Refining Larval Cores into Nanites

[UncreativelyNamed]

I do this all the time, usually in a personal refiner while hunkered down in my hidey-hole waiting for the biological horrors to burrow back into the ground after taking a cluster of cores.

It says that the operation isn't recommended, and I've always wondered why. Seems to me a good way of getting nanites. One abandoned building's worth of whispering eggs usually gives me at least 1000-2000 nanites. It's easy and less work than curious deposits, and the refining process doesn't even take a second. So why is it not recommended? In capital letters, even?

[The Cog (O.T.H.G.)]

I have no idea lol. I never even tried refining those before >.< so this is news to me.

[UncreativelyNamed]

Originally posted by OTH.Incognito:

I have no idea lol. I never even tried refining those before >.< so this is news to me.

You get 50 nanites for each core, so you can grab quite a few. When I need nanites, abandoned buildings are my favorite POIs. :)

[knighttemplar1960]

Bio horrors are dangerous if you don't cheese the egg grabbing process. There are several ways to cheese it too.

I don't have time to refine eggs. I drop a base computer and build 4 walls around each nest. Jet pack over the wall. Grab eggs. The horrors pop up outside the walls. Then I jet pack out of that one and into the next. Repeat until I have all the eggs. Then I wait for horrors to die down, go to the base computer, and dismiss the base.

[UncreativelyNamed]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Bio horrors are dangerous if you don't cheese the egg grabbing process. There are several ways to cheese it too.

I don't have time to refine eggs. I drop a base computer and build 4 walls around each nest. Jet pack over the wall. Grab eggs. The horrors pop up outside the walls. Then I jet pack out of that one and into the next. Repeat until I have all the eggs. Then I wait for horrors to die down, go to the base computer, and dismiss the base.

Yeah, that works. I just dig a hole under the cluster of eggs. Shoot the eggs from underneath. The horrors spawn above and apparently don't look down. :) I just wait until they burrow again, using my personal refiner to refine the eggs into nanites, then go to the next cluster, repeat the process. It takes a minute or two for the swarm to subside each time, but to me it's worth the time.

[Mandrake]

I gave up on the larval cores when I found out the mirrors give way more nanites. Upgrade your shields, put all power to shields, upgrade a good weapon of choice on your ship, then just go slow boating over the surface of a Dissonant planet and start shooting up those big boring sentinels and get the broken mirrors from them.
You'll get a single sentinel ship pestering you the whole time, just don't kill it, and that's all you'll get. Then you can refine a load of nanites after you get sick of the sentinel gnat that's beating on you. :)
It's a fun alternative anyway!

[Bob]

Sadly, everything still vastly outclassed by jumping between a couple pirate systems and just buying all the suspicious goods (whatever they are called) and selling the tech that comes out. Broken amounts of nanites for relatively cheap

[UncreativelyNamed]

Originally posted by Mandrake:

I gave up on the larval cores when I found out the mirrors give way more nanites. Upgrade your shields, put all power to shields, upgrade a good weapon of choice on your ship, then just go slow boating over the surface of a Dissonant planet and start shooting up those big boring sentinels and get the broken mirrors from them.
You'll get a single sentinel ship pestering you the whole time, just don't kill it, and that's all you'll get. Then you can refine a load of nanites after you get sick of the sentinel gnat that's beating on you. :)
It's a fun alternative anyway!

That it is! I do that sometimes when I need mirrors, but generally I find a sentinel pillar on dissonant planets, plop a base computer near it, turn off the sentinels, then I like to explore the planet on foot to see what else it has and along the way blow up the drill things to get echo locaters and inverted mirrors and grab the loot barrel things from all the auto-killed corrupted sentinels. :) I discovered by doing this that at least since the Echoes update, the scrapped Autophages you find on dissonant planets give some pretty good stuff when you interact with them, now. Quad servos and walker brains in batches of 10, for instance. I think that's new, anyway. Whatever, since I avoid most on-foot combat and even when I do it I don't have much luck with the quads (since I never have a souped-up multitool), this is a good way to get those things.

Originally posted by Bob:

Sadly, everything still vastly outclassed by jumping between a couple pirate systems and just buying all the suspicious goods (whatever they are called) and selling the tech that comes out. Broken amounts of nanites for relatively cheap

Yeah, but I don't do that. :) Most of my time in-game is spent on planets, exploring them, so I tend to value planet-side sources of things. Though I do want to get me a solar ship in this save I've been playing since the Echoes update. They're my faves, and they're easier to find crashed in outlaw systems. So, maybe I'll buy a bunch of tech while I'm there, see what I can get.

