Forum: gaming.stackexchange.com
Tags: <starbound>
Title: How can I most effectively farm Pixels?
Question: I need a lot of Pixels to craft the various shiny weapons and armor that I have my eye on. However, the only ways that I can find to acquire Pixels are by killing enemies repeatedly, and by finding capsules underground. Neither method seems particularly quick, and frequent combat has its own associated risks.  Is there a better way? What is the fastest way to earn Pixels?

Answers:
sents: text: You can use the refinery to turn excess ore into pixels fairly effectively.
text: To get this, you will need the tier 2 crafting station, which you can only access after defeating the first boss.
text: This is, however, a very effective way to get extra bits out of excess ore.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/63182/James Travis
score: 10
sents: text: Exploring the surface for large buildings can prove quite fruitful, as many of the chests and containers therein will contain large caches of pixels.
text: Take them.
text: All of them.
text: As of right now (shortly after the Frustrated Koala update), NPCs don't even get mad if you take their stuff from their containers.
text: If you cant' find such structures easily, there's another way to find large pixel caches.
text: Dig deeper down.
text: The world I am on has a huge underground cavern that has tons and TONS of capsules full of pixels.
text: dig down deep enough, and you'll start running into them all over the place.
text: This area is dangerous though, so be prepared.
text: For extra bits, make sure you kill monsters with a strong Melee weapon, which provides a high chance of them dropping bits (with ranged weapons, the chance for bits to drop is lower due to a higher chance to drop meat and leather instead).
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/55285/Zibbobz
score: 10
sents: text: Search for a Sewer, but don't kill the po golems , search the whole sewer and lead all the po golems to one spot.
text: If the po golems can't hit you, they will start throwing small versions of The po Dig a 4/6 wide gab between you and the po golems so the small po's fall in.
text: The small po's can be killed easy and you can collect the pixels quite easy!
text: Make sure the range attacks of the golems can't hit you by placing one block in front of their face
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/73187/Krijgwat
score: 6
sents: text: If you don't mind slaughtering NPC - killing guards yelds quite a lot of pixels.
text: Kill everyone you see.
text: Guards with sniper rifles can be dangerous.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/20757/Ivan Solntsev
score: 1
sents: text: Kill everything you see and pick all the ores that you find, and then turn the ores into pixels in the refinery and voila!
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/66070/Miosad
score: 1
sents: text: Head to the highest sector you can currently access, then look for a group of planets that are all desert.
text: Pull out your pickaxe, and start looking for large sections of either soft sand, or gravel.
text: Dig straight down, and as the sand and gravels falls, any ore that was trapped inside it will fall down and be collected, it's like your sitting at the bottom of a funnel collecting all the ore that falls.
text: When you run out of sand/gravel, find a new place.
text: When you get bored, go and put the crazy amounts of ores that you've collected into your refinery/refineries, and watch the pixels pour in.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/69094/Engvar
score: 1
sents: text: An effective way of passively gathering pixels is to build a structure with a bunch of turrets on it in an untamed area.
text: For best results, the turret weapons should outclass the planet you're on.
text: Hang around nearby and attract monsters periodically, then lead them back to your turret firing squad and pick up the remains.
text: Disclaimer: this is based on my experience of creating an apartment complex for NPCs on a relatively dangerous planet.
text: I'm not sure whether the proximity of civilian NPCs has an influence on this equation.
text: Also, in my case the tiers of the planet and of the turret weapons are pretty close, which requires me and the civilian NPCs to take a hand in the defense.
text: My guess is that on a lower-tier planet, turrets killing monsters by themselves will make for an overall more efficient process, but the higher your level relative to the monsters, the less rewarding it will be, obviously.
text: Using this setup, in ten minutes I gather over a thousand pixels.
text: However, the turrets themselves obviously represent a significant initial investment, and turrets can't be re-positioned.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/126205/Wolfie Inu
score: 1
sents: text: The current best way to make pixels is by selling space station transponders.
text: Their value is 150000 pixels and they sell for 30000.
text: You need ores to acquire them.
text: So the strategy is going to a asteroid field and mine copper, silver, gold in abundance.
text: Then you need to mine titanium
text: but you can buy half of the bars from the outpost and still be profitable
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/30952/Marco Pappalardo
score: 1
sents: text: All these ways of taking ores have a risk of dying.
text: I have a better way that COULD kill you but only if you're about to die.
text: Make a large (30 x 10 is good) room, make sure there's no light and monsters will spawn.
text: And you know they're coming!
text: In 1 hour I got 1,450 pixels!
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/66923/jackson
score: 0
sents: text: Farm.
text: I mean Actually farm crops.
text: They give you tons of money of little effort.
text: Especially crops that grow more of it self(like pearlpeas).
text: Hope this helps!
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/139092/Rythm
score: 0
sents: text: For the best gain over time , I focused on farming this two products: Rice - sels for 24/pc Silk (crafted from 4 Silk Fibre at Sewing Machine )
text: - sels for 40/pc which is 10 per one Silk Fibre item.
text: Both those can be sold using Terramart Shipments which gives you twice the normal price.
text: Both are very convenient for farming.
text: Rice does not need replanting, so all you need is one sprinkler for about 40 plants Silk fibre just needs you to place Moth Trap .
text: You can even place them in your ship.
text: Of course, since I already have Terramart Shipments I also throw in any excess produces of my farm.
text: This probably isn't fastest method to gain lot of pixels but by the time you have build Heating EPP upgrade, you will no longer worry about pixels.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/54850/Tomáš Zato - Reinstate Monica
score: 0
sents: text: Just retry the Great Sovereign Temple mission.
text: You can find a Valkyrie Helm inside a box that you can sell at the Outpost for 1000 pixels.
text: This object always reappears each time you do the mission.
text: You just need five minutes to find the helmet, so it's a relatively fast way of farming pixels
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/181318/Starbound Protector
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
Use the refinery to turn excess ore into pixels. Exploring the surface and selling space station transponders can prove quite fruitful. Killing NPC can yield a lot of pixels. 
While there are plenty of ways to farm Pixels, effectively, the most common one is by using a refinery.