The world of Starfield is filled with different resources that you'll need for outpost building, researching, or upgrading your gear. You can ignore these mechanics if you're playing on easy difficulty, but they become essential on harder difficulties since the enemies become quite tough to beat during the late game.
Tungsten is one of the resources that you'll commonly need for performing various tasks, but it's also quite a rare one to find. Thankfully, there are a few places you can visit to hoard this resource without having to spend hours looking for it every time you need it.
Explore Certain Planets
One of the best ways to find almost any resource in Starfield is open-world exploration. The game has over 1,000 planets and most of them contain a few resources that you can farm using your Cutter. To find Tungsten, you have to look for the W icon on these planets since that's what resembles the element.
You might not be able to see the resources on a certain planet until you enter its Star System, and sometimes you even have to set course to the planet directly. Here are a few Star Systems where you can easily find Tungsten during the early game:
- Alpha Centauri
- Sol
- Heisenberg
- Alpha Ternion
The problem with Tungsten is that you won't find any concentrated areas for this element when you scan a planet, unlike Copper or Lead. Your only choice is to land on the planet and look at every single ore using your Scanner to identify the correct resource.
Spend Some Cash
Emptying your pockets a little is the easiest way to get almost every resource in the game. Starfield contains a bunch of major cities where you can find vendors selling resources in almost every shop. While going through their inventories, you'll commonly find about 15 to 20 Tungsten that you can buy.
Of course, this method can't be used during the early game and you have better ways to get the resource during the endgame. The only time you'd want to use this method is when you're in dire need of the resource and you haven't set up an outpost yet. You can easily find Tungsten at the following NPCs:
- Jemison Mercantile in New Atlantis
- Mining League in Neon
- Trade Authority Vendors
Keep in mind that Vendor Inventories are usually different for every player, so you might not find the resource on some of these vendors.
Set Up A Tungsten Extractor
Once you get to the late game and start racking up on various resources, setting up a Tungsten Extractor will be your fastest way to farm this resource. To set one up, you'll first have to find a planet with Tungsten on it and then look for a vein of the resource. These veins differ from random ores found on the surface.
The veins are underground and you won't be able to use your Cutter on them. Set up an outpost near one of these veins followed by the Tungsten Extractor to start getting the resource. You'll also have to set up a power source and some storage so that the resource gets filled up even when you're not at the outpost.
One problem that you'll face while trying to create a Tungsten Extractor is that most planets with these resources have extreme conditions, making it impossible to make an outpost. There are a couple of ways to get past this:
- Upgrade the Skill called Planetary Habitation, which allows you to make outposts even on extreme planets at any point.
- You can also head over to the Voss moon in the Alpha Centauri system. This is one of the few places where you can create a Tungsten Extractor even without the Skill mentioned above.