Salvager’s Field Guide

Twisted hull plating and structural offcuts. The base ingredient for almost everything you build before you can smelt your own.

"Ninety percent of a colony is this. The other ten percent is regret." — foreman, first winter

Fried boards, tangled wiring, and sensors of dubious honesty pulled from the wreck. Junk on its own — hand-sort five of them in the field to salvage one working Electronic part.

"Still smells faintly of ozone and bad decisions."

A clean, working board — the part every electronics recipe wants now. Crafted from a copper ingot and a machined part at the Workshop, or hand-salvaged in the field at five scraps to one.

"Five handfuls of junk, one part that blinks when you poke it. Out here that counts as quality control."

A dense chunk of the ship’s drive. Enormously valuable — and enormously heavy. You will curse it all the way home.

"It got us most of the way here. Rude of it to stop."

A full set of hand tools. Consumed to stand up the Workshop, where it becomes the bench everything else is made on.

"Whoever packed a spare — you are a legend and I owe you a drink."

Field medicine. Spent when you rescue a downed survivor, alongside the supply they ran dry on.

"Read the label. Then ignore it, you don’t have time."

Viable seed stock for the colony’s future. Not much use today; priceless the day the rations run out.

"Hope, vacuum-sealed."

A full breath of air — one suit refill (or feed it into a base O₂ tank). The single most important object in your pack.

"Rule one: the air is not optional. There is no rule two."

Clean water for one refill, or to top up a base Water tank. The planet has plenty of ice and zero of it is drinkable.

"Alien springwater: now with 200% of your daily allowance of regret."

Pressed algae and bio-sludge discs, extruded by the ship’s recycler and stamped into something the label dares to call food. One cake is a survivor-day of joyless, complete nutrition.

"Tastes like regret, but keeps your stomach quiet."

Frozen volatiles chipped from the surface. Melt it with a heating element to get a water bottle.

"Free water! (Batteries and a heater not included.)"

Field-melted drinking water. Costs a heating element (kept) and a jolt of suit power. Water is never truly free out here.

"Tastes like effort."

A 2 kWh cell. Powers your suit, or loads into a Battery Room slot to feed the base grid.

"Fully charged and quietly judging your power budget."

A copper-hungry bus bar. Install it in the Battery Room to add one permanent battery slot — up to the grid’s hard cap.

"More slots, more problems, more copper. Mostly more copper."

A rugged coil for melting ice into water in the field. Survives the job — reusable block after block.

"Glows a friendly orange. Do not test with fingers."

A powered drill for cracking ore patches. Pulls raw rubble; pair it with a filter for cleaner yield.

"Point at rock. Rock becomes smaller rocks. Genius, really."

A separator that clips onto a drill. Combine with a basic drill to get a Filtered drill.

"Turns ‘mostly dirt’ into ‘mostly ore’. We’ll take it."

Drill plus filter: mines concentrate directly, skipping the crusher step. The efficient survivor’s pick.

"Does two jobs so you can do zero."

A side-mounted rubble bin. Mining pours rubble straight into it — but it holds ONE type at a time, up to 40 kg. Carry spares in your pack and swap when one fills.

"One bag, one ore. The universe rewards the tidy miner."

A suit-mounted sweep that reveals nearby ore patches through the fog. Spends a little power per ping.

"Ping. Rock. Ping. Rock. Ping. Oh — good rock!"

The standard back-slot pack: 60 kg of carry. Your whole capacity IS whatever pack you wear — no pack means suit pockets only.

"Everything you own, and a little of everyone else’s."

An upgraded back-slot pack: 100 kg of carry. Worth the ingots the day the ore patch is far and the haul is heavy.

"Now with 40 extra kilos of regret-carrying capacity."

A canister of CO₂-hungry lime for the O2 Scrubber — good for 20 cranks before it’s saturated and spent.

"The cartridge absorbs your mistakes. Twenty of them, to be exact."

Genetically engineered yeast for fermentation.

"When life gives you space potatoes, make questionable decisions."

Solanum tuberosum.

"The humble spud - Earth’s last gift to the stars."

Hydroponic slots under grow lights. Plant a potato (it’s committed to the soil for good) and every planted spud yields one potato a day into the stockpile.

"Give a colonist a potato and they eat for a day. Plant it, and the accountants get involved."

