No Man's Sky's gameplay is built on four pillars — exploration, survival, combat, and trading. Players are free to perform within the entirety of a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion planets, many with their own sets of flora and fauna. By exploring, players gain information about the planets that they can submit to the Atlas, a universal database that can be shared with other players of the game. Players get compensated in in-game currency every time new information is uploaded to The Atlas.