Chromatic Metal gates almost everything you build in your first hours of No Man’s Sky, and you mostly don’t mine it. You refine it out of stellar metals. This post is about which recipe to run when. The full recipe list and everything that uses it lives on the item page.
What Chromatic Metal is
The in-game description calls it a processed alloy made in a Refiner from Copper, Cadmium, Emeril, and Indium, and adds that “the rarer the stellar metal, the more Chromatic Metal it will produce.” The item text doesn’t mention Quartzite, which Worlds Part II added and which refines just as well.
You need a lot of it, and you need it early:
| Item | Chromatic Metal |
|---|---|
| Hyperdrive | 125, plus 5 Microprocessors at 40 each (325 total) |
| Cadmium Drive | 250 |
| Personal Refiner | 100 |
| Mineral Extractor | 100 |
| Base Computer | 30 |
That’s 805 just for the basics, before you touch a single upgrade module.
Early game: Copper in a Refiner
Find Copper in yellow systems
Copper is the yellow-star stellar metal. Its item text says it forms on planets orbiting yellow stars. Per the Fandom wiki, you dig the deposits out with the Terrain Manipulator, and hotspots and Galactic Trade Terminals are other sources if you’d rather not dig.
2 Copper makes 1 Chromatic Metal
Drop Copper into a Portable Refiner and you get 1 Chromatic Metal for every 2 Copper. It’s the worst ratio in the game. It’s also the one you have at the start, so dig a lot of Copper.
Double it with Pure Ferrite
1 Copper plus 1 Pure Ferrite makes 1 Chromatic Metal. Same output, half the Copper. Ferrite Dust refines 1:1 into Pure Ferrite, and Ferrite Dust is in basically every rock you shoot.
The catch is the second input slot. The Portable Refiner only has one. You need a Medium Refiner or the Personal Refiner Mk 2. The wiki says the Medium Refiner blueprint costs 10 Salvaged Data at the Space Anomaly. Buy it early.
Every Chromatic Metal refiner recipe
Every yield below matches both our extracted game data and the Fandom wiki. I’ve left refine times out. The wiki’s own Refining page says the displayed times are often wrong, so I’d rather not hand you a number. Relative speed is in the notes under the tables.
Single input (Portable Refiner works)
| Input | Chromatic Metal |
|---|---|
| 2 Copper | 1 |
| 2 Cadmium | 1 |
| 2 Emeril | 3 |
| 2 Indium | 4 |
| 2 Quartzite | 4 |
| 1 Activated Copper | 1 |
| 1 Activated Cadmium | 2 |
| 1 Activated Emeril | 3 |
| 1 Activated Indium | 4 |
| 1 Activated Quartzite | 4 |
Pure Ferrite fusion (Medium Refiner)
| Input | Chromatic Metal |
|---|---|
| 1 Copper + 1 Pure Ferrite | 1 |
| 1 Cadmium + 1 Pure Ferrite | 2 |
| 1 Emeril + 1 Pure Ferrite | 3 |
| 1 Indium + 1 Pure Ferrite | 4 |
| 1 Quartzite + 1 Pure Ferrite | 4 |
| 1 Activated Copper + 1 Pure Ferrite | 2 |
| 1 Activated Cadmium + 1 Pure Ferrite | 4 |
| 1 Activated Emeril + 1 Pure Ferrite | 6 |
| 1 Activated Indium + 1 Pure Ferrite | 8 |
| 1 Activated Quartzite + 1 Pure Ferrite | 8 |
Gold and Silver fusion (Large Refiner)
| Input | Chromatic Metal |
|---|---|
| 1 Silver + 1 Gold + 1 Copper | 5 |
| 1 Silver + 1 Gold + 1 Cadmium | 10 |
| 1 Silver + 1 Gold + 1 Emeril | 20 |
| 1 Silver + 1 Gold + 1 Indium | 30 |
| 1 Silver + 1 Gold + 1 Quartzite | 30 |
This needs a Large Refiner, which itself costs 200 Chromatic Metal, 100 Sodium Nitrate, and 5 Microprocessors.
On speed: Indium, Quartzite, Activated Indium, and Activated Quartzite are the fastest single-input recipes. Pure Ferrite recipes all run at the same speed as plain Copper, the slowest single-input recipe. Gold and Silver fusion is roughly 13 times slower per batch than that. You’re trading time for yield.
Best ratio by star color
Chromatic Metal per 1 stellar metal, depending on what shares the refiner with it:
| Metal | Alone | + Pure Ferrite | + Gold + Silver |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copper (yellow) | 0.5 | 1 | 5 |
| Cadmium (red) | 0.5 | 2 | 10 |
| Emeril (green) | 1.5 | 3 | 20 |
| Indium (blue) | 2 | 4 | 30 |
| Quartzite (purple) | 2 | 4 | 30 |
| Activated Copper | 1 | 2 | n/a |
| Activated Cadmium | 2 | 4 | n/a |
| Activated Emeril | 3 | 6 | n/a |
| Activated Indium | 4 | 8 | n/a |
| Activated Quartzite | 4 | 8 | n/a |
The short version:
- Yellow: Copper with Pure Ferrite as soon as you can.
