Remote Release Flak Launcher
One is enough. It bursts a whole cluster of needles at once. A dumbfire missile rack works too, but flak clears more per shot.
Guides // Gathering
Raw Materials
The crystal-shard circuit out in the black — seven sites, seven G4s, one evening.
One circuit fills the whole raw grid. Seven crystal-shard sites, roughly 1,500 ly out, cap the seven G4s in an evening — then a Raw trader converts that stock down into every row beneath them. It flies best in a Mandalay.
Surface biology that grows crystal needles. Break a needle and it dumps Grade-4 raw — the top of that element group. Raw never goes above G4, so a shard field is the ceiling for its material.
There are seven raw groups, each with a single G4 at the top. This circuit visits all seven. Cap those bins ~1,500 ly out, fly home, and convert down at a Raw trader — the G3 and G2 rows fill from that stock. You do not gather them one by one.
A thick field caps the 150-unit G4 bin in minutes with limpets (A single-use drone that collects, prospects, repairs, or researches. Weighs a tonne and rides in the hold.). You rarely need that much: a modest top-off still converts into a full lower-grade stack. The run also counts toward the Professor Palin unlock if that is still open.
One evening, not a commute. Scoop the seven G4s, then let the trader finish the grid. Grade-1 commons pile up while you fly — never plan a trip for Carbon, Iron, Nickel, Phosphorus, or Sulphur.
- Sites
- 7 across 3 systems
- Haul
- ~1,500 ly out
- Tier filled
- Raw G4
- Grid covered
- 28 raw materials
The fast way is to shoot the shards and scoop with limpets from the ship — the Anti-Xeno Initiative (Anti-Xeno Initiative: The community group that documents Thargoid combat and material gathering.) rates this well above crawling the field in an SRV (Surface Recon Vehicle: The wheeled buggy you drive on planet surfaces. Needs a Planetary Vehicle Hangar.). Any explorer with a hardpoint and a limpet controller does it. Engineering is optional; jump range is what matters over 1,500 ly.
Collector Limpet Controller + limpets
One or two controllers. Bring B-rated (Modules are sized 1–8 and rated A–E. A is best and heaviest, D is lightest, E is cheapest.) limpets (A single-use drone that collects, prospects, repairs, or researches. Weighs a tonne and rides in the hold.) — the longest range — and a small cargo rack of ~20 to hold them. Limpets are cargo; the raw they fetch is not.
Detailed Surface Scanner
One cheap slot. Maps the dense patches so you land next to shards, not empty rock.
Fuel scoop + jump range
The deep pair sits ~1,500 ly out. Keep an engineered FSD (Frame Shift Drive: The drive that does both jobs: hyperspace jumps between systems, and supercruise inside them.) if you have one. Add a Planetary Vehicle Hangar + SRV (Surface Recon Vehicle: The wheeled buggy you drive on planet surfaces. Needs a Planetary Vehicle Hangar.) for Selenium and as the flak-free fallback.
Cut your draw distance. Lower the graphics draw-distance slider before you gather. Limpets and shards render closer, so limpets (A single-use drone that collects, prospects, repairs, or researches. Weighs a tonne and rides in the hold.) stop wandering off and scoop rates climb.
Four bodies at HIP 36601, two at neighbouring Outotz LS-K D8-3, and Selenium at HR 3230 near the Bubble (The Bubble: Inhabited space around Sol, roughly 400 ly across. Everything outside it is the black.). Distances are straight-line from Sol.
| # | Body & System | Coordinates | Material | Group | From bubble |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | C 1 A · HIP 36601 | -57.4599, 126.9543 | Polonium | Group 6 | ~1,600 Ly |
| 2 | C 1 D · HIP 36601 | -51.2639, 14.7291 | Ruthenium | Group 3 | ~1,600 Ly |
| 3 | C 3 B · HIP 36601 | -17.6769, -55.1800 | Tellurium | Group 5 | ~1,600 Ly |
| 4 | C 5 A · HIP 36601 | 3.5500, 111.5415 | Technetium | Group 2 | ~1,600 Ly |
| 5 | B 5 A · Outotz LS-K D8-3 | -1.9216, -145.7013 | Yttrium | Group 1 | ~1,715 Ly |
| 6 | B 5 C · Outotz LS-K D8-3 | -62.4905, 80.2426 | Antimony | Group 7 | ~1,715 Ly |
| 7 | 3 A A · HR 3230 (Brain trees) | 45.66, -30.49 | Selenium | Group 4 | ~425 Ly |
Site 7 is the odd one. HR 3230 3 A A is a brain-tree forest, not a shard field — Selenium has no crystal site here. Kappa-1 Volantis B 3 F A is the other known Selenium forest if HR 3230 is picked clean.
