I've gotten data and manufactured mata, but no raw. Am I just unlucky, or is it not a thing?
Am I missing something...no raw mats for mission rewards?
- Thread starter Dunkel Reynolds
- Start date
You are supposed to drive around in your SRV and shoot rocks for these, or crystalline clusters etc. at geo sites for higher grade raw materials to trade down. Or even shoot 'roids with a mining laser for them. But whichever way you do it, they will take a while to gather. They come in handy for all kinds of things in the game, so it's a good policy to learn how to gather raw materials.
A loooong time ago you could get raw mats as mission rewards but they haven't been seen in ages.
I get that. I know how to obtain them directly from the wild ..just like you can with data and manufactured. Just seems weird that I can get other mats from mission rewards, but not raw... especially considering that raw is the hardest of the three to obtain in the wild.
Things were made much easier with the Chapter 4 update which brought POI's with varying grades of mats. Not saying it is a doddle now, but certainly easier than driving round shooting rocks and meteors for mats.
As mentioned around 1200 Ly from the bubble the crystal shards are easy picking for high grade (bar Selenium) in a fairly short period of time.
I really should have prospected the 4.8% selenium body I passed a couple of days ago...
I would disagree with that, even before they basically put buckets of the stuff on certain planets just 1000LY out of the bubble.
Raw is the easiest and most predictable.
Using standard geological sites, or the "super" biological sites, you can reliably farm G4 elements, and then trade them down for G1-3 (except Selenium), without aimlessly driving around some rock praying on RNGesus. Lol
Raw mats are absolutely the easiest mats to go out and grab exactly the specific material you want. Even selenium is pretty easy to find, you just need to get it from volcanic sites and look for fragments instead of needle crystals. Fill your bins with them and you won't have to go out looking again for a long time.
Edit: my selenium spot is Wolf 587 4 E a. Just go to one of the geological sites on the surface, rather than faffing around in the canyons.
Edit: my selenium spot is Wolf 587 4 E a. Just go to one of the geological sites on the surface, rather than faffing around in the canyons.
They're easy if you consider downing tools to undertake an activity specifically to get that particular type of material "easy". Which is similar to another flawed logic which i won't go near in this thread.
I never set about consciously getting manufactured or data materials... data comes in just from clicking through various ships while on supercruise or the various datapoint scan missions, and mission rewards, while manufactured is, again, mission rewards, or a quick scoop at the end of an assassination or "inbound enemy" from a delivery/ passenger missions. Anytime i run short on a particular type , i have plenty to trade.
But raw, ugh, i tried to do it through mining, but even "high material" asteroids didn't yield much, and i eventually did the crystalline grind, but good god, i wanted to gouge my eyes out at the end.
So I mean, yeah, if I compare the crystalline grind to, say, the logoffski grind at a shipwreck for materials, or the DWE grind, yeah, raw materials are "Easier". But Raw materials have no comparable "parallel activity" in the game that allows gradual collection of these materials over time.
I guess you could call mining and exploration "parallel activities", but they're both very specific activities, whereas Data and Manufactured can both be collected while doing combat, trade, exploration, passenger runs or mining.
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I see your point, but at the same time, loads of manufactured materials and data are really hard, if not impossible, to come by through "normal gameplay".
You must go out of your way to get them, or accept the dismal trade rates.
(HGE's are very rarely on route to anything!)
Explorers can technically find raw materials during their gameplay, by accidently mapping a planet with geological sites, and landing to scan them for their codex, and seems you're down there... Lol
Raw can also be found by using the SRV to complete surface missions. You will find rocks to shoot if you're driving anywhere on a planet.
Adding elements to the mission boards will just dilute them further, making the manufactured materials and data that are only available from missions, even harder to find.
That's why the traders exist, I guess? There's plenty of debate around the availability and mechanics for getting certain materials, and I'm not going to disagree with that sentiment.
I'd disagree they're dismal trade rates... at least, when I'm constantly filling up on ones I can trade down, being able to trade full-stop is better than nothing. But that'd be a subjective argument which is pretty pointless.
I rarely ever stop at HGEs unless they're orbiting the same body as the mission target (i.e on the way). HGE farming is a pretty bad way of doing things too.
Yep, like I said, exploration is possibly one of the exceptions, but even then, exploration is a pretty dedicated activity.
