Chemical manipulators and distilleries

Excellent titbit, thanks Drew.


I think surface drops are still bugged with only giving (1) material instead of the usual (3) per pickup. Supposedly set for a fix in 3.04 which is apparently coming next week.

This bug does not apply to Raw Materials gathered from Outcrops etc.
 
I think surface drops are still bugged with only giving (1) material instead of the usual (3) per pickup. Supposedly set for a fix in 3.04 which is apparently coming next week.

This bug does not apply to Raw Materials gathered from Outcrops etc.

Data drops from datapoints are bugged. Manufactured materials are not, they give 3 per drop, as intended.
 
It didn't spawn any in 3.0.1 (or 3.0.2) for 30 mins of mode switching.
Got as many today as I've gotten in the past. Still possible to go 30 mins without any though, that's what happens with RNG if you are really unlucky. But they definitely can spawn with 3.0.3.

One plus now is that all those other mats that I ignored before don't really cost any time to collect and can be traded up / sideways for other stuff - the conversion rates may be poor but at the end of the day it's "free".
 
Got as many today as I've gotten in the past. Still possible to go 30 mins without any though, that's what happens with RNG if you are really unlucky. But they definitely can spawn with 3.0.3.

One plus now is that all those other mats that I ignored before don't really cost any time to collect and can be traded up / sideways for other stuff - the conversion rates may be poor but at the end of the day it's "free".

If you need one particular material, you can sit near specific spawnpoint and relog. It is faster than doing a full circle each time. There was even a map with detailed spawnlists for each of 10 spawnpoints.
 
It didn't spawn any in 3.0.1 (or 3.0.2) for 30 mins of mode switching.

I've been finding both, and enough quantities I traded up for the really rare top tier pharm isolator or whatever.

But rng is rng and sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't. Lol. Maybe "git gud" at rng? J/k sorry couldn't resist that. :D

But no it seems you'll get lucky or unlucky. I had stretches of crap, then stretches of good stuff a lot. It's just up to how much it likes you today.

Here is a map, with all items listed you can get at Davs currently, and I'm pretty sure I've gotten some of everything listed. https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/80rgfy/davs_hope_new_map_for_30/
 
Hiya! The best way to get any material nowadays is to farm its G5 root material and then trade down to it.

If you look at the materials trader (manufactured) window, you will see what is directly above (above being to the right in the table hierarchy) the resources you want. On the far right of that row will be the G5 material that is the top material for that category.

I believe (hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong), that the root G5 mat of chemical manips and distilleries, is Pharmaceutical Isolators, and those are actually one of the easiest G5 mats to farm.

Go to EDDB, and go to Systems, and plug in the following filters...(IF the root material is Pharma Isolators, if it's something else then these instructions will lead you to pharma isos, you'll need other instructions if I got that wrong) :)

State: Outbreak
Allegiance: Independent
Industry: High Tech (if you get no results that you like near you, try Industrial, if still nothing you like, just focus on population and disregard economy type, I've found plenty of HGEs in Agri systems in the past)

Now look at your results and choose the best trade off between population (as high as possible) and distance to travel to get there.

When you get to the system, imagine the orbital plane is a plate of food and you are a fly and you want to circle high above the plate of food. So you put the star in the rear view and head straight UP (relative to the orbital plane, it doesn't matter up or down, obviously), until you are at about 2000ls above the main star, looking down at all the planets orbiting the star below you (turn on orbit lines to make things easier to visualise), and then simply run large circles around the system at that 'height', popping into USSes that are High Grade Emissions. 1 per 5 to 10 minutes is an average rate, sometimes it will be better sometimes it will be worse, but I have a general rule that if I see 5 USSes and none are HGEs, I either log off and back on again, or drop to normal space, then re-enter the supercruise instance. It;s worth doing this in solo, so you don't get match-made with the supercruise instance of another commander (if this happens, you may not be able to reset the SC instance, and you won't even know if you have or not!).

