Factorio Forums

I searched, but somehow didn't come up with anything, which kinda makes me feel like this should be more obvious. but...

What's the best way to get legendary mech armor?
Most items you can craft by making or upcycling their basic ingredients to legendary first. But, mech armor itself and 3/5 of its ingredients require/is holium plates, which can't be crafted at quality. Which then leads you to being stuck just making the armor and upcycling it over and over and over. Which also means making all the ingredients for it over and over and over (like power armor mk2), which is so inefficient.

What am I missing?

There isn't a best way, it is too simplistic of a definition because there are may ways to consider what is more valuable, some players will consider the best is the fastest, others the way that uses the least amount of ressources , other will consider the best the way that doesn't require extra infrastructure dedicated to obtain it and so on.

I'm thinking fastest at this point. I'm at late game, trying to get the achievement (using rare mech armor worked just fine). So, resource use is of minimal concern. I'm just sick of sitting here watching my recyclers churn lol

The fastest way i think would be to use legendary material and craft 1 armor if you have the legendary materials, if not try to craft rare or epic armor receipe from rare or epic material, using quality module, and recycle the armor when it's not legendary.

mmmPI wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 1:34 amuse legendary material and craft 1 armor if you have the legendary materials

normally I would but

quigonquinn0 wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 12:11 ammech armor itself and 3/5 of its ingredients require/is holium plates, which can't be crafted at quality.

unless I'm missing something?

quigonquinn0 wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 3:03 am

quigonquinn0 wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 12:11 ammech armor itself and 3/5 of its ingredients require/is holium plates, which can't be crafted at quality.

unless I'm missing something?

You can put quality module in the plant that makes the holmium plate ?

You can recycle holmium plates in to homlium plates. So slap quality modules in the recycler and feed it holmium plates.

SirSmuggler wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 7:58 am You can recycle holmium plates in to homlium plates. So slap quality modules in the recycler and feed it holmium plates.

This.

oh boy jolly do I feel dumb

thanks!!

You can also just make regular mech armors, recycle them and re-assemble until you get Legendary. That's how I do it. I think it's a heck of a lot easier than having to deal with making all of the quality individual parts.

NineNine wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 5:00 pm You can also just make regular mech armors, recycle them and re-assemble until you get Legendary. That's how I do it. I think it's a heck of a lot easier than having to deal with making all of the quality individual parts.

yea, I've been doing that, but it takes forever. Especially having to craft hundreds and hundreds of power armor mk2.

quigonquinn0 wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 8:39 pm

NineNine wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 5:00 pm You can also just make regular mech armors, recycle them and re-assemble until you get Legendary. That's how I do it. I think it's a heck of a lot easier than having to deal with making all of the quality individual parts.

yea, I've been doing that, but it takes forever. Especially having to craft hundreds and hundreds of power armor mk2.

That's the whole point! That's the game! Scale up your factory so it doesn't take forever!

true, true. I'm just far end-game and just going for achievements before I start a new save. So I don't wanna wait around forever. In hindsight, I should've been working towards legendary mech armor for a long time, but I was just content with rare lol

If you have access to rare material already it's probably easier and faster to just try and craft the legendary armor from rare material and recycle the armor when it's not. This allow a single recycler to work on much more holmium plate than if you try to upcycle plate individually.

Another "better" way than trying to upscale the plate directly would be to try and craft electromagnetic plant, and recycle them, because you have a productvity bonus when making them, and still allow a single recycler to work on more holmium plate.

quigonquinn0 wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 12:11 am I searched, but somehow didn't come up with anything, which kinda makes me feel like this should be more obvious. but...

What's the best way to get legendary mech armor?
Most items you can craft by making or upcycling their basic ingredients to legendary first. But, mech armor itself and 3/5 of its ingredients require/is holium plates, which can't be crafted at quality. Which then leads you to being stuck just making the armor and upcycling it over and over and over. Which also means making all the ingredients for it over and over and over (like power armor mk2), which is so inefficient.

What am I missing?

The best way (by far) is to make an upcycling of electromagnetic labs. You'll need a ton of them anyway and if you recycle them (and refined concrete) you'll get all the materials you need for quality mech armor. I combined the upcycling of electromagnetic labs, bateries and procesors, which is almost perfectly balanced using whole scrap production.

mrkev wrote: Thu May 15, 2025 2:23 pm The best way (by far) is to make an upcycling of electromagnetic labs.

