Start with basic resource extraction and gradually build a more complex economy. Explore the depths of the Wall, search for stable resource deposits, and develop the infrastructure needed to use them efficiently. The official framing for progression is a set of production chains — raw materials feed processing stages which feed the things the colony actually needs.
Technological progress improves core systems and unlocks new possibilities: enhance resource gathering and processing, reduce costs, increase efficiency, strengthen the colony against external threats. Some technologies accelerate infrastructure development, others improve defence, automate key processes, or expand the area you can explore. The full release shipped an expanded research tree with brand-new structures — the word "expanded" implies the tree was already meaningful in the demo.
The research achievements name four tiers of progress: the first research, an Advanced Lab, a High-Tech Lab, and completing all research. A two-lab progression with a third tier beyond it is a standard technology-tree shape, and the achievement for finishing everything confirms the tree is finite and completable.
Miners extract resources in the mines, and the June demo patch fixed miners failing to collect mined resources automatically when available, plus miners flying around empty excavation points. Laser drills appear as their own achievement, marking a specific extraction technology distinct from the basic miner operation — a jump in throughput on a fixed resource deposit.
A Stockpile has its own achievement, and the demo patch fixed save/load bugs affecting resource amounts in additional storages — evidence that storage capacity is a real constraint you configure rather than an infinite sink.
Greenhouses are the food-production building, and they come in Small, Medium and Large variants with different output values. The Day One Update both corrected their displayed output values and adjusted the values themselves — food output was being rebalanced at launch, which makes sense for a game where food shortages are a primary riot trigger.
Community guides consistently describe six resource categories: Metals, Minerals, Energy Cores, Biomass, Rations and Water. That list is a guide-site summary rather than an official nomenclature sheet — Alawar has never published one — so read it as the shape of the economy, not as quoted game text.
A complete list of raw resources, ore types and processing recipes has not been published by Alawar. The Greenhouse sizes and the Laser Drill are the only concrete production numbers the official channels have given.