Turns potatoes into proper rations on base grid power. Three spuds, one hot plate, one meal nobody complains about twice.

"The colony marches on its stomach. The stomach marches on potatoes."

It’s rock. Mine it from rock deposits, crush it into powder, refine the powder into limestone. The planet’s least glamorous supply chain, and the one your lungs depend on.

"Geology is just inventory with extra steps."

Crushed rock, ready for the refinery. Not a concentrate — there’s nothing in rock worth concentrating. It’s powder.

"Do not inhale the ingredient for the machine that helps you inhale."

Refined from rock powder. The CO₂-hungry heart of a lime cartridge — combine with an iron and copper ingot at the Workshop.

"Every breath you take started as gravel."

Hand-cranked CO₂ filter using lime cartridges. Each crank scrubs 5 bars of breathable oxygen into the base tank; a cartridge lasts 20 cranks.

"Crank for 10 minutes, breathe for 20. Repeat until death."

A 100 L reserve for Spudshine Fuel. Not connected to life support — nothing about its contents supports life.

"Label it clearly. Someone WILL drink from the wrong tank."

Advanced ice-to-water refinery with plasma torches. Grid-powered only — no hand crank survives contact with plasma. 20 ice chunks and a kilowatt-hour become 50 liters of tank water every half hour; the difference boils away, which the manual calls “process honesty.”

"The billionaires thought they could reshape planets. All we got was a fancy way to boil ice."

Repurposed rocket engine preburner as power generator. Feed it Spudshine from the fuel tank and it pushes ~800 W into the grid, unattended — burning 2 L an hour at a conversion efficiency best described as “emotional.”

"A jury-rigged monstrosity that hums like a dying starship. It works… until it doesn’t."

Raw iron ore straight off the drill. Crush it to concentrate.

"Rock with ambitions."

Raw copper ore. Crush, then refine — copper is the price of power.

"Greenish, promising, heavy. Like most good things."

Crushed, upgraded iron ore. One refinery pass from being an ingot.

"So close to useful it can taste it."

Crushed copper ore, ready for the refinery.

"Halfway to a wire and it knows it."

Refined iron. Structure, tools, research gear — the backbone metal.

"Heavy, honest, everywhere. The colony’s favourite."

Refined copper. Everything electrical and every battery connector wants it. Guard your supply.

"The metal your power grid writes ransom notes for."

Bench-made gears, brackets, and fittings. The connective tissue of every serious build.

"The difference between a pile of scrap and a machine is these."

One refined iron ingot machines into two parts — twice the yield of scrap once your industry chain is running.

"Precision is just scrap that went to school."

Milled beams and panels from iron ingots. What settlements are actually made of — storage, tanks, dynamos.

"Flat-packed civilisation. Some assembly (a lot of assembly) required."

The base crafting bench: tools, machined parts, and suit gear are made here. Built from a salvaged tool kit.

"Where scrap goes to become someone’s bright idea."

Grinds mined rubble into concentrate over time. Set its ore (iron or copper); hand-operate it, or wire it to the grid.

"It has one job and it does it very, very loudly."

Smelts concentrate into ingots. Like the crusher: pick an ore, operate by hand or off the grid.

"Turns rocks into wealth. Slowly. Warmly. Insistently."

Expands the common stockpile (+500 kg) and every locker (+50 kg). Build as many as your hoarding demands.

"There is no such thing as enough shelving. Trust me."

Unlocks the tech tree. Spend stockpiled materials over time to research new technologies for the settlement.

"Two survivors, a whiteboard, and dangerous levels of optimism."

The base grid’s store. Load batteries into its slots; solar and dynamos charge them; powered buildings draw from them.

"The colony’s heart. It hums when it’s happy."

Passive power: trickles a small charge into the grid every minute (needs a Battery Room to store it). Build a farm of them.

"Free power, eventually, if the star cooperates. It usually does."

Cheap hand-cranked generator. Operate it to push charge straight into the grid — the bootstrap power source before a solar farm.

"Backup power, arm-powered. Leg day is now every day."

Base O₂ reserve (in bars). Sheltered survivors and suit refills draw from it first, before touching the stockpile.

"A big communal lungful. Please do not hold your breath near it."

Base water reserve (in liters). Sheltered survivors and refills draw from it before the stockpile.

"The well the whole camp gathers around to complain by."