A comprehensive guide to efficient (and mostly legal and combat-free) Odyssey material farming
22 Oct 2022Hanchen
One of the most common gameplay-related complaint I have seen about the Odyssey expansion is how grindy the farming for the material required to upgrade suits/weapons or install mods is. The reasons behind that became very apparent to me after switching from Horizons to Odyssey a little bit more than one month ago. At that time, the task of finding and accumulating so many materials seemed to be daunting. This was especially true for a player like me who is not good at on-foot combat, given how nearly all Odyssey missions have the annoying tendency to swarm you with waves of scavengers who can easily overwhelm you (especially when you start with mediocre equipment).After looking for material farming tips everywhere on the internet and (a lot) of mission grinding, I managed to find some relatively efficient farming routines that minimise the need for on-foot combat and illegal operations. This allowed me to fully upgrade 3 suits and 4 weapons to Grade 5 (G5), and fully mod all of them (except for one weapon) in a little bit more than one month. I wanted to gather the tips I have found online and that I can propose from my experience in this entry, with the hope that it would also benefit other Odyssey CMDRs who feel discouraged by the material grind.
Outfitting a on-foot operation ship
First of all, I would strongly advise to outfit a ship specifically dedicated to completing Odyssey missions. Ideally this ship should fulfill the following requirements:
- Be small: Odyssey content will require you to very often land (sometimes on rough terrain), which is significantly easier with a small ship than a medium or large one. Some Odyssey settlements also do not have landing pads above small size.
- Be equipped with at least one SRV: I have not experimented with the Scorpion SRV, but I found the Scarab to be more than enough for Odyssey missions. You will mostly be using it to run over scavengers, so extra speed and mobility could be useful.
- Be outfitted with weapons effective against on-foot enemies: for CMDRs not fond of the prospect of having to fight hordes of scavengers on-foot, you can equip your ship with dumbfire missiles (preferably the size 1 advanced rack, size 2 advanced rack, or size 3 rack). I have also seen other CMDRs saying that mines and remote flechette launchers (unlockable at the human tech broker) are effective too. Flechette have the advantage that they do not destroy the Horizons loot (i.e. materials collectable with a SRV) unlike dumbfires or mines, but need to be unlocked and cannot be engineered. Note that any other ship weapon will be completely ineffective against on-foot enemies.
- Have decent shield and armour: on-foot enemy weapons can be surprisingly good against ships, so having good shields and armour can make the operations conducted from your ship safer.
- Have a cargo rack: required to complete some Horizons missions that can grant you Odyssey materials (c.f. section about farming data materials below). A large cargo capacity is not needed (e.g. my current ship has a capacity of only 2 tons).
- [Optional] Have a Detailed Surface Scanner: not mandatory since surface mission Points of Interest (PoI) appear when you get closer to the planet, but can be useful to find random PoI without having to scan the nav beacon first.
- [Optional] Have a high max and boost speed: this is helpful to reach your destination faster when landing, or escape faster from potentially dangerous situations.
- [Optional] Have a fuel scoop: this can allow you to reach the other side of the bubble without having to refuel at a station if needed.
- [Optional] Have a good jump range: being able to jump further is always nice.
Looking for pre-upgraded/pre-moded on-foot equipment
Every Thursday after the server reset, pre-upgraded (up to G3) and sometimes pre-moded suits/weapons are randomly distributed across the Pioneer supplies shops in all stations and outposts that have one. It is strongly advised not to upgrade an equipment from scratch in order not to waste any materials, but rather to work on upgrading either a G2 equipment with a good mod, or a G3 equipment with or without mod.
It should be noted that the first CMDR who buys the equipment removes it from the shop for all other CMDRs, so you should expect heavily frequented systems/stations to be already depleted. Visiting low-frequentation stations and outposts in relatively unknown systems might give you a higher chance to find a good equipment. Other CMDRs also often share the location of good equipments they found so that others can buy it in this thread of the official Frontiers forum: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-great-pre-upgraded-gear-sharing-is-caring-thread.576352/
I would recommend to try to grab at least one suit of every kind (Artemis, Dominator and Maverick). Regarding weapons, it is down to personal preferences, although pre-upgraded and/or modded versions of the following weapons are considered to be premium findings, and should be bought (or shared with other CMDRs) if possible: Manticore Tormentor (plasma pistol), Manticore Intimidator (plasma shotgun for close-range combat), Manticore Executioner (plasma sniper rifle for long-range combat) and Karma L-6 (rocket launcher).
