Materials are used to upgrade your ship components using Engineer blueprints. Some materials are also used to unlock certain items.

There are three different kinds of materials:

  • Raw Materials
  • Manufactured Materials
  • Encoded Data

Materials do not take up cargo space; instead you have a fixed storage shared between all your ships – the amount you can store depends on the material grade:

  1. Very Common : 300
  2. Common : 250
  3. Standard : 200
  4. Rare : 150
  5. Very Rare : 100

If you farm Grade 4 or 5 materials you can trade them to a lower grade material at a Material Trader, which can be a very fast and efficient way to get the materials you need. However, when trading from a lower to a higher grade material you have to pay more materials than you receive!

raw MATERIALS

Raw materials are most often collected from geological sites on planet surfaces using your SRV but some can also be collected from asteroid mining. 

The sites listed below are some of my favorite mining spots close to my home base Shinrarta Dezhra but you can use INARA to fine other planets near your location – simply enter your current system in the NEAR STAR field and enter the material you need in the MATERIALS PRESENT box and click SEARCH; the search results will liste the nearby planets with the highest percentage of the material at the top of the list.

Material Grade Where to farm
Antimony 4 Collected on planets using your SRV: HIP 60051 – A 1  site 5
Arsenic 2 Collected on planets using your SRV
Cadmium 3 Collected on planet surfaces e.g. Shinrarta Dezhra – AB 2 F A
Chromium 2 Asteroid mining or collected on surface. Hyades Sector AQ-Y d81C 2 ; site 3
Germanium 2 Collected on planet surfaces or mined from asteroids.
Manganese 2 Collected on planet surfaces – Found lots of Manganese on Algol – A 4. There is also an USS with Earth Relics in this system.
Molybdenum 3 Collected on planet surfaces: Tiris1 c ; best site: 4,1 – avoid site 2,3,5
Polonium 4 Collected on planet surfaces: Tiris – 1 c ; avoid site 2,3,5
Selenium 4 Collected on planet surfaces – my favorite spots are either CPD-51 3323 – 1 d a (4,9%) or  Prthi – 2 a (4,4%).
Tellurium 4 Collected on planet surfaces: Nu Tauri – 1 site 1,3
Tungsten 3 Collected on planet surfaces: Nu Tauri – 1 site 3,10,13,1 – notice: high G
Vanadium 2 Collected on planet surfaces: Tiris – 1 c ; avoid site 2,3,5
Zirconium 2 Collected on planet surfaces + asteroid mining.
MANUFACTURED MATERIALS

Manufactured Materials can be collected from USS’s e.g. Aftermath of Combat or High Grade Emissions.  You can also collect these materials after killing pirates at Resource Extracting Sites or from crashed ships at planet surfaces. A popular way to quickly farm high grade manufactured Materials is by visiting the abandoned settlement Dav’s Hope, where you can also get Encoded data by scanning the  Data Point.

Material Grade Where to farm
Chemical Destillery 2 USS Aftermath of Combat in shipping lanes
Chemical Manipulators 4 >USS in ANARCHY systems in OUTBREAK state
Conductive Polymers 4 USS Aftermath of Combat in ANARCHY systems in OUTBREAK state
Core Dynamics Composites 5 USS High Grade Emissions in high-population Federation system in BOOM state.
Exquisite Focus Crystals 5 Mission reward or Material Trader
Heat Vanes 4 USS: Combat Aftermath in ANARCHY systems
Hybrid Capacitors 2 USS / Abandoned Settlement
Imperial Shielding 5 USS: High Grade Emissions in high-population Imperial systems in BOOM state
Improvised Components 5 USS: High Grade Emissions in CIVIL UNREST systems
Proto Heat Radiators 5 USS: High Grade Emissions in High Population systems in BOOM state; found in Lave
Proto Radiolic Alloys 5 USS: High Grade Emissions in high-population Independent systems in BOOM state. Also Sol (Federation) in NONE state.
Sensor Fragment 5 Crashed Thargoid ship at HIP 17403A 4 A
Thargoid Carapace 2 Collected on planet surfaces: Hyades Sector AQ-Y d81C 2 ; site 3
Thargoid Energy Cell 3 Collected on planet surfaces: Hyades Sector AQ-Y d81C 2 ; site 3
Thargoid Technological Components 4 Collected on planet surfaces: Hyades Sector AQ-Y d81C 2 ; site 3
Thargoid Organic Circuitry 5 Collected on planet surfaces: Hyades Sector AQ-Y d81C 2 ; site 3
ENCODED DATA

Encoded Data can be acquired by scanning other ships, FSD wakes, data points in settlements or in USS. Some can also be given as mission reward. However, the fastest and easiest way is get Encoded Data is from Jamesons Crash Site and then simply trade to the materials you need.

MaterialGradeWhere to farm
Cracked Industrial Firmware3Scanned from settlement data point. Mission reward.
Datamined Wake Exceptions5Scan High Wake / Scan Private Data Point / Encoded Emissions / Mission reward
Eccentric Hyperspace Trajectories4Scan High Wake
Irregular Emission Data2USS with Private Beacon / Mission reward
Modified Consumer Firmware2Jamesons Crash Site
Modified Embedded Firmware5Scan datapoints in Medium or High Security  settlements
Unexpected Emission Data3Scan combat vessels + salvage from USS
commodities

Technically these commodities are not materials but I have included them on this page as they are required to unlock certain items. 

Notice: These commodities are not materials but require cargo space!

MaterialGradeWhere to farm
Meta-AlloysCollected from Thargoid Barnacles on planet surfaces; Hyades Sector AQ-Y d81C 2 ; site 3