What does the merchant landing do in Lightyear Frontier? The merchant landing is one of the most important structures in the game. With it, a small ship housing a woman named Lola will begin visiting your little homestead, bringing with her plenty of customization options for your mech and resources to purchase if you’d rather not scour the gorgeous alien world for them. However, it also requires a few steps to build which you’ll have to figure out for yourself – or read our guide.
Did Lightyear Frontier grab your interest because of its farming and life sim roots? You should definitely read our guide for the best games like Stardew Valley if you want to experience similar titles. Otherwise, forge onward to read all about how to make yourself your very own merchant landing pad.
How to build Lightyear Frontier merchant landing
The merchant landing will unlock fairly early on in the game after restoring Pine Heights to pristine condition. A woman named Lola will contact you and ask you to construct the merchant landing in order to receive her and her goods. However, building a landing requires three resources, two of which you likely haven’t found yet:
- 10 aluminum rods
- 8 red crystals
- 10 stone
While stone is easy to obtain, the other two take some work to uncover. Here’s how:
Where to find Lightyear Frontier aluminum rods
Aluminum rods spawn from ore deposits, which are giant holes spread throughout rocky terrain. After resting for the day, there’s a chance that the silver-colored rods will spawn out of one of these holes. The newly liberated Pine Heights has plenty of ore deposits for you to check, and using the Spike Saw you can quickly break the silver rods and collect them.
Where to find Lightyear Frontier red crystals
Red crystals are found pretty much the same way as aluminum rods. They spawn from similar ore deposits and you can see them from a distance at night as they give off an eye-catching red glow. The upper reaches of Pine Heights has some that spawn after the area is restored.
However, red crystals require a Spike Saw upgrade in order to mine, which requires an Upgrade Depo.
How to upgrade Lightyear Frontier Spike Saw
You’ll need to first make an Upgrade Depo to upgrade your Spike Saw before you can collect red crystals. And before you make an Upgrade Depo, you have to build an Assembler.
An Assembler requires the following:
- 10 aluminum rods
- 10 stone
- 10 plant oil (obtained from placing plant fiber in an oil presser)
Once completed, place 8 aluminum rods in it to make 4 aluminum frames for the Upgrade Depo, which needs the following materials to build:
- 24 stone
- 4 aluminum rods
- 4 aluminum frames
Once built, hop out of your mech near the crane on the Upgrade Depo and head on over to the control panel to reveal a skill tree-like menu where you can upgrade your mech. Spike Saw Power I is what you’re looking for, and as you can see, it requires aluminum parts to upgrade. Suck up nearby blue polyberries with the Vacuum Harvester to collect their seeds, plant them in a small plot with the Seed Shooter, and don’t forget to water them. After two days, you can collect the polyberries with the Vacuum Harvester and place them in the Oil Presser to make polyberry oil. Combine polyberry oil and aluminum rods in the Assembler to create aluminum parts.
With enough aluminum parts collected, upgrade your Spike Saw and head over to Pine Heights to find red crystals. You can now build a Merchant Landing. Lola will arrive shortly after completion with a wealth of stock for you to pursue; consider selling any unwanted materials to her in order to save up for some new mech parts.
When you finish carving out a nice little home for yourself in Lightyear Frontier, consider checking out the best farming games on PC you can play next. There’s a lot of great titles there, and given how relaxing Lightyear Frontier is to play, it might threaten to kick one of those other great games off before long.