Intro
This guide is to help newer players with campaign mode obtain wealth, through both blocks and cash. Since you somewhat never know what you may need later and the store is limited, you wind up doing a lot of speculative buying which can get expensive!
This is an attempt to go from the very first claim your base mission to earning millions in 1.4.9.
Starting Out
I will start at the very first turret quest where they send you to another BB (prospector base, BB on the map) to kill the rogue turret and they give you a functional defender turret.
Note that in many cases this second base is undesirable as a primary base being very hilly or in the desert or whatever.
I actually recommend making a note where that very first starter BB is located and return to it in most cases as it is always in non-hilly forest terrain which is what you want for reasons that will become clear later.
The tutorial is rather confusing in some sense in that you have no inventory and cannot recall blocks. Whatever you find,you must attach to your tech and carry with you. However, after the tutorial this changes and it took me a while to figure out that I can right click and send any anchored blocks to my inventory. I actually carried around my solar panels, SCU, and even autominers around for quite some time until I figured this out.
Thus, early game once you have passed the tutorial, when you win a fight and see blocks you will want to drop a fixed or rotating anchor or even a power supply on the ground. Then just add all the enemy blocks to it, pile em up, then Send to Inventory via right click.
Eventually you will be able to add magnets to your tank (assuming it is large) and drag them back to base. Then, you will get a SCU and be able to deploy it as needed to suck in blocks. Eventually you wind up with a mobile SCU although by that time you won’t really need to take enemy blocks anymore.
Early Game Selling Stuff
You will quickly obtain quests to buy thimble collectors and start selling random resources. The crafty mike quests will also pop up and when you win them, you can right click and Send To Inventory to keep those handy blocks.
For this early game time, the best bet for Tech building is to have your front of the tech look like a staircase so you can mount lots of guns.
I recommend putting all your AK guns in the very middle. So like 3 on the very bottom level of the stairs, 3 on the second level above those and so forth. This lets you have a “mining zone” which allows you to break blocks much more easily than using drills or using a line of guns. You fill other slots on your stairstep with 3 pounders and lasers as they can all change their aim somewhat so having them on the sides isn’t a big deal.
On the back of your tech you will have a several rows of thimble collectors you will use to sell resources. Here is an example build.
During this time, check the shop daily as you are looking for Refineries and Anchored Cannons. If you find either one, buy 4 of them. Yes it is pricey especially for the cannons but worth it.
Drive around blowing up rocks with the AKs mostly and sell them to the BBs directly as they will give you a lot more cash than wood fiber. The green rocks are especially valuable but the trees are plentiful and do add up.
Your first selling base
As a note, you probably should drop that initial AI turret at this base as it will effectively mark its location forever. Otherwise the map will only show you the CLOSEST BB, not necessarily the beginner forest one.
Selling to the BB is slow and painful, but still better than nothing or making your own cannon seller. At least until youve gotten several cannons and refineries ready.
Once you have accomplished this task however after check the store daily while working on the Crafty Mike missions, you can finally make your first selling base.
The nice thing about this is that you will Manage Techs, Snapshot, and save it. Then you can deploy it ANYWHERE and sell your stuff!
You want to use a fixed geocorp base ideally since it is tougher and then lift the whole thing up several blocks. This allows you to drive your tech UNDER the selling base and also prevents hills with messing with the deployment. It is much easier to unload this way plus you can have resource collectors pretty far to the front and still be able to unload them.
So you build up several blocks then build outwards multiple blocks, depending on how many cannons you have. You can always add to it. Here is an example of what it will look like.
Note the direction of the refinery…the bright green hole faces towards the resource collectors.
Also note that the refinery interrupts the conveyers so everything gets processed. If you put the refinery in parallel, then a steady stream of raw resources will prevent the processed ones from ever getting back on the belt!
The downside is that if it does pick up an already-processed resource, that branch gets “stuck” and you have to manually pull the processed chunk off the belt and onto the selling belt, bypassing the refinery. You wouldn’t expect this to happen but apparently enemy techs will hold processed resource chunks occasionally as it gets clogged a lot more than you’d think.
However you can improve upon this base once you pick up some Silos. See the next section for more details but by adding a Silo, the refinery will only pull in unrefined resources. This does mean your pad will eventually clog up with refined resources but it prevents a single chunk from shutting down the whole works.
Adding the second silo just gives your selling base a bit more holding capacity since the refinery is faster than the delivery cannon. You can instead just use 2 conveyers to feed the refinery output to the cannon.
