[Pet Guide] No Egg Timers, Change Class, & More!

If you see this guide uploaded anywhere other than Steam, feel free to report it/get it taken down, as it's been reuploaded without my permission.

Using NMSE to alter your Companions should only be done in the spirit of fairness.

This guide is written to be followed to-the-letter to ensure you have "legal" companions.

If you get flamed, warned, or banned for bringing unfairly modified pets into Player Battles, you're the only one to blame.

In the meantime, feel free to hop to HelloGames through their Zendesk to drop a suggestion by on naturally increasing the Class (or changing the Type) of your favourite companion.

Don't lose your favourite Companion because you got lazy - any time you plan to make a change, make a backup of your save.

Be careful not to click and save haphazardly when save editing, to avoid corrupting your Companions and items!

File Directory for Windows

Windows key + R > %appdata%
%APPDATA%\HelloGames\NMS\

Copy this to a safe location!

If you can't see this folder, check that Hidden Folders are turned on in File Explorer.

For this guide, I'll primarily be using VectorCMDR's No Man's Save Editor, which is the (currently) most up-to-date save editor for No Man's Sky.

You can find it down here, on GitHub:
https://github.com/vectorcmdr/NMSE

NMSE will automatically point at your save directory 9/10 times, but just make doubly sure before going ahead that it isn't pointing at your BACKUP location!

The vanilla method, and the safest!

With a Companion that's able to Induce an Egg..

1. Warp/fly to a suitable planet biome (ie. Fire type? Scorching planet)
   
2. Hop out of your ship to create a Restore Point save
   
3. Summon your Companion
   
4. Induce Egg, do not pick it up
   
5. Reload the Restore Point
   
6. Pick up Egg, hop in and out of your ship for another Restore Point
   
7. Repeat steps 3-6 until you have the desired number of Eggs

How this Works
Save Points seem to capture dropped items (including Eggs), but not the new post-Induced state of your Companion.
When reloading, the Egg from the "false" save remains, while your Companion technically hasn't laid an Egg yet, allowing this infinite loop to happen!

Can't get an egg yet?

1. Name the Companion (easier tracking), save the game
   
2. Open your save in NMSE
   
3. Navigate to Companions and find yours
   
4. Set Last Egg Time to 1 day ago (ie. 2026-04-11 (year/month/date) to 2026-04-10)
   
5. Save changes

!! DO NOT use the "Induce Egg" button, it seems to produce bugged eggs! !!

Hate that you need to wait another 24 hours for a dropped egg to hatch?

1. Move the Egg(s) into your Exosuit inventory, then save the game
   
2. Open your save in NMSE
   
3. Navigate to Exosuit (2nd tab)
   
4. Find the Egg, click on it, and note its ItemID (ie. Egg7)
   
5. Navigate to Companions, scrolling down under Pets to reach Eggs
   
6. Cross-referencing the ItemID, locate your Egg
   
7. Click the Make Hatchable button under Birth Time
   
8. Save changes

Caught a baby and can't get an adult, or just hatched a baby and want another generation?

1. Name the Companion (easier tracking), save the game
   
2. Open your save in NMSE
   
3. Navigate to Companions and find yours
   
4. Set Birth Time to 1 month ago (ie. 2026-04-11 (year/month/date) to 2026-03-11)
   
5. Save changes

Why 1 month?
Annoyingly, Companions can take anywhere from 24 hours to 2 real-life weeks to grow from infant to adult. Yep, it can potentially be worse than Living Ship eggs!

You'll notice - checking any adults you've caught - that their birth time will be several weeks behind when you actually caught them, for this reason.

If you just wish your favourite six-legged cat wasn't all C class.

1. Name the Companion (easier tracking), save the game
   
2. Open your save in NMSE
   
3. Navigate to the Companions tab
   
4. In that Companion's Battle tab, check the Override Pet Class box
   
5. Set Health, Agility, and Combat Effectiveness as you please
   
6. Save changes

If you REALLY like one particular pet, but want elemental babies or hate its type!

1. Name the Companion (easier tracking), save the game
   
2. Open your save in NMSE
   
3. Navigate to the Companions tab
   
4. In that Companion's Stats tab, change their Biome (see below)
   
5. Save changes

*Also ignore everything below "Weird".

You can artificially level a companion through giving yourself Retroviral pellets, though it of course stands to drastically alter your experience with Pet Arena content.

Similar to giving yourself max units, you'll start from the top with much less to look forward to.

Treat Retrovirals like rare candies on your second go-around - good for if you've already done the grind and just want to speed up a new Companion just a bit.

I do not recommend directly altering the pet's level, because of the potential discrepency between a Companion's counted Holobattles without any Retroviral pellets consumed.

The Egg Sequencer is your friend!

• Increasing size will increase the native Health Points (HP) for a Companion, at the cost of potential Agility.

• Decreasing size will increase the native Agility (dodge chance + battle turn order) for a Companion, at the cost of potential HP.

• Max out their Traits for randomly-triggered bonus moves to happen more often in battles!

When Fauna Hunting, use the Photo Mode feature!
Sit the camera still for a few moments in Photo Mode, and the UI will disappear. This is how you get screenshots that retain the Portal Glyphs on the bottom left, so you'll never truly lose the location of cool finds!

When leveling, have one high-level Companion in the team!
Mutation (EXP) scales with the level of the Holobattle party you fight against, which itself scales to an average level of your party (ie. level 7, 1, 1, the opponent has a level 4 party).
You'll get significantly more EXP for low-level Companions this way!

When leveling, make sure every Companion participates!
No EXP Share, unfortunately - every Companion you want to level up needs to get one complete turn in battle to get EXP!