Getting raw mats reasonably well without 30 jumps?

[sniperfox]

Hello Commanders! Back after a long absence and trying to finish engineering my 2 ships.

HGEs seem pretty great for manufactured now and I can sit around a popular station or nav beacon and get some scans for encoded or pick them up while bounty hunting, but it looks like my choices for raw mats are:

1) Spend hours doing 30-50 jumps in my 25LY jump range tier 2 engineered Anaconda. - I only have a few hours a week to play and I'd rather not spend it this way.

2) Run evac missions in thargoid attack systems. - This looks like it needs more engineering than my ships have. I have tier 2 jump distance and tier 2 capacitor recharge rate and nothing else, sadly.

3) Mine asteroids or drive the SRV around planets. - Both of these seem to be much less efficient than the top 2

4) Grinding powerplay 2.0 seems to give a few loot crates, but it doesn't appear to be an efficient means of gathering raw mats.

Am I missing a 5th or 6th option for raw mats? If it comes down to doing 2 hours of jumps then doing boring driving around in a glitchy SRV when I want to play a space game or go play some other game, I'm probably going to opt for the later

Edit - I have a Anaconda (barely engineered), a Type 9, a Python, a Krait Mk 2, and around 1/3 billion credits. If there's some way to turn that into a reasonable raw mat farm, I'd be grateful to know! So much information on forums and youtube seems YEARS outdated.

 

[Factabulous]

Am I missing a 5th or 6th option for raw mats?

yup.

 

[sniperfox]

yup.

lol, can you elaborate?

 

[SteveWW57]

Koli Discii.
There used to be a crashed anaconda that has cargo racks that can be shot at to drop cannisters of raws. Have a look at the elite wiki page where there is a list of shipwrecks.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Asteroid (laser) mining isn't the most efficient way to get raw materials and only gives the lower grade ones, but has the big advantage that you get large amounts of expensive sellable cargo for credits (and if in Powerplay, potentially also merits) while you're at it. It's more a case of doing the laser mining for the cash/merits value and discovering at the end that your low-grade materials bins are also nice and full.
(and it's mainly the low-grade raws you actually need for engineering; the high-grade ones don't actually show up in many blueprints so they're mainly for downtrading)

Non-Thargoid VIP passenger missions have high-end material rewards, about 12 at a time. You can get a mix of raw, manufactured and encoded that way so pick the ones that give the rewards you want, and you don't need a fancy ship to do them (just one big enough to fit a couple of decent sized Business and First-class cabins). There are various other mission options but those are probably the easiest for the amount of materials they give.

If you only have a couple of low-grade blueprints so far, bear in mind that even with the easier material collection, it's still true that you can engineer your entire ship to G3 for the equvialent material value of a single G5 module, and a full-G3 ship has far better performance than a ship with one G5 module and the rest stock. So one option you have is to go for breadth first - and once you've got a bunch of your ships full of G3 modules (for which a few of the cheap raws are all you need anyway and either laser mining or VIP passengers will give you enough of those) then you can take on higher-end content like Thargoid evacs or high-end combat missions or similar.

 

[Happy Daze]

Maybe you could hook up with a fleet carrier pilot who would take you out to the crystal shard palace and hang out while you gather what you need. Wouldn’t take more than a day there’s a group on discord I think called fleet carriers, owners club check that out and maybe you could find somebody who will take you.

 

[aardappelianen]

high grade emissions now have hundreds of materials and there are material traders, best to check inara where they are.
even jamesons crash site got a buff, theres 1 more data point and a bunch of canisters.

you can bomb brain tree sites and collect from the surface with limpets if you're at a certain altitude as well.

 

[Happy Daze]

For data, I recommend two things: go to a system in famine and go to the food drop off. Scan the departing ships for as long as you can stand it.
Google down to Earth Academy videos for scanning megaships for grade 5 data. The ship you need is in an anarchy system right now, so it’s perfect timing. PM me if you need any more information.

 

[pFVD]

Probably still almost 20 jumps to get there at 25lys each (plus the 3-4 jumps between all of the systems) but this picture is still valid, although there is an updated version somewhere but I find this simpler to use.

Go to those systems with collector limpets and a flak launcher, bomb the tree's with the flak and retreat to above 600m; the tree's will despawn leaving the "fruit" to be picked up by your collectors without hitting the tree's. Go to each system as needed, another 10-20 minutes for each including collection time. Fly back to the bubble (another 20 jumps) and trade for what you really want.

20 jumps shouldn't be more than 20 minutes travel time really. If you are struggling to find the exact locations on the planets, a tool like E.D.I.S.O.N will get you there.

 

[varonica]

Koli Discii.
There used to be a crashed anaconda that has cargo racks that can be shot at to drop cannisters of raws. Have a look at the elite wiki page where there is a list of shipwrecks.

A couple of the crashed ships I found had upward of twenty cargo racks with 4 or 5 mats each, there's a spreadsheet somewhere with them listed. Thing is I don't know whether the cargo racks are persistent. The latest one was on Mingin AB 3 a and had around twenty cargo racks with grade 4 and 5 mats in them, the OP could try there, it would be interesting to see if the cargo racks are persistent across instances or I was just lucky.

 

[Neilski]

As mentioned above, FSD engineering isn't super-expensive in terms of materials. (Edit: the point being that you normally do that first on any given ship, to make it less painful to jump around for extra module purchasing, engineering, materials-gathering, etc.)

My usual ship for materials-hunting (raw, in particular) has for years been a DBX. A quick check on EDSY shows that a really cheap and simple DBX build with an SRV hangar and no engineering at all can do around 39 ly per jump, and with G2 IR it can do almost 49 ly, at a cost just over 10 M credits. It's also a lot easier to land than an Anaconda, though that may be less of a thing than it used to be?
There are likely even better options than the DBX for this job nowadays.

