Star Citizen guide #14: salvage, one of the most profitable careers

Salvage means recovering materials from ship wrecks to sell them. Low risk, profitable and relaxing: it’s often the career that gets a bank account off the ground.

The Vulture, the ideal ship

• The Drake Vulture is a solo salvage ship, sold in the game’s ship shops. The easiest way to try it: fly with a friend who owns one.
• To go further as a group, the Aegis Reclaimer is a huge salvage ship that needs a crew.

Scraping a hull

1. Find a wreck: a salvage contract in the mobiGlas, a ship graveyard, or a wreck left after a fight.
2. Switch to salvage mode, get close and turn on the scraping beams on the hull.
3. Sweep the hull methodically: the recovered material fills RMC (recycled material composite) boxes in your hold.
4. Depending on the ship and game version, structural salvage (disintegrating the wreck) also yields construction materials.

Components

• Before scraping everything, check whether the wreck still has components (shields, power plants, weapons). With the tractor beam, you can remove them.
• Some shops buy them back, or you can keep them to fit out your own ships.

Selling your salvage

• RMC and construction materials sell at commodity terminals in many stations.
• Compare prices between two or three nearby stations: the differences can be large.
• Don’t fill your hold to the point of putting your ship at risk: a full Vulture that blows up means hours of work lost.

💡 Beacon tip: wrecks left behind after player fights are often the most profitable. As a group, a combat pilot and a salvager make an excellent team.

Read next: Careers overview · Trading · Renting a ship

Written for Star Citizen Alpha 4.10.2 (October 2026). The game changes with every patch: if something has moved, tell us in a reply and we’ll update the guide.