The question “which moon has the most scrap” has a misleading answer, because scrap you cannot bring back is worth nothing.
This ranking is about sellable scrap per trip, which is the only number that pays the quota.
How this ranking differs from the moons tier list
The moons tier list ranks by risk versus return, which is the right question when you are deciding where to land at all.
This page answers a narrower one: if the quota is your problem today, where does a trip actually convert into credits fastest? That makes travel cost and trip completion the two heaviest factors, and danger the thing you are trying to minimise rather than a stat you are trading against.
The criteria
Travel cost. Every credit spent getting there is a credit the trip has to earn back before it makes anything.
Trip length. A facility you can clear in a few minutes gives you more completed runs per day than a large one you half-finish.
Completion rate. This is the big one. A moon where you reliably get out beats a moon where you occasionally get a huge haul and usually do not.
Spawn pressure. A calm moon means short trips stay short. A hostile moon means every trip ends earlier than you planned, usually loaded.
What the ranking looks like in practice
Best early: Experimentation and Assurance. Both are free, both are shallow, and both can be cleared in minutes once you know the route. The scrap per room is modest, but the trips complete, and completed trips are what a quota is made of.
Best mid: March. Mild spawns, a long open surface, and a layout that rewards a crew that already knows how to move. It is the last free moon and the best one for volume farming once the crew is confident.
Good but situational: Offense and Dine. Real loot, but the facility fights back — turrets and landmines on Offense, a Butler rate and night Barbers on Dine. Go when the crew is ready, not when the quota is desperate.
Avoid for farming: Artifice, Embrion, Titan, Rend, Adamance. These are the moons where the spawn pattern alone decides whether you get out. They are excellent for challenge and poor for paying bills, because the trips that fail cost the whole day.
Why the expensive moons are the wrong answer
An expensive moon charges you before you have looted anything, and its facilities are built to keep you inside longer. Both of those work against the thing that clears a quota: completed trips.
A crew farming a free moon will typically complete three or four trips in the time a crew on an expensive moon completes one, and the one trip that fails costs everything it was carrying.
The money guide covers the same logic from the scrap side.
Match the moon to the crew size
- Solo: Experimentation or Assurance, shallow routes only.
- Two players: Assurance, then March. Enough scrap to matter, calm enough to leave quickly.
- Three or four: March for volume, with Offense as an upgrade once the crew splits cleanly.
- Any crew, quota desperate: the free moon you have memorised, run repeatedly, taking only light high-ratio items.
The habit that beats moon choice
Whichever moon you pick, the crews that farm best are the ones that leave while they still want to stay.
A short trip on a boring moon, repeated, out-earns a heroic trip on a dangerous one. That is true on every moon in the game, and it is the actual answer to “where is the best scrap.”
Decision matrix: moon by quota and credits
“Best scrap” depends on what the quota is demanding right now, not on a fixed ranking:
| If your quota is… | and credits are… | fly to |
|---|---|---|
| low | tight | Experimentation / Assurance, repeated |
| mid | comfortable | March for volume, or Vow/Offense for better scrap |
| steep | can afford one fee | a single C-tier run (Titan/Artifice) |
| any | desperate | the free moon you have memorised, light high-ratio items only |
The constant is completion: a trip you finish pays the quota, a heroic trip you fail costs the day. Match the moon to the quota, then run it until you want to leave.
Related guides
- Moons tier list — the full risk-versus-return ranking.
- Best moons for beginners — where to start and why.
- How to make money fast — what to carry once you land.