Salvaged frigate module farming methods

"A technology module harvested from the remains of a large interstellar starship. May be collected from freighter crash sites or salvaged during frigate expeditions.
Useless in its current form, a Research Station aboard your freighter may be able to convert it into usable technology." -No Man's Sky game description

As the description suggests, salvaged frigate modules are items that can be used to unlock different recipes and technologies to upgrade and expand your capital ship, similarly to how salvaged data can be used to unlock base blueprints and tech.

In this guide I will be going through various different methods on how to get salvaged frigate modules, discussing my personal experience with farming them, and a conclusion where I will describe my preferred method of farming.

Without further ado, let's begin!

First method: Nexus missions. Average time: 10-20 minutes (depending on mission).

The first method is easily the quickest one, although it isn't all too consistent.
It's very simple; check the Nexus missions each day for missions that give salvaged frigate modules as rewards.
Unfortunately, the chance of getting frigate modules isn't very high, and sometimes the missions that you get can be irritating or take a while to complete(e.g. taking a photo on a certain type of planet). I get frigate module reward missions on average 2-3 times a week, and I have also noticed that I tend to get frigate module missions more on Tuesdays than other days.

Pros:
Easy and quick
Guaranteed reward
No setup

Cons:
Unreliable for consistent farming
Inconsistent times

Wouldn't recommend this as a primary method of farming. I do the missions whenever they're there, but I don't really actively seek them out. Use this method as passive income.

Second method: Crashed freighters. Average time: 15-30 minutes

This method is a little more complicated than the previous one. But no worries, it is also really simple once you do the setup.

There are 3 main methods of locating crashed freighters depending on what equipment you have:

1. Exosuit scans.
   This method requires you to build a Minotaur exosuit and install the radar array upgrade for it (Unlocked on the Nexus). This upgrade will allow you to scan for specific signals, one of them being distress signals. If your scan yields a crashed ship instead of a freighter, simply use the scanner again.
2. Buying distress signal planetary charts from your local space station.
   This method is not optimal, as it requires a lot of resources.15 nanite clusters and 1 navigation data per chart, to be precise. And after all that, it's not even a guarantee that the chart will locate a crashed freighter.
3. Just flying around.
   Self explanatory. Enter a planet's atmosphere and fly around until you see a crashed freighter. This is, by far, the worst method of them all.

Once you have found a crashed freighter through your preferred method, use your analysis visor to search for cargo pods on foot (there are always 6 iirc). Once you've marked them, you will need a terrain manipulator to dig them up. There is a 7.5% chance per pod according to the NMS wiki.

Pros:
Consistent farming method
Easy once the setup is done

Cons:
Low yield
Lot of setup required
High labour intensity

This method isn't all that great, mainly due to the low chance of a module dropping. Not the best, but perfectly fine for early game farming.

Third method: Fleet raiding. Average time: 5-10 minutes per fleet.

I believe this method to be the best one, although it comes with It's own risks.

Step 1: Find an outlaw system (systems with a skull on the system economy tab in the galaxy map) dominated by a race with which you have the lowest standing. This can be checked in the milestones tab in the pause menu.

Step 2: Once you've warped to the outlaw system, set up a minimal base consisting of a base computer and a portal. The base is necessary to be able to return to that system whenever you need to. Note that you don't need an energy source for the portal if you are teleporting TO the base.

Step 3: Fly to space and use the pulse engine in 10-15 second intervals, waiting 10-15 seconds in between intervals. Repeat until a freighter fleet spawns.

Step 4: Focus your attention on the large freighters with multiple storage pods, not the free floating storage units. There can be anywhere from 1-6 freighters per fleet. (While the small storage units can contain salvaged modules, but the sheer amount of them makes it inefficient to search them all)

Step 5: Check all the storage pods by simply looking at them. On average there will be anywhere from 1-3 modules per fleet.

Step 6: If you care about your reputation with the current race, only destroy the pods with modules, if not, just raid any resource that you need.

Step 7: Pulse away and repeat.

Pros:
Consistent farming method
Easy setup
High yield (If you check the wiki, it says that It's a 1% chance for a module to spawn, and while the numbers do add up, the low time to check a fleet compensates for the low spawn chance)
Very fast method
Low labour demand

Cons:
Lowering reputation
Chance to die if you get caught by the freighter defence systems (this is virtually impossible if you pulse away fast enough)

Overall, this method is my preferred primary farming method due to It's simplicity and high yield of modules. If your reputation goes too low, just use a forged passport to reset it to neutral.

This section will skim over methods that are too inefficient, slow, inconvenient, or for whatever other reason failed to make the list. Feel free to skip if you don't need this information. All of the quotes were taken from the No Man's Sky Wiki[nomanssky.fandom.com]

-"Industrial type Frigate Expeditions (7%-20%, depending on mission difficulty)." Too inconsistent and basically 100% based on chance. The only reason the Nexus method did make it is because it has a considerably higher yield. Although, if your fleet contains a lot of high class industrial type frigates, feel free to use this method as passive income

-"Explorers Guild envoy in some Space Stations (requires "Master" standing rank)." Too long setup. If you already have a master standing, use as passive income, but I wouldn't suggest grinding it out only for the modules.

-"Certain Mission Board jobs (2%-4%, depending on required standing)." Inconsistent, low yield. Wouldn't even recommend as passive income.

-"Pirate mission board missions (2%)." Same reason as previous method.

-"Crates aboard Derelict Freighters (2.5%) Note that while the drop rate is relatively low, the number of boxes (i.e. chances) makes this one of the more reliable options for farming." Although this is true, the method is really inconvenient, and depending on your progression it can be expensive for the setup. Helios does provide free locators each week, so feel free to use this as passive income, just make sure you have enough inventory space and life support fuel, as it's incredibly easy to run out of both.

In conclusion, there are many methods to farm salvaged freighter modules, though some are better than others. Feel free to share your own methods in the comments.

Before I wrap things up, I would like to provide my own farming method which I actively use.

I use the fleet raiding method as my main grinding method. I tend to grind it out for about 1-2 hours at a time which yields about 6-8 modules.
Whenever I'm at the Nexus for whatever reason, I check the missions and do the module reward missions as passive income. Whenever I randomly find crashed freighters I'll search the cargo pods depending on my mood. Overall, it will take maybe 1-2 months to unlock everything, depending on how much you farm.

And that concludes this lengthy guide.

Thank you so much for reading! If this guide helped you, please consider leaving a like or an award, as it took a lot of time and effort to write! Feel free to share your methods and opinion in the comments. Constructive criticism is welcome.

Have a good one!