Stars Reach Crafting: Recipes, Resources, Quality and Mining

How a craft actually happens in 8.7.2

1. Get the recipe. Recipes granted by skills are learned automatically. Recipes from loot go into your inventory as items. Right-click one to learn it, or use 'learn all' to learn every recipe in your bag (8.5.0).
2. Keep the qualifying skill active. Since 8.6.0 every recipe has a qualifying skill, and you can craft it whenever that skill is in practice. The Collections view colours recipes white (learned and qualified), red (learned but not currently qualified) or grey (not learned).
3. Find the right station. Each recipe needs a specific station type and tier. Inspect a station to see its type, its tier, whether it crafts instantly or runs jobs over time, and examples of what it makes (8.4.0).
4. Trace the chain. Right-click a recipe to see its recipe tree with every step and ingredient. Select a raw material in your inventory to see 'what can I use this for?', a list of every recipe it feeds into (8.4.0).
5. Craft. Some stations keep processing on a real-time timer, such as fermenting and some cooking, medicine and industrial steps (8.3.0). Since 8.7.2, each step of a finish chain uses the amount the previous step produced. For example, 100 stone gives 90 rough stone, and the next recipe takes those 90.
6. Check the result. Look at the finished item's stats before you put rare materials into the next step.

Why older advice contradicts itself: the recipe system, build by build

Most of the angry recipe threads from launch week, including the Reddit post 'Limited size recipe book is frustrating' (32 comments), describe rules that no longer apply. The timeline below shows what changed and when. If a guide mentions a recipe book, active slots or a five-hour swap cooldown, it was written before 15 September.

Quality: how your ingredients shape the item

This is the part of the system that rewards care. The 8.3.0 notes state that crafted items inherit status effects and special properties from their components. Matching effects stack up to a cap, while opposing effects weaken or cancel each other. The crafting window shows these effects on both ingredients and results. According to the studio, fully optimised gear can roughly double the strength of its character stat effects, and those effects also influence weather resistance and movement.

Players describe material stats with the shorthand PQRV, which stands for Potential, Quality, Resilience and Versatility. Each recipe decides what each letter affects. GUNC's materials guide gives the combining rule players work from: for each letter, the lowest ingredient value is dropped and the rest are averaged. That rule is documented by the community, not by the studio, so check a test craft before you commit a rare stack. A material with the same name can have different values on different planets, and since 8.4.5 merging stacks averages their stats, so don't merge a good stack into a poor one.

Not everything is in yet. The 8.6.0 notes say experimentation and a planned Specialties system, intended to stop advanced crafters dominating lower tiers, are still in development. For a sense of scale, one player in the Steam thread 'What do I do?' reported that upgrading from the starter Assault Rifle to a 600+ stat crafted Rime Rifle raised damage from about 40 to 50 per shot. That is a single player's anecdote, not a published figure.

Each tool has two ability slots. The 2024 design post had Specials crafted into the tool, but since the 8.1.5 update you swap a tool's abilities by right-clicking it in a safe area (the Loadout Kiosk also still works), so you don't need a second copy of the tool to change them.

Player-made or shop-bought: what the live build actually sells

The 2024 design post says every item in the game is made by a player. The live build has moved away from that. NPC shops at the Starbase now sell Fabricators (free, since 8.5.0), Instaformers and Pavers (Item Shop, 8.5.0), and paints and dyes in 12 subdued colours at 1,000 Klaatus for 50 uses (Tool Shop, 8.7.0). In September Steam threads, players also report starter weapons and the Trailblazer selling for around 2,000 Klaatus at the TPL tool shop. Players also say crafted tools beat the shop versions, so crafting still matters: shops give you a floor to start from, and crafters provide everything above it.

Crafting is spread across professions with their own stations. Since 8.5.0, the crafting stations themselves are built through the Machinist tree. Tailoring became its own profession in 8.4.0, and Carpentry, with its own experience and recipe collection, arrived in 8.7.0. According to the 2024 design post, crafters earn experience when what they made gets used, not when they make it. To sell to other players you need the Business skill, which earns experience from trades (8.4.0), and vendor kiosks have been craftable since 8.4.5.

Where resources come from

How to find a specific resource on a planet

1. Look it up in the Galactopedia. Since 8.5.0 it has an entry for every resource type showing what belongs to each tier, and your resource collections are sorted by tier. This settles most 'what counts as X?' questions.
2. Check the planet before you go. The Galactic Map (8.6.0) gives basic sector information, and the portal travel screen lists mayor and Servitor edicts (8.7.0).
3. Scan. Equip the Terraformer, press Tab, choose the resource and scan. Short-range prospecting shows deposits underground within a small radius, so dig toward a result rather than guessing.
4. Check the stack. The same material name can carry different PQRV values on different planets.
5. If the planet is mined out, go further. Players report that the asteroid fields and settled planets are depleted, and point to wild wormhole planets, which rotate in with fresh resources.

Why mining something is 'illegal': Servitor edicts

Every planet can carry Servitor edicts, which are materials the Servitors warn you not to take. Raph Koster explained the mechanism himself on Reddit (26 August 2026): when you enter a zone, the edicts are listed under the zone's name, and if you pile up too many warnings, Servitor drones will follow you or even attack, though they can be fought off. Since 8.7.0 the edicts also appear on the portal travel screen, and the opening GovBot screen shows them to citizens and non-citizens alike.

Which minerals are restricted depends on the planet and changes over time. Treat any specific list as a dated player report. In August one Reddit player listed copper, gold, tin, mercury and lithium as banned on one planet. Another Steam player complained of iron, gold, copper and manganese being off-limits where they were mining. Another Reddit reply suggested the Servitors restrict minerals that are scarce on a planet, but that is a player's interpretation, not a stated rule.

Mayors add a second layer. Once a GovBot reaches level 10, the mayor can open farming and xyloslicing to everyone, citizens, licensed citizens or the mayor only, and can grant licences to individual citizens (8.7.0).

Mining basics, and the three ways it kills you

The Terraformer (called the 'extractor' in 2024 posts) tunnels through terrain that behaves as a simulated volume. The hole stays, and the ceiling obeys the same physics as everything else. Useful material is skimmed into your hopper automatically and the waste is separated. When the hopper is full, empty it with the Empty Hopper ability. That cycle, not tool speed, is what limits how long you can mine.

The studio's mining post names the hazards. Ceilings collapse, especially in soft material, so place supports as you go. Tunnels can break into trapped gas such as ammonia, or into uranium. The third danger is digging a steep shaft and then finding it much harder to climb out than to go down. 8.5.0 stopped players dying from clipping into a ceiling while climbing or grappling, but terrain falling on you is still intended. Your tunnels also stay in a world other people share, which is one reason terrain shields are on by default on homestead plots since 8.7.2.

Click to play · loads YouTube — Stars Reach: Mining, Terraforming and Physics | The Ultimate Guide, by MadcapWarrior

Player questions about specific materials, answered with the evidence