Reactivate/restore settlement missions are your friend
I found these missions to be the best source of Odyssey goods (in particular suit schematics and power regulators) and materials (chemical, circuits, tech) by far, so I would advise you to prioritise them for material farming. To complete them, you will need a Maverick suit with the Arc cutter and Energy link tools to get into the powered down buildings.
Reactivation missions can be found in systems where Odyssey settlements are controlled by a faction in the state "infrastructure failure", and require you to restore the power at a deactivated and deserted settlement. You are given a power regulator and clearance level of 3 when accepting the mission. Restore missions are similar, but can be found in "civil unrest" systems instead. The mission completion requirements are the same, except that you also have to put out fires, which makes the missions slightly longer/more tedious. I would therefore advise to go for reactivation missions if possible.
Reactivation and restore missions allow you to loot an entire settlement without having to care about security or the illegality of your actions, since the settlement is empty and you are given a clearance level of 3. The type of loot depends mostly on the size and type of settlement. Bigger settlements tend to have more loot in general. Military settlements tend to drop more weapon and suit schematics. More data points but less schematics can be found at tourism and high tech settlements. Extraction settlements tend to give more assets (in particular tech ones) but less schematics. Agricultural and industrial settlements tend to be more balanced between all types of loot. You should therefore try to prioritise the type of settlements you would like to restore depending on the materials you are looking for. It should also be noted that some loot always spawns at the same locations regardless of the settlement type: suit and weapons schematics always spawn in the same lockers in CMD and PWR buildings and no other place, so if you are focusing on these, visit these buildings in priority. Parking your SRV in the middle of the settlement to be used as an offload base can be useful to limit the number of trips back to your ship in case of a settlement with a lot of loot. It is also important to note that you should not try to relog in the middle of a reactivation or restore mission: doing so will make all the loot in the settlement disappear.
Unfortunately, reactivation missions tend to spawn many scavengers (who may arrive in a NPC ship at any time during the mission), although there is a lot of variance in my experience. Across 100+ missions, I have encountered from 0 to 20 scavengers, spawning in up to 3 waves. Try to avoid landing your ship on the landing pad (after requesting docking) because it will be more likely to attract the attention of potentially spawning scavengers, and instead land around 100m outside of the settlement with full pips in shield. If scavengers are already on site, the best way to clear them is to use your ship weapons (dumbfire, mines or flechette). It is totally possible to fire at will on the deactivated settlement without getting any fine (but do not do this after turning the power on). The SRV can also be used to run over the last surviving scavengers (if any) after luring them in an open position (SRV weapons are very ineffective against on-foot enemies in my experience). Scavengers cannot spawn anymore once the power is on. After clearing the ones already on site (if any), I would therefore advise you to locate the PWR building (using a powered up terminal if needed) and turn the power on as soon as possible so that you can loot the settlement in peace. If you are fast enough with this operation, you should be able to completely avoid scavengers - and therefore any need for combat - during the mission.
Reactivation and restore missions are also the best way to get power regulators ... by abandoning the mission. You will get a reputation loss and 100k fine by doing so, but get to keep the regulator. When visiting an infrastructure failure or civil war system, I would advise you to take all reactivate/restore missions available, complete as many as you can/want and abandon the rest, so that credit and reputation loss/gains are balanced.
Finally, reactivating/restoring many settlements will allow you to get a lot of data over time, although it is not necessarily a reliable way to get a specific type. Just try to check every data point you can find, possibly using a terminal to locate them. Downloading illegal data is also completely fine and without consequences since the security is absent from settlements to be reactivated/restored.
Farming weapon schematics with larceny from hidden cache missions
If you were unlucky with weapon schematics drops after completing your reactivate/restore missions, you could have a try at missions of the type "Larceny: seize [illegal good] from a hidden cache" (not settlement). These missions are asking you to grab a specific (illegal) good at a surface PoI of type "irregular markers" that has three large containers arranged in a triangle pattern. Each container can be opened by using the Maverick suit Arc cutter and its Energylink in overload mode, and contains from 2 to 3 boxes with various illegal goods and weapon schematics.
The reason why such missions are interesting for farming purposes is that they tend to spawn many weapon schematics (between 3 to 5 relatively consistently), are relatively fast to complete and fairly low risk. Some scavengers might be already on site when you arrive at the PoI, in which case you can easily take care of them with your ship weapons. They might also spawn if you take too much time, but looting the containers is relatively fast, which means most of the time you will leave the PoI before they arrive. The mission item being considered illegal does not matter whatsoever because - with the exception of maybe some wanted scavengers - you will not encounter anyone, and in particular no security guard.
