Purple star systems in No Man's Sky: how to find them
Purple star systems sit at system numbers 3E9 to 429 of every region: about one system in nine. How to recognise their glyphs, reach them and find them here.
What is a purple star system?
Purple stars arrived with the Worlds Part II update, on 29 January 2025. They are the rarest colour on the galaxy map for most players, simply because they stay locked until late in the game, but they are not rare at all in the galaxy itself.
Their spectral class starts with X or Y, the two letters the game keeps for purple suns. See Star colours and classes for the full code.
How many purple stars are there?
Far more than it seems. On one million systems predicted across Euclid, purple suns make up 11.7 %, about 65 in every region. Only yellow suns are more common.
In the catalogue of systems recorded by players, they are still a small share, because they open late in the game: see the purple class page of the Observatory.
How to recognise a purple system from its glyphs
The second, third and fourth glyphs of a portal address give the number of the system inside its region (see Glyphs). Purple systems all sit in one fixed band of numbers, from 3E9 to 429 in hexadecimal.
- First purple system of a region: glyphs 2 to 4 are
3E9, which reads Diplo, Tree, Galaxy. - Last purple system of a region:
429, which reads Eclipse, Face, Galaxy. - Ordinary suns use the low numbers, from
001up to a few hundred, and nothing sits between the two bands.
The catalogue backs this up: out of 2 009 recorded systems with a purple class, 2 003 sit inside that band. The six others are most likely typing mistakes.
So to find a purple system near you, keep the last eight glyphs of an address you know (the region), put a planet glyph first, and use any number from 3E9 to 429 in the middle. The portal decoder of each galaxy takes the address and shows what is known about it.
How to reach a purple star
Purple systems open with the mission In Stellar Multitudes. It starts once two other missions are done, They Who Returned (the Autophage) and The Atlas Path. During it, you create a purple system of your own and get the blueprint of the Atlantid Drive, the hyperdrive upgrade that reaches purple stars. Before that, they do not even show on the galaxy map. Some expeditions open them for their duration only.
The other colours have their own drives, which you will need first: Cadmium for red, Emeril for green, Indium for blue.
Can you reach a purple star through a portal?
Yes, but only once In Stellar Multitudes is done. Until then, portals act as if purple systems did not exist: dial a purple address and you land in another system. Joining a friend who stands in a purple system does the same, it drops you in a nearby ordinary one.
Once the mission is done, a purple address works like any other: dial the twelve glyphs and you arrive on the planet.
If a purple address sends you somewhere else although you have access, check the galaxy first: an address only works in the galaxy it was written for.
Why go there?
Purple systems are the place to farm Quartzite: their planets always carry it, or its activated form. Who lives there follows the rest of the galaxy closely: on the predicted million, 13 % of purple systems have no dominant lifeform, the rest split evenly between Gek, Korvax and Vy'keen (see Gek, Korvax, Vy'keen).
Find purple systems on this site
- The Oracle: ask "purple star near" a region, in plain words, at the Oracle. It answers with recorded and predicted systems.
- Search: filter by star colour in the search.
- The Observatory: counts of purple suns, recorded and predicted, on the spectral page.
Found one worth sharing? Contribute the system, so the next traveller finds it too.
Last updated: 1 November 2026