Countless usable items, upgrades, and pointless oddities that serve no real purpose can be found across various playthroughs of Nier: Automata‘s main and side quests. One such item found exclusively on your second playthrough (and later) after finishing 2B’s first storyline is the machine core.
Although listed as a crafting material, machine cores don’t appear to actually be a usable item, but rather are a material meant for selling to make a quick buck.
A Machine Core
Farming And Selling Machine Cores in Nier: Automata
Most standard enemies don’t drop machine cores. So to effectively farm them, you need to head to specific areas and know what to look for. Here’s how you can get machine cores to drop most reliably:
- Goliath Tank in the Amusement Park
- Gold Tanks in City Ruins, Flooded City, and Desert Zone
- Robot enemies in cavern area headed towards Emil’s House
- Respawning large robots near the Desert Housing Complex
- Awarded for completing Threat Disposal main quest
- Awarded for completing Idiot Savant side quest
The drop rate is fairly low, but if you take on the enemies and quests listed above you have a stable method of earning machine cores more quickly.
Farming Machine Cores in the Desert Zone
After you’ve got a couple dozen, what’s an android to do with these seemingly useless parts?
When you first come across these valuable little components they will sell for 15k a piece — not a bad profit, but resist the temptation and don’t sell ’em quite yet! Wait until you get to Route C and you can instead sell them for 22k a pop at the vendor there! You just significantly increased your profits with very little effort.
Have you come across any other reliable machine core farming sites? Let us know in the comments below!
More Nier: Automata Help
Still looking for more ways to master this creative cross-genre title? Be sure to check out our other walkthroughs:
- Using Nier: Automata’s save system
- Nier: Automata endings guide
- YoRHa Betrayers side quest walkthrough
- Heritage of the Past relic locations guide
- A traveler’s guide to the many fine butts of Nier: Automata
