings, though they can appear on outdoor base terrain.

Companions have needs:

Trust increases when you pet, feed, and play with them.
Satiety affects their behavior and resource production.
Native Climate determines where they are happiest when induced to spawn.

A well-cared-for companion performs helpful actions more often, including scanning, attacking predators, and unearthing treasures.

Satiety and trust move independently. Feeding fills satiety and nudges trust; petting and playing cost nothing and build trust on their own. Satiety drains whether the companion is summoned or not, so a pet you have not called in days shows up hungry. The maintenance routine that keeps a companion useful is short: summon it, feed it, pet it, and leave it out while you work. Trust accumulates on its own while it is following you.

Low-trust companions mostly walk behind you. High-trust companions are where the practical value lives.

What Companions Can Do

Companion behavior is partly random but includes these useful actions:

Scanning nearby resources and marking them on your HUD
Attacking predators or hostile plants that threaten you
Finding structures and points of interest
Extracting resources from deposits
Producing Faecium when well fed
Providing light in dark areas

Which of these you see depends on the companion and how well you have looked after it:

Behavior	What you get from it	What encourages it
Scanning	Nearby deposits marked on your HUD without spending visor time	High trust
Guarding	The companion intercepts predators and hostile plants that come at you	Aggressive temperament, high trust
Prospecting	Resources dug out of the ground and left for you to collect	High trust, time spent summoned
Pathfinding	The companion drifts toward nearby structures and points of interest	Time spent summoned
Production	Faecium, and eggs over longer stretches	Satiety kept in the green
Illumination	A moving light source in caves and after dark	A bioluminescent species

Temperament is the lever that shifts the mix. A more aggressive companion spends its time fighting things, a calmer one spends it scanning and digging. Neither is better in the abstract, but a pet chosen for combat will not be the one that quietly marks resource deposits while you mine.

For detailed behavior and personality colors, see the creatures and companions hub.

FAQ

Why can't I tame a creature?

Make sure you have completed Awakenings and are using the correct food. Biological creatures need Creature Pellets; mechanical creatures need Ion Batteries. Some special creatures, such as Biological Horrors, cannot be tamed.

Can I rename my companion?

Yes. Open the Companion Registry, select the companion, and use the pencil icon to enter a custom name. Only alphanumeric characters and some symbols are supported.

What happens if I release a companion?

Releasing a companion removes it from your roster permanently. You cannot recover a released companion unless you tame the same wild creature again.

Do companions die?

Companions cannot be permanently killed. If a companion takes damage in combat, it retreats and can be resummoned after a short cooldown.

Can I have more than one companion out at once?

You can summon one companion at a time per active slot, but typically only one is physically present with you. Switch between them from the Companion Registry.

Should I spend Nanites on slots or upgrades first?

Upgrades, in most saves. Two slots cover a mount and a helper, which is enough to see everything the system does. Buy more once you have a specific creature you want to keep and no room for it, rather than buying slots speculatively.

My companion is not doing anything useful. What am I missing?

Trust, most likely. Helpful behaviors become frequent as trust builds, and trust only accumulates when the companion is out with you and being petted, fed, and played with. A pet that lives in the registry and gets summoned for two minutes at a time will never develop past following you around.

Key Takeaways

Complete Awakenings to unlock Creature Pellets.
Feed a calm creature a pellet, then adopt it when hearts appear.
Buy additional companion slots with Nanites as your collection grows.
Summon companions from the Quick Menu and keep them fed for best behavior.
Companions provide scanning, combat, and resource benefits beyond their cosmetic appeal.

No Man's Sky: How to Get a Companion Pet