Mining and Terraforming in Stars Reach provide both a way to gather resources and shape the ground around you primarily using the terraformer tool and later using the depositor and chronophaser tools. You are able to mine terrain on both planets and asteroids located in space around the TPL station. Unlike many other game in Stars Reach resources you find have stats so the same material found on different planets will have different stats, better stats when crafting tend to mean better stats on the equipment you make so its best to keep an eye out for materials with good stats.
Gathering Materials
The terraformer’s prime use early on is for gathering resources found in the ground be that metal ores (copper, tin, silver, gold etc), gemstones, soils, clays, muds, sands and different bedrocks and carbons. Pointing terraformer at any terrain and pressing ‘left click’ will result in any materials that are located in the targeted piece of terrain to fly off into your inventory (you may also notice a hole appearing where you target, but more on that later).
Resources you are gathering are added to your collection to make it a bit easier to find them in the future. While having the terraformer equipped to your toolbelt and out press the ‘Tab’ key to bring up your collections screen for any items you have discovered using your terraformer as shown on the right.You are then able to select the resource you are looking to gather more of (in this case sand) to help narrow down where to gather more of it.
Once you have selected the resource you wish to find more of to gather you are going to want to close the collection window where you selected what you are looking for and with your terraformer still out hit the ‘E’ key which will display a scan field as show on the left to point you in the right direction. You are then going to want to walk in that direction with your terraformer out periodically hitting the ‘E’ key to check if you are still heading in the right direction and see if you are close to the resource you wish to gather.
Once you are close enough the resource you have been tracking what you see when you press the ‘E’ key will change to what is shown on the image on the right. This shows a outline for the area which contains the resources you are looking for. All you then need to do is start digging through the terrain to the outlined area using your terraformer, when you reach the area you will start to see the desired resource going into your inventory. Keep pressing ‘E’ periodically to make sure you get all the resource and once the outline no longer shows when you press ‘E’ you can safely assume you have gathered everything and move onto the next area.
Now onto that hole we mentioned earlier that appeared when using the terraformer….
Terraforming
One of the first things you will notice when using the terraformer (other than the glowing bright purple beam now emitting from it) is that it will shape the world around you boring holes into the terrain surface it is pointing at while gathering any resources that are in that piece of ground. This will fill a hopper on the terraformer which shows up as a yellow percentage bar to the right of your character. When the yellow percentage bar is full (or before if you choose) you will need to empty the hopper using the ‘Q’ key, this results in a beam of material using the gun which will raise any ground surface it is pointing at.
This is particularly interesting when it comes to Stars Reach as it allows you to terraform the area you wish to build your home in. You can bore a hole into the side of a mountain and live in a cave if you choose. A group of players can come together and terraform areas for full cities or build weird and wonderful mountains and shapes in the land. The possibilities are endless.
The Depositor
Moving on from the terraformer the next step down the skill-tree is the depositor. While the terraformer has a hopper you need to empty when full the depositor lets you select resources from your inventory to deposit using a depositing beam. Lets take the sand we gathered earlier, with our depositor equipped to our toolbelt and out in our hands we are going to press the ‘Tab’ key select the sand, close the window and hold down ‘Left Click’ and watch as the depositing beam shoots out from the depositor depositing sand and changing the shape of the terrain in front of us.
Another use for the depositor is to use it to assay (a none destructive way to analyse) resources without the the terraformer gouging out terrain just to see the resources it contains. Assayed resources are also added to your collection. In order to do this have the depositor equipped to your toolbelt and out in your hands, point it at the terrain you want to know the resource of and press the ‘E’ key.
The Chronophaser
Finally we have possibly the most complex tool use in mineralogy and terraforming, The Chronophaser. The chronophaser allows you to accelerate or rewind geological time, it has 3 main uses, Erode, Heat and Lithify.
Erode
First up we have erode, over time rocks erode be that into soil, sand or other types of rocks, the chronophaser allows you to speed this up, while having the chronophaser equipped to your toolbelt and having it out in your hands pressing the ‘E’ key will allow you to turn glass back into sand or marble (as well as many other available options which you will be able to see on the the flow chart below).
Heat
Next up we have heat, this allows you to heat thing up and we mean really heat things up with extreme heat, want to turn the sand you are finding into glass or chalk into marble (as well as many other different options which you will see in the flow chart below) you can, once again have your chronophaser equipped to your toolbelt and out in your hands and hold down left click.
Lithify
Finally we have lithify or lithification to give it its full title. This allows you to turn things like sands and soils back into solid rock. Say you are gathering chalky soil but require chalk, all you need to do is make sure your chronophaser is equipped to your toolbelt and out in your hands and press the ‘Q’ key this will lithify your chalky soil into chalk. Again you can find a full flow chart of soils and sands you can lithify below.
Finally you can combine all of the uses of the chronophaser to get your desired final material. Say we want marble for example but can only find limestone and chalky soil, we can superheat the limestone into marble and we can lithify the chalky soil into chalk, we can then superheat that chalk into marble.
***Guide currently written for Pre-Alpha and will be updated as changes are made in game.
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