Now you can run around doing missions, loading up resources and then Loading the seller base for fast parallel processing of the resources. You can also give it a battery, solar panel and shield/repair to help its survivability if you have them.
NOTE: I recommend NO shield and just repairs on your Tech at this point, because your battery life is limited and shields eat batteries. You want to be able to have decent movement range and you won’t have any way to recharge on the go for a while. Repair bubbles for GSO do not cost any power unless they are actually fixing stuff. Once you get more batteries you can reconsider this position.
Also keep in mind that you can always go to Manage Techs and Send to Inventory the sellerbase if you left it next to your autoturret and then redeploy it locally. This is great if you are in the desert or doing a mission and have a full load.
When you find a PACEMAKER, attach it!!! This will speed up the delivery cannons and refineries everywhere on the selling tech!
NOTE: You may wish to skip straight to the AutoMiner section as it is by far the main part of the guide. The next few sections are interesting but you may just not really care about it yet. Automining green stuff is how you get rich.
Silos vs Collectors vs Receivers
One thing that may be confusing is when to use Silos and how to get them to work. Do you use them on mobile techs or stick to receivers? How about on Selling bases?
As you saw, my first base just used a single receiver and piped it straight to a refinery and then to the cannon for selling.
This is the most straightforward way of doing it and most appropriate for early campaign when you need the cash with a minimum of investment. My theory has been that once you get autominers working on Green Stuff, you dont really NEED to make dump trucks and sell resources anymore.
However, there are definitely more advanced designs possible as mentioned by people making comments about this guide. As such I wanted to cover them, for those that do want to keep mining from their mobile tech.
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TL;DR version:
Silos are great when you have mobile refinery,selling cannon, and furnaces for a mobile tech due to how they interact.
However, they wont let go of their resources TO a selling base though so not so good early game for transporting resources.
Collectors are straightforward. Geocorp is best bet just due to availability.
Receivers are only really for static selling bases.
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Silos: They can carry 10 stacks high of resources per block which is the most of any. However they have some odd properties. They WILL NOT send resources onto a conveyer unless pulled by a fabricator. The only other good way to pull resources onto a conveyer is a Filter. You need a filter for EVERY single Silo to send resources onto some conveyer line for selling and refining. Since filters are kind of hard to come by, this is not really all that feasible. This will also tend to clog up your conveyer belt and you can wind up with your refineries getting “stuck” and unable to put their product onto the belt.
Finally, silos have no grabbing power and you need a collector or receiver adjancent to transfer resources to them.
However, a silo IS actually really useful if you have smaller space to work with as I was told in comments. This is because refineries, furnaces, and selling cannons WILL use a silo if it is adjacent. Conveyer…. no go. But as in the demo below I have 2 Geocorp Collectors which grab resources and feed it to the big silo. The mobile venture refineries grab unprocessed only and process it and return it to the silo. This is unique because collectors will NOT re-accept chunks from a refinery output that is adjacent. The furnaces will grab fuel chunks. The selling cannons will grab chunks somewhat randomly but will mostly sell refined chunks overall. This is way better than filters and conveyer belt lines!
The following is a further refinement of the above which represent the pinnacle of my design so far given a bit more room to work with. As you can see, the big range and high capacity collectors feed resources into the big silos. The refineries work on all the raw chunks.
The filter pulls in the refined chunks to be sold. In the meantime, fuel chunks are routed to a secondary smaller pad which will hold them and feed to the generators. The combined approach is more compact but tends to sell a lot more of the fuel chunks. This approach ensures your batteries stay topped off for much longer.
The Silos are good for up to 110 mph which isnt an issue with most techs. Note however that Silos DO NOT give up their resources to a Receiver. So you’d have to break all your silos to dump them off at a selling base, making them not good for transporting to a selling base.
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Collectors have varying amounts of carry capability and hold strength.
The thimble that you start with is good for 5 stacks high and 15 pickup radius.
Venture only holds 3, but has really high hold strengthand 19 radius.
Geocorp holds 8 but has weaker pick up radius, although the size of its 4×4 effectively increases range. Plus it is readily available.
GSO 2×2 has 6 stack height but some collosal 17 range. Tech 4 is a problem though.
Hawkeye is just 1 block big and has no other attachment points. 4 stack and 17 radius.
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Receivers CAN be used in mobile techs but its generally not a great idea.
