OGame Resources

The Four Resources in OGame

OGame has four resource types that you need for every investment in the game. Buildings, ships, research, defence — everything costs resources. The art lies in keeping production and consumption in balance and setting the right priorities.

Metal — The Base Resource

Metal is the most common and in most cases cheapest resource. Almost every building, ship and defensive structure primarily consumes metal. Your entire empire stands on a foundation of metal.

The Metal Mine produces metal continuously — 24 hours a day, even when you're offline. Production increases exponentially with each level, as do building costs. Metal Mine level 1 produces around 30 metal per hour, level 20 already over 50,000 metal per hour.

Metal Mine: Production Reference Values

Crystal — The Resource for Progress

Crystal is scarcer than metal and is particularly heavily consumed for research and advanced ship types. Anyone who researches many technologies or builds a strong fleet quickly notices: Crystal becomes the bottleneck resource.

The Crystal Mine works analogously to the Metal Mine but produces more slowly with similar energy requirements. As a rule of thumb: Keep the Crystal Mine at about 60-70% of the Metal Mine's level. Those prioritising research should weight crystal even higher.

Crystal is particularly valuable on the OGame market (trader system) — a high crystal supply enables you to obtain metal or deuterium in exchange.

Deuterium — Fuel of the Empire

Deuterium propels your fleets. Without deuterium, no flight, no expedition, no fleetsave mission. At the same time, deuterium is the most expensive of the three mineable resources and is required for many high-end research projects.

The Deuterium Synthesizer has a special feature: Its production is temperature-dependent. The colder the planet, the more deuterium it produces. Planets at positions 1-3 in the solar system are coldest and thus best suited for deuterium. Anyone wanting to establish a deuterium specialist planet colonises as far out as possible.

Deuterium and Fleetsave

Every fleet mission consumes deuterium — depending on distance, ship type and speed. Anyone regularly conducting fleetsave consumes considerable amounts of deuterium. A well-developed Deuterium Synthesizer isn't optional but mandatory for active players.

Energy — The Invisible Resource

Energy isn't a collectable resource in the traditional sense — it isn't stored. Instead, it represents capacity: Your energy sources must cover the energy requirements of all mines at all times. If energy goes negative, all mines are throttled proportionally.

Energy sources in OGame:

• Solar Plant: Cheap entry point, no operating costs, grows with demand
• Fusion Reactor: Highly efficient at high levels, consumes deuterium as fuel
• Solar Satellites: Quick to build, cheap — but they can be shot down

Solar Plant vs Fusion Reactor

In the early phase, the Solar Plant is the only sensible option. From the mid-game onwards, when deuterium is produced abundantly, switching to the Fusion Reactor becomes worthwhile. The Fusion Reactor delivers significantly more energy per building level and has no weakness to attacks — unlike Solar Satellites.

Dark Matter — The Premium Resource

Dark Matter is OGame's premium currency. It isn't produced by mines but found through expeditions, earned at certain events or purchased with real money. Dark Matter enables the activation of officers who provide permanent bonuses, as well as accelerating building times and research.

For starting out, free-to-play is completely sufficient. Those investing Dark Matter benefit most from a permanent officer set that permanently strengthens production and fleet.