The Crystal Warehouse sets how much crystal a planet is allowed to hold. Every planet starts with room for 100,000 crystal and no warehouse at all. Each level of the warehouse raises that ceiling, and when the ceiling is reached the Crystal Mine stops. On any planet you actually use, the warehouse does not stay optional for long.
You build and upgrade it on the Buildings page. It has no building or tech requirements, so it is available from your first day.
What it does
One thing: it raises the crystal cap on the planet it is built on. It does not speed anything up, it produces nothing, it uses no energy, and it does not protect a single crystal from being taken.
The cap is per planet and per resource. The Ore Warehouse and Hydrogen Storage do the same job for the other two resources, and each one has its own level. Raising your Crystal Warehouse does nothing for ore.
When the store fills up
The mine stops. Not slows down, stops. That includes the free 20 crystal an hour every planet gets for nothing, so a full store means zero crystal out of that planet until you do something about it.
Two places in the game tell you. The crystal figure in the top right turns red once you are at or over the cap, and the Storage panel on the Buildings page picks up a "Capacity Exceeded" warning.
You can end up over the cap, not just at it. Plunder, mission rewards, the Lucky Draw and incoming transports all ignore the cap. Nothing is lost when that happens. The mine just sits idle until you are back under.
Three ways to get moving again: spend the crystal, move it off the planet with a transport or a resource save, or buy another warehouse level.
Costs and capacities
The cost doubles every level:
Ore = 2,000 × 2Level - 1
Crystal = 1,000 × 2Level - 1
Capacity grows by a factor of 1.6 a level, rounded up:
Capacity = 50,000 × (round up(1.6Level) + 1)
Which is the same as counting up from the 100,000 a bare planet already has:
Capacity = 100,000 + 50,000 × (round up(1.6Level) - 1)
Table
| Level | Ore cost | Crystal cost | Capacity | Gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | - | - | 100,000 | - |
| 1 | 2,000 | 1,000 | 150,000 | +50,000 |
| 2 | 4,000 | 2,000 | 200,000 | +50,000 |
| 3 | 8,000 | 4,000 | 300,000 | +100,000 |
| 4 | 16,000 | 8,000 | 400,000 | +100,000 |
| 5 | 32,000 | 16,000 | 600,000 | +200,000 |
| 6 | 64,000 | 32,000 | 900,000 | +300,000 |
| 7 | 128,000 | 64,000 | 1,400,000 | +500,000 |
| 8 | 256,000 | 128,000 | 2,200,000 | +800,000 |
| 9 | 512,000 | 256,000 | 3,500,000 | +1,300,000 |
| 10 | 1,024,000 | 512,000 | 5,550,000 | +2,050,000 |
| 11 | 2,048,000 | 1,024,000 | 8,850,000 | +3,300,000 |
| 12 | 4,096,000 | 2,048,000 | 14,150,000 | +5,300,000 |
| 13 | 8,192,000 | 4,096,000 | 22,600,000 | +8,450,000 |
| 14 | 16,384,000 | 8,192,000 | 36,100,000 | +13,500,000 |
| 15 | 32,768,000 | 16,384,000 | 57,700,000 | +21,600,000 |
| 16 | 65,536,000 | 32,768,000 | 92,300,000 | +34,600,000 |
| 17 | 131,072,000 | 65,536,000 | 147,650,000 | +55,350,000 |
| 18 | 262,144,000 | 131,072,000 | 236,200,000 | +88,550,000 |
| 19 | 524,288,000 | 262,144,000 | 377,850,000 | +141,650,000 |
| 20 | 1,048,576,000 | 524,288,000 | 604,550,000 | +226,700,000 |
There is no level cap. The formulas keep going as far as you want to take them. In practice the fields on the planet run out long before the maths does, and most planets in the game never get past level 10.
Where it stops paying
Cost doubles every level, which is 100% more each time, while capacity only grows about 60% a level. Those two curves cross, and they cross early:
- Up to level 11, an upgrade costs less ore and crystal than the extra room it buys.
- From level 12 on it costs more. Level 12 is 6,144,000 ore and crystal for 5,300,000 more room.
- By level 16 one upgrade costs more than the whole warehouse can hold. That is 98,304,000 spent for a 92,300,000 ceiling.
That is not an argument for stopping at 11. Late game you will happily pay over the odds to hold a fleet's worth of crystal in one place. It is an argument for building the level when you need it and not before. A warehouse level bought a week early is a week of ore and crystal that could have gone into mines or ships instead.
Building it
Each level takes one field, the same as every other building, so a level 12 warehouse is 12 fields that are not growing anything.
Build time depends on the planet:
Hours = (Ore + Crystal) ÷ (5,000 × (Capitol level + 1) × 2Foundry level)
A planet only builds one thing at a time, so a long warehouse upgrade blocks every other building and mine on that planet until it finishes. You can cancel a running upgrade and get the whole cost back, or pay credits to finish it early. Anything with under five minutes left finishes for free.
Tearing down a level costs a third of what that level cost to build and takes a third of the time, and you pay that, there is no refund. What you get back is the field. It is a repair for a planet you overbuilt, not a way to move resources around.
The More Info button on the warehouse gives you the next few levels and what they cost, plus the teardown price for the level you are on.
The Trade Merchant limit
The warehouse also caps what the Trade Merchant will hand you. The most crystal a single trade can give you is your crystal capacity minus what is already on the planet. With a level 8 warehouse holding 2,200,000 and 200,000 crystal on hand, the biggest trade you can make for crystal is 2,000,000. Ask for more and the merchant caps the deal at what fits.
Going the other way there is no limit at all. You can trade away every crystal on the planet whatever your warehouse level is. Trading is capped on the receiving side only.
If the planet is already at or over its crystal cap you get "Crystal storage is full. Upgrade your storage to trade for this resource." and the trade will not go through.
Storage is not protection
Everything sitting on a planet is a target. An attack that wins takes up to 50% of the ore, crystal and hydrogen on the planet, 55% if the two of you are at war, limited by the cargo space the attacker brought with them. A bigger warehouse means a bigger pile to take. On its own it makes you a better target, not a safer one.
The building that hides resources is the Resource Den. It shields a fixed amount spread across all three resources and what it shields cannot be plundered. The two buildings do different jobs and you want both.
Resources in flight are not on the planet, so anything sitting in a fleet's cargo on a resource save or a harvest cannot be plundered either. That is still the cheapest storage in the game if you are only trying to survive the night.
Moons and platforms
You cannot build a Crystal Warehouse on a moon. Moons only take the Lunar Base, Capitol, Oracle, Jump Gate and Lunar Dock, so every moon is stuck at the base 100,000 crystal cap forever. That does not destroy anything. Ship a million crystal to a moon and it sits there quite happily, because moons have no mines and nothing is trying to top the pile up. It does mean the Trade Merchant will not give you crystal on a moon once you are past 100,000.
A deployed Hephaestus platform has no Buildings page at all. It carries a flat 1,000,000,000 of each resource instead.
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