Resources required for the average playthrough
Dracobomba
Join Date: 2016-04-08 Member: 215502Members
Join Date: 2016-04-08 Member: 215502Members
I ended up doing some research on why Gold is the worst resource in the game, and came up with this data while looking around. It might be helpful to new players and veterans alike, so I've recopied the information here for your viewing pleasure. Keep in mind all of this is likely to be very wrong after ~2 updates.
So, how much of each resource do you need?
You need an ungodly amount of Titanium. I didn't do the math because it's incredibly variable on your play-style, but we're talking upwards of 500 here, probably more.
You need at least 118 Quartz to make one of everything in the game, but quartz is used in so many recipes that you build multiple times (most notably lockers and solar panels) that the amount is probably closer to 200. Better get to drilling.
You need 45 Silver to make one of every recipe that requires it, most of which are often repeatedly crafted items (Fabricators, Battery chargers, tools and upgrades, etc.). You'll probably end up needing somewhere from 60-80 depending on how many bases you make.
You need at least 34 Copper to make one of everything in the game. Since copper is used in batteries and power cells, you mileage with this resource varies depending on how many you collect from supply crates. The more you collect, the less need there is for collecting copper, so I think it's one of the most balanced resources in the game.
You only need 16 Gold to make one of everything in the game. That means after about 30 sandstone, basalt, or shale outcrops, you would never need to get any gold ever again (unless you really need a lot of power transmitters.) They are glorious inventory space wasters.
You only need 7 diamond and 5 Kyanite to make one of everything in the game, and they're all one-time recipes (unless you need more purple artifacts. In that case add 2 diamond per artifact).
You need 8 Aluminum Oxide crystals for all upgrades and the Prawn suit. Since you're likely to max out 2 depth modules, add 3 to that for a total of 11. You'll also need 33 Lithium to do much of the same (also assuming you max 2 depth modules).
You'll need at least 5 Magnetite for their recipes, but most players like to use Thermal power, so expect to use around 10-15.
You need 3 Sulphur for literally one recipe.
Outside of Nuclear reactors, you only need 2 Lead (for the Radiation suit). If you do decide to make a Nuclear reactor, you'll need 7 Lead and to fully power it once and 4 every time thereafter. You'll also need 12 Uraninite for each set of rods. You'll probably only need to replace the rods one time though, because they last forever.
You need 0 Mercury Oxide and 0 Nickel ore. That's early access, folks.
As for notable Organic resources...
You need at least 68 Table coral and probably a lot more. They're used in computer chips, which are used for everything, so I expect on average you'd need 80 or so.
You'll need 36 Acid Mushrooms if you craft all of your batteries by yourself, but I find that highly unlikely, so expect to collect anywhere from 20-30.
You need 51 Creepvine Seed clusters and 28 Creepvine samples. Thankfully they're not repeatable often, but your inventory space will still suffer.
You only need 9 Stalker teeth, but they're a pain to collect, so dedicate 30 minutes to farming it properly.
Finally, you'll only need 6 Blood oil to make the Reinforced Dive suit. So exactly one Blood Kelp run should be sufficient.
So for those who can't read all that, here's the quick rundown:
500+ Titanium
~200 Quartz
~60 Silver
~30 Copper
33 Lithium
16 Gold
11 Aluminum Oxide Crystals
~24 Uraninite
~13 Lead
~13 Magnetite
7 Diamond
5 Kyanite
3 Sulphur
~80 Table coral
51 Creepvine Seed Clusters
28 Creepvine Samples
~25 Acid Mushrooms
9 Stalker Teeth
6 Blood Oil
So, how much of each resource do you need?
You need an ungodly amount of Titanium. I didn't do the math because it's incredibly variable on your play-style, but we're talking upwards of 500 here, probably more.
You need at least 118 Quartz to make one of everything in the game, but quartz is used in so many recipes that you build multiple times (most notably lockers and solar panels) that the amount is probably closer to 200. Better get to drilling.
