The Refinery is the Relay Network Bay that turns items into Salvage. Salvage pays for almost everything else in the Network, so the Refinery is the Network's engine.
Build a deposit basket and commit it. Salvage then drips out at a steady rate until the basket is used up. You can withdraw committed items you no longer want to refine.
- Rate is flat. Which items you commit does not change how fast Salvage comes out. It changes how long the basket lasts.
- Item role matters. Items are grouped by role, and each role drains your basket at a different speed:
| Role
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What counts
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Basket drain
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| Crafted
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Items with a recipe
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1×
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| Consumable
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Pet food items
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3×
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| Raw
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Items that cannot be crafted
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5×
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- Crafted items give the most Salvage for their value. The Raw, Crafted and Consumable Efficiency Research nodes reduce the drain for their role.
- Expensive items last longer. A pricier item refines for longer per unit, so one valuable crafted item produces far more Salvage than a pile of cheap materials.
- Not everything can be refined. Rare drops, lootboxes, items with boost effects and items marked as Relay-restricted cannot be committed.
- Longer baskets. Higher Module levels let a basket run longer before it needs refilling.
Unclaimed Salvage collects in the Refinery's output buffer, which has a cap. Raise it with the Capacity Foundations Research node and the Refinery Output Capacity upgrade.
When the buffer is full, the Refinery keeps using up items by default and the extra Salvage is lost. The Overflow Cutoff Research node pauses the basket when the buffer is full and resumes it after you claim. Auto-Deposit Research can keep the basket topped up.
Output grows with Module count, Module level and the operating mode. Each extra Module adds a little less than the one before (the highest-level Module always counts in full), so a very large Refinery reaches a soft ceiling instead of growing forever. An idle or stalled Refinery cools down twice as fast.
The Overdrive upgrade makes the Refinery burn through item value much faster. Each tier doubles the item value consumed per hour, while Salvage output rises only slightly, and heat rises 10% per tier. It suits players chasing the Refined leaderboards rather than Salvage efficiency.
The daily and weekly Refined leaderboards rank players by the BC value of items fed into their Refinery. At each daily reset the top players receive DX Coolant, plus a Salvage draw. At each weekly reset the top three receive XenoServers.
| Release date |
Update |
Changes
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| July 25, 2026
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v2026.07.25
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- Refinery basket category picker is now a normal amount input instead of a row of percentage buttons, and re-topping-up a running basket skips the confirmation.
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| June 22, 2026
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v2026.06.22
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- The Refinery’s committed item list and runtime estimate now match the server’s model: different item categories burn at different rates (raw items burn much faster than crafted ones), so raw-heavy baskets finish sooner.
- Committed items now shrink together as the run burns (you won’t see cheap items vanish and then reappear when re-committing), and the deposit bar tooltip shows per-item BC/min burn so runtime estimates are more accurate.
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| June 18, 2026
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v2026.06.18
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- It is no longer possible to commit huge amounts of items to refinery committed basket that would go above your maximum.
- Adjusting any bay configuration that impacts the maximum amounts of added items (Refinery basket, Cooling bay Cryo Gel storage) automatically adjusts the current maximum and refunds over-supply if necessary.
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| June 17, 2026
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v2026.06.17
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- The Refinery now burns much more BC to produce Salvage. Salvage rates were retuned so salvage/min feels consistent, and Salvage values are now shown as whole numbers (no trailing decimals).
- Overdrive is a new research-gated upgrade (up to 8 tiers). Once researched and bought you get a slider in the refinery UI to pick an active Overdrive tier. Higher tiers multiply BC burn a lot while giving slight Salvage gains, it’s an intentional BC sink for faster output.
- Overdrive also raises active heat per tier (higher tiers run hotter). The refinery UI now shows Overdrive’s heat contribution separately in the heat tooltip so you can see the trade-off.
- A refinery’s committed-basket duration now scales with how much you’ve invested in that bay (module levels): small/early bays complete much sooner (~12h), fully-built bays can hold up to ~96h before they complete.
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| June 6, 2026
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v2026.06.06
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- If you add items to the Refinery while a run is already in progress, the Refinery now carries the previous run’s unconsumed leftover into a fresh run together with your new items.
- That means the refinery bonus window (the Grid Resonance boost) restarts and applies to the whole new run instead of only the newly-added portion.
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| May 25, 2026
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v2026.05.25
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- If a Refinery output is full, deposit is empty or fully consumed, that’s now called out directly in the bay header so you can spot it at a glance.
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| May 23, 2026
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v2026.05.23
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- Committed basket “time remaining” estimates are now realistic.
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| May 22, 2026
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v2026.05.22.2
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- Refinery changes. (TheDepartedOne)
- The refinery’s per-minute Salvage output now depends only on your bay’s throughput, not on the specific item you commit. A single L1 module at normal speed produces about 1 Salvage per minute while running.
- What changes by item is how fast the bay’s committed “basket” drains. Categories now affect drain speed: Crafted items drain at 1×, Consumable items drain at 3x, Raw items at 5x. This affects the maximum committed basket duration.
- The refinery yield research nodes now reduce the category’s drain by 20% (so your basket lasts longer and you get ~25% more Salvage per committed BC of that category).
- Lowered the diminishing returns for each module installed, meaning crafting new modules is less punishing.
- The explicit Gear refinery category and its special research node were removed from the refinery UI and catalog. Weapons were kept refinable and are considered either Raw or Crafted.
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| May 21, 2026
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Welcome to the Relay Network
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Bays, modules, families
- Refinery: burns surplus inventory and outputs Salvage, the new relay material.
The Refinery, in plain terms
- The Refinery turns items you do not want into Salvage. You build a deposit basket, commit it, and the bay drains it over time, filling up a Salvage buffer that you claim.
- The Refinery is intentionally lossy. You burn through a lot of BC value to get Salvage out. The payoff access to relay progression and benefits, not BC profit.
- Items are grouped into four categories: Raw, Crafted, Gear, and Consumable. Some items are explicitly excluded from refine list (boosts, bounties, DX Coolant, rare loot).
- There is no item cost cap, other than the basket size. You can refine very expensive items. Pricier items yield more Salvage per item, but slightly less Salvage per BC of value.
- A new Refinery bay starts with 5 module slots, expandable to 25 across 5 upgrade tiers.
- Each additional module contributes a little less throughput than the last. Stacking still helps, but not linearly.
- You can withdraw a committed basket at any time. You get back whatever has not started to burn yet.
- Warning: withdrawing a single item that started burning yields absolutely nothing. You get no Salvage from it, you get no item back. Be mindful of what you’re adding to the basket!
- When the Salvage buffer fills up, you click to claim. With the Overflow Cutoff research unlocked, the bay pauses when full. Without it, the bay keeps burning through items and the excess Salvage is discarded.
Bay upgrades
- Module Capacity Expansion (5 tiers of plus 4 slots, max 25, Refinery only): more module slots.
- Refinery Output Capacity Expansion (10 tiers, Refinery only): bigger Salvage buffer.
- Refinery Deposit Category Slot (5 tiers, Refinery only): more custom category presets.
Modules: crafting, leveling, pausing
- A level-15 Refinery module’s throughput factor is also about 4x its level-1 value.
- One thing to watch on Refinery stacks: each additional module contributes a little less throughput than the previous one, ranked by level. The bay still scales as you add slots, but the curve flattens. Once your stack is wide, leveling existing modules beats crafting new low-level ones.
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