Diesel Fuel — The Key to Passive Farming
Since the Big Quality of Life update, the Giant Excavator, the static quarries, AND pump jacks all run on Diesel Fuel (quarries and pump jacks used to take Low Grade Fuel). Diesel is the gatekeeper for all passive resource generation.
Where to get Diesel Fuel: - Loot it from monuments: Dome (2), Junkyard (3), Small/Large Oil Rig (2/3), Power Plant (2), Water Treatment (3), Radtown (1). - Buy it at Outpost for 300 Low Grade Fuel per barrel.
Diesel can't be crafted, so monument runs and Outpost trades are how you stockpile it. Each barrel powers one run cycle on any of these machines.
The Giant Excavator Pit
The Excavator is the most powerful resource generator in the game -- but the most contested. It's a monument guarded by an army of Scientists with minor radiation.
How to run it: 1. Bring a few barrels of Diesel Fuel. 2. Go to the Engine Room in the centre and place diesel in the white silo (minimum 1 barrel). 3. Take the staircase behind the Engine Room, walk out along the excavator arm to the Control Room, and select your resource: Sulfur, HQM, Metal Fragments, or Stone. 4. Collect the output at the two drop zones -- run between both to grab everything.
Yield per 1 diesel (about 2 minutes): roughly 100 HQM, 2,000 sulfur ore, 5,000 metal fragments, or 10,000 stone. It also has a built-in recycler for breaking loot into scrap. The catch: it's loud, visible from a distance, and Scientist-defended, so expect company.
Static Quarries (Sulfur, Stone, HQM)
Three permanent quarry monuments dot the map: the Sulfur Quarry, Stone Quarry, and HQM Quarry. Unlike the old craftable quarries, these are fixed structures you can't relocate or own.
To run one: place Diesel Fuel in the blue barrels at the base, climb up, and start the engine.
Per-diesel yields: - Sulfur Quarry: ~1,000 sulfur ore per diesel (cycle ~2 min 10 sec). - HQM Quarry: ~50 HQM ore per diesel (~2 min 10 sec).
Quarries are far quieter than the Excavator and have no Scientists -- the only threat is other players. You can wall a quarry off with high external walls and add auto-turrets on the watchtower to defend a session, but the monument itself can never be locked or owned -- it stays public.
Pump Jacks (Crude Oil & Low Grade Fuel)
Pump jacks generate fuel rather than ore. Unlike the quarries, they don't have a dedicated monument -- they spawn on the outskirts of the Power Plant, Train Yard, and Water Treatment.
They run exactly like the quarries: add diesel, start the engine. Yield per diesel: about 60 crude oil and 170 low grade fuel. Crude oil refines into more low grade fuel at a refinery, so a pump jack is a strong passive fuel source for running furnaces, vehicles, and -- circularly -- buying more diesel at Outpost.
You can't build around pump jacks, so securing one means physically holding the spot rather than walling it.
Excavator vs Quarry — Which to Use
It's efficiency versus safety:
- The Giant Excavator outputs roughly TWICE the resources per diesel compared to a quarry over the same time, and lets you pick the resource. But it's loud, visible, Scientist-guarded, and a magnet for clans -- realistically a group activity.
- Quarries are quieter, guardian-free, and much more solo-friendly. On low-pop servers a well-defended quarry passively fuels large-scale raids; on high-pop servers clans contest them too, so time your runs.
General advice: solos and small groups should lean on quarries and pump jacks and run them when the server is quieter. Larger groups with the firepower to hold the Excavator get the best raw throughput. Either way, stockpile diesel first -- the fuel, not the machine, is the real bottleneck.