Magnet

Magnet is a Tier 2 basic crafting material smelted from Iron Ore. It can be produced in a Smelter or directly by Icarus' Replicator, and it serves as one of the earliest processed resources in the production chain.

Its main purpose is to feed downstream manufacturing. Magnet is used directly to make Magnetic Coil, Super-Magnetic Ring, and Plasma Capsule, but in practice its importance is even greater because Magnetic Coil is itself a common ingredient in many advanced items, including Electromagnetic Matrix and Electric Motor. Because of that, Magnet production is usually scaled far beyond its own immediate needs.

A Magnet recipe takes 1.5 seconds per craft instead of the usual 1.0 second found on many early smelting recipes. This means a Smelter working on Magnet produces at a slower effective rate, and you need 50% more Smelters than a standard 1.0-second recipe would require to match the same output. The same ratio applies when planning belt-fed smelting lines: one full Conveyor Belt supports fewer Smelters than many players expect if they are comparing it to faster recipes.

• One Magnet line consumes Iron Ore at the same rate it outputs Magnet, so a 1:1 ore-to-magnet conversion is easy to balance.
• On Conveyor Belt Mk.I, 40 Iron Ore per minute becomes 40 Magnet per minute, supported by 9 Smelters.
• On Conveyor Belt Mk.II, 720 items per minute supports 18 Smelters.
• On Conveyor Belt Mk.III, 1800 items per minute supports 45 Smelters.

Because Magnet is so tightly tied to Magnetic Coil production, it is often better to process it close to the ore source and then move the finished product onward. This keeps logistics simpler and reduces the burden on later manufacturing stages, especially once Copper Ingot is also being delivered for Magnetic Coil production. If you are short on storage or transport capacity, converting Magnet into Magnetic Coil early is usually more efficient than stockpiling large amounts of raw Magnet.

In short, Magnet is a foundational early-game material whose real value comes from how many later recipes depend on it. Its slow smelting speed is the main thing to watch when designing production lines, but its 1:1 ore conversion makes it straightforward to scale once enough Smelters are in place.