TECH TREE & RESEARCH

Every team on QuantumRift builds up its own tech tree — a shared pool of 84 technologies your team funds together to unlock better gear, automation, defenses, and offense. This page covers how research works, how to pay for it, what’s actually in the tree, and what completing a tech gets you.

Quick Facts

• Research progress belongs to your team, not to any one player.
• The tree has 84 technologies spread across 7 tiers.
• Research points come from three channels that all stack together: passive income, credit injection, and resource donation.
• How many techs you can fund at once depends on your team’s Base Core level.
• The whole server gets notified whenever any team finishes researching a tech.

How Techs Become Available

A tech shows up as researchable only when both of these are true:

1. The server-wide Empire Tier has reached the tech’s own tier number (0–7).
2. If the tech lists a required Empire Mission, that mission has been completed.

That’s it — there’s no web of individual tech prerequisites to chase. Empire Tier is a shared, server-wide counter that advances as the whole server completes Empire Missions, so unlocking higher tiers is a team effort across everyone playing, not just your own squad.

Farming I is Tier 0: any team can research it from the very first day, before any Empire Mission is done, so carrots and potatoes can be planted for the Food mission. The four Tier 1 techs need no mission at all — just reaching Empire Tier 1. From Tier 2 onward, most techs are gated behind one of these missions, which roughly track a resource-tier ladder:

Good to know: once your team queues a tech, its point cost is locked in at that moment. If the devs rebalance costs later, a tech you’re already researching won’t suddenly get more expensive (or cheaper) out from under you.

Funding Research — 3 Channels

Every tech has a point total it needs to hit before it completes. You can fill that bar through any combination of the three methods below — they all add up toward the same total.

1. Passive Income

Your Base Core generates research points automatically, ticking once every minute. The rate grows with every Base Core upgrade:

Research points are whole numbers, so a fractional rate carries its remainder from one minute to the next: a level 2 Core earns 13 points every 10 minutes. Every active research slot earns the full rate.

2. Credit Injection

Use /tech inject at your Base Core to spend credits directly on your team’s active research.

• Rate: 100 research points per 1 credit spent.
• Cap: credit injection can only cover up to 40% of a tech’s total cost — the rest has to come from passive income or resource donations. This keeps rich teams from just buying every tech instantly.
• Injections are capped to the room left in the tech too — you are never charged for points it doesn’t need.

3. Resource Donation

Physically donate items to fund research. Each item has a base point value (see the table below), and every tech has its own bonus materials — usually 2–3 materials it especially wants, worth 1.5x or 2.0x their normal value when donated toward that specific tech.

• Only items listed in the value table are accepted — anything else donates for 0 points, so check the list before hauling a stack over.
• Donations are capped to exactly how much room is left in the tech — you can’t overshoot and waste materials.

Tip: always check a tech’s bonus materials before donating. Donating Iron Chain to a tech that wants it at 2.0x is twice as efficient as donating it somewhere it gets no bonus.

Resource Donation Value Table

About 1 point per item, more for valuable ones. A donation is rounded down once as a whole, so 64 Stone give 96 points.

Iron Chain is worth as much as an ingot, and a lot of early-game techs specifically want it as a bonus material.

Leaving a Team: The Comeback Bonus

If you leave your team, are kicked, or it disbands, 60% of the research points you personally contributed to it (from item donations and credit injections alike) is banked for you. On your next team, every donation you make — items or credits — gets a 25% bonus on top, paid out of that bank until it runs out, so switching teams doesn’t erase everything you put in. A bank of 1,000 points boosts your next 4,000 points of donations. The bonus never costs extra credits, stays inside a tech’s 40% credit cap, and is never spent on points a tech has no room for.

Only what you contributed since your last bank counts: leaving the same team twice does not bank the same points twice. The bonus has no expiry.

Check your balance any time with /tech comeback. While you have one, it also shows in the detail pane of every tech in the Tech tab, and each donation tells you how much bonus it used, e.g. (+80 comeback bonus, 1160 left).

Research Slots — Active & Queue

Your team can only actively fund a limited number of techs at once, with more waiting in a queue behind them. Both numbers scale with your Base Core level:

When an active tech finishes, the next one in your queue automatically promotes into an active slot — no need to babysit it.

The Full Tech Tree

The tree covers 7 categories: Machinery (44 techs — the biggest by far), Defense (11), Attack (11), Gear (12), Energy (4), Farming (3), and Combat (2). (“Mounts” and “Utility” are declared categories with nothing in them yet — a sign of where the tree may grow.)