This is how I get large numbers of lower level mats, by farming the high level root material. Hope it helps, good luck to you. :)



This is what I do too.
One good drop of PIs is worth 45 chemical manipulators at the trader.
That's also worth 135 chemical distilleries.
So in just 2 HGE sources you could have both of those numbers of mats in your hold.

Seems quite a few people are having trouble at Dav's Hope.
I'd avoid that for the time being.

PS It would take quite a while to find 135 chemical distilleries at Dav's...
 
I think surface drops are still bugged with only giving (1) material instead of the usual (3) per pickup. Supposedly set for a fix in 3.04 which is apparently coming next week.

This bug does not apply to Raw Materials gathered from Outcrops etc.

Good to know, cheers.
 
I've found that high level NPCs quite often drop at least one G5 material now: Pharmaceutical Isolators, Imperial Shielding, Military Supercapacitors, etc.

I just hoover up anything decent now and trade it at the material brokers. It's much more fun than flying about deep space hoping for the right USS to appear.

Same here. I've been doing plenty of assasination missions and usually have to wreck condas & corvettes or their extra conda buddies sent after you during a mission. Besides what you've mentioned, I also found occasionaly, core dynamic material, proto radiolic alloy, crystal shard, filament ?, etc. so now it's a nice touch since 3.0.1 that there's a chance for npc wreckage to drop a rare material.
Some of those grade 5 materials used to take so long to find for a specific USS that had them even during a long multi-hour serach.
 
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If you need one particular material, you can sit near specific spawnpoint and relog. It is faster than doing a full circle each time. There was even a map with detailed spawnlists for each of 10 spawnpoints.

This is what I do too.
One good drop of PIs is worth 45 chemical manipulators at the trader.
That's also worth 135 chemical distilleries.
So in just 2 HGE sources you could have both of those numbers of mats in your hold.

Seems quite a few people are having trouble at Dav's Hope.
I'd avoid that for the time being.

PS It would take quite a while to find 135 chemical distilleries at Dav's...
You are both absolutely correct. If you are after a specific material and no others then these are the two methods to use. But I still like Dav's Hope because of the variety it provides. Drive round in a circle / re-log isn't exactly wonderful gameplay but (for me at least) it does beat the optimised methods for "fun". And is massively more enjoyable than, say, the Guardians' missions... And you end up with a good mix of materials which you can exchange for the rarer ones.

My engineering experience is somewhat atypical in that it's only exploration relevant ones that I care about, but it does seem to me that with the current system most people will end up with an abundance of mats over time. We'll end up with max amounts of lower value ones which we'll gradually upgrade to higher varieties. Eventually, mats will be largely irrelevant in the sense that any time we want to engineer something we'll have more than enough of the needed mats. 3.0 initially created an arms race and the need for massive amounts of mats to be at the bleeding edge of what's possible for those interested in PvP or multiple roles. But over time the ability to trade mats is going to be the key factor - whether hunting the very rares and downgrading or just collecting the normal and upgrading.
 
This is what I do too.
One good drop of PIs is worth 45 chemical manipulators at the trader.
That's also worth 135 chemical distilleries.
So in just 2 HGE sources you could have both of those numbers of mats in your hold.

Seems quite a few people are having trouble at Dav's Hope.
I'd avoid that for the time being.

PS It would take quite a while to find 135 chemical distilleries at Dav's...

If you are soecifically only needing those mats, or those in its lower tiers then this is certainly the mor efficient way.

But if you need all manufactured mats from all tiers of all classes like me, then Davs hope is better imo. I have gotten some of every class, was able to trade up and down for a few other things, and was able to get what I needed for a lot of engineering.

Also I want to clear up something, all ground drop mats from Davs are giving 3 at a time. I haven't been checking the data ones. But the manufactured materials are giving 3 at a time.

It may take longer to get 135 Chen distillers depending on luck, but I got plenty and a ton of other mats I needed. So it's really a matter of scale, and preference.

