TECH TREE & RESEARCH

Every team on QuantumRift builds up its own tech tree — a shared pool of 77 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 77 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 (1–7).
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.

The five 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 scales with your Base Core’s level:

This is further boosted by your Core’s own passive research multiplier, so upgrading your Base Core pays off twice over for research.

2. Credit Injection

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

• Rate: 16 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.

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

Iron Chain stands out at 6 base points — the best “common tier” item you can donate, 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, 60% of the credits you personally contributed to research is banked for you. If you join a new team afterward, your donations there get a 25% boost until that banked amount runs out — so switching teams doesn’t erase everything you put in.

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 (42 techs — the biggest by far), Defense (10), Gear (9), Attack (7), 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 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 (mission: empire.t4.iron)

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 Research tab, Base Core, PDA, and mission views. But under the hood, only three kinds of tech actually change what your team can do:

Gear Tier Gates

Exactly seven techs raise the tier of gear your team is allowed to equip:

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

Unlocks like Bow, Crossbow, Mace, 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 — 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).
• Research tab — check progress, queue new techs, and see what’s unlocked, accessible through your PDA and Base Core.
• 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.