8 Best Upgrades To Get First In Lightyear Frontier

Establishing a cozy homestead in the untamed wilderness of outer space is the main goal of Lightyear Frontier, and mech upgrades are the key to success. This peaceful open-world farming sim has players jumping into the pilot’s seat of a rickety old mech, using its tools to tame a previously unexplored planet. However, building your dream settlement requires special resources that only an upgraded mech can harvest.

Lightyear Frontier’s mechs add a cool twist to the idea of frontier farming, and you’ll be depending on your mech’s various tools a lot. This includes the Spike Saw for chopping trees and breaking rocks, the Irrigation Hose for watering crops and cleaning your local environment, the Vacuum Harvester for sucking up resources, and the Seed Shooter for planting crops. It’s highly recommended that you upgrade these tools first.

8 Inventory Capacity I

Avoid Weighing Your Mech Down

Resources Needed 2 Aluminium Frame

18 Plant Oil

Inventory capacity upgrades are essential in most farm sim games, including Lightyear Frontier. Your mech puts several useful tools at your disposal, but you still need to travel away from your home base to collect all of the resources you need. Inventory Capacity I is a simple upgrade that increases the carrying capacity of your mech so you can carry more before becoming over-encumbered. This increases your overall efficiency, allowing you to collect more resources while making fewer expeditions out into the wilderness.

To upgrade your mech, you need to construct an Upgrade Depot. This allows you to exit the cockpit to customize and upgrade your mech.

An over-encumbered mech suffers from various issues. Going over the inventory capacity shuts down your mech’s sprint ability, limiting you to a slow walk. While you can still move about, the relative lack of mobility makes a long journey back to your home base much more arduous. Unlock Inventory Capacity I as early as possible and prioritize subsequent Inventory Capacity upgrades.

7 Spike Saw Power I

Break The Toughest Materials On The Frontier

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Resources Needed 5 Aluminium Parts

Similar to Stardew Valley, certain resources in Lightyear Frontier can only be harvested with upgraded tools. Your mech’s Spike Saw is a multi-purpose tool designed to chop down trees for wood and also to mine stone, aluminum, copper, and Red Crystals. However, the starting version of the Spike Saw isn’t enough to crack some materials, so the Spike Saw Power I upgrade becomes essential if you’re hoping to progress beyond living in a small tent.

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Even some resources found in early-game areas such as Red Crystals require Spike Saw Power I, so this is one of the first upgrades you should get. The Spike Saw is also one of the best tools to upgrade early, as it’s your main harvesting tool and can be used to interact with the environment.

For example, boulders can be found blocking waterspouts across the open world. Breaking them with the upgraded Spike Saw can flood the nearby area, creating a new pond that serves as an easily accessible water source.

6 Thruster Booster I

Jump Higher & Stay In The Air Longer

Resources Needed 50 Rabbage Oil

1 Power Core

Anyone used to the highly advanced mechs of games like Armored Core VI will likely find Lightyear Frontier’s rickety farming mech to be extremely low-tech. The mech comes pre-equipped with a thruster booster that lets you jump and stay in the air for a limited period of time. However, it’s surprisingly weak; without upgrades, the mech is barely able to jump over ridges half its height.

To craft a Power Core, you need Noxious Spores. Noxious Spores can be made by processing Noxious Pods in the Grinder building.

Attempting to clear major obstacles with the starter thruster will probably lead to you flipping your mech over and creating an embarrassing spectacle, especially if you’re playing online co-op with friends. The Thruster Booster I upgrade goes a long way towards giving your mech some additional mobility. It’s also more than a simple convenience upgrade. Lightyear Frontier’s world has several different biomes to explore, many of which have terrain that’s hard to navigate without jumping.

5 Sprint Speed I

Cover More Ground In Less Time

Resources Needed 36 Caroot Oil

5 Copper Wire

To collect resources for other upgrades, farming equipment, and buildings, you will need to explore a few different biomes. The Sprint Speed I upgrade is a basic increase to movement speed that applies as long as your mech isn’t over-encumbered. This is an essential early-game upgrade, and one that’s almost always useful whenever you’re traveling away from your home base to explore, collect resources, or restore planetary biomes.