Farming data materials
Data materials are definitely the most time-consuming to obtain because they cannot be traded at the stations bartenders unlike chemical/circuit/tech components. For most of them, there is unfortunately no efficient way to obtain them other than completing Odyssey missions giving them as reward, hoping to find some traded by CMDRs on their fleet carrier, or hoping to be lucky to find one when reactivating/restoring settlements.
There are however some notable exceptions that can be very effectively relog-farmed (i.e. collect the data, exit to the main menu, relog, collect the data, repeat): manufacturing instructions and patrol routes/settlement defense plans/surveillance logs/ballistic data/maintenance logs.
For manufacturing instructions that are required in large numbers to upgrade suits and weapons, take an Odyssey salvage mission asking you to recover either a micro transformer or circuit board. This mission always spawns a crashed nav beacon with a data point that may have manufacturing instructions. Go to the site, clear scavengers with your ship if any, and land your ship close to the beacon (e.g. within 100m) with full pip in shields. Then disembark, go the beacon and download the data you are interested in without getting the mission item (collecting the mission item will make the relogging not work anymore). Stand on the top of the beacon, and relog. After relogging, you will spawn inside the beacon and still be able to download data while being shielded from potential scavengers. You might have to relog several times to find the desired data type to download. Relogging might spawn scavengers who may attack your ship, but just relog to make them disappear in that case (they completely stop spawning after 3-5 relogs in my experience). While inside the beacon, you will even be able to open the power regulator drawer. Most of the time, it will contain a degraded regulator (useless), but sometimes it will be glowing blue indicating that it is a regular power regulator that you can then collect. Once your suit data capacity is full, just clip outside of the beacon (with a combination of running and jumping), offload the data to your ship and relog when standing on the beacon. This method - although not very interesting from a gameplay point of view - can allow you to collect very large amounts of manufacturing instructions in a small amount of time (e.g. 100 in less than an hour). You will also be able to farm less useful data like stellar activity logs, radioactivity data, topological surveys, operational manuals and mineral surveys with this approach.
For patrol routes/settlement defense plans/surveillance logs/ballistic data/maintenance logs, find Horizons missions (i.e. from your ship!) called "Liberate n bootleg liquor". These missions are asking you to locate some item on a planet surface, and recover it with your SRV. These missions can spawn three types of planetary PoI at random: artificial structure, irregular markers and minor wreckage. The two first ones are uninteresting as you will only find the mission item, some Horizons components and goods, and some skimmers defending it. For minor wreckage, two types can be spawned: one with some ship debris, the other with a destroyed SRV and skimmer. The last one is what you are looking for, since the crashed skimmer has a data point with patrol routes/settlement defense plans/surveillance logs/ballistic data/maintenance logs that can be scanned with relog-farming, as long as you do not collect the mission item with your SRV. These PoI also do not spawn any enemies (skimmers or scavengers), so you can collect as many materials as you desire in peace. You should note that for this farming approach, the most difficult part is to find the correct PoI: sometimes you will be lucky and find it with your first "Liberate bootleg liquor" mission, other times you will have to take 9-10 different missions before getting it. It might also happen that you find the correct PoI but the skimmer spawns below the ground, making it unaccessible. Just keep in mind that you only have to find it once to make it work however.
Conclusion
I hope that this guide will be useful to new Odyssey CMDRs who are - like I was at the beginning of my Odyssey journey - overwhelmed by the amount of new contents and mechanics. Fly safe!
o7
CMDR Hanchen
Note as of 24.10.2022: edited with further details regarding data farming, and a new section about weapon schematics farming.
Note as of 27.04.2024: an alternative way to relog farm power regulators was suggested to me. Pick an Odyssey salvage mission to find some non-mechanical component (lower threat level preferred). It should spawn a PoI of type 'distress beacon' on a planetary surface. Several different types of PoI can be generated at random, but the one you are looking for is a landed (and not crashed) ship with enough space to land right behind its engines. Deal with on-site scavengers with your missiles (if any) and land as close as possible to the ship engines with 4 pips in SYS. If landed close enough, you should be able to see the type of goods and materials salvageable from the landed ship on your ship's left-hand menu. If you find a non-degraded power regulator, disembark and grab it, come back to your ship and relog. Otherwise, relog inside your ship until one working power regulator can be found. Relogging can spawn scavengers, in which case you can log out to make them disappear (stronger shields/armour are advised so you can withstand incoming damage during the 15-second cooldown). Repeat until you get the desired number of power regulators, then pick the mission item to end the loop. This proposed method should also work with relogging inside a SRV (more vulnerable from incoming damage from scavengers than ships, but remove the need to land close to the PoI). Thanks to CMDR Scarlette Starr for their suggestion!