Where to get Oxygen in No Man's Sky
Solution 1:
Oxygen is spotted by bright red plants. The hazardous plantlife, like the bulb in your question is also a pretty decent source of it. To find Oxygen quickly you can do four main things
- Use your Scanner, Oxygen will appear as red O² marks when you pulse it. You can upgrade your scanner with modules to increase it's effective range. Scanning Flora can also "unlock" Oxygen as the bonus resource.
- Use your ship and fly low and slow. As I pointed out, Oxygen plants are bright red and universal no matter what planet you are on. You will be able to spot the plants from your ship. You can even shoot the plants with your ship to harvest directly.
- Jump to a different planet. No Man's Sky is a stupid huge game, with basically near infinite possible planets. For all you know you've only seen "desert" planets and your next jump will be an Oxygen rich paradise.
- Buy it. It's normally always in terminals and pretty cheap too, if you are absolutely out of life support and O² stores, hop to a station and stockpile some... Scanning some flora/animals should get you enough credits to buy a decent amount, even without bonuses.
Some other things you'll be able to do to get plenty of Oxygen later in the game
- The Oxygen Harvester is a buildable that will essentially convert Carbon to Oxygen
- The Atmosphere Harvester is also buildable, performs pretty much the same exact way as the Oxygen Harvester, but upgraded to improve efficiency and yield. This can collect other gaseous resources as well
- The Gas Extractor is the final buildable. This behemoth uses power instead of fuel (like solar) and is a bit of a project to build and get going. but this will provide massive amounts of Oxygen. This can also harvest different gases depending on its location.