Catalysts

Catalysts push your ship beyond its blueprint specs. They are modules that slot into your crafted gear and grant bonuses, ranging from raw combat stats to quality of life perks across the galaxy.

Installing one, step by step

Catalysts go into crafted items only. An item that dropped from an enemy has no slots, no matter its rarity or its level. Crafted items are the ones made from a blueprint at Crafting, and a crafted item bought from another player on the Market has its slots too.

1. Open your inventory and go to the Ship parts tab.
2. Click the crafted item you want to modify.
3. Press Catalysts in the item menu. If that button is not there, the item is not crafted.
4. Pick the activity profile at the top, click an empty slot, pick a catalyst from the list and confirm. Installing costs resources.

If you do not know what the profile picker is for, leave it on Default and read Activity profiles when you want more out of your gear.

The catalyst category has to match the item: Battling catalysts go on weapons and shields, Boost on lasers and probes, Utility on engines and sensors.

What are catalysts?

Catalysts are modules that you install into the slots of crafted items. Each catalyst belongs to one of three categories and grants a specific stat bonus. Equip them on your ship and the bonus applies as long as the item is equipped.

The actual value a catalyst grants depends on three things:

• Base value of the stat (fixed per stat, see table below)
• Rarity multiplier (normal x1, uncommon x1.5, rare x2, unique x2.5, epic x3, legendary x4)
• Quality (1-100, rolled when the catalyst is generated, weighted towards low values)

The final value is base * rarityMultiplier * (quality / 100). A higher quality means a stronger catalyst.

Where each category goes

Every catalyst category is tied to a pair of ship slots, and a catalyst can only be installed on an item of its own category:

That pairing is what caps your stacking: two items per category, 4 slots each, at most 2 of the same stat per item. Those 4 slots are per activity profile, so the cap applies inside one profile.

Base values, max single, and caps

The "Max stacked" column assumes the maximum legal stack inside one activity profile (up to 2 same-stat catalysts per item, the weaker one halved at 50%, across the two items of that category = single × 3). When that exceeds the cap, the cap clamps the final value.

Battling

Boost (no caps)

Utility

Going past the cap is wasted potential. Once the cap is reached, additional same-stat catalysts add nothing. Plan your build around the cap, not above it.

How do I get them?

Catalysts can drop at any rarity, but higher rarities are extremely rare. The primary way to obtain higher rarity catalysts is through merging.

There are four sources:

• Battling: 2% base chance per kill, boosted by global drop boost and the catalyst_drop_chance utility catalyst stat
• Exploring: 4% chance when you discover a new system manually, boosted by the catalyst_drop_chance utility catalyst stat
• Voyager expeditions: 8% chance every time you discover a new system during a Voyager run, boosted by the catalyst_drop_chance utility catalyst stat
• Solo dungeons: 10% chance on the loot roll of a solo dungeon run, boosted by the catalyst_drop_chance utility catalyst stat

In all four sources the drop stat scales the base chance (+bonus% of the base) instead of adding flat percentage points, so a maxed 60% raises each source by 60% over its own base: battling goes from 2% to 3.2%, solo dungeons from 10% to 16%. The source with the highest base stays the best one no matter how much drop chance you stack.

Whatever the source, the rarity is rolled on its own:

Quality is rolled separately, weighted so low values are much more common than high ones.

Categories and stats

There are three categories of catalysts. Each one focuses on a different aspect of the game.

Battling

Boost

Utility

Who found it

Every catalyst carries the name of whoever brought it into existence, shown as Found by in its tooltip. That is the player it dropped for, the one who crafted it from parts, or the one who merged it. A merge credits the merger even when the five catalysts that went in were somebody else's, because putting the set together is the work being credited.

The mark travels with the catalyst, so one you buy on the Market or receive by wire still shows who found it. Catalysts obtained before this existed have no mark and will never get one.

Merging

You can fuse 5 catalysts of the same stat and same rarity into a single catalyst of the next rarity. Legendary catalysts cannot be merged any further.

Merging normal catalysts is free and always succeeds. From uncommon on, merging costs Quantum Cores and has a chance of failure that depends on the rarity. On failure, the Quantum Cores are spent but the catalysts stay in your inventory.

Your Crafting level adds extra merge chance: each level adds 0.1% to the base success chance.

You can also protect the merge with extra Quantum Cores (50/100/200/500 depending on rarity, on top of the merge cost) and the merge is guaranteed to succeed. Normal merges never need protection.

The new merged catalyst inherits the average range of the 5 inputs, plus a +5 bonus and an extra +1 per 10 Crafting levels (capped at the maximum range of 100).

Every successful merge also grants Crafting XP.

Mass merge

Instead of merging one group at a time, you can mass merge a whole stat and rarity at once. The game groups your unequipped, unlocked catalysts into batches of 5 chosen to waste as little range as possible, then merges every batch, retrying the ones that fail until they all go through or you run out of Quantum Cores.

