History Main / RefiningResources

* In ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'', the [[IWasToldThereWouldBeCake Cake]] has one of the most complicated crafting procedures in the game. The end result is a food item that can almost fully heal you. It requires 3 buckets of milk, 2 sugar, 1 egg and 3 wheat. While some ingredients are, although somewhat uncommon, relatively simple to obtain (i.e. eggs are laid by chickens, sugar is refined at the workbench from sugar cane, which grows near water), others are a bit more complex:
** Wheat - Grown using dirt, a source of water, a hoe, and seeds. The last one is initially obtained by smashing tall grass.
** Milk - Mine 9 pieces of iron ore with a stone pickaxe, smelt them in a furnace with a fuel source (coal, wood) to get 9 iron ingots, craft them into 3 buckets at a workbench, then finally find some cows to obtain 3 buckets of milk.

* VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}: Part of the economic overhaul in 2.2 was the addition of several advanced resources refined from minerals. Alloys are used to produce starbases and ships, consumer goods are consumed by the population to keep them happy, and “strategic” resources like exotic gases, rare crystals, and volatile motes are needed for advanced buildings and ships. In addition research jobs now consume consumer goods.

* ''VideoGame/VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun'' has 47 different types of resources. A lot of the basic ones are required to create the more advanced ones. (culminating in something like 4-5 steps for the most "high tech" stuff like Radios and Tanks) Due to the highly complex market mechanic, and to represent the situation in the time-period depicted, it's not always most profitable to immediately produce the high-tech stuff though, since demand for basic resources like lumber and Iron will be very high at the beginning of the game.
** Its sequel retains this system, albeit with a smoother market simulation. The "POP Demand Mod" for this game adds even more resources, as well as far more ways to produce them.
* At least the older ''VideoGame/TheSettlers'' games, 1 to 4 runs on this trope, first games added complexity by requiring roads to connect workshops. The player has to produce long chains of resources, and every stage needs special buildings and special tools which require special resources to be made. The entire chain reaches its apex in military and religious production.

* In VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram, ore can be mined from planets, moons, and asteroids and converted into propellant, based on the concept of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization In-Situ Resource Utilization]]. Mods like the [[https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/154587-18x-modular-kolonization-system-mks/ Modular Kolonization System]] add more complex refinement chains and the ability to manufacture spacecraft outside your homeworld.

* ''VideoGame/KnightsAndMerchants'' plays it relatively straight mostly, up to the point you realise your warriors are also some kind of resource. It may not be easily seen by beginner players because they are supplied with some initial resources though. For example, getting an axe chevalier requires a horse, an axe, a leather armor, a wooden shield and a recruit. Axes and shields are made of wood, which is made of logs. In order to get a leather armor, you need a piece of leather, which you get when you kill a pig. In order to get pigs and horses, you need wheat farms. Finally, if you want to get the recruit, you need to pay him in gold, which is made of gold ore being burnt with carbon. Every conversion presented here requires separate building and worker, which you need to build or hire...

* ''VideoGame/{{Valheim}}'''s resources are all around the world, but usually require gear from a previous tech level to obtain, e.g. birch and oak trees are too hard for stone and flint axes to chop down, so you need a bronze axe, which requires copper and tin. The ores need to smelted, which needs stone and coal (made from wood) and parts from fire elementals called surtlings, and to get them in the first place you need a pickaxe, which is first obtained after killing a giant lightning-spewing stag to use his antlers. Naturally, getting these resources is often dangerous in and of itself (trolls usually hang out near ore deposits, surtling cores are found in skeleton-haunted graves, etc.)

** Turned UpToEleven with certain mods. Industrialcraft is particularly brutal here. Want the top-tier energy storage device? Here's how you do it: Extract rubber from sticky resin, create wire with copper ingots, combine the rubber and the wire to make insulated wires. Make four of those. Now take 4 diamonds and surround them with redstone to make energy crystals, put 8 iron through the furnace again to make it refined iron. Use the 8 iron to craft a machine block, then put the crystals and the insulated wires around the machine block to make the second-tier energy storage device. Now combine 6 insulated copper wire, 1 refined iron, and 2 redstone to make a basic circuit. Make 13 of those. Add 4 redstone, 2 glowstone dust, and 2 lapis lazuli to one of the circuits to make an advanced circuit. Make one of the aforementioned machine blocks again, then craft 3 refined iron, 3 bronze, and 3 tin to make two mixed metal ingots, then put them into a compressor to make alloy. Take 16 coal dust, craft that into 4 carbon fibers, make that into 2 carbon mesh plates. Combine the machine block, the alloy, and the plates to make an advanced machine block. Now, make 6 more of the previously-mentioned energy crystals, then combine 6 lapis lazuli and 2 of the basic circuits on each energy crystal to make it a lapotron crystal. Combine your 6 lapotron crystals, advanced machine, and advanced circuit with your second-tier storage device to make the top-tier energy storage. [[SelfDemonstratingArticle If your eyes went cross-eyed reading this, you probably shouldn't play this mod]]. This, of course, doesn't count all of the stuff you need beforehand, like macerators and compressors and a power supply worthy of this top-tier storage.

