Metal Helm

Details

At 10 weight each it eats carry capacity fast, so bring a mount or park a chest nearby. At 15,600 gold it is worth real money to a merchant.

Metal Helm Crafting Recipe

Ingot×40

Paldium Fragment×20

Ancient Civilization Parts×2

What it really costs, once every sub-recipe is expanded

Ore×80Paldium Fragment×20Ancient Civilization Parts×2

Crafting it takes 62 materials across 3 types, and the bottleneck is almost always the 40× requirement — line that up first and the rest follows.

Where to Find Metal Helm

The recipe is not on the Technology tree — it is locked behind a schematic you have to find first. The best single source is sea base enemy camp boss stashes in the Grasslands at 0.6% per container, and the table below lists every tier and where each one drops.

The 3% against Bushi is the alpha's table rather than the Pal's, which decides where you go: the wild Bushi you run into between levels 25 and 59 carry nothing on this line, and the game places exactly one fixed alpha — a level 25 spawner in the Grasslands, standing on the Sealed Realm of the Swordmaster warp. The timing is the kind part. The Technology tree opens the plain Metal Helm at 23, so the strongest source for the top rung is a two-level walk from the moment the piece becomes yours to build, and it is a scripted fight you travel back to rather than a hunt. Bring a sphere instead of finishing it and one respawn is worth two rolls, since the capture pays the drop table and butchering the caught Pal pays it again — roughly 33 clears at the raw rate becomes nearer 17. Bushi Noct is no substitute: its alpha table holds no schematic at all, so the Cherry Blossom Cave version of this fight pays nothing here.

Bushi is also one of the eighteen Pals that can be guarding Volcanic Cavern, at level 36 to 38 down there, and that cavern's chests draw the Mount Obsidian pool — the same table that stocks this schematic ladder, though only from its Grade 4 chests and only at 0.061% for the top copy. Cavern of the Dunes is the other cave on the route, drawing the Desert pool at 0.055%; no cavern feeds the third pool that stocks this line, so the Forest rows are overworld only. Neither cave is a farm. Which Pal holds a cavern is a roll of eighteen, and a Grade 4 chest is about one copy in sixteen hundred. Go for the eggs, the skill fruits and the boss fight, and count a schematic falling out as change.

Using Metal Helm Well

Two Ancient Civilization Parts are the whole exotic half of the bill, and the ladder only starts charging them near the top — the plain build and the first two schematic rungs want none, the 3★ wants one. That makes crafting an intermediate copy the one clearly avoidable waste, because Parts spent on a helmet you are going to replace never come back, while fusing five schematics into the next rung costs nothing but schematics. The fight that eventually hands you the top schematic covers the craft many times over long before it does: the alpha pays 3 to 5 Parts on every clear at 100%. Worth knowing too that no rung of this helmet carries an equipment passive, unlike the Metal Armor body piece that gains an attack bonus at the top, so everything the Legendary buys you is already in the stat block.

Fourteen levels is the honest span of this piece. The tree offers no other head slot between the plain Metal Helm and the Refined Metal Helm at level 37, and that swap is less clean than it looks: the newer helm arrives at 100 defence and 250 HP but holds 1,500 durability, so it is a genuine defence step that wears through in a little over half the time and hangs 2 more weight on you. Keep the Legendary rather than scrapping it — it is the piece to wear on a long trip away from a bench. Its craft is a 480,000 work job against 15,000 for the base version, thirty-two times the labour for a single slot on the same High-Quality Workbench, so queue it and let a Handiwork crew grind it out rather than holding the button yourself.

Every Tier of Metal Helm

The same piece exists at 5 rarities, and the gap is not cosmetic: defense runs 50 to 80, a 1.6x swing. Which one you end up with is decided by the rarity of the schematic you built from, not by the recipe — so a legendary copy of this is worth more than the next item up built from a common one.

Schematics That Unlock Metal Helm

The Technology tree hands you the plain Metal Helm at level 23 for 2 Technology points, but nothing above that base version — the rarer builds are schematic-only. One schematic grants the recipe, and they are world loot — chests, boss Pals and the late-game pools — rather than anything you research. Higher-rarity copies of the same schematic raise the quality of what you end up crafting.

Fastest route. Two routes to the top-tier Metal Helm schematic, and they are not measured in the same thing: about 33 kills hunting it directly from bushi (alpha), or roughly 85 containers farming the 3★ copy from sea base enemy camp boss stashes in the Grasslands and fusing five. Which is faster depends on how long one of each takes you. Schematics fuse five-to-one, so a lower tier with better odds can beat the top tier outright. Counts are containers of that source, not time.

Schematic	Rarity	Where it comes from
Metal Helm Schematic 4	4★	Grasslands sea base camp stashes, Treasure map digs (tier 1), Forest camp loot +11 more — best 0.6% (grade 2/3/4/5/6) · Supply drops in the Forest (0.07%) · Bushi (3%)

Alternatives and Upgrades

Long-Eared Headband matches it exactly at 80 defense — those two differ in what they resist and what they weigh, not in raw defense, so picking between them is a swap rather than an upgrade. The next real step is Monarch's Crown at 90; below it is Penking Cap at 80.

Long-Eared Headband80Penking Cap80

Other head pieces at a similar tier, for when you want to weigh this against the rest of its class:

Auri HatAxel HatBjorn HatLily HatMarcus HatSaya HatVictor HatZenara HatZoe HatFeathered Hair BandBowler HatDazzi Hat