How to get tungsten in Starfield

Tungsten is a rare but extremely important resource in Starfield. You’ll need it for a ton of different machines when you’re building out your outposts, so it’s important to get a tungsten mine up and running as soon as possible. The problem is that tungsten can be a bit hard to come by out in the wide universe of Starfield — for free, at least.

In this Starfield guide, we’ll walk you through where you can find tungsten and how to make as much of it as you want (as long as you’re on PC).

Where to find Tungsten in Starfield

Tungsten is a bit of a pain to track down in Starfield — at least in the early game. You can find it resting on many different planets in the universe, but many of them have extreme environments, which means you won’t be able to build an outpost on them until you unlock the Planetary Habitation skill (which requires you to reach the Master tier of the Science skill tree) and upgrade it to at least rank one to deal with extreme temperatures.

The alternative is to find a celestial body with plenty of tungsten on it and and extreme environment. Enter Voss, a moon of Olivas, a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri system.

Voss is packed with resources, including water, lead, nickel, and even uranium. But tungsten is its most valuable resource of all — and there’s plenty of it to be had. Head over to Voss, open your scanner, and pick one of the massive gray spots to touch down in. The only bad thing about Voss is that it doesn’t have a helium-3 supply, which means you’ll need to use solar panels for power. Still, once you settle this planet, you’ll have an unlimited supply of tungsten. Even better, you can get this farm going fairly early in the game, which will make your life much easier as you try and expand out into the galaxy.

There are a couple of other tungsten-rich planets in both the Alpha Centauri and Sol systems that we want to call out. Each of these have extreme environments, but once you upgrade your Planetary Habitation skill, you can make a second, third, or even fourth tungsten farm on one or all of these:

• Bondar, planet in the Alpha Centauri system
• Titan, moon of Jupiter in the Sol system
• Pluto, planet in the Sol system

Where to buy Tungsten

You can (and should) buy tungsten from all the usual resource shops in Starfield: Jemison Mercantile in New Atlantis, the UC Exchange in Cydonia, and the Mining League in Neon. You might also get lucky with your local Trade Authority, so it’s worth popping in to see.

Every day of in-game time you should be able to find quite a bit of tungsten at Jemison Mercantile. And when they run out, you can always go wait on a nearby chair or head back to your ship and sleep for 24 hours. When you return, you should be able to buy more. If not, go rest for another 24 and come back.

Tungsten item ID

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

Starfield has console commands — on PC at least — that you can use to do a variety of things, like give yourself unlimited storage or, in this case, give yourself specific items.

To give yourself tungsten, you’ll need to use its item ID code, which is: 0000556B.

Hit the ` key any time during your Starfield playthrough and you’ll pull up the console command. Here is the full console command to give yourself 20 tungsten in Starfield:

• player.additem 0000556B 20

You can copy/paste the code above directly into your console command, sans bullet point.

If you want to get more tungsten in a single command, change the 20 on the end of the code provided above to 50, 100, even 1,000. Once you hit enter, you’ll be able to find the resource sitting in your inventory.

It’s worth mentioning that using console commands can disable achievements in Starfield, so be careful if you’re an achievement hunter.

What is tungsten used for in Starfield?

You’ll primarily need tungsten for building heavy mining machines in Starfield, most notably solid resource extractors for your outposts.

In order to build a self-sustaining tungsten farm — with a generator fed from helium-3 and at least two solid extractors — you’ll need at least eight tungsten (as well as other materials). If you want to throw in a Transfer Container, so you can grab said tungsten while still in your ship, you’ll need another five.

We suggest you purchase 20 or so tungsten before trying to build yourself a tungsten mine — or any other resource like iron or aluminum.