The bigger and more complicated brother of YouRequireMoreVespeneGas. In a game with this trope there will probably be a lot of resources... Probably some that are "basic" and some that are more "advanced", the "basic" resources will then be used to create the "advanced" ones, which are usually needed for more advanced units or a considerable economic boost.

* ''VideoGame/{{Achron}}'' has a strange variant of this trope. All three factions can convert QP (Quark-gluon Plasma) into LC (Liquid Crystal), which is tantamount to converting the more "advanced" / rare resource into the more "basic" / common one... inefficiently to boot. This has less to do with game balance and more to do with [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness realism]], since [[DevelopersForesight it stands to reason that a player should be able to convert a more refined version of a resource into a less-refined variant in case of an emergency]].

** ''VideoGame/EmperorRiseOfTheMiddleKingdom'''s resources actually evolve along with the timeline: at first tax records are kept on wooden slats, but once paper is invented (made from hemp) that's all they'll use. Weapons are made from copper, then iron, then steel (requires wood and iron).

* In VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram, ore can be mined from planets, moons, and asteroids and converted into propellant, based on the concept of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization In-Situ Resource Utilization]]. Mods like [[https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/154587-18x-modular-kolonization-system-mks/ Modular Kolonization Systems]] add more complex refinement and manufacturing chains.

* In VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram, ore can be mined from planets, moons, and asteroids and converted into propellant, based on the concept of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization In-Situ Resource Utilization]]. Mods like [[https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/154587-18x-modular-kolonization-system-mks/ Modular Kolonization Systems add more complex refinement and manufacturing chains.

* VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}: Part of the economic overhaul in 2.2 was the addition of several advanced resources refined from minerals. Alloys are used to produce starbases and ships, consumer goods are consumed by the population to keep them happy, “strategic” resources like exotic gasses, rare crystals, and volatile motes are needed for advanced buildings and ships. In addition research jobs consume consumer goods.

* ''VideoGame/{{Factorio}}'' tasks the player with building a massive factory to set up defenses for a colonization fleet, using only local materials. All building materials are refined from ores and other useful materials; iron, copper, coal, stone, wood, and crude oil. Ores need to be processed into plate metal, which can then be used for a variety of construction tasks. The electrical engine unit for logistics drones, for example, require a standard engine unit (built from steel refined from iron, iron pipes, and iron gears), lubrication (refined from heavy oil), and circuit boards (using copper wires and iron plates). Factories often have enormous furnace areas for processing ore shipped in via train from distance mines.

* ''VideoGame/{{Deadlock}}'' allows you to refine iron into steel and [[UnObtainium endurium into triidium]]. Although not required, doing so makes more efficient use of your resources.

* ''VideoGame/Zombidle'''s ItemCrafting system relies on villager ghosts, which can be picked up once you get the right item and are used in the highest-level items such as shards, which multiplying DPS or money gained by 3. Three ghost items can be refined into a more concentrated one (ghost->ectoplasm->ectoplasm ball->ectoplasm cube->ectoplasm prism), for a total of 81 ghosts and 1 hour per item. This took a ridiculously long time before upgrades were added that allowed creating multiple items at once and harvesting several ghosts per villager.

* A key feature of ''VideoGame/{{Pharaoh}}'', which has a large number of different resources representing both raw and processed materials; which ones you collect/export and which you must import depends on the local natural resources of the map you're playing. The processed goods are the ones your citizens want, of course, and each one has a specific industrial building dedicated to producing it from the appropriate raw material. It's also possible to [[AnEntrepreneurIsYou make a profitable industry]] out of RefiningResources; importing flax, building Weavers and exporting linen, for example.

* In ''SidMeier's VideoGame/{{Colonization}}'', the economy is built on this trope. In theory you ''could'' just sell raw materials to and buy manufactured goods from Europe, but it's much more beneficial in the long term to build your own industrial base in your colonies, especially considering you'll have to fight your mother country in the endgame. Of course, advanced resources mostly are still traded away, but for a greater profit. The only refinements used up by your own colonies are Lumber → [[labelnote:Hammers]]used to construct buildings, as well as ships once you build your own Shipyards[[/labelnote]], Ore → [[labelnote:Tools]]spent by Pioneer jobs or production of ships, cannons and non-basic buildings[[/labelnote]] → [[labelnote:Muskets]]needed to to equip soldiers and dragoons[[/labelnote]], and [[labelnote:Food]]allows colonies to survive and grow without immigration[[/labelnote]] → [[labelnote:Horses]]needed to equip dragoons and scouts[[/labelnote]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Achron}}'' has a strange variant of this trope. All three factions can convert QP (Quark-gluon Plasma) into LC (Liquid Crystal), which is tantamount to converting the more "advanced" / rare resource into the more "basic" / common one... inefficiently to boot. This has less to do with game balance and more to do with [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness realism]], since [[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything it stands to reason that a player should be able to convert a more refined version of a resource into a less-refined variant in case of an emergency]].