https://youtu.be/4L1M6mbvDxY?si=SCCyU4VTTOC5wr__

If you don't want to read, I encourage you to watch my video instead! :)

In the video, you will get a lot more interesting information behind why I chose these routes over some others, and I personally think the video is a lot of fun to watch! Anyways, let's get into it.

Only two relics are really important to know about for these farms:

• The "Eye of the Beast+" relic
  Increases material gains by 20%.
  
• The "Headless Gold Statue+"
  Only needed for the AFK farm. Makes 30% of kills give out drops, where it then rolls a 50/50, where it's either a Material drop, or a Scrap drop.
  The amount of Scrap is the same no matter the enemy, always around 30-70.
  The amount of Materials entirely depends on the area.

The previous best active route (shown in my video) was nerfed to the ground in update 1.1.0.
So, here is the CURRENT BEST ROUTE for grinding materials in update 1.1.0!

Important relics for maximum efficiency:

• Eye of the Beast+ relic
  
• Leg Enhancement Gear relic
  
• Enhancement Gear relic

With the "Eye of the Beast+" relic, this route produces around 312 000 materials per hour, or around 5200 materials per minute.

Follow the purple line below, destroying all the crystal lamps. For a full run of the route, feel free to watch my video and look at the pinned comment!

This farm was heavily nerfed in terms of material income in the 1.0.4 update.

Credit goes to "lentinant" for originally coming up with the idea for this AFK farm.
This part of the guide is a culmination of mine and @lentinant's knowledge.
If you are struggling to stay alive during AFK (although that should not be a problem), @lentinant along with some other commentors discovered a way to stay 100% safe during the farm. So feel free to also check out @lentinant's guide!

First of all, difficulty has no impact on material gains. For that reason, turn all the difficulty modifiers down as low as possible to avoid dying. The only exception is the "Enemy Attack Frequency" modifier. Crank this one all the way up. If you are curious as to why, please watch my video!

To make the farm work in the first place, you must equip the "Headless Gold Statue" relic. The "Eye of the Beast+" relic and the "Eye of the Homunculus+" is also recommended for the extra 20% material and scrap boost.

Next, just make your build as healthy and defensive as possible. There is no exact blueprint here, because with all the modifiers all the way down, you won't have any trouble surviving. The only thing to keep in mind is that you want to have enough attack boosting relics so that the rats die relatively quickly. This is very important for the efficiency of the farm. If you are interested in my preferred loadout, again, just watch the video!

Important note:
If you are follow my build from the video and you want that extra 20+ scrap boost from using the "Eye of the Homunculus+" relic, I highly recommend switching it for "Declan's Ring" relic.

To start the farm, follow the purple route below and place Lorna in front of the rat spawner in the Biological Research Facility.

The reason we chose this one is because the spawner is against the wall, preventing the rats from going out of aggro-range. Credit for @lentinant for figuring this one out!

Before going AFK, make sure that most of the rats are not landing in between Lorna's beams. Some are fine, but if you want the AFK session to be as efficient as possible, try to minimize this.
A nice setup I found to place Lorna well, is to place her when Lilac stands inside the 4th fence post from the right.

As a side note:
There are also some spawners down in the Subterranean Waterway, but the rats there only drop 24 materials on average. That corresponds to only 8000 materials/h, which is really bad and truly a waste of time. It does produce the same amount of scraps, however, at around 11000 scraps/h. So, you could grind early game AFK scraps here, but considering that it's so much faster to grind scraps manually, I don't really see a point.

With the "Eye of the Beast+" relic, this farm produces around 42 000 materials per hour, or around 700 materials per minute.
With the "Eye of the Homunculus+" relic, this farm also produces around 14 000 scrap per hour, or around 230 scrap per minute.

This is by far the best early game farming route you can run, all the way until you reach the Central Stratum. It's also super simple to run and accessible right at the start of the game.

Although this farm is still the best early game farm, I DO NOT recommend actually using it. It is MUCH more profitable (and more fun) to just play the game normally while breaking objects as you go. Only use this farm if you are missing just a tiny bit to buy what you need.

The reason for this, is that the farm's material income is heavily dependent on which chapter you are on. Also, destroying the same object within a certain timeframe also reduces its material value from breaking it. Refer to testing below:


Without the "Eye of the Beast" relic (because you most likely won't run this route with it), this route produces around 39 000 materials per hour, or around 650 materials per minute.

Just follow the red line below and destroy all the crates!

This was a lot of fun and hard work to make, and I hope you enjoyed the final result.

As stated in the guide introduction, feel free to look at all the data I gathered to make this guide/video. My google sheet has a lot of interesting stats and graphs, and it should prove quite useful if any of you out there decide to try and find an even better material route to run.

Thank you for reading/watching :)