How to get Nano Cells in Outcast: A New Beginning

When you’re playing Outcast: A New Beginning, you’ll quickly find that Nano Cells are a necessary item to collect if you want to upgrade Cutter Slade’s abilities and weapons. It’s vital to know where to obtain Nano Cells and how to use them, so let’s dive deeper into the subject so you can start building up your skills and arsenal. 

How to collect Nano Cells in Outcast: A New Beginning

Where to get Nano Cells

So far, I found two different ways to collect Nano Cells: finding them in outpost chests or looting them from defeated enemies. Let’s take a look at these methods in a little more detail. 

Collecting Nano Cells from outpost chests

You can find outposts across the Adelpha map in Outcast: A New Beginning. On the map, they’re marked with a red, circular icon. When you hover over the icon for an outpost, you’ll see a pop-up on the right-hand side that tells you how many Nano Cell chests you can find at the location. 

To get Nano Cells from chests, head over to any of the outposts marked on the map. Quite a few outposts are high up on a metal structure, so it’s best to wait until you’ve upgraded your jetpack to have two boosts instead of one before you try to access them. 

It’s almost impossible to reach them without that extra boost, but they can still be tricky to get to even with a double boost. I was able to reach the tougher platforms by standing on elevated rocks near the base of the structure, so give this a try if you’re struggling to reach an outpost. Stand on the highest rock you can find and time your jumps as best you can, and you should be able to boost yourself up there.

When you reach an outpost, you’ll find various enemies milling around. The only ones I encountered so far are humans and small, flying droids. Defeat them, then search the outpost until you find a chest. You can see what it looks like in the image below. Interact with the chest to obtain Nano Cells. 

Collecting Nano Cells from defeated enemies

Droids and human enemies are the only ones I found so far that drop Nano Cells. You encounter them at outposts, but they also roam around other areas, like larger bases. 

The droids are small, but they pack a punch, so be prepared to swiftly throw up your shield to avoid their missiles. Human enemies are a little trickier to fight due to how much damage their shots deal, so make sure to dodge or use your shield appropriately. They also melee attack you if you get too close. I found it easier to defeat them by reducing their health from a distance while periodically using my shield to dodge their incoming gunfire. When they’re at low health, approach them if you can and finish them off with a melee hit.

When defeated, these enemies drop bright green shards (Green Helidium) and purple orbs (Nano Cells). You don’t have to walk into them to pick them up, as Cutter will automatically collect them a few moments after they drop.

How to use Nano Cells in Outcast: A New Beginning

Now that you know where to collect Nano Cells, let’s focus on how to utilize them best. Nano Cells upgrade your combat abilities and unlock module slots for weapons.

When you’ve collected a fair amount of Nano Cells, head into the main menu and scroll through the tabs. Head to the Weapon tab if you want to unlock a module slot, or the Upgrade tab to improve your abilities. 

Unlocking weapon module slots

On the Weapons tab, you can see your equipped weapon alongside the available modules on the left-hand side. Navigate to the bottom of the screen to find four slots where you can equip modules. You begin the game with one free slot, but you’ll unlock more with Nano Cells as you go. 

Hover over the slot to see how many Nano Cells you need to unlock it. Once unlocked, you can equip any available modules to your weapon and increase its power by unlocking certain abilities, like the Concussive Shot module that increases damage and stun chance toward droids.

Upgrading combat abilities

To upgrade your combat skills with Nano Cells, head to the Upgrade tab and navigate to the Combat section. You’ll also see a section to improve your Jetpack, whose upgrades you unlock via Blue Helidium rather than Nano Cells. 

From there, you’ll see a skill tree where you can enhance your combat abilities, with skills that increase melee damage, upgrade your armor, and more. You need between 50 and 100 Nano Cells to unlock the first tier of skills, but more advanced skills require more cells as well as other resources. 

Nano Cells are an essential item in Outcast: A New Beginning, particularly when you start encountering more formidable enemies. You need to strike a good balance when using your Nano Cells if you want to unlock weapon module slots and keep upgrading your combat abilities, which we strongly recommend, as it can be almost impossible to make progress without. Keep looting outposts and defeating humans and droids to collect as many Nano Cells as possible.