Every single mission will fly you directly to the POI. You actually need to avoid the mission area and divert entirely. Much like your HGE example, rocks to crack are rarely on route to any planetary surface mission.
Harder to find, correct.
Hard to find? Nope.
But you'll also note that I suggested adding them to mining missions only. I don't do mining missions as they're barely worthwhile in their current form, so that would make them marginally more worthwhile.
Personally, asteroid-cracking should've been what yielded significant amounts (equivalent of a barnacle's worth) of materials, and sub-surface mining how you'd get "core" minerals. But that's just me.
EDIT: Tangentially, the mechanic surrounding the collection of materials should never require a dedicated effort from the player for any type of material. It should completely be a secondary economy arising from standard game activities. Are there gaps in the current implementation? Absolutely, and should they be fixed? Definitely, but that's a lengthy, complex argument. Take DWE's for example. Probably the only way to get them is to sit there farming wake scans. There's no actual game activity with a requisite for scanning wakes. That's a much bigger problem than just the materials economy, and needs to be fixed.
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I think they can show up occasionally from the private data beacon USSes and installation data scans, but that would be a very slow way to get them, and other than gathering materials there's not much reason to do those either.
"There's no actual game activity with a requisite for scanning wakes. "
Not as such no, but it is an enabler of Piracy, where you can follow a ship to an anarchy system to pirate it without security interference. In doing so you will be scanning High Wakes.
Not as such no, but it is an enabler of Piracy, where you can follow a ship to an anarchy system to pirate it without security interference. In doing so you will be scanning High Wakes.
I did a tour of thargoid related sites. At almost every site I found nearby metallic meteors and many G4 raw mats. I can't resist checking out those double lines, even though I am maxed on all of them. Same happens when ever I do planetary scans or recoveries.
Your final comment on DWEs is incorrect.
I fit a wake scanner to my combat ship, and scan all the wakes of fleeing enemies (or allies) in conflict zones. Lol
But largely, the whole material gathering does need some rebalancing to make them a bit more consistent. Or at least the higher grades do. Low grades are very easy to stumble upon with no effort.
It's just a shame you need 100s of a G1 to trade for 1 G5. Lol
You don't have to go out of your way to find data or manufactured. You can get both as rewards for any type of missions. Even if you're just a trader, you can hit USS on your way to a station. My inventory is full of both because they're so easy to get on a routine basis. If I want raw, I do have to go way out of my way, either getting my mining rig out or by landing on a planet and running around...even if there are specific sites where they are concentrated, I still have to go find them and get to them. We can debate whether or not these two options are "difficult" or whatever, but I don't think anyone could make the argument that it's easier or less time consuming (which is the bigger concern) than getting data or manufactured.
It doesn't make sense to have the other two as rewards and not raw materials.
It doesn't make sense to have the other two as rewards and not raw materials.
Your interpretation there is slightly off... didn't mean there weren't activities you can do to get DWE's, just there's no real reason to be scanning the wakes in the first place (other than getting DWE's themselves) . This ties back to the problem I'm trying to highlight[1].
Right now, I've got four G5 materials in quantities over 50. I don't even remember how I got them, just that I did, over the course of playing the game. All the others are in the 10-20s, which I probably got when those G5 mats filled up. Probably opportunistic scoops when taking out assassination targets, defending myself during hauls or mission rewards.
Likewise for Data, one G5 is almost full at 94, others in quantities varying from 30-50. DWEs are at just 3, probably owing to some FSD upgrades I did recently, but I've never had to plan ahead for that trade; I knew I'd always have enough data on hand. I'm scanning
But raw? I know I got that entirely from the crystal grind, and I'll probably have to play fetch for those G4's (the ones I trade down for ammo resupplies) again soon, and I'm not looking forward to that.
I've almost never traded up, maybe once when I was real desperate for a G4 raw, funnily enough. Beyond that, I've always traded down.
I guess I see that as drawing you away from whatever activity you're actually doing still, which is really my point here. Certainly, it's not a fast process, unlike the seconds it takes to scoop wreckage after a fight.
[1] Coincidentally, following low-wake drops has been broken for god-knows how long now... following the wake drops you at the wake, which is 1,000km from the actual target (e.g a station). Dropping at the station instead guarantees your target won't be there (game assumes you haven't followed the wake). Good thing there's no game activity related to that mechanic...
I would say Raw Mats are the easiest by far to gather, their locations are pretty static.