GSO small one holds 3 stack size and grab range of 7. Much weaker than the thimble collector.
GSO bigger one has 3 stack size and same 7 range. Just bigger.
Geocorp one has 6 stack size and 9 range.
Venture one has ONE item and 5 range, lol.
better future is an oddball that holds 12 items total and is huge.
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Delivery Cannons and Refinery:
So it turns out that the geocorp refinery and cannons are no faster than the GSO ones. Disappointing since they are way bigger. The only difference is the mobiles ones are slower and their speed does vary a bit by corporation.
Also, the delivery cannons DO NOT prioritize processed chunks instead of unprocessed which was extremely disappointing.
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As far as selling bases go, Silos will hold a lot of resources so that you can more easily dump the entire contents of your Tech. The trick is that you must have a refinery and selling cannon adjacent to each one as otherwise the resources will be stuck there unless you have a filter or some such to move them forward.
In other words you cant really use your 2×2 silos just to hold a big dump of resources early game because you won’t have the other parts to get it out of the silo. You will probably just need to buy more Receivers.
But you can definitely use the silos with a refinery,selling cannon, and receivers to ensure your selling base does not get broken by a receiver holding onto an already-refined chunk. The downside is the cannon will sell some non-refined resource chunks initially.
The Silo method also interacts really well with Scrappers since you dont worry about parts and stuff getting into your refinery.
MAJOR DISCOVERY!!!!!
So that pacemaker that speeds up conveyer belts? Guess what? It WORKS ON REFINERIES AND CANNONS!!! I never knew this. Just hook it up to your circuit and it works awesome and works on the entire tech.
–Testing————–
I used this base and dumped off an entire 8 4×4 scotties worth of materials (128 x 8 = 1024!).
It took 28 seconds to empty my entire truck and 114 seconds to process everything.
Note that the cannons STILL sell the unprocessed few tree chunks for 6 when it has a huge pile of processed ones it could sell instead.
To fix this, you could use filters to move only processed stuff to a short conveyer that goes to each cannon. This eats a lot of filters and can get clogged up as the refinery may be unable to return the refined chunk back to the filled silo pad. Or you can have the output of the refinery go to the cannon itself which pretty much looks like the basic seller we started with.
Anchoring Your Tech?
So it turns out that the big Anchor Tech button at the bottom left is not just there for looks. Who knew?
I always assumed that was for turrets or whatever, but you can actually attach anchorable items to your mobile Tech and then anchor it. What this does is activate ALL of your anchored-only blocks which is very useful, especially for most of the campaign.
Here is an example of adding this capability to your tech. There is no top so you can better see how its made.
In this example the SCU acts as the anchorable block. But this can and probably should be a fixed anchor or something cheap and plentiful. The big downside is notice how low it is to the ground. You need to ensure there are tires right next to it so that it is less likely to get damaged by your bouncing around as you drive. And definitely ensure a repair bubble covers it!
When I anchor the tech, the SCU activates and sucks in any blocks. It might not hurt to have some magnets in the back to help push blocks and carry them until you can anchor at which point the SCU kicks in. Or put the SCU at the top of the tech so it pulls in blocks easier. A less boxy design would help too!
You can also sell resources long before ever getting mobile versions of refineries and delivery cannons.
In this example I went with quantity over quality and skipped refineries as they tend to get clogged up when you pick up random already-processed resources. You can use filters to get around this somewhat but even that is rather ineffective.
Note the use of the manufacturing path resource collectors instead of the usual ones.
You can use the split-path filter arrow doodads to act as load-balancers inbetween the rows of conveyers but they dont show up until later.
You can also use fuel burning generators and filters to move wood and such to a silo for later usage, but this also adds complexity. Thats good with mobile tech versions but for this case, I just went with simple Solar generators. Limited at night of course but super easy and compact to use.
In general it might be a better idea not to drag your selling apparatus around with you and just have it as a separate tech as Ive shown in this guide earlier. Its up to you. Dropping a SCU as needed to scoop up goodies is likely easier too. You can also just use a charger-tech to recharge as needed.
But, this approach does provide a unique all-in-one approach to consider.
Fabricators/Scrappers
At this point, Crafty Mike will show you how to build stuff using Fabricators and how to scrap using scrappers.
Here is the deal. Fabricators are an AWFUL idea in general. You literally can’t hardly make anything useful whatsoever without a Complex Dongle (and advanced dongle) that you add to your Component maker. If I were you, I’d not bother with this at all until maybe later on.
