Welcome to my guide on farming keys, Strike crates, and carbon powder (as well as stacks of salvage)!

This version of the guide will not include how to kill enemy mechs. I may or may not update it in the future with such information, depending on if people want it.

Here are the basic principles of farming these items:

1) Keys, strike crates, Dr. Zim modules, carbon powder, and 3 epic items can drop when you kill enemy mechs (Iron Hand mechs). They can also drop consumable salvage that won't add to your salvage count unless you use them from your inventory. These come in stacks of 1k, 5k, and 10k salvage.

2) Keys have a 48 hour cooldown.

3) When they drop, they show up on the map where the mech blew up.

4) They appear as a yellow star on the radar (just like part drops show up as white, green, blue, or purple stars). If they blow up over an outpost or fortress, they can be hard to spot. Just fly over the area where they blew up if this happens to make sure you aren't missing it. (Or look for what is described in point #5).

5) They show up as a greyish-brown metallic crate on the ground (or outpost or fortress). Careful, they blend in easily with enemy outposts and fortresses.

6) Each enemy mech can only drop one thing per mission. However. . .

7) Playing co-op increases the amount of enemy mechs, therefore you can get up to 3 mech drops in one mission (if you play with two other players, not counting co-pilot bots).

8) Iron Hand mechs can run out of lives and not drop anything. However. . .

9) The more lives an enemy mech has, the more likely you are to get a drop that mission (because you have more chances to kill it and get the drop).

10) Mechs tend to have more lives in higher difficulties.

11) Mechs tend to have more lives the later they are in the campaign (roughly speaking).

Since these items drop by killing mechs, here are the missions viable for farming. They do not include missions with Iron Hand Mechs with only one life (like Death March) since the drop rates are terrible. They are listed in the order they appear on the map:

Open Up Shop
Perimeter
Production Foreman
Cascade Pass
Harvest
Salt Mines
Heavy Metal
Kessler Beta
Mt. Hood Ops*
Iron Duel

*Personally, I don't like Mt. Hood Ops. The area is wide open and the mech's AI can get defensive and hang out at the fortress

Harvest is probably the easiest to farm crates. Simply kill the mech(s) attacking your Northwest outpost when the mission starts (you may get there before them). If that doesn't result in a drop, go to the fortress in the bottom right. They will respawn there and stay to defend it against your attacks. Of course, don't attack the fortress much since that ends the mission. Just attack the mech(s) and the units around it to keep the mech guarding it until you get a drop. Once you get the drop simply restart the mission if you want to keep farming more loot.

Happy hunting!