Avorion is rich in resources and contains many different ways to obtain them. Each resource also has some variables that make it better or worse for certain things. Other materials are also incapable of being used for specific systems, meaning that sometimes obsolete materials need to be used. Specifics stats of each are detailed more on the shipbuilding page. In this part of the guide, we're going to focus on locating and mining these minerals.


Above is a diagram that you should become very familiar with. It's what most players use as their defacto guide to the game and works to both tell where minerals spawn and where bosses spawn. Below is a list of minerals and where they spawn.


Do note that all of the above values apply for salvaging as well. Ships with these materials will spawn after the points mentioned; however, ships are generally only made of materials from the currently available materials and the two previously available materials. So for example, if we're in a Xanion area, expect only to run into salvage with Xanion, Trinium, and Naonite (Iron however is on a lot of ships, due to Inertia Dampeners requiring Iron). Also worth mentioning is that Factions always prefer the best materials available to them, whereas Pirates and Aliens generally use the previous two materials for their ships.


Mining and Salvaging are some pretty straightforward activities; you get a Mining Laser or Salvaging Laser and use it on the relevant objects. However there are some intricacies that are worth mentioning.

First, although it doesn't seem like it at the start, by mid to late game you will realize that you will need way more materials to continuously upgrade your ship due to the amount of processing power required to keep upgrading it. You also need a material supply to build your fleet, which will be covered in another section. Your dainty normal lasers just aren't going to cut it, and honestly they're a bit of a waste of resources due to how much you could be extracting.

The solution is best divided into steps: R-Mining / Salvaging and Automation.

You should look to acquire an R-Mining Turret and Salvaging Turret ASAP. Baseline, they will likely at least double your yields, eventually getting to a point of quadrupling them by the end of the game. Make sure that you have a good size cargo bay for your R-Turrets; unlike normal turrets, they don't automatically refine things for you so you need to process them at a refinery. This is the first big step towards being able to support your material needs.


The second big step would be hangars, and should be explored once you get access to Xanion. You want to make hangars and add a transporter of any size to your craft (note, that you also need to permanently install a RARE or better Transporter Software. This is honestly the harder part to this setup and shouldn't be done until this is obtained). You then have three options:

Option 1: Buy a Squad of R-Miners / Salvagers Fighters - This is costly, but is quick and also saves on materials. You are heavily at the mercy of RNG for this option.

Option 2: Buy a Single Fighter and produce the rest. This requires a decent amount of materials, and will often also take quite a bit of time. To produce the fighter you just bought, you drag it into the second blank slot from the left in your hangar screen. Remember that you need to have assemblies on your ship for this option.

Option 3: Create your own Fighter. You can create your own fighter and use Option 2 to reproduce it; You can do this by taking a turret to a fighter factory. It will then show a menu. On the left, you select your fighter design which needs to be selected before anything else (this has no effect on the fighter itself, its just aesthetic). On the right, you then select the turret you want to use. You want the turret with the highest efficiency you can possibly find for this. Remember that all modifiers on this turret are also applied to the fighter, so if it has increased range or damage, then it increases the range or damage as well for the fighter. Once you select these, you then can change various variables using "skill points" in the middle. Ideally, you want size to be as low as possible with the rest put into speed and maybe a point or two in maneuverability. Durability is pointless for mining fighters. Once you're done, you click the button and then follow Option 2. This is way more labor intensive, but it also is way more reliable at getting you what you need.

After this, you can command your fighters to harvest for you. If you haven't already, I highly recommend getting a captain so you can autopilot mining instead of doing it manually. Watch Youtube or something while mining at your heart content; I do however recommend paying attention or mining in faction-controlled sectors; Otherwise, you could get destroyed by Pirates or Aliens that warp in.

This is where Automation comes in. Eventually, you will want to make dedicated ships for mining that are automated. Eventually you reach a point where mining will become too tedious for you to get all the materials yourself, and you probably want to actually do things other than mining in the game anyways. Due to steam guide character limits however, this will be explained in the Fleets part of the guide. If you decide to skip to that portion of the guide, please visit the captains page first.

