Building a Metal Farm in Subnautica 2 is absurdly useful when it comes to duplicating rare metals like Troilite. Later on, when you’re repairing the Alien Power Plant, you’ll need a lot of this material and there isn’t very much to find on the map, so using a Metal Farm is a much better approach.

You’ll need to have reached the Alien Ruins area via the Tadpole Pens to do this, and you’ll also need the Tadpole Depth module. Otherwise, here’s what you need to do to unlock the Metal Farm blueprint and how it works.

Subnautica 2 Metal Farm location

You need to scan three Metal Farms to unlock it as a blueprint, but thankfully they are all in the glowing green pool area about 870 meters northeast of the Alien Ruins Research base, bearing around 75 degrees. This location is very deep, around 450 meters, which is the limit of your Tadpole even with the depth module attached.

This area is filled with predators and patrolled by a leviathan, so bring a Repair Tool for your Tadpole and some healing for yourself. The video above shows how to get there, but in case you can’t see it:

1. Head east from the Alien Ruins Research Base, dropping off the cliff and descending until you spot the purple tube, which you should then follow to the Angel Comb
2. Go northeast from the Angel Comb following another purple tube down a ravine, which will lead you to an area with green glowing pools and lots of alien column-like devices around the outside—these are Metal Farms

Scan a few of these and you’ll unlock the blueprint, though stay as low as possible to avoid the leviathan. While you’re here, make sure to grab some Troilite and an Axum Bacterial Culture—you can get these by smashing the materials in the pools—since you’ll require both to actually craft the facility.

How to build a Metal Farm in Subnautica 2

Metal Farms are a bit strange since they clearly require power, but they don’t mention a power consumption on their blueprint. You’ll likely have to build some more power infrastructure to support them—since you can build them anywhere, I recommend building one close to your already linked power production so you don’t have to craft an extra transmitter.

Crafting a Metal Farm costs you:

• 1x Mangalloy Ingot
• 1x Axum Bacterial Culture

Crafting the Mangalloy Ingot requires one Troilite, one Atacamite, and one Titanium Ingot.

How to use a Metal Farm in Subnautica 2

Once powered, using the Metal Farm is straightforward enough:

1. Interact with the front of the device to “open storage”
2. Place whichever metal you want duplicated inside—I recommend Troilite since it’s annoying to collect and you need a lot of it to reactivate the Alien Power Plant
3. A timer will appear on the front
4. When the timer runs out, the Metal Farm will produce an ore node of the corresponding type on top of it
5. Smash this with your Sonic Resonator

Since you get a random amount of ore from smashing a node, it could be one or three, but as soon as you do, the Metal Farm will start producing more. If you can provide the power infrastructure, you can even craft multiple Metal Farms to get more ore.