How to efficiently farm carbon fibre plating, titanium plating, tungsten carbide and weapon components? - an illustrated Odyssey guide
27 Nov 2022Hanchen
The Odyssey engineering system is infamous for being very grindy (even more so than the Horizons one), due to it asking for very large quantities of engineering materials (data, good and assets) that take a lot of time to gather. CMDRs have realised over time that one of the most efficient way to collect them are missions asking to reactivate/restore settlements. But while these missions tend to give a lot of loot, they are not optimal when it comes to farming a specific component due to the large variance in terms of loot they present.This can become problematic when looking for specific assets - i.e. chemicals, circuits and tech components - that are expensive to trade at the bartender, in particular when it comes to tech assets. Circuit and chemical components (especially graphene that has a high bartending cost) tend to be easily found in Odyssey settlements to be reactivated. But tech assets comprise a high number of rare and expensive components that are required in large numbers for critical upgrades (and mods), such as carbon fibre plating (for the Maverick suit), titanium plating (for the Dominator suit), tungsten carbide and weapon components (for various weapons).
After doing a few heist and theft missions, I inadvertently found a way to efficiently farm these components in large quantities that - although technically illegal - involves minimal risk and no combat (so no bounties and notoriety gain). I wanted to share it in this guide to help other CMDRs looking to farm these materials in their modding and upgrade process.
Prerequisite
This farming method can be done without any specific equipment. Weapons are in particular not needed. I would just advise to use a Maverick suit for its larger storage capacity. If you have it, the quieter footsteps mod can help, but is not mandatory. You can also make sure that you have binded the command to discard stolen security profiles to avoid issues with security NPCs, but you should normally not have to use it with the proposed farming loop.
Finding an appropriate target settlement
The settlement that works the best for this farming technique is a specific type of medium extraction settlement as shown in the picture below. This settlement has two specificities that makes it very good for farming purposes:
- It has two large storage buildings (indicated as buildings #1 and #2 in the picture) that contain a lot of high value tech assets and that have only civilian NPCs (administrators, technicians, researchers) inside or near them.
- The settlement is quite spread out which means security NPCs are too. It is therefore very easy to avoid them when looting the settlement.
The targetted medium extraction settlement layout (in this example: Baldock Extraction Rigs in the V848 Monocerotis system), with buildings #1 and #2 respectively circled in red and blue.These settlements can mainly be found in system whose main economy is extraction. Since medium extraction settlements (indicated with "++" in their name) have different layouts, some trial and error might be needed to find the correct one. But you will need to find it only once to make it work.
The farming loop
Each loop should last 10-15 minutes and allow you to get around 5-10 materials among carbon fibre plating/titanium plating/tungsten carbide/weapon components, as well as many less valuable materials like graphene, electromagnet, micro thrusters, microelectrode if you are interested in collecting them. It consists in the following steps:
- Land your ship close to building #1 (but not on the landing pad as it is more likely to have security NPCs around it).
- Steal a security profile from a NPC using your Profile analyser in cloning mode. For this farming technique, a profile of level 1 is enough. Keep in mind that stealing a profile is an illegal action that will trigger the settlement alarms and security response if you are caught. Usually, stealing a profile can be done by following a NPC outdoors and scanning them from behind while crouching. In this settlement layout, there is however a consistent way to safely acquire a profile: go on the roof of building #1 and scan the NPC patrolling on the second floor of the building through the window as shown in the picture below. Make sure the NPC is not looking at you while doing this. Running and jumping may attract the attention of the NPC towards you, so keep crouching during the whole process.
- With your newly acquired profile, go inside building #1 and start scanning the NPCs indoors so that their position appears on your radar. You do not have to worry about being spotted by civilians NPCs since - unlike security NPCs - they will never attempt to scan you. Additionally, NPCs will neither react to you opening lockers under their eyes, nor to items mysteriously disappearing around them over time. For this settlement layout, buildings #1 and #2 should both contain only civilian NPCs.
- Take any loot you are interested in. It is important that you make sure that no NPC sees you when taking the item! Always keep an eye on your radar: previously scanned NPCs who cannot see you will be indicated as a circle, while the ones with a direct line of sight to you are indicated with a triangle (although they may be looking in another direction as indicated by the triangle direction). As long as no triangle are pointing in your direction on the radar when taking the item, you should be fine. NPCs cannot detect stolen assets during a scan (unlike stolen goods), so any component you successfully stole is basically yours. Note that assets are located in lockers without passcode (ignore the ones with passcode as they only contain goods that are most of the time worthless), but might also be on the floor or on the top of boxes, so make sure you check the building thoroughly so that you do not miss any important loot.
- Exit building #1 and go to building #2. In this settlement layout, you should not encounter any security NPC along the way. If you do and they scan you, just discard your stolen security profile and work on stealing another one again. Remember that any stolen asset will not be detected during a scan.
- Repeat steps #3 and #4, but this time in building #2.
- Exit building #2 and go back to your ship.
- Leave the settlement, enter supercruise to reset the loot and then immediately abort it. Go back to the settlement and repeat the loop at step #1.
Steal a security profile from the NPC on the second floor of building #1, while making sure they are not looking at you. Keep crouching during the whole process to make sure not to attract their attention.
A example of loot in a locker. Ignore any locker with passcode as they usually contain worthless goods. Note that in this example, no NPC is currently seeing you (as shown on the radar) so you are free to steal the components.
A example of a loot on the top of a box. Note that in this example, one NPC indicated as a triangle on the radar might be able to see you. It is therefore better to wait a little bit for the NPC to move further away before stealing the materials.
An example of loot on the floor. No NPC is seeing you in this example, so the component can be safely collected.Conclusion
I hope this guide was useful to CMDRs looking for efficient ways to collect these valuable tech assets (carbon fibre and titanium plating, tungsten carbide and weapon components) and to optimise their farming routine. Keep in mind that all these specific four components have relatively high bartending costs, which should therefore help you with trades to get your desired component.
Fly safe!
o7
CMDR Hanchen
The pictures used in this guide are available at https://imgur.com/a/icEW1XZ
Edit as of 06.09.2024: a tip suggested by CMDR Happy Daze to find an appropriate settlement more easily consists in using the advanced search functionality of EDSM to filter for medium extraction settlements, and target anarchy systems if possible. In settlements controlled by an anarchy faction, killing NPCs in emergency situations can be done without incurring a bounty. Some trial and error may however still be required to find the correct settlement layout, which is the third extraction layout in this database of Odyssey settlements.