In Hytale, your progress is often gated by a handful of materials: basic building wood, mid-tier metals, and late-game ores for advanced crafting. This guide explains a reliable, repeatable approach to getting Softwood Trunks, Gold, Cobalt, and Thorium, and how to avoid constant return trips by upgrading your carrying capacity.

Before you start: a resource-farming checklist

  • Bring the right tools: a better-tier pickaxe dramatically reduces time per node and improves consistency when mining in dangerous areas.
  • Carry light, leave room: deposit non-essential loot before a mining run so ore stacks aren’t forced onto the ground.
  • Mark locations: when you find a good cave, vein cluster, or dense forest patch, mark it for repeat farming instead of roaming randomly.
  • Plan a loop: the best runs are circular—start at base, hit 2–3 known spots, then return once inventory is full.

How to get Softwood Trunks

Softwood Trunks are your early bottleneck for crafting, building, and basic workstation progression. The fastest method is to farm in a consistent biome and avoid spreading your chopping across too many areas.

  1. Target dense softwood forests: look for areas where the same tree type is clustered—this increases trunks per minute because you spend less time traveling.
  2. Cut at the base: prioritize speed. If your game version supports it, felling a tree efficiently (rather than harvesting every segment) saves time.
  3. Replant or rotate patches: if trees regrow/repopulate over time, rotate between two nearby forest patches to keep a steady supply.
  4. Convert into what you need: process trunks into planks or crafting components at your base in batches to save inventory space on future runs.

How to get Gold

Gold typically appears deeper than early metals and is often best farmed by committing to a cave/mining session rather than opportunistic surface mining.

  1. Go underground intentionally: choose a cave system (or mine shaft) that quickly leads to deeper layers.
  2. Scan cave walls and junctions: ore frequently appears along exposed stone faces, especially where tunnels branch.
  3. Mine in strips when caves run out: if you hit a dead end, mine a short, straight strip at the same depth to “re-find” pockets that aren’t exposed.
  4. Bring safety supplies: deeper mining means more combat and hazards—being forced to retreat early is the biggest gold-per-hour killer.

How to get Cobalt

Cobalt is usually a step up in difficulty—either it’s located in more dangerous zones, deeper depths, or guarded cave areas. Treat cobalt runs like focused expeditions.

  1. Prepare for tougher encounters: upgrade weapons/armor before dedicating time to cobalt, since interruptions reduce efficiency more than tool speed does.
  2. Prioritize consistent depth: once you find cobalt, keep mining around that level rather than bouncing between elevations.
  3. Use a “hub cave” strategy: find one large cave network where you can open multiple branches—this usually yields more cobalt over time than repeatedly entering new small caves.
  4. Extract and reset: once you’ve mined the visible cobalt in an area, move laterally to a parallel corridor instead of going upward—staying at the same depth increases repeat hits.

How to get Thorium

Thorium is a higher-tier resource, so efficiency comes from minimizing risk and maximizing time spent at the correct mining depth/zone.

  1. Upgrade before you hunt: treat thorium as a late-mid or late-game target. Use strong tools and survivability gear so you can stay underground longer.
  2. Search the deepest reachable areas: thorium is most reliably found by pushing deeper rather than widening shallow searches.
  3. Follow ore “signals”: when you find a single thorium node, clear the surrounding rock—veins often cluster, and one node can indicate more nearby.
  4. Run a repeatable route: once you identify a thorium-rich region/cave system, return to it instead of exploring randomly each session.

How to increase inventory space (so you can farm longer)

Resource farming becomes dramatically easier once you stop doing “half runs” caused by full bags. The goal is to extend each trip and reduce downtime.

  • Craft or upgrade a backpack: prioritize any early backpack upgrades that add slots, even if it costs materials you’d rather spend elsewhere—more space usually pays itself back quickly.
  • Stack smart: keep a dedicated slot row for common drops (stone, dirt, ore) so you don’t fragment stacks across multiple partial piles.
  • Bring only what you’ll use: tools, healing, and a small amount of utility. Leave crafting ingredients at home unless you need them for a specific task.
  • Use quick-deposit storage: set up labeled chests near your base spawn point so unloading takes seconds, not minutes.

A simple farming plan (putting it all together)

  1. Start with Softwood Trunks to stabilize building and crafting.
  2. Move to Gold with a deeper cave loop once you have dependable tools and basic survivability.
  3. Commit to Cobalt with better combat readiness and a dedicated “hub cave.”
  4. Target Thorium only after your kit supports long deep-mining sessions.
  5. Upgrade inventory early so every step above becomes faster and less frustrating.

If you follow a repeatable route, mine at consistent depths, and expand inventory space early, these four materials stop being roadblocks and become routine pickups.