As outlined in the previous article, every resource has access to specific subsystems, with each tier having increasing usefulness. Unfortunately to the uninitiated, this system can seem a bit weird because tiers aren't quite linear; no resource is necessarily better than another and each has their distinct uses. Most resources will be used for very specific parts, but this also depends on what your goals are. If you're looking for the most efficient hull / weight for armor, Ogonite will always be the best option. However, Trinium is very close to the same efficiency in terms of hull / weight, costs way less, and is way more abundant. So for large builds, Trinium actually can be way better for building late game armor than Ogonite. To help you better understand this, this article will help you by providing you with the statistics for each resource, and highlighting their specific strengths.

Some blocks in Avorion have no scaling based on the materials used. Because of this, with these blocks it's up to the player to best determine what materials to use for them, usually the material that costs the least, weighs the least, or gives the most HP.

The blocks that fall in this grouping are Hull Blocks, Engine Blocks, Stone Blocks, Cargo Bays, Crew Quarters, Thrusters, Hangars, Docks, Solar Panels, Integrity Field Generators, and Computer Cores. For them, the below table will suffice to help you better make a decision.




When it comes to the Transporter, you should just make it with whatever resource you want. The Transporter has no minimum size requirement and does not change based on the resources used; therefore, the only thing to consider is the mass / hp ratio, since you only need a very small one on even the largest ships. Because of this, the highest tier resource you have access to is always the best for this component.

Generally speaking, once you gain access to Trinium, all things that can be made from Trinium should be made from Trinium due to it having the highest weight / hp efficiency out of all materials.

There are two exceptions to this; One, this is considering if you had infinite space to build. Because that is not the case, eventually you may want to use the material that's the most efficient for the amount of space used.
Second, is Hyperspace Cores. Hyperspace Cores Avorion is always the best material to be used because of it scaling 25% better than every other resource in the game. Before that, its whatever highest tier resource you can make it from.

Modules are items that you install into your ship to provide varying effects. There are a large range of modules, with a lot of different variations for the player to use. Also like weapons, the modules can range from Broken all the way up to Legendary in quality. Every module also has some psuedo randomized values, with modules obtained closer to the core generally having higher values than ones found elsewhere. Below is a complete list of modules; Due to character limits however, I will not be including Into the Rift module variants. For Into the Rift module variants, just know that they can take any two of the normal modules below (including its variants) and combine them. This basically means you're just condensing down slots, which is very useful late game.


Xsotan Artifact Modules are special modules that are obtained through killing various bosses or doing certain things in the galaxy. Below is a table saying how to get each and what they do. SPOILER: They are also used to open the gateway to the core. You will need one of each to do so.

Factions are groups that make up your Galaxy within Avorion.

On your initial start, the faction you spawn in will always have an "Excellent" relationship with you.

There are 5 distinct relationship levels within Avorion. You can get an approximation of this level based on the color of their ships and stations when you look at their icons. This follows a scale, that is shown below.

• Hostile (At War) - Red
  
• Bad - Orange
  
• Neutral - Purple
  
• Good - Blue
  
• Excellent - Light Blue

Furthermore, each faction has up to 5 traits, with at least a minimum of 2. Additionally, these traits may be labeled as Somewhat or Very. These effectively change how the traits behave based on what they are supporting. Somewhat means that the trait has some but not all of the effects of the normal trait, whereas "very" means that the trait contributes to relationships more than normal and have stronger effects.


Above is all currently known faction traits. Please note, that even if a trait increases or decreases relationship, the game independently evaluates each factions relationship with the player when you join a game and randomly changes their relationship to one of the levels described at the top of the article. This can cause factions that baseline should like you to drastically dislike you, and ones that should dislike you to instead like you, determined by RNG. After this initial relation is calculated is when the increased / decreased relations are applied by a trait.


Increasing and decreasing your relationship can be achieved through a variety of means. Naturally, decreasing relationship is rather fast and simple.

Here are the ways you can do each, with the most effective to the least effective from top to bottom:

Increasing Relationship:
• Help defend against attacks from a neighboring faction. (Note, this instantly allies you with the defending faction and declares war on the attacking faction.)
  