- Red: Cadmium alone is as bad as Copper. With Pure Ferrite it’s four times better. Never refine it solo.
- Green: Emeril is decent either way. Pure Ferrite doubles it.
- Blue and purple: Indium and Quartzite are tied. Their activated versions plus Pure Ferrite make 8, the best one or two slot recipe in the game.
- Large Refiner: biggest yield per stellar metal, but every batch eats Gold and Silver and takes a while. Worth it if you’ve got asteroid Silver and Gold sitting around.
Moving up the drives
Better metals live behind hyperdrive upgrades. The first costs Chromatic Metal, and each one after that is paid in the previous color’s metal:
- Cadmium Drive (red systems): 250 Chromatic Metal + 3 Wiring Loom
- Emeril Drive (green): 250 Cadmium + 4 Wiring Loom
- Indium Drive (blue): 250 Emeril + 5 Wiring Loom
- Atlantid Drive (purple): 250 Indium + 200 Atlantideum + 1 Living Glass
Every jump puts a better ratio in reach, so the Copper grind is the worst it ever gets.
Activated metals: the 2x upgrade
An activated stellar metal does in one unit what the plain version needs two for. 1 Activated Indium makes 4 Chromatic Metal. So do 2 plain Indium. Cadmium is the outlier: 1 Activated Cadmium makes 2, double what 2 plain Cadmium give you.
The item text only says these metals were “activated by the extreme conditions in which it was formed.” The Fandom wiki is more specific and says Activated Quartzite typically turns up on extreme weather planets. It lines up with the game’s wording, but the planet type is the wiki’s claim, not the game’s.
Quartzite and purple systems
The Worlds Part II patch notes say every planet in a purple-class system has Quartzite deposits, and new refining recipes came with it. In practice Quartzite is a second Indium. Same yields, and since every planet in the system has it, you don’t have to hunt.
If you’re already in purple systems for Lithium, grab Quartzite while you’re there. The Lithium guide covers getting there with the Atlantid Drive.
Other ways to get Chromatic Metal
These come from the Fandom wiki, not our game data, so treat the numbers as the wiki’s:
- Some Galactic Trade Terminals sell it.
- It shows up as a secondary element in some minerals.
- Rescue a freighter from pirates and you can ask the captain for up to 256.
- Destroyed pirate and NPC ships drop 30 to 50. Shooting NPCs costs you standing.
- Freighter cargo pods drop 200 to 250 each. Sentinels respond, and standing drops.
The Chromatic Expansion loop
Chromatic Expansion recipes go the other way: 1 stellar metal plus 1 Chromatic Metal makes 2 of that stellar metal. You can do it with Copper, Cadmium, Emeril, Indium, or Quartzite.
Fandom documents a loop with Indium or Quartzite. Expand into more Indium, refine it back at 2 to 4, and you end up with more Chromatic Metal than you started with. The wiki says it only works with Indium or Quartzite as of Worlds Part II, and not with Activated Indium. With Copper or Cadmium, the round trip loses metal.
It works. It’s also a lot of refiner babysitting, and honestly, mining more Indium or Quartzite and pairing it with Pure Ferrite is less effort for most people.
What to spend it on first
- Hyperdrive. 325 in total once you count the Microprocessors. You’re stuck in one system until it’s built.
- Cadmium Drive. 250, and it unlocks red systems and better ratios.
- Medium Refiner. It costs no Chromatic Metal at all (100 Magnetised Ferrite + 5 Di-hydrogen Jelly), and the Pure Ferrite recipes double your output.
- Personal Refiner. 100, so you can refine on the move.
- Large Refiner. 200, for the Gold and Silver recipes.
Later on, the Freighter Hyperdrive takes 500 at once. Antimatter takes 25 per craft, covered in the Antimatter Housing guide. For bulk numbers, the calculator and the refining table save you the napkin math.
Sources
Related
Frequently Asked Questions
1 Activated Indium or 1 Activated Quartzite plus 1 Pure Ferrite makes 8 Chromatic Metal. Without activated metals, 1 Indium or 1 Quartzite plus 1 Pure Ferrite makes 4.
Mine Copper in a yellow star system and refine it. 2 Copper makes 1 Chromatic Metal in a Portable Refiner. Once you have a Medium Refiner, 1 Copper plus 1 Pure Ferrite makes 1, which halves the Copper you need.
Yes, but only the single-input recipes. The Portable Refiner has one input slot. Pure Ferrite recipes need two slots (Medium Refiner or Personal Refiner Mk 2), and the Gold plus Silver recipes need a Large Refiner.
2 Cadmium makes 1 Chromatic Metal, the same as Copper. Add Pure Ferrite and 1 Cadmium makes 2, so never refine Cadmium on its own.
Yes. Quartzite came with Worlds Part II and refines like Indium: 2 Quartzite makes 4 Chromatic Metal, and 1 Quartzite plus 1 Pure Ferrite also makes 4.
125 Chromatic Metal plus 5 Microprocessors. Each Microprocessor takes 40 Chromatic Metal, so you need 325 in total.