Subnautica 2 Metal Farms Guide: How to Unlock & Automate Resources

Why You Need Metal Farms

Every base module costs metal. Every upgrade takes metal. Every tool, every vehicle component, every piece of equipment you craft eats into your finite supply of Titanium, Copper, and other metals scattered across Zezura’s ocean floor.

Early game, that’s fine. You swim out, grab some ore from a deposit, swim back. But by mid-game, you’re running long distances to find deposits that haven’t been cleaned out. The nearby nodes are empty. The far ones take five minutes of swimming each way. And your base keeps demanding more materials for the next expansion.

Metal Farms solve this problem permanently. They produce resources at your base, automatically, without you lifting a finger. Once they’re running, you never need to mine a natural deposit again unless you want to.

How to Unlock Metal Farm Blueprints

Metal Farms aren’t available from the start. You need to find and scan the blueprint fragments at a specific location before you can build one. Here’s the path:

Travel to the Karakorum Metal Farms. The Metal Farm blueprints are found at the Karakorum Metal Farms sub-zone, approximately 2,100 meters east of the Lifepod (or roughly 850 meters past the Alien Ruins marker). This is a late-game destination. You’ll need a Tadpole vehicle — swimming this distance is not practical.

Scan the structures on site. Once you arrive, look for a large glowing pool surrounded by curious-looking structures. Scan everything mechanical or industrial at the site. Watch out for hostile Epicurean fish and a Leviathan that patrols the area nearby.

Complete the blueprint. Once you’ve scanned the required fragments, the full Metal Farm blueprint unlocks in your Habitat Builder. You can then construct farms at your own base.

Building Your First Metal Farm

Once you have the blueprint, construction is straightforward, but placement matters.

Materials Required

The Metal Farm requires base materials to build, including processed metals and electronic components. Make sure you have a stockpile before you start. Nothing worse than unlocking the blueprint and then needing to go mine the materials to build the thing that mines materials for you.

Placement

Build Metal Farms inside or attached to your base. They need power to operate, so make sure your base’s energy grid can handle the additional load. A single Solar Panel might not cut it if you’re already running fabricators and other equipment. Consider adding a dedicated power source before you scale up production.

Tip: Group your Metal Farms together near your storage. The output needs to go somewhere, and running back and forth across a sprawling base to collect from scattered farms wastes the time you’re trying to save.

Power Considerations

Each Metal Farm draws continuous power while operating. If your base’s energy runs dry, production stops. Plan your power grid to handle the load:

• Solar Panels work but are inconsistent at depth
• Thermal Reactors are reliable near heat vents
• Bioreactors are a solid mid-game option if you can feed them

Match your power generation to your farm count. Running three Metal Farms on a single Solar Panel will result in intermittent production at best and full shutdown at worst.

What Metal Farms Produce

Metal Farms generate common base metals over time. The primary outputs are:

• Titanium — the backbone of almost every recipe in the game
• Copper — used in wiring, electronics, and multiple tool upgrades

Production isn’t instant. Each unit takes time to generate, and output accumulates in the farm’s internal storage. Check back periodically to collect what’s been produced and free up space for the next batch.

The generation rate is steady but not fast enough to make natural mining obsolete overnight. Think of Metal Farms as supplemental income, not a replacement for active gathering. In early setup, you’ll still need to mine while your farms build up a stockpile. After a few real-time hours of play, though, you’ll notice that your storage is full and you haven’t touched a rock in ages.

Scaling Up Production

One Metal Farm is nice. Multiple Metal Farms change the game entirely.

How Many Should You Build?

That depends on your consumption rate. If you’re actively expanding your base, building vehicles, and crafting tools, two to three farms running simultaneously will keep up with moderate demand. If you’re in full construction mode, building a large multi-room base, you might want four or more.

Each additional farm multiplies your output linearly. Two farms produce twice as much as one. The only limit is your power supply and the space in your base.

Dedicated Resource Wing

The cleanest setup is a dedicated wing of your base for resource production. Build a corridor, line it with Metal Farms on both sides, put storage lockers at the end, and connect it all to a dedicated power source. This keeps your production separate from your living and crafting areas and makes collection efficient.

Storage Management

Metal Farms will fill up their internal storage and stop producing if you don’t collect. Build enough storage lockers nearby to handle the output. A good rule of thumb: one locker per two farms. Check every time you return to base and move produced materials into long-term storage.

Co-op Farm Sharing

In multiplayer, Metal Farms at a shared base benefit everyone. All players can collect from the same farms, and production continues whether you’re online or not (as long as the host’s session is running).

Coordinate with your co-op partners on farm placement and collection. There’s nothing stopping one player from emptying the farms before the others log on. Set up a shared storage system and agree on who takes what. Four players all building separate farm bases is wasteful when one centralized production facility can supply everyone.

Common Mistakes

Building farms before you have stable power. This is the number one mistake. The farm sits there doing nothing because your base doesn’t generate enough energy. Always solve power first.

Ignoring farms after building them. Out of sight, out of mind. Set a mental reminder to check your farms every time you return to base. Full internal storage means wasted production time.

Building too far from storage. If collecting from your farms involves a long swim through your base, you’ll procrastinate on collection. Keep farms and storage close together.

Not scanning enough fragments. Some players find two fragments, assume that’s all they need, and then wonder why the blueprint hasn’t unlocked. Check your PDA for scan completion percentage and keep looking until it hits 100%.

Late-Game Resource Independence

Once your Metal Farm operation is running at scale, your relationship with the game changes. Base expansion becomes a question of design, not material scarcity. You stop thinking “do I have enough Titanium for this room?” and start thinking “where do I want this room?” That mental shift is the whole point.

Natural metal deposits still exist in the world and they’re still useful for quick grabs when you’re exploring far from home. But your base becomes self-sufficient. You can focus on exploration, story progression, and pushing into new biomes without worrying about whether you’ll have enough Copper to build the tool you need when you get there.

That’s the real value of Metal Farms. They don’t just save you mining time. They free you up to play the parts of Subnautica 2 that actually matter.