Vigor
30 Achievements
1,000
150-200h
Materialist
Amassed 1 000 000 materials in stash
50
0.35%
How to unlock the Materialist achievement in Vigor - Definitive Guide
Passive earning: While leveling up your shelter you will notice that the Wood Log and Box of Herbs will earn you materials per hour. These improvements should always be upgraded if you have the resources as it will help speed up the process. I had Wood Log at level 7 and all Box of Herbs at level 10 by the time I unlocked this achievement. This would earn me ~9.5K just for logging in and doing my daily challenges. You should also get the Chemical Distillation improvement up to level 4-6 to increase your gain from deconstruction. Anything past level 6 will start to have negative returns as it costs more than would be gained.
Crates: You can earn crates through daily challenges or by getting the airdrop at the end of each match. Make sure you either complete your daily challenges or abandon them before they reset because if you don't you won't get a new challenge for that slot. These rewards can really make a big dent in the overall total depending on the rarity. The crates can vary in value but will usually in the ballpark of 1-30K worth of materials after deconstruction. If you want to read more on what I have to say about crates check this guide. Solution for Gun Freak In Vigor
EDIT: You can now earn crates through the season pass just by playing regularly. Also you can earn crates by donating food at you shelter every 28 days.
Deconstruction: I will go into some detail about each section and have sorted them by most to least valuable.
Resources- This is where the majority of your materials will come from. As i mentioned before you should probably upgrade each improvement once but beyond that I would avoid upgrading anything that requires purple materials and be conservative with your Chemicals. Electronics and Fuel are worth 200 a piece and Chemicals are worth 50 a piece so these are the real important ones. Just to make a point, upgrading the Electric Generator from level 1 to level 2 will waste about 170K worth of materials.
Weapons- I recommend finding a few guns that you are comfortable with and sticking with them. I personally rotated between using the Thompson, Grease Gun or the Soumi KP/-31 exclusively. Remember its up you which guns you use but using more expensive guns will make the process take longer. Also melee weapons, pistols and shotguns just aren't good enough to deal with long range encounters or multiple enemies so I avoided them. I sold all of my guns that weren't the three I used to knock out around 300K materials.
Weapon Parts- You can either turn these into the guns for a free magazine of ammo or just deconstruct them in bulk. If a weapon takes 4 parts to craft then the part will be worth exactly 25% of the gun.
Ammo- Ammo costs the exact same amount to craft as you get in return for deconstructing them, so don't stress about anything here. Just deconstruct everything as you are nearing the 1 million milestone and you can buy it right back.
Consumables- Depending on whether you use these on your load out or not will determine how many you have on hand. However, there typically won't be a large amount to gain here anyway.
Consumable Parts- Not currently in the game and even if added they wouldn't be worth much assuming they work like weapon parts.
Finally here are a few looting tips:
Because of the potential rewards, be prepared to go after any crate that is blue or higher.
Always make room for purple and blue resources.
If you have the chance, take whatever gun is most valuable. Don't take someones shotgun over a high quality alternative. Always take machine pistols over regular pistols and knives.
Destroy or avoid picking up handgun and knife weapon parts. These are worth next to nothing and take up precious backpack space.
Ammo can also be destroyed if you need extra room as they aren't worth much.
-always choose m1911 over Lugers or PMs.
-always choose izh 43s over silver pigeons
- prioritization of common primaries.
The semi auto rifles like the SKS, Mosin, or M2 are worth more than the automatics.
-Rarity is generally the rule except in cases like the ADR compared to a high value military grade weapon like the HBAR (4K for a special issue vs 6k for a military issue.).
-Since material acquisition is the main goal, it’s worth knowing/rushing the high value houses that have the double rooms with cabinets full of electronics (you know the ones) or guaranteed fuel can spawns that are around depots and various vehicles on the road.
-safes aren’t worth it in non boosted lobbies. Most of the time guns don’t even show up and the purples are nothing you couldn’t get by looting in the same time frame. If there was a big fight though it’s worth checking out all the bodies, as even a team can only take as many as 2 guns.
-also, if it is a crate/loot boosted lobby, I would say go for a stacked inventory full of loot over the crates. They are often camped and it is very easy to get encumbered before you can grab them. If you have stacks of purple resources, you are risking thousands of resources for a crate drop that could be a fraction of your looting.
-lastly, save your chemicals and fertilizer. It’s way more worth it to upgrade your resource nodes and workbench over an instant resource
bump.
This achievement is NOT an overall cumulative count of your career total. You MUST have at least 1 million materials in your stash at one time. This means that using materials for Shelter improvements or to craft items/weapons will negatively affect your progress. With that said, if you play the game for long enough you will eventually reach 1 million materials through a very long grind. You can see your materials in the top right corner with your food and crowns when in the menus at your Shelter. The following is a list of ways to gain materials in the game.
Passive Earning: Certain Shelter improvements will generate materials (i.e. Wood Log, Box of Herbs) over time. Upgrading these improvements will increase the amount of materials generated per hour. Focus on upgrading material generating improvements to around level 6, anything higher and the cost and time for improvements is not worth the materials gained. Eventually, you should start to gain close to 10k materials for logging in daily and collecting the materials from your various improvements by approaching them and holding
Crates: Crates are earned through daily challenges and supply drops in encounters. Make sure to complete your daily challenges or recycle them before the 24-hour reset or you will not get new challenges for that 24-hour cycle. The crates will vary in value, depending on their rarity level, but you will have the potential to gain up to 30k in materials from deconstructing everything from the crate.
Deconstruction: This is where the bulk of your materials will be gained. It is recommended that you focus on fully upgrading your Shelter before using this deconstruct tactic. If your Shelter is fully upgraded, you no longer need the resources you would use to upgrade it, so you can deconstruct everything you gain from looting in encounters, gain from opening crates, and gain from passive earning off of improvements.
It is recommended that you get use to using a couple of guns and stick with them. This will allow you to deconstruct every other gun you get from looting, crates, killing other outlanders, and so on. Deconstructing guns goes hand and hand with ammo. Since you are only using a couple guns, you can deconstruct any ammo you get for the guns you aren’t using. You can choose to use whatever guns you feel comfortable with, but remember that a higher rarity weapon will be worth more materials to deconstruct, along with its ammo.
Weapon Parts aren’t super valuable. You can use them to craft a gun immediately with a bit of ammo and just deconstruct those; however, if it takes 4 weapon parts to craft a gun each part will be worth 25% of the gun anyway.
Consumables vary in value, but you generally won’t have many of them in your stash at a time. If you use consumables regularly in encounters then don’t bother deconstructing them. Either way, they won’t affect your bottom line much.
As of writing this guide, consumable parts do not exist in the game despite there being a category for them in the deconstruct menu. We can assume that they will work similarly to weapon parts though and thus hold similar value.