How to Farm Materials in Death Stranding
Once you gain the ability to fabricate items in Death Stranding, you’ll find that it can become essential to gather up materials from a variety of sources to help not only fund your fabrication costs, but allow you to help construct and rebuild structures and roads.
Materials consist of Chiral Crystals, Metals, Resins, Ceramics, Chemicals, and Special Alloys.
- Metals are needed in large quantities to build and upgrade most PCC Structures, including Bridges, and also for restoring roads using Auto Pavers.
- Resins are needed to create a variety of smaller equipment items, including Bridges Boots.
- Ceramics are needed in large quantities to restore roads using Auto Pavers.
- Chemicals are needed to create special items, and used to upgrade Zip Line structures.
- Special Alloys are needed to create and upgrade Safe Houses and more advanced items.
- Chiral Crystals are needed for almost everything, including making Hematic Grenades and Blood Bags, building, upgrading, and repairing structures, and restoring roads with Auto Pavers.
Even though most items you can fabricate don’t cost too many materials, you’ll find that the various Knot Cities, Waystations, Distribution Centers, and Prepper Shelters can easily run out of supplies if not stocked by yourself or other players. This goes double for amassing materials to help build larger structures like bridges, fabricating vehicles, and of course – rebuilding roads with the Road Paver.
The best ways to gather Materials quickly can be broken up into several sections, depending on your needs and how many materials you need:
Gathering Lost Materials
One of the most simple ways to quickly get needed materials for fabrication is to simply grab up lost cargo full of materials as you find them when exploring or are already on your way to deliver an order. Just like other Lost Cargo, you need only ping your Odradek Scanner regularly to highlight these containers on the map – which are strewn about all over the world. Unlike other Lost Cargo, they technically have no owner, and can be delivered to any facility you choose.
Materials Cargo can take many shapes and forms, from small containers that can be carried on your suit, to extra large cargo that is best carried in vehicles – and for this reason it may be best to scout for materials with a Reverse Trike or Truck. You’ll often find these materials strewn about alongside other Lost Cargo, in large fields, rocky terrain, or well-traveled areas.
Though simple enough, gathering lost materials as you find them doesn’t guarantee you’ll always find the right materials you need, and you may not find them in adequate quantities – though it can still be worth it when finding clumps of materials near a facility to drop them off in.
Raiding MULE Camps in Death Stranding
One of the more gusty and effective ways to amass materials quickly is to take the fight to MULEs, and clear their camps entirely to help yourselves to the spoils. This can be dangerous – especially if you aren’t experienced or don’t have many weapons, but the payoff can be very rewarding.
Each of the MULE Camps you run into generally stockpile large amounts of one or more materials, and leave them both lying around their tents, and also keep many larger containers in their postboxes. They also keep a few smaller packs on their person – which is essential for tracking, so only take them once you’re sure they won’t be woken up by friends.
Because most cargo containers at MULE Camps are large or extra large, you’ll likely want to either comandeer one of their MULE Trucks, or bring your own. An exceptionally devious tactic is to drive around the outskirts of their camp on a Reverse Trike and ram into patrolling guards, working your way to the center of their camp while making hit and run attacks to knock each of the MULEs out, while outmaneuvering their shock sticks. Once the camp has fallen, swap to a MULE Truck, park them by the postboxes, and transfer all the truck can hold and take it to where the materials are needed.
This tactic is especially useful for helping to rebuild roads using Road Pavers, as you can find a MULE camp full of Metals or Ceramics and drive the truck full of materials straight to the paver!
Standard Orders – Materials Deliveries
A huge underlooked method of rapidly restoring materials to certain locations is in taking on special Standard Orders marked “Materials Delivery”. These orders appear in most all of the Knot Cities, Waystations, Distribution Centers, and Prepper Shelters you’ll come to, and while they often require a lot of cargo to be moved, its one of the few types of deliveries to actually have an immediate effect.
By completing any of these Standard Orders, and bringing whatever materials have been specified to the destination, that facility will automatically boost its stores of those materials for immediate use, which can be just what you need to fabricate essential materials. This also leads into another overlooked method for farming materials…
Claiming Materials for Transport
This particular method is only really useful for those interested in helping to pave the roads across the Central Region, but it can be absolutely essential – especially if you’re looking to rake in Likes from other players quickly.
Each of the facilities you go to already have their own stores of materials of course – which you can see by highlighting the location on the map. This also means you have the ability to “Claim Materials” and transfer them to a waiting Truck to take directly to an Auto Paver. Because the stores of each facility are gradually replenished through your own actions, recycling, and other players, you can use this to your advantage and quickly build up roads this way.
Other players may have the same idea as you, which may lead to a deficiency of materials like Metals and Ceramics at the major Knot Cities – but often times players can overlook how much materials out of the way locations like Prepper Shelters or the Weather Station and Timefall Farm can carry. For this reason, you should always glance around on the map after awhile to see if any locations near an Auto Paver have amassed a good amount of materials you can use without too much trouble.
