Erlkönig: No Man's Sky: Beginner Hints

Assuming you're playing on normal difficulty - 9999 resources per inventory/cargo slot - the basics are:

Expanding Inventory

• Expand your inventory (or tech slots) at every chance. Any system will at least let you call the Anomaly, and most have spacestations, so that's 1, or usually 2 more inventory slots to buy per system. Adds up steadily.
• There are maps to capsules on planets that will add an additional cargo (or tech) slot
• Don't worry too much about starship cargo size by comparison since you'll probably switch to another ship later anyway, with some exceptions:
  • If you build a Corvette, you can reasonably keep it forever, and later you can upgrade it to S class, so expanding cargo (not tech!) slots at the spacestation upgrade station at the back of the station is a great idea
  • If you find a Sentinel body style you really like, you can keep hunting that planet until you find a class S version, or just assume you'll upgrade it later
  • If you find one of the special cockpit-only ships, which are always S class, these are great options, but are quite rare - typically only a single type per system
• Most cockpit-only ships can be worth upgrading if you really like how they look and like the stats of the specific one in front of you - but unlike Sentinels it can be hard to find the S class variant
• If you keep jumping between systems, you'll have opportunities to take over Freighters and Pirate Dreadnoughts. The extra cargo slots are extremely helpful if you also get the Mattermitter for it. However, you can't upgrade class on these, so it's better to delay adding cargo slots until you have an S class with a appearance you like

How to Fill up those Slots - Resources

• It is hugely helpful to get at least 1000 of every basic resource you're consuming
• Upgrading your mining beam is pretty critical for saving both time and fuel
• Your Multitool's Terraformer has three sphere sizes, and you can extract far more from a given ore vein using the smallest one - and you gather fuel for it by just pointing it at the ground basically anywhere
• When you have more units to spend (often from upgrading your Multitool's scanner to get more unit for scanning critters), buy basic resources you're short on from the spacestations and other NPC pilots on them, as well as anywhere else that option shows up
• You can also gather resources by shooting things on the ground with your ship (although there's a small chance you'll make a sentinel mad) - later you can consolidate the separate inventory and ship cargo stacks to free up a slot
• Some resources are much easier to find in caves (Cobalt especially)
• Later you'll want to set up Extractors to mine deep resources. Once set up, you can just drop in to pick up a few thousand of a resource whenever you need, which will be pretty rarely, since 9000+ can last a long time

Key Boosters to Watch For

• Tech upgrades from the Anomaly
• Tech upgrades from Graves (talk to translucent-ish Travellars on spacestations and ask about interesting locations)
• Tech upgrades from various planetside points of interest
• Check spacestation vendors for class S upgrades (max 3 of a type) for Multitool systems. Scanning = more units of profit. Mining = more resource, faster, for less fuel. Check out other types as well, notably for your favorite weapon.
• Same advice applies to those vendor for ship upgrades (I upgrade my Infra-Knife), and your Exosuit (shield, env protection, health, etc)

Where to Get the Nanites for those Boosters

• Sell any tech upgrades you don't want to the spacestation tech vendors (or any tech vendor that lets you sell tech modules for nanites)
• Curious Deposits - when you're mining beam is sufficiently upgraded, you can convert these wandering balls into Runaway Mould, then refine it into Nanites
• Quite a number of other things can be refined into Nanites, pay attention to Dissonant worlds especially for some easy options
• Quests

Where to Get Units

• Upgraded scanner on Multitool
• Selling everything you can get your hands on, to spacestations, NPCs, and various other things
• Finding and rehabilitating ships on the ground - especially on Dissonant worlds
• Looting Derelict Freighters (using a module from the tree-headed NPC on the Anomaly)
• Quests