Lightyear Frontier is a cozy-ish open world farming game that just got released on early access, and players are quickly figuring out how to build up their base and get settled in this new alien planet. With that in mind, one resource you’ll be needing is Red Crystal Dust, and this guide will show you how to get some of it!
How to Get Red Crystal Dust
Red Crystal Dust is something that you will be using for various new crafting stations, upgrades, and even components for other stuff. Because of that, you will need to know how to gather a lot of it eventually.
The first step in getting some is finding red crystals, which can be found in various places all around the map. One early location that will have it is just around the border of Pine Heights.
This is a location that you can visit very early in the game, and there are a handful of red crystal nodes scattered all around to help you get some dust as soon as possible.
To ensure that they spawn properly, make sure to progress through the objectives that you will have at the start. Sooner or later, you will be tasked with getting red crystals anyway, which should guarantee their appearance.
Upgrading the Spike Saw
Now that you know where to find red crystals, you have to upgrade your mech’s spike saw first before you can start gathering it.
To do this, go back to wherever your base is and construct an upgrade depot. This requires 10 stone and 3 aluminum rods, which can be found around The Meadows just beside Pine Heights.
Once you have an upgrade depot set up, make sure that your mech is parked on top of the platform. Walk up to the terminal and select the Spike Saw Power I upgrade under the Gathering category.
This process will require an additional 5 aluminum rods, so go and get some more if you don’t have enough.
Upon finishing this upgrade, you should now be able to mine red crystal nodes. Head on over to Pine Heights and start gathering from them before moving on to the next step in the process!
Grinding up the Crystals
Getting red crystals isn’t enough, you also have to turn it into dust after mining them. This will require you to set up a grinder in your base, which requires the following resources:
- 12x stone
- 4x aluminum rods
- 4x Copper Wire – Copper ore (you need two for each wire) can be found within the Edge Cliffs, a little further down south from the previously mentioned locations.
Once you have a grinder up and ready, you can finally create some red crystal dust. For each piece of red crystal, you can produce two batches of dust.
Each will require around 2 minutes to refine, so maybe just leave it running and do something else in the meantime if you need a lot of it. You could also make more grinders.
And that is pretty much everything you need to know when it comes to making some red crystal dust in the game. While you’re still relatively early in the game, consider checking out our guide on the best base location for Lightyear Frontier!
