Mineral Harvester

The Mineral Harvester is the deployable resource-extraction structure that anchors SWG’s entire player resource economy. Crafted by the Architect profession (or, in the late-NGE consolidated taxonomy, by Trader Structures), it is the workhorse extractor every Surveyor plants on top of a mineral spawn to pull ore over time.

Acquisition

Crafted from the Mineral Harvester Schematic at a Structures Crafting Tool. The schematic is trained automatically through the Architect profession tree — the personal-grade Mineral Harvester is one of the first deployable structures a new Architect learns. Higher-grade versions (Medium, Heavy, Elite) follow deeper in the tree, with each tier increasing extraction rate, storage capacity, and maintenance cost. Architects typically pre-bench dozens of harvesters at a time, since Surveyors deploy them across multiple planets and replace them as resource spawns shift.

Role in the galaxy

Most player resource supply across SWG begins life inside one of these structures. A Surveyor scans a planet for a high-quality mineral concentration, claims a deed for the lot, plants a Mineral Harvester on top of the spawn, and the structure extracts ore on a timer until the spawn rotates out or the harvester runs out of maintenance credits. The output feeds every downstream crafter — Weaponsmiths need steel for chassis, Armorsmiths need it for plating, Droid Engineers need copper for wiring harnesses. Without the harvester economy, none of the crafting professions can scale.