You need 45 Silver to make one of every recipe that requires it, most of which are often repeatedly crafted items (Fabricators, Battery chargers, tools and upgrades, etc.). You'll probably end up needing somewhere from 60-80 depending on how many bases you make.
You need at least 34 Copper to make one of everything in the game. Since copper is used in batteries and power cells, you mileage with this resource varies depending on how many you collect from supply crates. The more you collect, the less need there is for collecting copper, so I think it's one of the most balanced resources in the game.
You only need 16 Gold to make one of everything in the game. That means after about 30 sandstone, basalt, or shale outcrops, you would never need to get any gold ever again (unless you really need a lot of power transmitters.) They are glorious inventory space wasters.
You only need 7 diamond and 5 Kyanite to make one of everything in the game, and they're all one-time recipes (unless you need more purple artifacts. In that case add 2 diamond per artifact).
You need 8 Aluminum Oxide crystals for all upgrades and the Prawn suit. Since you're likely to max out 2 depth modules, add 3 to that for a total of 11. You'll also need 33 Lithium to do much of the same (also assuming you max 2 depth modules).
You'll need at least 5 Magnetite for their recipes, but most players like to use Thermal power, so expect to use around 10-15.
You need 3 Sulphur for literally one recipe.
Outside of Nuclear reactors, you only need 2 Lead (for the Radiation suit). If you do decide to make a Nuclear reactor, you'll need 7 Lead and to fully power it once and 4 every time thereafter. You'll also need 12 Uraninite for each set of rods. You'll probably only need to replace the rods one time though, because they last forever.
You need 0 Mercury Oxide and 0 Nickel ore. That's early access, folks.
As for notable Organic resources...
You need at least 68 Table coral and probably a lot more. They're used in computer chips, which are used for everything, so I expect on average you'd need 80 or so.
You'll need 36 Acid Mushrooms if you craft all of your batteries by yourself, but I find that highly unlikely, so expect to collect anywhere from 20-30.
You need 51 Creepvine Seed clusters and 28 Creepvine samples. Thankfully they're not repeatable often, but your inventory space will still suffer.
You only need 9 Stalker teeth, but they're a pain to collect, so dedicate 30 minutes to farming it properly.
Finally, you'll only need 6 Blood oil to make the Reinforced Dive suit. So exactly one Blood Kelp run should be sufficient.
So for those who can't read all that, here's the quick rundown:
500+ Titanium
~200 Quartz
~60 Silver
~30 Copper
33 Lithium
16 Gold
11 Aluminum Oxide Crystals
~24 Uraninite
~13 Lead
~13 Magnetite
7 Diamond
5 Kyanite
3 Sulphur
~80 Table coral
51 Creepvine Seed Clusters
28 Creepvine Samples
~25 Acid Mushrooms
9 Stalker Teeth
6 Blood Oil
Comments
Is it Magnesium? dont we need at least 1 of those?
EDIT: Found out the Scanner Room is picking up on large nodes of Gold when I thought it was Gold dropped by me.
The Scanner Room list is just limited on reload and eventually fills up to more than the 10 types displayed and it currently doesn't scroll. Reported by F8.
There's a few blueprints for things made that need Salt.
http://subnautica.wikia.com/wiki/Salt_Deposit
3 to make a Magnesium for the Repair Tool (which then gets recharged by swapping its battery...battery?!?
But a lot of Salt is used for either making Bleach for Disinfected Water or curing fish. So it's a lot more than 5.
You can use trashcans to get rid of unwanted stuff. It shouldn't be too long before you can build them in a given save file.
If you maintain a nuclear reactor as sole energy source for a base, lead's necessity goes up quite a bit in comparison to the single way to acquire it. But I'd like it if the lab trashcan would require lead and if uranite & uranium would need to be stored in lead-based lockers or they'll produce a small radiation field.
Scanner room also needs something like where you can see where YOU are.
