The Thumper is the drill you make in the opening hours of Breathedge 2, and it is one of those tools the game quietly expects you to have before it will let you move on. It is cheap, it takes about two minutes of scavenging outside the train, and skipping it stalls you at the Cutter.
Quick answer: Craft the Thumper in the Tools tab of the crafting menu for 4 Metal and 2 Plastic. Metal comes from smashing floating barrels outside the train with the Scrap tool, and Plastic comes from the black debris drifting near the wreckage.
Thumper recipe and where each material comes from
Both ingredients are common junk resources found within a short flight of the train, so there is no need to travel far or unlock anything else first.
| Material | Amount | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|
| Metal | 4 | Break the metal barrels floating in space just outside the train, using the Scrap tool |
| Plastic | 2 | Break the black plastic debris objects drifting near the wrecks |
Barrels and debris both use the same interaction prompt. Float up to one, hold it in place if it drifts, and use the Break option until the resource pops out and goes into your inventory.
Unlock the Thumper recipe before you go scavenging
The Thumper does not appear in the crafting menu from the very start. Three things need to happen first, and they all fall inside the game’s opening stretch.
- Finish the first quest the game gives you.
- Craft the Scrap tool, the crowbar-style scrapper that breaks objects apart.
- Poke around the train and its immediate surroundings until the recipe registers.
Once that is done, open the crafting menu and look under Tools. The Thumper sits alongside the Cutter and the Scrap tool, listed at 4 kg with a Charge value of 100/100 and an Extraction rating of 5.
How to gather the materials and craft the Thumper
Confirming it worked, and why the recipe might be missing
You will know the craft went through when the Thumper appears in your inventory as a 1×1 tool with a full 100/100 charge, and when the hotbar slot you assigned it to shows the drill icon. Equipping it swaps your held item from the Scrap tool to the drill.
If the Thumper is not listed in the Tools tab at all, the recipe is simply not unlocked yet. Go back and confirm you have finished the first quest and actually crafted the Scrap tool, then spend a little more time investigating the train before checking the menu again. If it is listed but greyed out, you are short on Metal or Plastic, and the counts on the recipe will tell you which one.
What the Thumper unlocks next
The immediate payoff is the Cutter, which cannot be built until the Thumper exists. The Cutter carries a higher Extraction rating of 9 against the Thumper’s 5, so the drill is a stepping stone rather than a permanent upgrade.
The drill is also your entry point to Aluminum. Those silver-flecked deposits on the asteroids and the large white rocks in the debris field cannot be harvested by hand, and early deposits give roughly three Aluminum apiece. Since Aluminum feeds into gear like the upgraded spacesuit and helmet, it is worth stripping any deposit you fly past once the Thumper is on your hotbar.
Note: the drill runs on a charge meter rather than durability, so keep an eye on that 100/100 value while you are mining a deposit dry.
All told, this is a five-minute detour that opens up the rest of the early tool tree. Grab the four Metal and two Plastic on your first trip outside, and you will not have to make a second one.
