How to Get the Best Freighter in No Man's Sky For Free (For Beginner to Veteran Players)

Credits

I learned about this trick from Reddit user Melinsarious12. If you want to check out their guide on getting freighters, I'll link it right here:

Perfect Freighter Guide!

Notice

This method will only get you the freighter for free if you have not acquired a freighter yet. If you do have a freighter, you will have to pay the usual tens of millions of units to get the freighter you want.

Types of Freighters

In No Man's Sky, there are two types of freighters. There are the more common system freighters, which are the ones you usually see floating around a star system and warping in near the space station, and the capital freighters, which are much harder to find. Capital freighters are what we will be focusing on.

Capital freighters are several times larger and more powerful than system freighters, and they will only spawn in pirate space battles after two conditions by the player are met. This will be the meat and bones of the method we will be using. There are two designs that a capital will take on: a Venator design (as pictured above) and a Sentinel design (as pictured below).

The designs will stay the same, but the lengths of the freighters can vary. For example, the largest of the Venator capital freighter can have up to six indentations on one side (Resurgent-class) and a minimum of two indentations (Venator-class). The design and length of the freighter has no impact on its stats, so it is up to you to decide which design you want to shoot for. It is simply a matter of preference.

Stats

Capital freighters can range anywhere from 24 to 34 inventory slots while system freighters can only have 15 to 19 inventory slots. Again, model design and size does not impact these stats, so you don't have to worry about that. However, something important to remember is that capital freighters have the same classification system as system freighters, as in they can range anywhere from a C-Class to an S-Class.

Also, the dominant race of the system that the capital freighter is in will influence the crew your freighter will have. If the dominant race is Korvax, the crew will be mainly Korvax, etc.

Just because it is a capital freighter does not mean you are guaranteed an S-Class freighter. You will have to do some rerolling to get an S-Class if that is the class you are shooting for.

Now that we know the freighter type that we want, we can get down to the actual grinding. Firstly, you're going to want to have a decent long distance travel ship. It's recommended you have an A-Class or S-Class Explorer starship or an Exotic starship. If you're curious about Exotic starships, I also have a guide on those you can check out.

It is also recommended to have an economy scanner, an indium drive, and as many hyperdrive upgrades as you can manage. You'll need to be able to handle fighting about four to eight pirate ships during the freighter battle.

Starting the Search

Once you've got these, we can start looking for your capital freighter. In order to get one to spawn, you'll need to force trigger a capital freighter battle, which will happen when two conditions are met. One, the player needs to have warped to a system 5 times, and two, the player must have been playing for three consecutive hours (unpaused). When these conditions are met, the freighter battle will spawn on the fifth warp and the searching can begin.

NOTE: Ignore Pirate Dreadnought battles. These are not relevant to capital freighters.

I recommend playing for three hours first and then choosing a "base" system to create your restore point in. To do this, just head to the space station in the system of your choosing and get out of your space ship to create a restore point. This is crucial for rerolling to get the freighter that you want. Warp three times first to other systems and then on the fourth warp, head to the base system of your choosing so the freighter battle will trigger on the fifth warp.

NOTE: Ideally, you will want to choose a base system that is near a bunch of three-star (wealthy) systems. These systems will be your bread and butter for finding the freighter that you want, as S-Class freighters are more likely to spawn in these systems.

Once you've started your fifth warp to a wealthy system, a capital freighter battle will trigger. Fly over to the main freighter, usually near the front where all of the freighters are facing, and check to see if the freighter is the model you want. If it is not, reload your restore point from the menu and check another wealthy system. Rinse and repeat until you find the freighter model that you want. I recommend getting a pen and paper or something to write info down with so you can list and scratch off systems you've already visited.

NOTE: Once you get the freighter later, you can change the color of the model with freighter upgrades, so only focus on the model, not the colors. You will need nanites for this, so if you want to know how to farm nanites, I also have a guide for that.

After you have found the system that your ideal freighter is in, the rerolling can begin. Defeat all of the pirates attacking the freighter and the captain will send you a transmission asking you to board the freighter to reward you. Once you've boarded, you can use the teleporter on the platforms between the docking areas to reach the main command area. The captain will offer you the freighter for free if you have not acquired one already.

However, before you accept the offer, use your Analysis Visor or talk to the captain to detect what class the freighter has rolled as. If it is not the class you desire, reload your restore point and fight the battle again in the same system. Accept the captain's transmission again, board the freighter, and check the freighter's class again with your Analysis Visor. Rinse and repeat until it is the class you desire.

NOTE: You will have to fight the pirates and accept the captain's transmission afterwards each time. You do not, however, need to accept initial emergency message. You can go straight to fighting the pirates.

Once you've got the class, race, and design model you want, you can accept the offer from the captain and you've got yourself your new mobile space base!

This process took around four or five hours total for me, and it will vary between inidividuals.

If you have any questions, leave a comment and I'll be happy to answer them :)

Happy hunting, Travellers!