The only time I have found them useful is when you have the Complex dongle and a Venture fab. In this case you can spam out the Cluster Missile Launchers. They aren’t great, but they are your first missile and hugely allow for better tank design possibilities. This requires a lot of effort however and a ton of cash spent on the compressed raw resources (or a ton of time mining exotic resources). it is also finicky.
Still, you can make some cool techs using these missiles and they make hovertanks viable too. Be aware that anything decent from Hawkeye will need the exotic dongle.
Scrappers are not a bad plan however. You can sell stuff you break down but it can be a bit tricky. You want the raw stuff to be processed but don’t want it clogging up the works by trying to feed your refinery already processed chunks.
Here is a sample selling base. I filtered UNrefined instead which should prevent clogging entirely but it also means some raw materials may get sold. Just don’t feed it too fast and its a good way to recycle those weak tires.
Be aware that the parts needed to make weapons differ from those for other pieces. As such you cannot just buy GSO cannons or chargers or whatever and think you can scrap them to make the complex parts needed for missiles. It won’t work. 🙁
Here is a more advanced scrapper seller to use later on. Addition of a pacemaker is a big improvement by itself. Also you see that parts and refined chunks only are allowed to pass to the second silo where 3 cannons will work to deliver all those resources quickly. The 2 refineries work on anything unrefined that comes out of the scrapper (which isn’t usually a whole lot). This design is pretty efficient and will let you clear out quite a bit of scrap quickly and relatively easily.
The Real Money: Automining Erudite
Eventually you will get to the crafty mike where Autominers become available. This is where you can start raking in the cash.
Right now you are using your extra cash to find parts and advance in the game. You likely have something like so. I found these chain guns and wanted them protected at all costs. I have magnets on top for hauling around stuff to dump off periodically at the SCU and the back is filled with resource haulers.
Once you can use autominers, obviously look for more in the store! At this point you want to look for nice clusters of GREEN stuff in the forest. Its called Erudite and is plentiful, easy to find, and worth a ton! You will want to set up autominers on each node then use a mini-seller to process those resources and make more turrets to guard them.
For the turrets, I recommend tall ones. Use the anchored AI module and build up some blocks. Add a weapon to the very top to determine its orientation. Then you add wings to hold more guns, shields, a few batteries, solar panels, repair. The height adds range and reduces the chance of blowing up resources close to the ground.
DO NOT use wierd random parts on your turret design. Keep it STANDARD as possible…stuff you can easily obtain plenty of so you can add multiple turrets easily. For example I used those dinky tires as extra “armor” since they don’t scrap for much. This way, you can easily drop more turrets as you buy more standard parts and AI modules from the store as they become available.
For the autominer sellers, I say keep it simple! Many people make complex custom designs which I do not think are necessary. They are also very delicate and a pain to replace. Just make a cannon, a collector, a refinery and try to center the collector so orientation when you deploy the tech does not really matter. You can also drop them quickly and easily for new nodes.
You may optionally add a shield to each one since one hit tends to dislodge the autominers and they just sit there unhinged. This gets expensive though so I’d pass on that for now. You can also tack on a few conveyers and add another receiver if green stuff is out of reach for a given seller.
As you can see the green stuff gives you 233 credits refined per piece! This adds up and keeps going as long as you are in the general area.
Keep in mind that eventually the vein will stop working. You can see the pump action stop on the autominer and it now updates to NOT show the green patch anymore when dry. However, this seems to take a long long time, apparently 960 minerals worth per patch! That’s about 230,000 each!
Once you have your first autominer up and running you will see that it generates a lot of cash for you. You can still supplement this by continuing to collect and scrap blocks, and resources.
Bonus Tip: The Bridge
One fantastic way to increase your wealth is with the Bridge mission. It involves trekking out to a big bridge and fighting the large juggernaut that you will find there. This is a surprisingly difficult mission as it is heavily armored and has advanced weapons. You WANT those weapons!
The key to doing this is to destroy the back of the tank without having to shoot through the armored front thus destroying the precious weapons. Up to this point you likely have a bunch of junk guns and win by just having a whole lot of them.
One janky way to do this is to make a very tall tech that his big guns cannot hit very well. It does fall over but the idea is to minimize the damage its big guns can do and fall over on top of it and shoot through its cab. Put a shield as far forward in the middle as possible to deflect a few initial shots. If you have a wireless charger, build a charge tower and top off before this mission, or max out at the nearest BB before engaging.