 

[SteveWW57]

A couple of the crashed ships I found had upward of twenty cargo racks with 4 or 5 mats each, there's a spreadsheet somewhere with them listed. Thing is I don't know whether the cargo racks are persistent. The latest one was on Mingin AB 3 a and had around twenty cargo racks with grade 4 and 5 mats in them, the OP could try there, it would be interesting to see if the cargo racks are persistent across instances or I was just lucky.

Relog used to spawn the mats for new farming.

 

[zeta]

Hello Commanders! Back after a long absence and trying to finish engineering my 2 ships.

HGEs seem pretty great for manufactured now and I can sit around a popular station or nav beacon and get some scans for encoded or pick them up while bounty hunting, but it looks like my choices for raw mats are:

1) Spend hours doing 30-50 jumps in my 25LY jump range tier 2 engineered Anaconda. - I only have a few hours a week to play and I'd rather not spend it this way.

2) Run evac missions in thargoid attack systems. - This looks like it needs more engineering than my ships have. I have tier 2 jump distance and tier 2 capacitor recharge rate and nothing else, sadly.

3) Mine asteroids or drive the SRV around planets. - Both of these seem to be much less efficient than the top 2

4) Grinding powerplay 2.0 seems to give a few loot crates, but it doesn't appear to be an efficient means of gathering raw mats.

Am I missing a 5th or 6th option for raw mats? If it comes down to doing 2 hours of jumps then doing boring driving around in a glitchy SRV when I want to play a space game or go play some other game, I'm probably going to opt for the later

Edit - I have a Anaconda (barely engineered), a Type 9, a Python, a Krait Mk 2, and around 1/3 billion credits. If there's some way to turn that into a reasonable raw mat farm, I'd be grateful to know! So much information on forums and youtube seems YEARS outdated.

Pirate massacre missions give 18-20 raw mats, if you rank up sometimes you only have to kill 7-12, but usually 24+.

 

[Nowski]

Am I missing a 5th or 6th option for raw mats? If it comes down to doing 2 hours of jumps then doing boring driving around in a glitchy SRV when I want to play a space game or go play some other game, I'm probably going to opt for the later

Sounds like your best option is to visit the crashed Anaconda site at either Orrere planet 2B or Koli Discii C 6 A (google says) which were buffed quite a bit alongside HGEs.

Or just check a few on-ship mission boards at large stations, select the "material" reward (in the drop-down just below the mission givers) and see if any of the offerings are any use to you (G4 raw material rewards for missions are not restricted to evacs, I think). Slower, but you can do actual gameplay while to stock up.

So much information on forums and youtube seems YEARS outdated.

I often use the date option in googling Elite Dangerous things. Like this search, for example

 

[aRJay]

…! So much information on forums and youtube seems YEARS outdated.

Yes it is,the game has been updated and changed a lot over the last ten years.

You should always check the date when something was posted/edited/updated and the older it is compared to the last game update the more caution you should use.

 

[varonica]

Relog used to spawn the mats for new farming.

Yes but most "crashed ship" sites have only one or two cargo racks, sometimes none, which makes that super inefficient, it's just a few that have many cargo racks, if they do persist with many cargo racks across relogs that makes it useful, if they don't there are much better options.

 

[MacDoom]

Probably still almost 20 jumps to get there at 25lys each (plus the 3-4 jumps between all of the systems) but this picture is still valid, although there is an updated version somewhere but I find this simpler to use.

Go to those systems with collector limpets and a flak launcher, bomb the tree's with the flak and retreat to above 600m; the tree's will despawn leaving the "fruit" to be picked up by your collectors without hitting the tree's. Go to each system as needed, another 10-20 minutes for each including collection time. Fly back to the bubble (another 20 jumps) and trade for what you really want.

20 jumps shouldn't be more than 20 minutes travel time really. If you are struggling to find the exact locations on the planets, a tool like E.D.I.S.O.N will get you there.

The flak/limpets combo no longer works, the locations are still good, but you have to get into your srv now to collect.
You can still knock the fruit off with flak cannons but nothing appears on contact panel except for your limpets.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Yes but most "crashed ship" sites have only one or two cargo racks, sometimes none, which makes that super inefficient, it's just a few that have many cargo racks, if they do persist with many cargo racks across relogs that makes it useful, if they don't there are much better options.

Uhm actually (Orrere):


I think I got 12(x3) tellurium there per run and I wasn't careful about making sure I hit every container, it'd be a bit more efficient if you're also farming the other G4 mats present there and have enough limpets to saturate it so they don't get stuck picking up 1 impossible to get item.

The few with more cargo racks are probably the old ones people used pre-crystal shards which should cover most of the raw materials and the random or POI shipwrecks will have next to nothing compared to this.

 

[varonica]

The few with more cargo racks are probably the old ones people used pre-crystal shards which should cover most of the raw materials and the random or POI shipwrecks will have next to nothing compared to this.

Visited different 29 crashed ship sites, only 2 had more than a couple of cargo racks, they weren't random POI sites, the chance of finding one with a lot of cargo racks is too small to really consider it a good resource when you can guarantee mats at Brain Trees and Crystal Shard planets.

 

[Easy]

Thank you for the Orrere tip. Lots of cargo racks near the downed ship. Relog dance works well. Either my key bindings are busted or something else is amiss. I can shoot the cargo racks open with my sidearm, but my SRV repeater does not function in regular combat mode or turret mode in the vicinity of the cargo racks. Maybe I parked my ship too close?

Should I be rocketing the site and using limpets?