A lot of the grind comes from journeying out into the open world to harvest resources, returning to your home base to process them, and then repeating the process over and over again. However, Lightyear Frontier offers creative grind reduction mechanics, allowing you to significantly increase your mech’s efficiency. Upgrading Sprint Speed means you ultimately spend less time away from home, and more time building up your dream homestead.

4 Water Tank Capacity I

Store More Water For Crops And Slime

Resources Needed 18 Polyberry Oil

A big part of the Lightyear Frontier experience is farming alien crops, which can then be processed into other resources. For example, some of the upgrades on this list actually require different types of oil, all obtained by pressing crops through the Oil Presser machine. Just like in other farming sims, you will need to collect, plant, and water seeds daily to grow crops.

As such, collecting and storing water is something that you need to do frequently. The Water Tank Capacity I upgrade allows your mech to store more water, reducing the number of trips you need to take to refill your tank. Setting up your homestead and crop fields near a water source is highly recommended. However, you’ll also need water to clean Slime when restoring degraded biomes. Having a bigger tank means more efficient cleaning, making the process of restoring your local environment much easier.

3 Irrigation Hose Power I

Wash Away More Slime

Resources Needed 10 Red Crystal Dust

9 Rabbage Oil

Although the starting biomes have lots of resources you need, you’ll eventually have to explore other biomes. Even early-game resources such as Caroots can only be found in other biomes. However, it’s important to note that most of the other biomes you come across need to be cleaned and ecologically restored before you can collect resources from them. This process involves sucking up Noxious Weeds and using your Irrigation Hose to wash away patches of slime.

The mech’s Irrigation Hose can also be improved with range upgrades, allowing it to spray water at much greater distances. However, although these are useful, it’s recommended that players get other early upgrades first.

Some degraded biomes have patches of Slime that can’t be washed away with the starter Irrigation Hose. The Irrigation Hose Power I upgrade increases the strength of the water jet, allowing the mech to wash these tougher slime patches away.

2 Seed Shooter Lock-On

A High-Tech Approach To Planting Seeds

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Resources Needed 5 Aluminium Rods

5 Plant Oil

The Seed Shooter Lock-On gives the mech’s Seed Shooter tool an automatic firing mode, allowing it to lock on to several locations. It then fires a spray of seeds, planting them in the soil. Although it’s not the same as automating a Palworld farm to run without any player input, it’s a fun and quick way to replant your crop fields without having to plant individual seeds one by one.

Other farming sims such as Stardew Valley require players to plant each and every seed by hand. The Seed Shooter Lock-On makes the process far less time intensive.

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It’s also worth noting that the resources needed for this upgrade are surprisingly easy to obtain. Aluminium Rods can be found near the starting Meadows biome, and Plant Oil is easily obtained by processing Plant Fiber through the Oil Presser: one of the first machines the game asks you to build.

1 Irrigation Hose Hydro Splash

Water Large Areas With A Bubble Of Water

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Resources Needed 5 Aluminium Parts

The Hydro Splash gives the mech’s Irrigation Hose an alternate firing mode that shoots large spheres of water. These have a large area of impact, allowing you to water multiple crops with a single splash. As such, it greatly simplifies the process of watering your crop fields, and you can complete your daily crop watering much more quickly. It’s a great example of the potential of farming with mechs rather than by hand.

The initial Hydro Splash upgrade is also cheap, costing only 5 Aluminium Parts, which can be crafted in the Assembler with Aluminium Rods and Polyberry Oil. As you progress through the game, you can also upgrade the Hydro Splash even further to increase its splash radius. As a nice bonus, the Hydro Splash is also more efficient than the standard hose, making it a great tool for blasting away Slime in degraded biomes.

Overall, many of the best early upgrades in Lightyear Frontier are designed to improve the overall efficiency of your mech, whether it’s inventory and water storage or resource harvesting. However, although they’re relatively simple on the surface, they can have a transformative effect when installed together on your mech. On top of that, fun upgrades such as the Seed Shooter and Hydro Splash proves that mechs and farming sims are a perfect match.