Also, I think my original question has been lost: Why is refining larval cores into nanites not recommended? I don't get it. There are perhaps easier/better ways of getting nanites, depending on how you play, sure, but I don't see a downside to refining the cores....

[笛野めのん]

I also 'egg hunt' in my spare time. The refining time is extremely short.
The reason it is not recommended is probably because the monster's attack power is quite powerful and depending on when you are tackled, you can be sent flying quite far, and it is dangerous for players who are just starting out and do not have their exosuit sufficiently enhanced.

[Bob]

Originally posted by UncreativelyNamed:

Also, I think my original question has been lost: Why is refining larval cores into nanites not recommended? I don't get it. There are perhaps easier/better ways of getting nanites, depending on how you play, sure, but I don't see a downside to refining the cores....

I don't know why some people say this, but refining them is more than fine.

The only time I would say not to is on a brand new file where their worth is substantial relative to other gains for a little bit, but that doesn't take too long to change.

It is more than fine to sell or refine them as needed.

I will say this though; I would actually argue that refining them early also has its merits, so you can potentially get better scanner upgrades right away which will earn you way more units anyway.

[Buuh]

I just hunt sentinels, they drop so much salvaged glass that I can sell all the sentinel upgrades for nanites. Maybe your way is faster dunno, but with high end gear sentinels go down fast and 1 sentinel weapon shard or sentinel exosuit upgrade is worth over 600 nanites. However I also have a curious deposit farm on my storm crystal base which adds up too.

[Redlegoguy1]

Originally posted by UncreativelyNamed:

Also, I think my original question has been lost: Why is refining larval cores into nanites not recommended? I don't get it. There are perhaps easier/better ways of getting nanites, depending on how you play, sure, but I don't see a downside to refining the cores....

It's just flavor text. Usually that spot is filled with the name of a process, like "Extract Metallic Elements" or "Magnetise Metal". "NOT RECOMMENDED" is the machine's way of telling you "WAIT NO PLEASE DON'T PUT THAT IN ME", but it doesn't actually have any consequences.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by UncreativelyNamed:

Also, I think my original question has been lost: Why is refining larval cores into nanites not recommended? I don't get it. There are perhaps easier/better ways of getting nanites, depending on how you play, sure, but I don't see a downside to refining the cores....

That warning is intended for new players. Bio horrors are dangerous and hit hard. One or 2 chomps is all it takes to kill you if you only have starting gear.

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by UncreativelyNamed:

It says that the operation isn't recommended, and I've always wondered why.
...
So why is it not recommended? In capital letters, even?

"NOT RECOMMENDED" is just the name of the recipe, sort of like how turning Copper into Chromatic Metal is called "EXTRACT CHROMATIC MATERIAL".

There is (as far as I'm aware) no in-game effect resulting from any recipe name.

[Redlegoguy1]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Originally posted by UncreativelyNamed:

Also, I think my original question has been lost: Why is refining larval cores into nanites not recommended? I don't get it. There are perhaps easier/better ways of getting nanites, depending on how you play, sure, but I don't see a downside to refining the cores....

That warning is intended for new players. Bio horrors are dangerous and hit hard. One or 2 chomps is all it takes to kill you if you only have starting gear.

I don’t see how this makes any sense. To see the refiner process name, you’d first have to have a larval core, and even if you got it from an atypical source that didn’t require confronting monstrosities the only way to make the connection with the cores and the monstrosities would be to encounter one the normal way in the first place. It doesn’t make much sense to have a warning to not do something that would require you to either have already done it or have been given that information from somewhere outside the game.

I see no obvious reason for it to be anything other than flavor text. They setup the refiner system in a way that each recipe has a process name it displays, and there’s not others in this exact same format but there are multiple goofy ones that are in the same vein.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Redlegoguy1:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

That warning is intended for new players. Bio horrors are dangerous and hit hard. One or 2 chomps is all it takes to kill you if you only have starting gear.

I don’t see how this makes any sense. To see the refiner process name, you’d first have to have a larval core, and even if you got it from an atypical source that didn’t require confronting monstrosities the only way to make the connection with the cores and the monstrosities would be to encounter one the normal way in the first place. It doesn’t make much sense to have a warning to not do something that would require you to either have already done it or have been given that information from somewhere outside the game.

I see no obvious reason for it to be anything other than flavor text. They setup the refiner system in a way that each recipe has a process name it displays, and there’s not others in this exact same format but there are multiple goofy ones that are in the same vein.

The warning comes in the tutorial missions and is a genuine warning. It also comes with some of the repeatable missions on space stations and it is flavor text there.