Astroneer: How-to Get Iron – Finding Hematite!

Our How-to Get Iron in Astroneer Guide features exactly what you'll need to do to get Iron in the Astroneer universe! Iron is a pretty important piece of the puzzle, it allows you to create Shredders and Trade Platforms!

Iron is a refined resource in the game, that means you're going to need to have a Smelting Furnace at the very least. You'll also need to leave the planet, because Hematite, the resource you need for Iron, can't be found on the starting planet.

Creating a Small Shuttle

We're going to need to travel, so that means we need a ship. Creating a Small Shuttle isn't too costly, although you'll need a Large Printer, and 1,500 Bytes to unlock it. Once we've got that, you'll then need 2x Aluminum. Aluminum is a refined resource like Iron, so you'll want to create a Smelting Furnace. We'll need Laterite for this, and that's found underground in caves. So, head out exploring a bit and look for some natural cave formations.

Once you've got the Aluminum and you've created your ship, we're going to need a couple more things before we can take off. The first is a Solid-Fuel Thruster, this is what will take us to the planet and get us back. This costs 1x Aluminum and 1x Ammonium. The Aluminum we should have from before, but Ammonium does not occur naturally on the starter planet. However, we can get it in a different way. We'll have to create a Soil Centrifuge, that requires 1x Aluminum and 2x Compound along with 750 bytes. Once you've got that created, you'll need to create a Canister. This holds soil for us, so place that on your pack and go farm some resource. You'll need to fill up the Canister, and then bring it back to the Soil Centrifuge. Place the Canister in it, and it will drain the soil from it. You'll need to do this twice to create 1x Ammonium. You can then create the Solid-Fuel Thruster, and place it on our ship.

Now, technically you could just fly off to space with the ship from here, but it will make your voyage a lot easier if you create an Oxygenator. If you don't do this, you won't be able to connect Tethers to the ship and explore the new planet or moon very effectively. To create this you will need 1x Aluminum and 1x Ceramic. We should have Aluminum already, but you might not yet have needed Ceramic. To get Ceramic, you will need Clay. This can be found pretty rarely on the planet, but you can also create it with the Soil Centrifuge. Create that and place it in your ship!

Space Flight

One key thing to note about the Solid-Fuel Thruster is that it can only take you into space, land on a planet, bring you back into space, and then land somewhere again. Once you've completed that journey, your engine will be unusable! I found out this the hard way, and had to create another engine from scratch because I took off and landed again on the new planet. So, once you land somewhere on the foreign world, you won't want to take off again and land somewhere else unless you've fully planned for it!

Make sure to bring some Tethers with you, it can sometimes be hard to find Compound depending on where you land. A couple of Resin is good too, you can convert this into Oxygen Filters.

Where-to Find Hematite

Hematite can only be found in two different places: Glacio and Novus (Vesania moon). Glacio is probably the easier of the two because you can find Hematite on the surface of the planet. If you head to Novus, you'll need to locate naturally occurring caves which can sometimes be difficult to locate.

How-to Make Iron

Throw some Hematite into your Smelting Furnace and it will create Iron!

Iron Recipes

• Medium Shredder: 2x Iron
• Atmospheric Condenser: 1x Plastic, 1x Glass, 1x Iron
• Large Shredder: 1x Tungsten Carbide, 2x Iron
• Large Platform C: 3x Iron
• Trade Platform: 1x Iron, 1x Tungsten, 1x Compound
• Extra Large Platform A: 4x Iron
• Extra Large Platform B: 2x Iron, 2x Resin
• Extra Large Platform C: 2x Steel, 2x Iron
• Extra Large Storage: 2x Steel, 2x Iron
• Steel: 1x Carbon, 1x Argon, 1x Iron