The No Man’s Sky Dream Aerial is a new item introduced in the Endurance Update — allowing players to find more organic frigates and add them to their fleet! Think of these like a sort of capital version of your NMS living ship. Though, on the bright side, getting a Dream Aerial is a lot simpler and potentially faster than those organic constructions. You just need to send an organic frigate out on a Fleet Expedition! Let’s take a look at what that means in our latest guide.
It’s worth noting right off the bat that players who completed Expedition 7: Leviathan will have a hefty leg up on this whole process. The Leviathan frigate awarded by that event is quite powerful (it starts as an S class) and makes Fleet Expeditions (not to be confused with the time-limited Expedition events) run smoother. In addition, sending an organic frigate on missions can spawn “a special anomalous event result” which “result in various organic implants for living starships.”
Basically: having a living frigate from the start will increase your odds of getting upgrades for future additions to your fleet. If you already have the Leviathan, make sure you use it!
How to Get a Dream Aerial in No Man’s Sky
Yet you don’t need an organic frigate to get a Dream Aerial. NMS should supply you with a freighter and one frigate pretty early on in the game. They automatically appear after several warp jumps through space, during an ambient mission where you defend the freighter from pirates, marked as “Space Rescue.” After which you can take command. The freighter and its frigate(s) will be yours forever! Alternatively, you can purchase a freighter by simply docking with one in space and talking to the captain. Even the weak ones are pricey, though, so choose wisely.
Aboard the freighter, you can speak to your Navigator NPC (by the circular central console on the command bridge). They will let you send your fleet on missions. Though you first need a Fleet Command Station. Construct one using the base building menu aboard your capital ship. After you send a fleet on its mission, you can access the Fleet Expedition rewards from the Fleet Command Station, once the real-world timer is complete.
Getting a Dream Aerial at this stage is just… stupid luck. There’s a random chance of getting the blueprint to one as a reward from each Fleet Expedition. If you don’t get one at first, send out your frigates again! This is the only documented way to get Dream Aerial at the moment.
Once you have the blueprint, you should be able to construct the device with 3x Living Glass and 1x Solar Mirror. This was originally called out by the NMS community.
With the Dream Aerial finished, it’s just a matter of activating your Pulse Engine while you’re in space (similar to summoning a Derelict Freighter 0r, in fact, the original organic frigate encounter from the Leviathan Expedition). The Dream Aerial is simply an item that must be present in your inventory when you activate the engine.
According to Hello Games’ patch notes, the living frigate should change “according to the player’s choices while on this mission.” Though it’s still unclear exactly on how… Having picked up multiple living frigates now, it at least seems clear that picking different dialogue choices influences the creature to develop specific stats. For example: picking very “violent” dialogue options made one organic frigate heavily weighted towards the combat stat.
So far, we’ve only seen organic frigates wind up focused towards one stat that way. Just like most normal C-Class frigates. Other players have reported that, after reloading a save and making different choices, the living frigate kept the same stats regardless. It’s possible this was simply another bug (like the one listed below).
Your new frigate needs an available slot in your freighter fleet, too. Quite like when you ask a pilot to join your squadron. Be ready to make some room in the fleet!
Getting More Living Frigates in No Man’s Sky
Once the ship is added, the Dream Aerial remains in your inventory, just like the Whalesong Flute used for the Leviathan. Though it doesn’t appear to work more than once by default.
However, several folks have reported that more organic frigates appear during normal space encounters, or “anomalies.” These are random events that occur all throughout No Man’s Sky. They’re quite rare, by default, but you can force one to happen with a consumable item called an Anomaly Detector. These are a very rare drop from broken asteroids. Just shoot up a belt for a few minutes to get one!
With the detector active, just pulse your engine. Again. You’ll eventually get a notification asking you to drop back to normal speed. At which point something will happen. It won’t necessarily be a living frigate, as there are many different types of space encounter the game pulls from, but plenty of players are finding more this way. It also appears you don’t need to keep the Dream Aerial in your inventory to trigger this event. You simply need to recruit your first organic frigate with the device to permanently unlock the “Whalesong” event as a possible anomaly.
Players also recommend pulsing and continuously ignoring anomaly notifications until you see the right notification. Whalesong, in this case. Every anomaly has a warning message when it tells you to drop out of pulse speed. Such as “Rare Deep Space Object.” If it’s the Whalesong event message, however, it will always be a frigate.
Each of these notifications has a short timer displayed on your starship’s interior computer screen. Simply wait for this timer to run out without stopping your Pulse Engines. A new anomaly will trigger several seconds later. It might take multiple skipped messages until you finally see Whalesong. Just be patient!
NOTE: Living frigates were previously able to take damage during fleet expeditions in some cases. This appeared to be a bug, as there is no way to board organic frigates to repair them like normal frigates.
The No Man’s Sky Steam discussion forums note that the problem has been fixed. (Similar to the Expedition 7: Leviathan reward bug before it.) That means PC and console players should be safe now.
We’re still mentioning it here, however, for anyone whose ship already took damage and possibly never resolved it. “Living frigates that are damaged can be fed from the fleet management screen to restore them to health,” according to Hello Games. You should be able to feed your frigate from the Fleet Management menu to fix the problem.
That’s what we know about the NMS Dream Aerial so far. We’ll be back to update this guide with more information as it develops (and as updates continue to influence the game). Best of luck getting your blueprint, in the meantime, and setting yourself up with another organic frigate or four!