If you leave your camera drones attached, you can look at the holographic map and see them as two blue dots in the centre, indicating where the Scanner Room is. And to make good use of it, you have to craft the HUD chip. Install that in one of the two slots on your paperdoll model in the PDA and you see direction dots in bronze colour to the resource you've selected on the screen.
Hmm. Other people seem to use a lot more Thermal generators than I do. I only ever build 1, maybe 2 for my extraneous forward bases, and power my main bases with nuclear, since it's easy, generates lots of power and lasts a long time. Could you guys tell me how many Nuclear/Thermal power generators you usually make?
1. I don't like being restricted where I can place my base--needing to build it relatively close to someplace hot.
2. They take the resource Magnetite that I would only ever gather just to build thermal generators
3. Then, I have to figure out how to build the power transmitters
1. Power transmitters can bring power a long, long way, and there's fairly plentiful hot spots in the deep.
2. It's not like it's hard to find, and you only need to gather enough to make your generators.
3. Not hard. At all.
The upside is that like solar, it's completely maintenance free - they just work, and you never have to think about them again (unless you placed them badly near an erupting vent and they get destroyed). And you don't need a room in your base for them.
Well, I'm a little less ambitious than @xm234 but 4-ish generators is usually sufficient for my needs. I'm not a prolific builder though - I make smallish bases that are functional and have limited power needs. I don't, for example, build rooms with 4 water machines, I'll stick with 1.
If Thermal Power is common in the deep areas, I'll have to take enough Magnetite along to build some for permanent and temporary bases. Its benefit over nuclear is that I wouldn't have to worry about refueling.
Don't forget Lubricant and ingots.
Salt is too difficult to pin down a number for. You only need 3 salt to create a welder, and technically speaking, you can complete the game without ever using one, meaning salt is a completely optional resource (though I'll admit you'd be hamstringing yourself). Outside of that, salt is only really used in food and water, which means that there's no way for me to approximate a number.
It's just impossible to predict how much you'd need, and it's an easily generatable resource anyways.
In that case, the answer would be...
As Many As It Takes...
Lel
I'm honestly not sure what your point is here. Using basic resources the most and rarer resources less is a perfectly reasonable setup. Especially when you consider that a good chunk of that use for titanium is fabricating a higher level resource (ingots) and then an even higher level resource (plasteel). For example, if memory serves, you need 5 plasteel for a cyclops, 1 plasteel for a pressure compensator for that cyclops and 10 more plasteel to upgrade the compensator. That's 160 titanium right there, or about a third of your titanium investment.
Looking only at the titanium cost, thermal resource cost is WAY too high for how much power you get. 10 Titanium for 50 power. Yeah, you don't need fuel. But if you are powering your base with only Thermal and want to match the power of a single nuclear reactor, you will spend 100 Titanium for maintenance free power versus only 20 for the nuclear reactor. So, given a choice between maintenance free power or increasing the depth of my Cyclops to 1500 meters--or building a SECOND Cyclops from scratch, I'll skip the Thermal Plant. I think they should dramatically drop the resource cost from 10 Titanium to maybe only 2 or 3. I mean, look at the titanium costs for the four power sources:
Solar - 1 - 50 power - no fuel
Bio - 1 - 100 power - needs fuel
Nuclear - 20 - 500 power - needs fuel
Thermal - 10 - 50 power - no fuel
10 Titanium is WAY over-priced for Thermal.
I agree that Thermal power is a lot of extra effort for what could be accomplished with the other power options. Nuclear/Bio in particular lasts a long time once you fill it up, to the point where you may only need to refuel it once or twice.
However, it seems most people prefer this low maintenance kind of power, so it's important that I try to see how much magnetite the average player will need. It's all subjective in the end, but the goal is to make a good approximation, since resource gathering can be time consuming.
Last I checked solar panels used 2 titanium and 2 quartz. Did they reduce the cost?
Regardless, needing 10 of literally the most abundant resource in the game hardly seems taxing to me, especially since you condense it down to one inventory spot for transport / construction.