The Crust Gases Guide — How to Find Neon, Argon & Methane
Published 2026-09-205 min read
The Crust gases explained: where gas deposits spawn, how to unlock and place the Gas Extractor, and what neon, argon and methane are used for.
The Crust hides half its economy underground — and the other half in the craters. Neon, argon and methane are the Moon's three harvestable gases, and unlike every oxide you'll ever mine, they only exist as surface deposits. If your base feels complete but the tech tree has stalled, this is usually why: gas recipes unlock a whole column of production you can't touch without extractors.
Where gases are: on the surface, in the craters
The rule players learn the hard way — summed up by one 1.0 creator mid-run — is:
"Gases are on the surface of the moon; metals and stuff are under the moon."
Gas deposits spawn as crater deposits on the surface map. In documented runs, players find them the same way they find anything on the surface: by exploring. Surface outposts, rovers and signal-discovering structures (the Repeater, for example, "will discover new signals on the moon's surface") reveal what a crater holds; one creator spotted an argon deposit while flying past it in a sandbox tour. If you can't find gas, the honest answer is: you haven't explored that direction yet — push scouts/rovers outward and watch for new discovery markers.
The Gas Extractor
The community wiki documents the machine (data verified at version 0.99.55 — exact costs may drift with patches):
| Gas Extractor | Value |
|---|---|
| Category | Mining and Refining |
| Required research | Gas Extractor (research node of the same name) |
| Placement | Must be placed on a gas deposit — no deposit, no extraction |
| Construction cost | 8 / 4 / 12 / 5 (per the wiki infobox) |
| CPU | 3 |
| Power | 12 |
The same research family gives you supporting infrastructure: Gas Storage for the output and Gas Pipe Supports for routing — gases move through pipes rather than the conveyor system your ores use, so plan the surface grid with that in mind.
What each gas is for
- Argon and neon feed dedicated recipes — a 1.0 creator describes reaching "access to recipes using argon or neon" as the reward for finally building surface extractors. They're the gateway to the surface-side production column.
- Methane is documented by the wiki's mining-resource table alongside argon and neon as one of the three harvestable gases. Specific recipe yields per gas are the piece the community wiki hasn't filled in yet — check your in-game recipe list after unlocking the extractor research rather than trusting secondhand numbers.
- All three sit in the same resource tier as helium-3: late-map materials that separate a mid-game base from an endgame one.
Practical order of operations
- Get the surface unlocked first — roads and exploration techs reveal crater contents.
- Research the Gas Extractor before you need the gas; deposits are useless without the machine.
- Claim territory near a deposit if the nearest one is outside your build range — the same probe-and-outpost loop used for helium-3 harvesting works here.
- Budget CPU and power: 3 CPU + 12 power per extractor adds up across a multi-gas surface grid, on top of the solar and battery farm you're already running (see the automation guide).
For how the gas layer fits the broader surface/underground split — and where the elevator fits between them — the layouts guide maps the zones.