No Mans Sky: How to get Warp Cells for Hyperdrive Fuel

No Mans Sky is a crazy, open experience and depending on if you take the Atlas Path or not in the games opening it can become even more obtuse for players. That feeling of openness can be pretty damn amazing, but theres also nothing more frustrating than being stuck trying to craft a specific item.

Early on in the game nothing is more important than Warp Cells, the fuel thats used to fuel your faster-than-light drive. Given that FTL travel is your primary method to travel from star system to star system in order to try to reach the center of the universe, the ultimate goal of the game, its arguably the most vital individual resource in the game.

No Mans Sky: How to Craft a Warp Cell
In order to craft a warp cell youll need two key ingredients, both of which arent necessarily available to you if youve been focused on mining resources on planets as many players are early on.

The first key resource is Thamium9. This is actually fairly common but is much less so on planets. Youll likely find some of this when first getting your ship into space, but once youre up there you can find it far more easily by blasting asteroids out in space. Youll need 100 of this per warp cell you want to create.
The second resource is Antimatter, an item youll actually need to craft first. We describe how to tackle that below.

Once you have these two components all you need to do is craft the Warp Cell like any other in-game item, then

How to craft Antimatter
Your first ever Antimatter should be rewarded to you by a friendly alien as part of No Mans Skys main story quest. After that however youre on your own and youre going to need a heck of a lot of them for your journey. Thankfully an alien in your second system will also give you the crafting recipe so you can get making it.

For Antimatter youll need:
1 Electron Vapour. This resource is crafted from 1 Suspension Fluid (Available for purchase from space stations) and 100 Plutonium (Readily available to mine on planets or also sold in space stations). The crafting recipe is unlocked from the moment you start the game.
50 Heridium. This resource is available planet-side but also happens to be frustratingly rare. It can be found as part of very large rock deposits, so fly low over a planet in your ship and keep an eye out for colossal rocks if you find one, theres a strong chance its an absolutely huge Heridium deposit. You can also just buy it from space stations, but its comparatively expensive.
20 Zinc. This is another planet-side resource but is more common. Its found all over, though in the systems Ive traveled so far its most commonly extracted from certain types of plant. Its also available for sale in space stations.

No Mans Sky: How to find Warp Cells
If you dont want to craft your own warp cells or are struggling to track down the necessary resources in the system youre in, youre not exactly stuck: there is another option. Warp Cells are occasionally gifted to the player as part of quests or simply found out in the world. Heres where youre most likely to find them:

At Alien Monoliths
Alien Monoliths are points that you should always prioritize investigating since the rewards they offer tend to be pretty damn solid; they often teach you languages, expose new points of interest on the map and so on. Each interaction also contains a little bit of story.

Interactions with Alien Monoliths has a chance to gift you a warp cell at the end. Keep an eye out for monoliths their icon is purple-ish and features a block with an inscription on it as you fly around. They can also be found directly by hacking a beacon at a camp site with a bypass chip.