Breathedge 2 Aluminum: Where to Find the Drill-Only Metal

Aluminum is the material that stops most Breathedge 2 runs in the station area, and it stops them for a dumb reason: it is the only confirmed material you cannot get by looting. Every other bottleneck has an object in a room. Aluminum is out on the asteroids, and it only gives itself up to a drill.

This page covers where it spawns, what the mining loop looks like, and how to clear the 10+ unit Chapter 1 wall without three round trips.

Where do you find aluminum in Breathedge 2?

Drillable ore nodes on asteroids. That is the whole answer, confirmed by a full Chapter 1 playthrough cross-checked against player reports. Aluminum sits on the confirmed material list of the Early Access build alongside Metal, Refined Metal, Plastic, Rubber, Titanium, Ice, Wires and Electronics — but where those hang off machines, pipes and crates, aluminum is mined.

What that means in practice:

• Look for ore, not debris. The asteroid field around the station carries mineable nodes. Space junk and floating wreckage are a different loot table — that is where Metal and Titanium come from.
• Do not expect it inside structures. No appliance, container, panel or box has been reported as an aluminum source. Rummaging through the Outskirts for aluminum is wasted oxygen.
• The wrong tool yields nothing. Aluminum ore does not respond to Break, Cut, Unscrew or Pull. The scavenging layer runs on five explicit verbs and this ore belongs to Drill.

Routes and rough directions sit in the map and all locations index; this page stays on the material itself.

How do you mine aluminum?

Equip the drill, then use the Drill interaction on the node. There is no shortcut and no alternative verb: the loop is mining, not looting, which is why the carry-capacity problem below matters more than finding a node in the first place.

Durability note: the developers state that base tools stay intact and eternal, while the DIY modules installed in them wear out, with part of their raw materials recoverable. Mining a lot of aluminum will not eat your drill — it may eat the module on it, which is a materials problem, not a tool problem. See the crafting recipe list.

Why does Chapter 1 need 10+ aluminum?

Because of the toilet — the Chapter 1 repair chore that wants 10 or more aluminum in one go, reported by players as the single biggest early material sink. Arriving from other survival games, players assume a spread of small 1-2 unit crafts and end up with four aluminum, a full inventory, and a quest marker that will not budge.

Treat that number as the real early-game budget. Anything aluminum-costing after that chore is bonus, so the efficient order is:

What is aluminum used for?

Confirmed: the Chapter 1 toilet repair chore, in quantities of 10+. Everything else is fuzzy — no published aluminum recipe table exists for the launch build, so if another site lists exact aluminum costs for armor or tools, ask which build they measured.

What we can say structurally: aluminum sits in the same base-metal tier as Metal and Refined Metal, and the confirmed conversion in that family runs the other way — 4 Metal crafts into 1 Refined Metal, with Refined Metal also appearing in deeper industrial equipment and containers. Aluminum is its own mined resource rather than a step in that chain, which is why you cannot substitute your way out of the requirement. For the verified recipes — Purified Oxygen at 2 Oxyworm + 1 Metal + 1 Ice, the Public Oxygen Station kit — see all confirmed Breathedge 2 recipes.

One practical upside: aluminum is not alone on the asteroids. Titanium and the base metal tier are listed as drilled asteroid ore in the same reports, with Titanium additionally available as loose prised chunks. So plan one trip as a mixed haul — aluminum to the quest number, Titanium into the remaining carry, Metal last.

Should you farm aluminum before the quest asks?

Yes, within reason, and the reason is oxygen rather than luck. Mining trips take you away from the train and your refill point in a suit whose early oxygen capacity is measured at 600. The community rule of thumb: when you are out with a drill, mine until your carry is full, not until your quest counter is full.

Three things separate an annoying chore from a dead run:

• Refill before you fly. The Public Oxygen Station in the Outskirts is a repairable external refill point — 3 Metal, 2 Electronics, 1 Wire, 3 Electrical Tape. Wires are the part most people are missing, and the fix is not obvious.
• Keep raw Ice on hand. Ice feeds both drinking water and the oxygen terminals; players who process all of it into water strand themselves at the nodes.
• Watch the cold. Entering a cold zone is not the same as working in it — the cold protection guide covers the 100 threshold met at the train wardrobe.

If you would rather follow quest order than optimise materials, the beginner guide and the Chapter 1 walkthrough put this wall back into the sequence where it actually hits.

Last verified 2026-09-01 against the Early Access build released 2026-08-31. Ore behaviour, the drill recipe and all quantities are community measurements from very early play, not official values, and may change with patches. This page is reviewed as updates land — it is not auto-updated.