This Hydroneer Crafting Guide will tell you how to smelt Ore, Craft items, and make a bunch of profit from all of the Metals and Gems you can dig out of the ground!
How to Smelt Ore and Make Bars in Hydroneer
Once you've dug some ore out of the ground, you're going to have to smelt it into bars before you can use it for crafting. That involves the Furance, the Crucible, and the Casting Mold.
How to Use the Furnace
The Furnace has to be placed on the ground (or on a building piece) in order for it to work. The fire will light automatically once placed and it can then be used to smelt Ore with the Crucible or to heat up Iron Bars and Gold Bars for Crafting with the Anvil.
Tip: Get Two Furnaces
The Furnace has two purposes: melting Ore and heating up Iron Bars and Gold Bars for Crafting. Furnaces are pretty cheap, so it may be a good idea to buy two of them and dedicate one for smelting and one for Crafting.
How to Use the Crucible
The Crucible is used to melt Ore in preparation for making Bars. Place the Crucible in the Furnace to heat it up. Then, drop in Iron Ore nuggets, Gold Ore nuggets, or Shards. They'll melt into a liquid; you can then use a Casting Mold to make Bars.
Do not attempt to mix multiple types of materials -- you'll lose anything that is not the same as the material you're melting. Melt one material at a time!
How to Make Metal Bars with the Casting Mold
The Casting Mold can be used to make Iron Bars, Gold Bars, or Shard Bars. Melt the required Ore or Crystal in a heated Crucible, then pour the Crucible into a Casting Mold and you'll have
How Much Ore is Needed to Make a Bar?
There is no notable minimum for making a Bar -- you can use one nugget of a material or you can use several. Nuggets aren't the same size, either -- one nugget of Iron might weigh 0.5 and another similar-looking nugget will weigh 0.95.
Using the Saw and Crucible to Change Bar Sizes
You can use the Saw and the Crucible to change the size of your Iron Bars, Gold Bars, and Shard Bars.
- The Crucible can melt down Bars back into liquid material -- you can then add in more Bars or ore of the same material and pour it into a Casting Mold to make a bigger Bar.
- The Saw will split a Bar exactly in half. You can use this to make smaller Bars as needed.
How to Polish Gems
The Grinding Wheel lets you make polished Gems as long as you have a rough Gem; here's how you do it:
- Purchase a Grinding Wheel and place it on the ground.
- Hold an unpolished Gem in your hand.
- Left-click on the Grinding Wheel.
Polished Gems are needed for Crafting Jewelry.
How to Craft Items in Hydroneer
Pretty much all of Hydroneer Crafting is done using the Anvil, Furnace, and Blacksmith's Hammer.
How to Use the Anvil and Blacksmith's Hammer
The Anvil is an important part of Hydroneer Crafting and the main way that you'll make items. Here's how to use it:
- Purchase an Anvil and place it on the ground.
- Left-click on the Anvil to select a recipe. The chalk marks will show you how many Bars and what other items, if any, you may need (such as polished Gems).
- Heat up any Bars in a Furnace (not a Crucible -- throw them directly into the Furnace fire) until they're red hot.
- Place the hot Bars and any other items on the Anvil.
- Hit the Anvil with the Blacksmith's Hammer to Craft the item.
- If the item is not crafted, either you have the wrong items on the Anvil or the Bars were not hot enough.
How to Make Jewelry
Jewelry is crafted at the Anvil like any other item. However, you'll need polished Gems to make most of the items.
Hydroneer Crafting Guide - Best Item to Craft
The best item to craft in Hydroneer depends on three factors:
- Which materials you're using
- How much material you're using
- Stock market prices
For example, an Iron Bar weighing 0.5 is worth 6 HC (Hydrocoins). Use that Iron Bar on the Anvil to make a Dagger and it's worth 7 HC. Two Iron Bars weighing 0.5 make an Axe worth 14 HC, and three Iron Bars making a Sword is worth 23 HC.
The price premium on crafted items increases substantially as the Weight of the material increases. Three Iron Bars weighing a total of 4.58 is worth 54 HC. Use that to make a Sword and the value jumps to 70 HC.
Materials matter, too. 1.06 Weight of Gold is worth 21 HC -- that's basically double the value of Iron. And, as with Iron, using Gold Bars to Craft items will get you a nice increase in price. Here's a little more real-world data:
- 1 Gold Bar (1.06 Weight, 21HC) + 1 Sapphire (0.3 Weight, 8 HC) = 1 Sapphire Ring (1.36 Weight, 32 HC)
How to Make Money With the Hydroneer Stock Market
So, we've learned that Gold is worth about twice as much as Iron and heavier items are worth more overall. Now we get to the last part: the Stock Market. Stock Markets are special shops that buy items with higher or lower prices than normal. If you stockpile a particular item (such as a Sword or a Gold Bar), you can sell a bunch of them to the Stock Market and make a higher-than-usual profit.
There are multiple Stock Market locations in the world, each of which purchases a single item. Selling an item or items at a Stock Market will lower demand, so it's probably best to sell as much as you can in one go rather than a little at a time. If the price is too low for your tastes and you need money right away, you can always sell to a Jeweler as usual.
That's it for our Hydroneer Crafting Guide -- make sure to check out our other guides below!