Finding resources is crucial to progressing through Starfield. Whilst they are not strictly used to complete quests, they can craft and be used for research on your ship, made into weapon modifications or used as raw materials to help piece together your Outposts. Regardless of their use, you will want to spend quite a bit of time in the wilderness of each planet in Starfield to gather your resources. Keep in mind however that you have a limited amount of space available in your Inventory and should plan according to the resource you are looking to farm on land. This is Vincent’s guide on everything you need to know about understanding the different resources and their symbols in Starfield.
What Resources Can You Mine in Starfield? – Symbols Guide
The materials are available to harvest through the mining processes in Starfield – on the planet’s surface using the Cutter or inside your Outposts via an Extractor. The Scanner is incredibly useful for both surveying the planet you are standing on (100% completion of every POI and resource inside its biomes) and harvesting resources that you know are found on the chosen planet. When getting started on Starfield it can be rather confusing what each resource does due to their labelling in-game as seen on the periodic table. With their elemental symbols being the only thing in view, you will want to refer to the list below for what each symbol means. Keep in mind that some are on the rarer side to gather such as Titanium. These are much harder to find on foot and require a higher levelled skill such as Geology to locate.
These are all resources and their material symbols shown in Starfield:
- Alkanes – HnCn
- Aluminium – AI
- Antimony – Sb
- Argon – Ar
- Benzene – C6Hn
- Beryllium – Be
- Caesium – Cs
- Carboxylic Acids – R-COOH
- Chlorine – Cl
- Chlorosilanes – SiH3Cl
- Cobalt – Co
- Copper – Cu
- Dysprosium – Dy
- Europium – Eu
- Fluorine – F
- Gold – Au
- Helium – He-3
- Ionic Liquids – IL
- Iridium – Ir
- Iron – Fe
- Lead – Pb
- Lithium – Li
- Mercury – Hg
- Neodymium – Nd
- Neon – Ne
- Nickle – Ni
- Palladium – Pd
- Platinum – Pt
- Plutonium – Pu
- Silver – Ag
- Tantalum – TA
- Tetrafluorides – xF4
- Titanium – Ti
- Tungsten – W
- Uranium – U
- Vanadium – V
- Water – H20
- Xenon – Xe
- Ytterbium – Yb
Starfield material location guides: Silver and Titanium.
How to Check What Resources a Plant Has to Harvest
If you are looking for specific resources (i.e. Silver for crafting), you will want to use the ship and head to any planet. Once you get close enough you can see the overview of the planet, including which resources are available to survey and harvest via the Resources Tab. Here you will see all common resources which have a set color that appears as an underlayer of each material symbol. This is transferrable onto the planet itself as it shows each biome and highlights which resource is available in that area, visible via the color that corresponds to the symbol.
This system does not work for rarer materials however, which is why you may need skills like Geology to increase your chances of finding rare-legendary resources on each planet in Starfield. Rare materials appear on the Resource list in the planet overview but include dots in the right-corner of the symbol to indicate their rarity.
When you are looking to mine these resources, land on the planet and use the Scanner to find the resources that will be highlighted in blue. If you have visited this planet before, anything previously scanned will appear in green. Be sure to keep track of your progress and each resource you have found as they get ticked off the Resource Counter. When you have found the resource you were specifically searching for, switch to the Cutter and use it to cut out the material to place in your Inventory.
We hope this guide helped you for the search on specific resources in Starfield, be sure to regularly check back here for the Resources List and their elemental symbol. For more on Starfield, be sure to check out our GJ section dedicated to the game here. Thank you for reading this guide.
Published: Sep 1, 2023 08:49 am