Klingon Mining Drill is a Rare Forbidden Tech, and it is built for one job: pulling more out of every node you sit on. Its first buff raises your crystal mining rate, and later tiers stack on cargo capacity, general mining rate, and protected cargo. Put it on the miner you fly most and a normal mining run comes home noticeably heavier. If crystal is what your base keeps running short of, this is a solid piece to chase.
What Klingon Mining Drill does
The drill leads with crystal. That buff is live from tier 1, so the piece does useful work the moment you slot it, and it scales further than anything else on the item as you level it. The other three buffs arrive later and broaden it from a crystal specialist into a general mining upgrade: more cargo space to hold the haul, a faster overall mining rate, and more of that cargo protected when someone decides your miner looks like a target.
| Buff | Unlocks at tier | Unlock value | Max value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Increases Crystal Mining rate | 1 | 50% | 1,300% |
| Increases Cargo capacity | 3 | 20% | 200% |
| Increases Mining rate | 6 | 50% | 900% |
| Increases Protected Cargo | 8 | 50% | 1,000% |
Those values are current as of the latest game data. In practice the crystal buff and the general mining rate buff both cut the time a node takes, while cargo capacity decides whether you can finish a rich node in one sitting instead of flying home half full. Protected cargo is the insurance line: it does nothing for your speed, but it decides how much you keep if a raider catches you loaded.
How to get Klingon Mining Drill
Forbidden Tech is unlocked with rarity fragments in the Forbidden Tech refinery. For a Rare piece like this one, that means Rare Forbidden Fragments, which the game describes as coming from Q’s Trials and from special rewards. Fragments are the gate, so the practical answer to “how do I get the drill” is to keep running the content that pays Rare Forbidden Fragments and take them to the refinery.
Two other currencies matter before you can fly it. Forbidden Tech Fusion Rods unlock the Forbidden Tech slots on your ships, and they are also what you spend to pull a piece back off a ship later. Rods come from the Forbidden Tech refinery and the store. If every slot on your miner is already filled, budget rods alongside fragments, otherwise you will end up with a drill and nowhere to put it.
Upgrading Klingon Mining Drill
Two separate tracks move this piece forward. Tiering up raises the level cap and switches on the buffs that are still dormant, so tiers 3, 6, and 8 are the moments the drill actually changes shape. Leveling up does the scaling: every buff already unlocked climbs toward its max value as the item level rises toward 60. Tier-ups are paid with Forbidden Tech Reactors and Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalysts; levels are paid with Reactors and Forbidden Tech Protomatter.
| Ebene | Level cap | Kosten |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | Starting tier, no cost |
| 7 | 35 | 32 Forbidden Tech Reactor, 4,200 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst |
| 12 | 60 | 32 Forbidden Tech Reactor, 4,900 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst |
Taking the drill from tier 1 to tier 12 costs 352 Forbidden Tech Reactor and 57,000 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst in total. Running it from level 2 to level 60 costs another 1,856 Forbidden Tech Reactor and 475,975 Forbidden Tech Protomatter. Reactors come from Daily Goals and the store, catalysts from the refinery and the store, and protomatter from Q’s Trials and the store. Reactors are the shared cost across both tracks, which makes them the resource most likely to stall you.
One more item is worth knowing about: Probability Devices raise the chance a Forbidden Tech upgrade attempt succeeds. Upgrades are attempts, not guarantees, so hold onto devices for the tier pushes you care about rather than burning them early.
Best ships and uses for Klingon Mining Drill
This belongs on a dedicated miner, not a combat ship. Every buff on it is a mining buff, so slotting it anywhere else wastes the piece entirely. The obvious home is whichever survey ship you park on crystal nodes, since the crystal rate buff is the largest number on the item by a wide margin and it is live from tier 1.
Once you reach tier 6 the general mining rate buff makes the drill useful on any node type, so a single well-leveled drill can follow your main miner across gas, ore, and crystal instead of sitting idle when you switch materials. If your server is aggressive about hitting loaded miners, the protected cargo buff at tier 8 changes how much a hit actually costs you, which matters more than raw speed on a busy map.
Klingon Mining Drill in Star Trek
There is no Klingon mining drill on screen with this name. The item is a game concept, and its in-game description sells it as advanced Klingon drilling equipment able to cut through the toughest planetary crusts.
The idea still sits comfortably in canon. Klingon mining is a real fixture of the shows and films: the dilithium mines of the Rura Penthe penal asteroid, worked by prisoners in brutal cold in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and Praxis, the Klingon moon whose over-mined energy production facility exploded and pushed the Empire toward peace with the Federation. Aggressive extraction, pushed past what the rock can take, is very much a Klingon story.
Is Klingon Mining Drill worth it?
If you mine seriously, yes. It is a Rare piece with a crystal buff that runs to four figures at max, and it starts contributing at tier 1 rather than making you invest before it does anything. Players who log in mainly to run nodes should take it deep. If your account lives on hostiles and armadas and your mining is incidental, put your fragments somewhere they will see more use.