Used for
The backbone of weapon and module engineering.
Guides // Materials
Material Codex
Learn the three material inventories and the Guardian and Thargoid piles beside them, their grade ladders, and how to turn what you have into what your engineering needs.
Most materials sit in one of three inventories — raw, manufactured, or encoded — each with its own gathering loop, storage, and trader. Guardian and Thargoid pieces use those same inventories, but traders will not convert them.
Grade ladder
Every material carries a grade and a rarity, and each grade has a hard storage cap. Caps shrink as grade climbs, so high grades are the scarce currency — the catalogue below flags which grade to gather and which to trade for.
| Grade | Rarity | Cap | Inventories |
|---|---|---|---|
| G1 | Very Common | 300 | Raw · Manufactured · Encoded |
| G2 | Common | 250 | Raw · Manufactured · Encoded |
| G3 | Standard | 200 | Raw · Manufactured · Encoded |
| G4 | Rare | 150 | Raw · Manufactured · Encoded |
| G5 | Very Rare | 100 | Manufactured · Encoded |
Pick an inventory to see its trader lines, grade columns, and the fastest gathering loop.
Components salvaged from ships and structures — alloys, capacitors, focus crystals, shielding.
Found at
Combat salvage, debris signals, settlements, and High-Grade Emissions.
Ten category chains, each climbing G1 to G5. Each chain is a trader sub-category. Names track the grade as they climb.
| Chain | G1 | G2 | G3 | G4 | G5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chemical | Chemical Storage Units | Chemical Processors | Chemical Distillery | Chemical Manipulators | Pharmaceutical Isolators |
| Thermic | Tempered Alloys | Heat Resistant Ceramics | Precipitated Alloys | Thermic Alloys | Military Grade Alloys |
| Heat | Heat Conduction Wiring | Heat Dispersion Plate | Heat Exchangers | Heat Vanes | Proto Heat Radiators |
| Conductive | Basic Conductors | Conductive Components | Conductive Ceramics | Conductive Polymers | Biotech Conductors |
| Mechanical Components | Mechanical Scrap | Mechanical Equipment | Mechanical Components | Configurable Components | Improvised Components |
| Capacitors | Grid Resistors | Hybrid Capacitors | Electrochemical Arrays | Polymer Capacitors | Military Supercapacitors |
| Shielding | Worn Shield Emitters | Shield Emitters | Shielding Sensors | Compound Shielding | Imperial Shielding |
| Composite | Compact Composites | Filament Composites | High Density Composites | Proprietary Composites | Core Dynamics Composites |
| Crystals | Crystal Shards | Flawed Focus Crystals | Focus Crystals | Refined Focus Crystals | Exquisite Focus Crystals |
| Alloys | Salvaged Alloys | Galvanising Alloys | Phase Alloys | Proto Light Alloys | Proto Radiolic Alloys |
10 chains at the Manufactured trader. G5s for most of those chains drop in [[hge|High-Grade Emissions]].
Gather the top. High-Grade Emissions (High-Grade Emissions: A short-lived supercruise signal packed with one Grade-5 manufactured material.) dump G5s by faction allegiance and state — one signal often caps a whole material. Convert the surplus at a Manufactured trader for G1–G4. Do not trade six G4s up to a G5 if you can scoop an HGE.