I kind of enjoyed running around Davs hope for a bit, turn it into a little mini race track. It was a change of pace from running for DSS and missions and such I was doing before. [up]

Davs hope issues, if you mean getting there, and dropping in seems like it may be a ps4 thing more than anything? I've had no problems there the last couple of days when i went. I'm on PC
 
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But I still like Dav's Hope because of the variety it provides. Drive round in a circle / re-log isn't exactly wonderful gameplay but (for me at least) it does beat the optimised methods for "fun". And is massively more enjoyable than, say, the Guardians' missions... And you end up with a good mix of materials which you can exchange for the rarer ones.

I hate to say it but I kind of enjoy running around Dav's Hope scooping up materials. But then I love driving the SRV in general, as I take a break every few laps to go play on the nearby mountain, or in the crater up over the hill.

The best way I've found to get Chemical Manipulators in 3.0 is to actually farm Pharmaceutical Isolators instead and then trade some of them down at the mat trader. This gets you boatloads of them. :cool:
 
Well never been much of fan of supermarkets and was too tired from a busy week of killing Thargoids all over the place and cleaning up the mess they leave.

Instead I popped into my local grocery corner store in my dropship. A nice pristine haz site a whole 7ls away.

Scan wakes on the way out of the station, stop at any USS on my leisurely swing around the planet, drop into the Rez site, shoot rocks, scan and shoot pirates, collect mats, scan the cops and wake scan them as they leave....and repeat until the hold is full.
Cash in shiney stuff and collect bounties.

I know it's a bit lazy letting the mats come to you but I was tired and just needed some R&R.
 
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I think it all really comes down to preference more than anything, also the situation of whichever CMDR is involved.

But I. Really liking these changes, and yeah some of the mat traders rates are stupid. Like 200+ iron for one of the top teir mats. But I needed other planetary mats so I just dumped all my iron since I was going to fill it up again anyways. And did so 3 times looking for antimony, polonium and yttrium. I'm not one to let too much loot just go to waste sitting on the ground.

But at least there finally feels like progress, and options for all as far as how to get things.

My last week or so has been this. 3-4 days of my usual few hours of playtime, running kill/massacres missions with mat rewards, res sites, beacons. Killing and then using limpets for the dropped goodies, while finishing missions. Then I went for about 3 days to planetary mats. Then now I went to on to Davs and did 2 days of that.

But I'm not joking when I say I need a lot of every mat. I haven't engineered a lot, and only be plying a year. Don't even own a whole lot of ships. So I have a long road of engineering ahead.

So far the only ones I have none of are mil. Super caps, imp shielding, and a few data, like wake scans and stuff, which I haven't focused on yet. But I got a lot by using traders. And I feel like while it's still a chore, it no longer has that, omg this is fricken impossible feeling to it anymore.
 
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If you are soecifically only needing those mats, or those in its lower tiers then this is certainly the mor efficient way.

But if you need all manufactured mats from all tiers of all classes like me, then Davs hope is better imo. I have gotten some of every class, was able to trade up and down for a few other things, and was able to get what I needed for a lot of engineering.

Also I want to clear up something, all ground drop mats from Davs are giving 3 at a time. I haven't been checking the data ones. But the manufactured materials are giving 3 at a time.

It may take longer to get 135 Chen distillers depending on luck, but I got plenty and a ton of other mats I needed. So it's really a matter of scale, and preference.

I kind of enjoyed running around Davs hope for a bit, turn it into a little mini race track. It was a change of pace from running for DSS and missions and such I was doing before. [up]

Davs hope issues, if you mean getting there, and dropping in seems like it may be a ps4 thing more than anything? I've had no problems there the last couple of days when i went. I'm on PC




That formula works for almost all the mats.
It's only things like datamined wake exceptions, which don't come from a specific source, where it doesn't pay off to hunt the higher level mats exclusively.

If you only need a few of each, sure, Dav's or similar is fine for that.
If you want to fill your hold and do multiple ships the answer is pretty clear, hunt the higher level mats.


Dav's Hope bug report links:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...g-in-to-game?p=6545538&viewfull=1#post6545538

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...annot-log-in?p=6546112&viewfull=1#post6546112
 
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