No Man's Sky glossary: glyphs, regions, systems and more
The words of No Man's Sky exploration in one place: portal address, glyph, region, system number, black hole, star class, economy, wealth and more.
Addresses and glyphs
Portal address: twelve glyphs that lead to one exact planet in a galaxy. Also called a portal code or glyph code. See Glyphs.
Glyph: one of the sixteen symbols carved on portals. Each one is a hexadecimal digit, from 0 to F. Players gave them names: Sunset, Bird, Face, Diplo, and so on.
Planet glyph: the first glyph of an address, from 1 to 6. It picks a planet inside the system.
System number: glyphs 2 to 4 of an address, the number of the system inside its region. Players often call it SSI, solar system index.
Region glyphs: the last eight glyphs. Two addresses that share them are in the same region.
Galactic coordinates: four groups of four characters shown by a signal booster, like 041D:004D:0D88:0157. They hold the same information as a portal address, written another way. The portal decoder converts them.
Hex code: a portal address written as twelve characters, like 1157CE589C1E. This site reads it in the address bar: glyphs.had.sh/1-1157CE589C1E. See Use direct URL.
Space
Galaxy: one of the 256 galaxies of the game, from Euclid to Odyalutai. The same address leads somewhere else in each one. See the galaxies.
Galaxy type: each galaxy is normal, lush, harsh or empty, which changes the odds of finding gentle or hostile worlds.
Region: a cube of space about 400 light-years across, holding a few hundred systems. The game names every region.
Quadrant, sector, block, cube: the zones this site uses to cut a galaxy into pieces, from a quarter of it down to a group of regions. They are not in the game. See Navigation and Zoning.
Core: the centre of a galaxy. Going through it leads to the next galaxy. See Black holes.
Black hole: a shortcut that sends you about 6 000 light-years closer to the core. Always in a yellow system, at system number 079.
Stars and systems
Star colour: yellow, red, green, blue or purple. Each colour other than yellow needs a hyperdrive upgrade. See Star colours and classes.
Star class: the code of a sun, like G6pf. The letter gives the colour.
Purple star: a colour opened by the Worlds Part II update, at system numbers 3E9 to 429 of every region. See Purple stars.
Economy: what a system produces: trading, mining, technology, and four others. See Trade routes.
Wealth: the strength of the economy, in three tiers, from struggling to prosperous.
Conflict: how dangerous a system is, low, medium or high. Pirate controlled systems sit apart.
Dominant lifeform: the race of a system: Gek, Korvax or Vy'keen. See Gek, Korvax, Vy'keen.
Uncharted: a system with no dominant lifeform.
Abandoned: a system whose station is empty.
Dissonant: a system touched by corrupted Sentinels, flagged in the game as dissonance.
Gas giant: a huge planet you cannot land on, added by Worlds Part II.
Words of this site
Recorded: a fact seen in the game and written down by a player. The site keeps it with its date and its source.
Predicted: a fact computed from the address alone, for places nobody has written down yet. Always labelled, never mixed with recorded facts.
The Oracle: the part of the site that answers questions in plain words and computes predictions. See the Oracle.
Survey: a form to record what you saw in a system. See Contributing.
Historical record: a place as it was seen before a game update changed it, kept rather than deleted. See Why an archive and Updates that changed the universe.
Story: a page made from your save file, that never leaves your browser. See Stories.
My Glyphs: your bookmarks and travel log, kept in your browser. See My Glyphs.
Last updated: 1 November 2026