How to Use the Smelter in StarRupture

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In survival games like StarRupture, building structures around your base is crucial for staying alive. These buildings let you transform simple resources – such as Calcium, Titanium, and Helium – into advanced materials. You’ll need these complex materials to craft powerful items and satisfy the demands of your corporate bosses.

You’ll probably unlock the Smelter first. This building is key to understanding the game’s crafting and how to succeed on this new planet.

Here’s a complete guide to building, running, and improving the Smelter in StarRupture.

Unlocking and Building the Smelter

The Smelter is a core building in StarRupture, so you’ll unlock it early in the game. You receive it automatically as you progress through the first level of the Selenian Corporation.

During the game’s tutorial, you’ll receive essential starting items from the Selenian Corporation’s first level, including the Base Core, a Basic Item Printer, an Ore Excavator, a Smelter, and a Habitat.

Okay, so I can build a Smelter near my base using 100 Basic Building Materials. Just a heads-up though – once I place it, it’s stuck there! No moving it around later, so I gotta make sure I pick a good spot, or I’ll have to tear it down and start over.

As you construct the Smelter, you’ll notice arrows pointing in and out of it. These arrows show the paths drones will take inside the Smelter, as it’s designed to be operated by drones.

When you position your Smelter, try to align it with your other machines. This will help keep your drone rail system simple and efficient.

Using the Smelter

The Smelter is a machine that processes raw materials into usable building blocks. Initially, it can create Wolfram Bars and Titanium Bars. With upgrades, it will also be able to produce Calcium Blocks.

Okay, so to use the Smelter, you just walk right up to it and hit the ‘E’ key. That pulls up the crafting screen, and then you need to find the button that looks like a folded piece of paper – it’s on the left side. That’s what you click to get started!

Okay, so this icon opens up the crafting menu for the Smelter. That’s where you pick what you want it to build. Honestly, I’ve found it’s super helpful to have a Smelter dedicated to each type of resource I’m collecting – it really boosts how much stuff I can make!

The Smelter keeps producing whatever material you choose until you turn it off or it reaches its maximum capacity. You can then link the Smelter to other machines to process its output into even more advanced materials.

Upgrading the Smelter

You upgrade the Smelter, and other crafting stations, at the Recipe Station. Doing so unlocks new crafting recipes you can use with the Smelter.

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Besides the two recipes you begin with, the Smelter can learn to make Calcium Blocks. To unlock this, go to the Recipe Machine, choose the Smelter, and add Calcium Ore to the Recipe Station until the recipe is available.

I’ve figured out that once you feed the machine enough ore, the recipe becomes available, and then I can craft it using the Smelter. It seems like other machines work the same way, but they just have more recipes to unlock, which is pretty cool!

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2026-01-11 02:09