Boss gates and automation
Drill Automation
Drills turn discovered ore boulders into unattended raw ore, freeing exploration time for other materials and crafting goals.
WHERE & HOW TO FARM
Drill Automation
Ore boulders in their native biomes; Copper and Iron boulders occur in the Forgotten Ruins.
Before you go
- Ore boulder discovered and marked on the map.
- Drills, each crafted with Scarlet and Iron Bars at the Automation Table.
- Electricity Generator or Lever power source.
- Chest or a planned belt and robot-arm collection route.
Farming steps
- Find a boulder and confirm its ore type; map markers help distinguish a return site from ordinary wall patches.
- Craft Drills at the Automation Table and bring them, power, and a collection container.
- Place Drills around the boulder so they can extract its ore.
- Power the drills with an Electricity Generator or Lever.
- Collect raw ore directly, or build a conveyor route that carries drops to storage.
- Check chests and processing stations on return visits; clear finished bars before output storage fills.
- Smelt the collected ore at the correct station and spend bars on your current crafting goal.
- Drills continue working regardless of player distance, so leave the site running while exploring elsewhere.
- If using belts, build from the destination end toward the source; check each tile’s direction.
Repeat, collect and use
Automation repeats until the boulder’s finite 1,800-ore total is exhausted. Dedicated servers stop running automation when no players are connected.
Common mistakes
- Using a pickaxe on a boulder: it is unbreakable by hand tools and requires powered Drills.
- Leaving a full chest or furnace output: blocked storage can halt collection or processing.
- Assuming distance stops extraction or that output is infinite: it works while away, but the node has a fixed total.
When to stop or switch
Stop investing in a depleted site and mark it complete; use another boulder if you need more of that ore, or collect the stored output and return to crafting.
Sources & fact checks
What you can get here
Open a guide to find other locations and see what the item is used for.