Forage

Many raw materials can be foraged directly from the environment. Not all resources are available in every environment though.

Foraging is most commonly used to quickly get a few materials for handcrafting. This includes the foraging to make an empire's first flag.

Locating Natural Resources

Using the top-down view it is possible to find almost any resource in the environment.

Locating plants

Plants can easily be found using the Plants overlay.

Plants are hard to describe, because plants are procedurally generated and are therefore unique to each planet. Some plant types can be foraged from both trees and bushes.

Example of some plants.

Locating Rocks

Rocks can easily be found using the Rocks overlay.

Rocks while having multiple possible shapes, always have the same look.

Icon	Rock	Name	Note
		Stone	The most common rock.
		Ore	No handcrafting uses.
		Crystals	No handcrafting uses.
		Minerals
		Oil
		Gems	No handcrafting uses. Valuable in trade.
		Radioactives	No handcrafting uses.
		Coal	No handcrafting uses.
		Ice
		Gold Ore
		Eludium	Commonly only on moons and other atmosphere-less worlds.
		Lumenite	Commonly only on moons and dark worlds.

Inspect Natural Resources

It is possible to inspect a resource before foraging it. Look at the ground at the base of the resource, whether it is a rock or a tree or a shrub. Use the spotting key, default `, to get a spot description of the terrain at that location. The description will include the type and quality of the resource.

Picking Up Natural Resources

Natural resources are picked up from the ground using the hand cursor, or by clicking the "Forage" button that appears on the right of the screen.

Click on the rock or shrub to forage from it. Some times other plants may get in the way, when trying to harvest, in that case try from another angle or another source.

It is also possible to forage water by clicking on the surface of visible water.

If there is room in the inventory, an item foraged from the environment will be added to the inventory. Otherwise, it will be dropped on the ground.

Seeds

When foraging plants, a seed will also be acquired. Seeds are largely useless for anything other than flower pots. This means that if inventory space is limited, it is best to just drop them.