For major projects in Death Stranding, you’ll need to farm Chiral Crystals. Particularly when building the highway roads, you’ll be spending thousands of Chiral Crystals at a time. Unfortunately, the only source of them is the little hand-shaped deposits you find on the ground.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to generate a vast, farmable source of Chiral Crystals in Death Stranding, but there’s some risk involved. However, if you prepare yourself beforehand, you can rake in crystals by the thousands without any of the frustration of roaming around and collecting them one deposit at a time.
Preparing to farm Chiral Crystals in Death Stranding
Before you start farming crystals, you’ll want to have reached a certain point in Death Stranding. I recommend you wait until you’ve connected the Junk Dealer and the Weather Station to the Chiral Network first. Once you’ve done this, you’ll have two things that will help you greatly in the process.
First, you’re going to need to seek out areas with Timefall. Having the Weather Station on the network will help you see which areas are currently being affected by Timefall, which will make locating areas with BTs easier. Since farming involves BTs, it’s incredibly helpful to know where to find them at all times.
Bringing the Junk Dealer onto the network gives you a helpful blueprint (in a roundabout way) that isn’t necessary for farming Chiral Crystals but will allow you to pack more weapons. When you bring him on the network, you’ll get access to a delivery that has you delivering prototype pouches to the nearby distribution center. Once you make it there, turning in the delivery gives you the design for the grenade pouch, which lets you bring in a ton of Hematic Grenades without worrying about having to carry them on your back. You can craft the pouch by going to any private room and examining your backpack. I recommend crafting as many as you possibly can.
Once you’ve taken care of the above, you’re ready to go. Pack light. You only really need weapons, Blood Bags, and the skeleton of your choice. Anything else is extra.
How to farm Chiral Crystals in Death Stranding
Once you’re ready, bring up your map and look at the Timefall forecast. You’re probably already familiar with several areas that BTs spawn, but the forecast will let you know whether they’re currently there or not. In some locations, Timefall is relatively constant (the Middle Knot City crater north of the Craftsman, for example), and in others, it’s sporadic, so consulting the forecast will keep you from wasting time.
Once you’ve targeted a location that you believe is infested with BTs, proceed there and get ready to fight. You want to get caught by a BT and pulled into the other world. This will pit you against one or more large BTs. More than likely, if you’re in Episode 3 – Fragile, this will be either a smaller squid-type or a lion-type BT.
You can check our guide to fighting BTs for a more in-depth strategy, but it’s pretty simple. Since you’ve loaded down with Hematic Grenades and Blood Bags, you won’t have to search around for weaponry or health. That means you just need to find some stable ground and make sure the BT doesn’t get too close.
If you’re good, you can pretty much stunlock a BT by pelting it with a grenade anytime it looks like it’s going to attack. Then, wait for it to sink into the ground and reappear and repeat the process. It won’t take long to take down one BT by itself. If you’re facing more, it can get a bit trickier, but especially early on, these guys aren’t too hard.
Once you kill a large BT, the tar-like substance and broken buildings will recede, and the monster will crumble into a large smattering of Chiral Crystal Deposits. There’s usually at least 20 or so of them left behind, and each gives you from around 40-120 cg of crystal. You can easily mop up 500-800 cg just by taking down one large BT.
How to speed up farming Chiral Crystals in Death Stranding
There are a few methods you can use to speed up farming crystals in Death Stranding:
Build Safe Houses near dependable sources of BTs
You can build a Safe House to get a fast travel point added to the map. If you create several by areas where Timefall is almost always around, you can bounce from one to the next, taking out BTs and gathering crystals. Since Chiral Crystals are the one resource that travels with you, you don’t have to worry about having to store them before jumping with Fragile.
Collect Chiral Crystals from network connections
Each time you make a delivery, and over time, each connection in the network will generate Chiral Crystals. You can pick these up by selecting “Claim Materials” in the menu. These are pretty much free crystals, and you don’t have to worry about not having enough to craft with as the game will just draw out of your personal stash if a particular connection is tapped out.
Up your weaponry
It’s a no brainer that the better your weapons are, the faster you can take down BTs. As the game goes on, you’ll get access to quite the arsenal, and when you hit mid-late game, Hematic Grenades won’t be your first choice to combat BTs. Explosives are still going to be your best friend, even after you get the Anti-BT Handgun and other weapons. However, remember to keep in mind that traveling light is still essential to farming. You don’t want to be sluggish or have to worry about spilling a bunch of cargo everywhere during a fight.