• Selling Asteroids. Relationship with buyer determines how much they are willing to pay and how much relationship will be given. Lower relations give more relations and less money. Relationship from this method is capped at 45k. This method is not highly recommended due to the money making potential from mines, but may be necessary if relations don't allow for missions or trading.
  
• Help defend against attacks from Aliens / Pirates. (Note, occasionally you don't get relationship from aliens. Not sure why.)
  
• Trading. Buying goods always gives relationship, whereas selling only gives relationship for requested goods. Relationship is determined by the volume of credits associated with the transactions. Relationship from this method is also capped at 45k except for buying equipment at the equipment dock, where it is capped at 75k.
  
• Missions. Missions give varying amounts of relationship, based on the mission type.

Decreasing Relationship:
• Help an enemy during an attack from a neighboring faction.
  
• Boarding any ship or station that they own.
  
• Attacking a transport ship that they own. (Note, this decreases relationship with all witnessing factions as well unless they have the Opportunistic trait.)
  
• Attacking a station or ship that they own.
  
• Smuggling goods through their territory without a licence and getting caught.
  
• Founding stations within their sphere of influence. Not a recommended way to decrease relationships due to cost. (Allys of a faction don't get penalized for founding stations inside the factions sphere of influence)
  
• Failing to complete purposely accepted missions within their time limit.

Factions all have a Sphere of Influence. This is represented by a "haze" on your minimap that is the color of your relationship with a faction. The Sphere of Influence is divided into three separate territories; Outer Territories, Central Territories, and No-Mans Land. Territory is decided by the density of stations within an area.

Captains got a massive rework in 2.0 to make them feel more unique and useful to the jobs that they perform. Captains have 3 tiers, and each captain has a bonus that makes them more useful for specific things, giving bonuses to whatever ship that they command. Every captain also has a set of traits that accompany them that change the results of missions.

There are currently 8 types of Captains

Rifts are a mechanic that you have access to if you decided to get the Into the Rift DLC. These areas are meant to be hard and can be quite taxing if you don't know what you're doing. That being said, these missions are the only way to get hybridized modules, so they can be well worth it.

In Avorion, there's a lot of different strategies you can employ to make massive amounts a money, and ultimately the easiest way depends on your preferred play style as well as the options you chose when starting the game.

Ultimately, your end goal for making money is to make stations that produce goods in Avorion. These stations may cost a lot of money, but you'll realize really quickly that they're kinda OP in terms of money production if placed right.

So, you have a few main goals when starting the game:

The Main Goals

One. Get well equipped to defend yourself and explore.

Two. Explore and find an area with a massive resource defecit. The easiest way to do this is using a high end trade module.

Three. Find the location of a Research Station, Turret Factory, and Fighter Factory. Believe it or not, these are three INCREDIBLY important stations in Avorion. Without them, you have to heavily rely on RNG to give you the drops you would want, which isn't ideal. These Stations will help you way more than you may think, and all of them scale based on what inputs you put in; In essence, meaning that even if you were in the absolute corner of a map you can still make Avorion quality items as long as you have the ingredients to do so.

Four. Establish a fleet. It gets tedious to explore, mine/salvage, trade, expand, and eliminate hostiles all by yourself. Remember that only specific captains can do specific things. Ideally, the only things you should ever need to do are explore farther towards the core, expand your territory, as well as deal with the occasional hostiles. However, that's not to say you can't do the other things yourself. You should always look for unique opportunities to quickly get you resources that you may need, because fleets are quite slow and can be inefficient, but make up for it with their numbers. IF you see a station wreck somewhere, you should definitely salvage it yourself because it would take an AI way too long to do it. There are even some tasks that AI do better than you; If you find a Smuggler early on, it may be easier to be opportunistic and attack a trade outpost in a contested sector and transfer all the goods to your smuggler captain. He can get high rates for stolen goods without ever getting in trouble, netting you about double the profit that you would normally get from having to go to a hideout and unbrand goods.