Below, every tech is listed by tier, with its cost, required mission, what it does, and its bonus donation materials.

Tier 0 — Open From Day One

Tier 1 — No Mission Required (just reach Empire Tier 1)

Tier 2 — Empire Tier 2

Tier 3 — Empire Tier 3 (mission: empire.t3.copper)

Tier 4 — Empire Tier 4 (three missions: empire.t4.iron, empire.t4.works, empire.t4.siegeworks)

Tier 4 is the first tier that takes three Empire Missions to open fully. The Imperial Armoury (empire.t4.iron) raises the Empire to Tier 4 and opens Iron Tools & Armor, the Crossbow, both Bandit Stock lines (Heavy Core, Breeze Rod), the Repair Station and the Repair Kit. The Imperial Works (empire.t4.works) opens every Tier 4 machine and power source: the Wind Turbine, the Water Boiling Engine, the Shield Crafter, the three upgraded machines, the six Tier 4 spawners, the Water Reservoir and the Quarry. The Imperial Siegeworks (empire.t4.siegeworks) opens the raiding and defense techs: Small Sentry Level 2, Compacted Deepslate, Reinforced Copper, the Iron Raid Pickaxe, the Drill and the Siege Bull. The Works always completes before the Siegeworks, so teams get the Quarry a mission before anyone can bring a Drill.

Tier 5 — Empire Tier 5 (mission: empire.t5.gold)

Tier 6 — Empire Tier 6 (mission: empire.t6.diamond)

Tier 7 — Empire Tier 7 (mission: empire.t7.diamond_elite)

What Completing a Tech Actually Unlocks

Most of a tech’s listed “unlocks” — things like gear:bow, gear:mace, or trim names — are just the readable label shown in the Tech tab, Base Core, PDA, and mission views. But under the hood, only four kinds of tech actually change what your team can do:

Gear Tier Gates

Tier 2 gear (stone tools and weapons, chainmail armor) needs no research: every player starts on it. Ten techs raise the tier of gear your team is allowed to equip from there, one per half per tier:

Weapon Research Gates

The bow, the crossbow and the mace each need their own research on top of the weapon tier. Until your team has completed it, the weapon won’t fire, charge, swing or craft, even when your weapon tier is high enough:

Trying to use one you haven’t researched shows: “Your team has not researched the Bow yet. Type /gear to see what unlocks it.” Solo players (not in a team) have no research, so the bow, crossbow and mace stay locked for them until they join a team that has researched them.

Farming Recipe Gates

Three techs control which crops your team is allowed to plant:

Shop Gates

65 tech ids act as purchase gates at NPC vendors — meaning a lot of techs aren’t just about crafting or placing something yourself, they’re the key to buying specific items from an NPC shop in the first place. If a shop item looks locked, check whether your team has researched the tech tied to it.

Everything Else Is a Label

Weapons and armor are researched separately. Tier 2 (stone and chainmail) is the starting tier and needs no research. Every gear tier from 3 to 7 is two techs: a weapons-and-tools half and an armor half, each costing half of what the whole tier used to. Your team has a weapon tier and an armor tier; a piece of gear is checked against its own half, and the highest completed tech of each half wins (no prerequisites). Teams that already owned a tier when the split shipped kept both halves. The bow and the crossbow need the weapon tier and their own research (see Weapon Research Gates above). Gear sets (Regular, Gathering, Scout) exist at every tier as armor trims rather than separate research.

Unlocks like Portable Battery and the armour trims are shown to players as readable names for what a tech grants, but they don’t gate anything separately from the gear tier or shop-gate rules above (Bow, Crossbow and Mace are the exception: see Weapon Research Gates) — the label is just there so you know what you got:

Where to Manage Research In-Game

• **/tech inject** — spend credits directly into your team’s active research (subject to the 40% cap described above). Officer and above only, since it spends the team treasury. You have to stand within 8 blocks of your Base Core.
• **/tech donate** — donate the item stack in your hand to an active tech. Any team member can donate. You have to stand within 8 blocks of your Base Core, so haul the items home first.
• **/tech comeback** — your banked comeback bonus and how many more points of donations it will boost.
• Tech tab — check progress, queue new techs, inject credits, donate items and see what’s unlocked. Right-click your Base Core to open it. Your PDA’s Gear tab shows how your gear research is coming along.
• Whenever your team finishes a tech, it’s broadcast to the entire server — so completing something big is a moment everyone sees, not just your own team.