Mass merge never uses protection. Failed attempts only cost Quantum Cores, so nothing is ever lost.

Installing catalysts on items

Catalysts can only be installed into crafted items of their own category (see the table at the top). Each item has 4 slots per activity profile. You can install at most 2 catalysts of the same stat in the same profile of the same item, and the weaker of the two is halved (50% effectiveness). The game always applies the penalty to the weaker one, so the order you install them in does not matter.

Items borrowed from your squadron armory cannot be modified.

Installing costs one specific resource mapped 1:1 to the catalyst's stat. The amount scales exponentially with the item's level and is multiplied by the catalyst's rarity and the item tier:

• cost = base × 1.03^itemLevel × rarityMultiplier × itemTypeMultiplier
• base: 10000 for most stats (battling, utility, XP). Uses common resources (e.g. defense → gold)
• base: 100 for the four rare boost stats (cosmic_dust_bonus, gathering_yield, crafting_scrap, battling_credits). These use rare resources (e.g. gathering yield → silicon)
• rarityMultiplier: normal ×1, uncommon ×1.1, rare ×1.25, unique ×1.5, epic ×1.75, legendary ×2. This is a much gentler curve than the value multiplier at the top of this page: a legendary is 4 times stronger but only twice as expensive to install
• itemTypeMultiplier: regular crafted = ×1, enhanced (PvP) = ×5, anomalous = ×20

The first time a catalyst is installed it grants Crafting XP. Reinstalling that same catalyst later, on the same item or another one, grants nothing.

Catalyst profiles

An item does not have 4 slots, it has 4 slots per activity, and the game reads a different set depending on what you are doing. A profile you leave empty uses that item's Default profile instead, so if you never touch one, everything reads your Default set and nothing changes.

There is more to it than that, and the part that catches people is that installing a single catalyst into a profile makes that item's Default catalysts stop counting for that activity. Full explanation in Catalyst profiles.

Extracting catalysts

Extracting a catalyst removes it from an item and returns it to your inventory, ready to be installed again. It is free and nothing is lost.

Moving catalysts to another item

When you upgrade your gear you do not have to extract and reinstall one by one. You can move every catalyst from one item to another in a single action, as long as both items are crafted, share the same category, and the target item has no catalysts at all.

Every activity profile travels together and each catalyst keeps the profile it was in, so the new item comes out configured exactly like the old one. The target has to be empty in every profile, not just the one you are looking at.

The move costs the full install price of each catalyst, recalculated against the target item. Moving to a higher level or anomalous item is therefore more expensive than moving to a cheap one.

Scrapping items with catalysts equipped

When you scrap a crafted item that has catalysts installed, all of them are recovered and returned unequipped to your inventory. Nothing is destroyed.

Because they need room in your catalyst inventory, the scrap is blocked if the returning catalysts would push you past your catalyst storage limit. Free up space and scrap again.

Scrapping catalysts

Scrap catalysts from the inventory tab to get Catalyst Parts, an account-bound currency. The amount depends mostly on rarity, with a small bonus from quality:

Plus +1 part per 5 quality. So rarity is what matters: a quality 1 legendary beats a quality 100 rare.

Crafting catalysts from parts

Spend Catalyst Parts at the merge interface to craft a normal-rarity catalyst with the stat you choose at a guaranteed quality between 5 and 50. Cost is 4 parts per quality point. A safety net for unlucky streaks.

You can craft several at once, which is the fastest way to build the 5 identical catalysts a merge needs.

Catalyst storage

You can hold up to 500 unequipped catalysts. Catalysts installed on items do not count towards that limit.

Once you are at the limit, new drops are lost, you cannot craft from parts, and you cannot scrap items that would return catalysts. Merging and scrapping catalysts are the ways to make room.

Locking catalysts

To prevent accidentally scrapping or wiring catalysts you care about, you can lock them. Locked catalysts cannot be scrapped, mass scrapped, mass merged, or wired until you unlock them.

You can also use mass lock / unlock / scrap buttons that appear when you filter the catalyst inventory, just like with regular items.

Trading catalysts

Catalysts are tradeable! You can:

• Wire a catalyst directly to another player from your inventory (the receiver must be in an inhabited system or have permanent market access)
• Sell or buy catalysts on the Market, filtering by stat, rarity and minimum range

TL;DR:

• Hunt enemies, run solo dungeons and Voyager expeditions to collect catalysts
• Merge them up to higher rarities (protect with Quantum Cores for the important ones)
• Install them in your best crafted gear, matching the category to the slot
• Move them across when you upgrade an item instead of losing progress
• Lock the good ones so you don't lose them by accident
• Trade duplicates with other players or on the market