You can also accomplish this by using a rudimentary hovercraft if you have the parts at this point in the game. You just need some down-facing guns and enough height to avoid damage and plink away.
Once you accomplish this you will pick up a ton of good stuff, mostly those giant battleship cannons which you can use to make something like so:
Same ole stuff for the most part, but notice how I changed the wheel alignment so that the entire tank basically leans upward. With the 9 battleship cannons hidden away I can hit mission-related things wayyy off.
You could also use a normal alignment tech and just obliterate anything right in front of you. Just don’t expect much salvage!
Fabricating Parts
I did say it was of limited utility but I will go ahead and show some tips in case you want to mess with it.
Ideally you will find a GSO terminal that lets you buy whatever and you can buy the complex dongle quickly. The advanced one will be obtained from Crafty Mike during one of his missions. Or just check the store a lot.
If you can pull this off, you need lots of silos to store all the parts and various resource types. You also need scrappers, especially geocorp for the raw materials you will want to buy. You will have tons of cash and the idea is to use it to advance your weaponry.
Here is an example and lets go through the parts.
First, notice the large length of conveyer with all the silos. You will need them.
Next, notice that the OUT of the component factory is after the input. Otherwise it can sometimes eat the part it just made as it tries to build something else.
The fabricators themselves face OUTSIDE with a SCU right there to scoop up the parts so they dont get stuck or despawn.
Component factories will try to make parts if you set a fabricator recipe active, but they are not very smart. You really need to make the lowest level components first. Otherwise you wind up trying to make a thermojet, your factory having already eaten the cyclone jet and then you are forced to cancel because you now need to make a Z4 explosive or something.
You CAN avoid this somewhat by having multiple component factories though, each with a different dongle. That might be tricky to obtain extra component factories though.
Be aware you can use the fabricators to reverse-look up your desired parts. For example, I can buy 8 GSO gyros and each one will give me 2 cyclone jets and 1 fiber plating when scrapped.
My Venture Cluster Missile that I want to spam needs one jet(though needs upgrade) and fiber plating. So that may be an easy way to obtain a good deal of my needed parts, rather than buy dozens of compressed resources. I might look and find that GSO mini mortars give me blasting caps and Carbius and I would be well on my way to Cluster Missile heaven.
Note there is also a pacemaker to speed up the conveyer and also a refinery (nonblocking) in case we need to refine any parts from lower tech items (like tires).
Here is an advanced version which includes several different corporation scrappers and fabricators. Most importantly is FOUR component factories… one plain, and one with each of the 3 dongles. I show it in-work to demonstrate the complexity, but this one is FULLY automated thanks to the 4 component factories. As long as you have the right resources and such. I also raise it really high to try to avoid damaging resources by random fire (especially your own turrets!) and a few strategic shields to block silo fire.
As you can see, by the time you can field this monster, you can likely just buy what you want much easier.
Final Thoughts
Using these techniques…mostly the autominers on the green stuff to be honest, you should have tons and tons of cash and blocks and be able to do whatever you want. By removing the money limitation you can have a lot more fun experimenting and trying new stuff.
Watch out for those messages that say you have maxed out a license…. that crate usually contains a Terminal for that corporation that lets you buy whatever you want from them. VERY nice to have!
Here is one of my more fun techs with seeker pods safely embedded in the middle, cruise missiles that pop up and speed out, and hits over 90MPH. Bubbles removed for clarity.
Direct your attention to the back however as you will likely want a similar configuration. It scoops up resources and then sends fuel chunks to a Silo that goes to a mobile furnace. The rest (or overflow) goes to a mobile cannon for selling. A refinery is tempting but tends to get clogged up a lot when you pull up refined chunks (which I have no idea how that really happens).
Here is a Transformer tank that uses internal rotors to adjust its height. You can see the cruise missiles tucked away nicely, and the slots in front hide 10 battleship guns and 20 or so seeker pods. Lots of ion jets boost its speed and manueverability and hoverpads give it juuust enough lift so that the rotors can either push it down to hug the ground or lift off about 6 times its height.
Or maybe you just want to do something dumb but fun!
The sky is the limit when you are well funded. Have fun!
Hope you enjoy the Guide about TerraTech – Campaign Money Making Guide, if you think we should add extra information or forget something, please let us know via comment below, and we will do our best to fix or update as soon as possible!
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