Ores

Ores are mined from Asteroids or Planets, and are processed into ingots in one of the Refineries. Grids are made of blocks, blocks are made of components, components are made of materials, materials are made of ores.

You mine ores from voxels using either a ship-mounted drill or Hand Drill. Ores can also be looted from the cargo holds of some pre-built ships, especially mining ships.

Ice is mined just like ore, but processed in an O2 H2 Generator which is not covered here.

Ore Detection Tips[]

• Use an Ore Detector to see ores close-by displayed on your HUD. Remember to set it to maximum range.
• Ore patches on planets are generally visible from jetpacking height as groups of discolored spots on the ground.
  • Ore patches are best visible on plains, under ice and sand.
  • Ore patches are least visible on mountains or under snow or grass.
  • In space, use a camera and zoom in on asteroids.
• If you don't find ores in one asteroid cluster, or in one planet region, travel a bit further: There are areas with nothing, the deposits have a fixed distribution.
• Short video: 5 ways of finding ores (not all of them good)

Planetary ore deposits appear in groups of two or three, and are spread out in horizontal layers below each other. If you only detect the top deposit (or on asteroids, the outermost deposit), dig down to the first deposit and scan again 50 m or 150 m below.

• Cobalt is often together with Iron and Nickel
• Magnesium is often together with Nickel and Silicon
• Gold is often together with Iron and Silver

Screenshots of ore patches in different environments:

Example picture of the fixed distribution of ore deposits from Simon5's "How to create your own planet - the guide (archived)".

How to mine ores[]

The handheld drill as well as the drill block both support two different dig modes, using the left (LMB) and right mouse button (RMB).

1. On foot, when drilling near your feet, first toggle (C key) to crouch to better reach down.
2. Equip the drill and hold RMB to dig tunnels to get closer to the deposit. Careful, this mode destroys ores, ice, and stone!
3. Equip the drill and hold LMB to mine ores. Ores, ice, and stone drop and can be picked up.
4. On foot, hold F and aim at dropped ores to pick them up into your inventory.

Should I pick up stone or not?

• If you’re tight on basic resources, process stone and ores.
• When you have found iron, nickel, and silicon ore deposits, start focusing only on ores.
• You can ignite warheads as mining charges to destroy stone layers fast. But be careful, warheads destroy ores and ice as well.
• On ships and rovers, use ejectors to prioritise ores and auto-discard stone from cargo containers to have more room for purer ores.

Processing Conversion Factor[]

To process stone or ores into ingots, you need a Basic Refinery, a Refinery, or a Survival kit.

To process stone in the Survival Kit, you must manually queue the production of ingots from stone. In contrast, Refineries automatically pull ores from all connected cargo containers to process them.

The yield of a Basic Refinery is 30% lower than that of a Refinery or Survival kit. Because of this it is not recommended to use a Basic Refinery for stone processing in the early game stages, as a Survival kit produces more Ingots per kilo of stone.

Examples:

• If you refine 1000 kg of Silicon ore in a Basic Refinery, you will get 49% of the weight in Silicon, which is 490 kg.
• If you refine 1000 kg of Silicon ore in a Refinery, you will get 70% of the weight in Silicon, which is 700 kg.
• If you refine 1000 kg of Silicon ore in a Refinery with 4 Yield Modules, you will get 140% of the weight in Silicon, which is 1400 kg.