Same drill on every body: confirm the world from cruise, then line up the coordinates from up high before you drop. Done from the SRV (Surface Recon Vehicle: The wheeled buggy you drive on planet surfaces. Needs a Planetary Vehicle Hangar.) it becomes an hour of crawling.
Find the dense patch
Honk and check
Discovery-scan the system. A shard world lists surface signals. Crystals sit under Biological, not Geological.
Deploy the DSS
Glide in, switch to Analysis mode, and probe the body to Mapped. Aim for 90%+ coverage.
Filter to Crystal Shards
Cycle the heat map to Crystal Shards and look for the dark blue areas — the densest patches. Steer by the lat/long on the HUD toward the site coordinates.
Known sites beat prospecting. For this circuit, fly the coordinates. The heat map is how you would hunt a brand-new field of your own.
Fly the coordinates
Stay high
Numbers move faster from cruise. Match the coordinates up there, then drop almost straight down.
One axis at a time
Fix latitude first by flying heading 0° or 180°. Once you are within a few degrees, turn 90° or 270° for longitude.
Refine, then drop
Hold the first axis to ±1–2° while you dial the second to ±0.5°. The last stretch is visual — spend the final kilometres low and slow.
Park on density
Set down beside a dark-blue patch with clear sky above it, so limpets (A single-use drone that collects, prospects, repairs, or researches. Weighs a tonne and rides in the hold.) have room to work.
Let a tool give you the heading. EDbearing takes your position and the target and gives a heading. EDDiscovery does the same as a local readout — either turns four numbers into “point the nose this way.”
Shoot the part that holds the material, scoop the fragments. Shards and brain trees share that loop — they differ only in what you aim at, and whether you do it from the ship or the SRV (Surface Recon Vehicle: The wheeled buggy you drive on planet surfaces. Needs a Planetary Vehicle Hangar.).
Crystal shards — flak and limpets
Clear your target
Deselect any contact. With no lock, launched limpets (A single-use drone that collects, prospects, repairs, or researches. Weighs a tonne and rides in the hold.) free-roam and grab everything in range.
Fire the flak
Put a flak burst into a cluster of needles. One shot shatters several into scoopable fragments. Aim for the needles, not the fat base — the base drops nothing.
Launch limpets
Deploy the batch with the cargo scoop out. They fetch fragments into the weightless raw inventory. When a material hits 150 they simply stop collecting it.
Move along the field
Burst the next cluster while the limpets (A single-use drone that collects, prospects, repairs, or researches. Weighs a tonne and rides in the hold.) clean up the last. A dense field has more shards than you need — reposition when the patch beside you is bare.
SRV fallback — no flak ship yet
No hardpoint or limpets? Drive up in the SRV (Surface Recon Vehicle: The wheeled buggy you drive on planet surfaces. Needs a Planetary Vehicle Hangar.), shoot needles with the plasma repeater, and scoop the fragments over the cargo scoop. It works and needs no engineering — it is just slower, which is why the flak run is the default once you have the ship.
Brain trees — for Selenium
Selenium has no crystal-shard site — it only drops from G2 nodes. Brain trees are the best source, gathered like shards: about one tree in seven carries a gold, fruiting pod. Shoot the pod, scoop the fragments, drive to the next fruiting tree.
A relog (Logging out and back in to rebuild the instance, so a picked-over site respawns its loot.) does not reset these fields. A stripped shard cluster stays bare after a menu logout; natural regrowth runs to weeks. Brain-tree pods only return if the whole instance is torn down. The real loop is spatial — keep moving to the next cluster.
Fly home with seven G4 bins topped, then trade down at a Raw trader — find the nearest on Inara. The G3 and G2 rows fill from that stock, and the G1 commons piled up while you flew.
| G4 collected | Trades down to | G1 common (incidental) |
|---|---|---|
| Yttrium G4 | Niobium G3 · Vanadium G2 | Carbon G1 |
| Technetium G4 | Molybdenum G3 · Chromium G2 | Phosphorus G1 |
| Ruthenium G4 | Cadmium G3 · Manganese G2 | Sulphur G1 |
| Selenium G4 | Tin G3 · Zinc G2 | Iron G1 |
| Tellurium G4 | Tungsten G3 · Germanium G2 | Nickel G1 |
| Polonium G4 | Mercury G3 · Arsenic G2 | Rhenium G1 |
| Antimony G4 | Boron G3 · Zirconium G2 | Lead G1 |