Its always worthwhile to keep all of these goals in mind. With these goals in your head, it makes it a lot easier to focus on what things you need to do.

So how do I do them and in what order?

Getting equipped early is probably the hardest goal. Ideally, "equipped" in this case means a ship that can comfortably take on any challenge thrown at you, and obviously how well equipped it needs to be changes as you get closer to the core.

A good way of doing this if you don't mind cheesing game systems is to constantly reroll stations and Equipment Docks for the Captains, Turrets, and Modules you need. This unfortunately is impossible to do in Multiplayer, but in Singleplayer all you have to do is constantly enter and exit the main menu to refresh stations. You generally want to do this to get some good modules as well as find specific captains. Remember that for Captains, you want to avoid rerolling stations with prioritized captains, so I highly recommend rerolling in systems with a crap ton of normal factories.

My main recommendation is to get to Naonite and get the knowledge to use it ASAP. Shields are extremely important in Avorion, and the game will kinda suck until you get one since Torpedos can annihilate your ship pretty quickly without Point Defense systems, which seem to be quite rare early on. Although I don't recommend selling Asteroids, at this early point in the game they are fairly useless to you, so if you need quick cash then selling Asteroids for a quick buck isn't a bad idea. Alternatively, mining and selling ores / scrap actually can be highly profitable early on. If you are looking for a way to make money with little to no risk while not relying heavily on RNG, this is the second best option.
Your final option is to find early profitable trade routes. Early in the game, you're generally limited due to your money reserves and cargo capacity. Because of this, trade is generally more recommended for later in the game, with a notable exception: If you can manage to find a sector with a trading outpost of two warring factions, take the opportunity to attack it, loot it, and then either quickly transfer the goods to a smuggler or head to a hideout to unbrand them (highly recommend just finding and using a smuggler though. Captain will be way cheaper than unbranding the goods and make you way more money.) Early in the game, this can EASILY take you to somewhere between 500k-800k depending on what the trade station had. Just be careful, because you could get immediately in trouble for suspicious goods if you don't have a specialized cargo bay or a smuggler captain on your own ship. If destroying the station is taking a while, I highly recommend using torpedoes since they're generally useless in Ship-to-Ship combat since the AI prioritizes killing them.

Once you've done that, I would start forming your fleet. This will give you your first passive income and will help you with exploring as well as finding the three stations you will want. Ideally, start with making a mining ship and set it to mine for as long as possible to get everything from Iron to Naonite (make sure to add a mining module, it increases their output on mining missions). Then, make a ship for trading with a really large cargo capacity and hyperspace range with a good trade module (NOTE: MAKE SURE NOT TO USE THE HYPERSPACE MODULE THAT HAS INCREASED CD TIME. YOU WILL ALMOST ALWAYS LOSE THE TRADE CONTRACTS) and do whatever trades you can afford and are profitable. By setting these up early, it sets you up nicely to be able to explore pretty much uninterrupted while being able to build up your ship. Make sure to keep your Miner up to date with your current ore tier, and you'll be able to keep your ship at an acceptable level for exploring and expanding.

Once you've got a bare-bones fleet operating, you then should focus on finding an area with a huge deficit of a trade resource. Without a trade module, it can be a bit hard to do; but the easiest way to do this is find areas with a large amount of one type of factory. This almost always guarantees a shortage of at least one of the goods used in the process. I do highly recommend using a trade module for this however, because they will show area deficits without you knowing what is in each sector. Ideally, for the first deficit you are looking for factories that need resources produced from mines (Silicon, Coal, Platinum, Gold, etc.) Then, you want to find a claimable asteroid near this territory, claim it, and then set it to produce the materials needed. Once this is established, it will automatically trade with local stations at the price rate that those stations offer as long as its close to that sector. For your first station, I recommend founding it in an already claimed sector of another faction. It will hurt relations unless you are allied, however they will still trade with the station and defend it, which is all that you need. You want this because you don't want to have to rush back to your station every 10-20 minutes due to pirate attacks. If it has other stations in it of another faction, it means that they will send reinforcements to defend their territory and thus you will be relatively well defended.