This was mentionned already, but imo it's too simplistic to call it "the best way" because it is not the most efficient in ressource consumption. If you have a limited scrap throughput, and you don't want to connect additionnal island, this method will "destroy" some holmium when trying to increase the quality.

If you are doing science and already using holmium you would make more out of the same quantity of scrap/holmium if not using recycler loop.

mmmPI wrote: Thu May 15, 2025 2:37 pm

mrkev wrote: Thu May 15, 2025 2:23 pm The best way (by far) is to make an upcycling of electromagnetic labs.

This was mentionned already, but imo it's too simplistic to call it "the best way" because it is not the most efficient in ressource consumption. If you have a limited scrap throughput, and you don't want to connect additionnal island, this method will "destroy" some holmium when trying to increase the quality.

If you are doing science and already using holmium you would make more out of the same quantity of scrap/holmium if not using recycler loop.

It is the best way. Because the electromagnetic lab is one of the most important production buildings in the game and also the best upcycling item for quality holmium plates. You also wanna make it completely separated from the science production and everything else, because it will use most of the scap product anyway (with a small excess of procesors and bateries as the LDS can be turned into more processors).

mrkev wrote: Thu May 15, 2025 2:48 pm

mmmPI wrote: Thu May 15, 2025 2:37 pm This was mentionned already, but imo it's too simplistic to call it "the best way" because it is not the most efficient in ressource consumption. If you have a limited scrap throughput, and you don't want to connect additionnal island, this method will "destroy" some holmium when trying to increase the quality.

If you are doing science and already using holmium you would make more out of the same quantity of scrap/holmium if not using recycler loop.

It is the best way. Because the electromagnetic lab is one of the most important production buildings in the game and also the best upcycling item for quality holmium plates. You also wanna make it completely separated from the science production and everything else, because it will use most of the scap product anyway (with a small excess of procesors and bateries as the LDS can be turned into more processors).

No , you are repeating the same thing but it doesn't make it less simplistic.

There exist fast methods and efficient methods, there isn't 1 best method, it depend if you want to go fast or be efficient.

mmmPI wrote: Thu May 15, 2025 5:09 pm

What do you even mean by "less simplistic"? And fast vs efficient? There literally isn't any faster and more efficient method.
Mech armor needs around 300 holmium plates to be produced, it's extremely expensive (especially since one of the ingredients is the power armor MK2), it's made out of stuff you won't typically have on Fulgora (electric motor, modules), can be made only in a simple assembly machine and it takes almost 6 times longer to recycle.

On the other hand, electromagnetic plant is made out of 4 common fulgora items, you can get 3 of them directly from scrap and 1 with a little bit of production, it can be made in electromagnetic plant (which has 50% productivity bonus and 5 slots, so >30% higher chance of getting a better quality item), it takes only 0.62s to recycle and it's one of three items (excluding belts, inserters, distribution and chests) you need the most in the whole game.

Also, there aren't any other options. Holmium plates are used in superconductors, fusion power cells and lithium (none of those be recycled to components), supercapacitors and tesla guns (recycling those will waste all the electrolyte). Electromagnetic plant or mech armor are the only options.

mrkev wrote: Thu May 15, 2025 6:05 pm What do you even mean by "less simplistic"? And fast vs efficient? There literally isn't any faster and more efficient method.

I explained it in my first post, but i can do it again :

Your reasonning is simplistic because it represent thing on a single scale where there is "good/best" in one side, and the rest on the other. But it's not like that, you have different scale, where you have "fast" and "slow" for the player to build, "fast" and "slow" for the factory to finish the products , and "efficient" and "inefficient" in energy, or ressources, and "easy" and "hard", and "require lots of UPS" - "doesn't require lots of UPS".

Imagine a player that doesn't want to use quality except for the armor and the achievement things, and another player that wants full legendary factory. They will not follow the same strategy. There is no such thing as "the best way" there. It's situationnal. That's the most important, recognizing when to use a method and when not, rather than trying to find "the best method". Because it's not the same depending on your situation.

mrkev wrote: Thu May 15, 2025 6:05 pm Also, there aren't any other options.

There are ^^ they were even mentionned on this thread, if you have already rare material and you're not interested into full legendary thing, you can just try to make a legendary armor from rare or epic material and recycle the armor when it's not legendary. 1 production area => 1 recycling area.

It's easier than setting up production for EM plant and the armor, and recycling the EM plant because that's 2 production area and 1 recycling.