Where to find Copper in Solarpunk

Finding Copper in Solarpunk is one of your first big material challenges. The mineral is vital for most construction projects beyond the most basic ones, and nothing on your home island points you in the right direction. You'll need to stockpile Iron and Cotton to build an airship dock, then find components to build the actual airship. After that, you'll find a location with Copper nodes — though these are limited, and they don't respawn. There is a way to get more Copper with less effort once those are gone, though.

In this guide, we'll show you where to find Copper in Solarpunk, and how to set up a Copper farm.

Where to find Copper in Solarpunk

The only other island you can reach with your standard airship is home to plenty of copper. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Cyberwave, Metaroot

Unlike Iron, you won't find any Copper nodes or veins on your starting island. You'll need to build an airship and fly to the island immediately west of the merchant's shop — the only other island you can reach before upgrading your airship — to find it. Once you land, you'll run across a handful of Copper nodes: brown rocks with light brown chunks sticking out of them. Use your pickaxe to harvest them, the same as with any stone.

Once those are gone, you'll need to mine a Copper vein to get more. Mineral veins are the patches of ground covered with bits of normal stone and small pieces of the mineral in question. You can use your pickaxe on these, but there's a chance you'll only get stone or sand instead of the mineral you're after. Mining veins with a pickaxe also reduces the axe's durability more quickly than normal use.

There is, however, a less intensive way to get quantities of Copper.

How to farm Copper in Solarpunk

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Cyberwave, Metaroot

You'll need drills to set up a Copper farm, which requires a new kind of crafting. Bear in mind that you'll need Copper for the drills too, so this farming method is for a little later in the game — not for your first time harvesting the mineral.

Bring four Watermelon to the merchant, and trade them for a blueprint. Turn around and interact with the table at the other end of the shop, and exchange your blueprint to unlock an Energy Crafting Table. This is where you'll unlock research options for all things automated, and the table comes with recipes for a drill and sprinkler.

The quantities are low, but drilling frees you to do other things while you wait. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Cyberwave, Metaroot

Build your table using Iron, Copper, Wood, and Glass and then work on acquiring the materials for a drill. You'll need a generator and some power cables to get a drill running and fuel for the generator. One drill will mine five stacks of Copper (or other metals if you're running them on a different vein) every four minutes. So if you fuel it with three wax briquettes, that'll be 12 minutes of run-time and 15 stacks of Copper. You can also mine with your pickaxe alongside the drill if you need some more Copper faster.

You can have two drills, but it's best not to bother until you get solar panels up and running. Each generator only outputs 200 energy, so one generator can only support one drill. Again, it's not a fast method, but it does free you up to go do other things while the drill does the manual labor for you.

It's a good idea to keep a regular supply of Copper, and any other rare minerals you find, on hand for future projects. You'll need quite a lot of it to upgrade your airship and reach the islands where Wheat grows, for one thing, and almost all advanced energy projects require Copper as well.