translocator What should I do with translocators? And how useful are they, generally?

[Jacsmac]

I noticed that translocators are very 50/50 about their usefulness, and there are plenty of ways to go about using teleportation as a means of fast travel. I'd like to know how the community treats their translocators, and how others' experiences have been.

[Avintagekindapainting]

Im not gonna lie, translocators are hella useful on servers to go to cities and towns, but this usefulness gets slightly dampened on singleplayer. Yes, resources, tropics homes and lore locations, but most important resources should be in a simple walk from where you live, many people dont use tropics homes, and most people only go to lore locations once (except Nadiya, but most people dont look for translocators to go to Nadiya, they either settle neither it or just use an elk/walk).

Edited April 20 by Avintagekindapainting

[LadyWYT]

1. I don't really bother with fixing up the place; I just loot what I want, repair the translocator, and break clutter that's in the way. I may also fortify the area to keep monsters from creeping in, if the area is particularly dangerous.

2. I don't bother with connecting translocators. The most I do is dig a shaft to the surface, if necessary, to make access easier, and otherwise mark translocator pairs with different colors and pin the destinations so that I can easily tell what goes where.

3. I voted "Yes, I have access to other resources", because generally that is technically true, but this question is where it really depends on what the player is hoping to get from the translocator. Sometimes they can save you some travel time for a story location, sometimes they can yield critical resources, and sometimes they really aren't that useful at all. For me, I like having a variety of stones to work with, so translocators help me acquire stone types and ores that are hard to find or otherwise don't exist near my base. They're also handy for acquiring fruit tree cuttings, since I like to leave the wild ones near my base alone.

7 minutes ago, Avintagekindapainting said:

most people only go to lore locations once (except Nadiya, but most people dont look for translocators to go to Nadiya, they either settle neither it or just use an elk/walk).

Spoiler

Or just build the rickety translocator, teleport to Tobias's cave, and walk from there. It's a relatively short walk, and while the rickety translocator does have a cooldown, the player probably won't be wanting to visit Nadiya that often.

 

[InternetDragon]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

 

  Hide contents

Or just build the rickety translocator, teleport to Tobias's cave, and walk from there. It's a relatively short walk, and while the rickety translocator does have a cooldown, the player probably won't be wanting to visit Nadiya that often.

Spoiler

You can bypass the rickety translocator cooldown by breaking it and placing it again

 

[ArgentLuna]

Everything useful is taken, everything else is removed for eas of movement

However its best to reach it ~ extensive tunnels as needed

My first iron was two Teleports in, have closer iron now but vast distances covered with only a day or two of travel needed to get there, havent fully expored both locals (and broadly World Gen has broken so its unkown how much there is to find) Have several more un tapped locations but unsure what would happen if i tried to use them since WG has stopped.

 

[cjc813]

TLs are pretty key in multiplayer, where folks tend to spread out. A network of known TLs can cut travel distance by orders of magnitude.

If traversing a large forever world in single player is important to you, by all means, set them up.

Also, if you'd like to explore what's on the other side for funzies, then do it.

Otherwise, I wouldn't bother.

[Jacsmac]

6 hours ago, Avintagekindapainting said:

Im not gonna lie, translocators are hella useful on servers to go to cities and towns, but this usefulness gets slightly dampened on singleplayer. Yes, resources, tropics homes and lore locations, but most important resources should be in a simple walk from where you live, many people dont use tropics homes, and most people only go to lore locations once (except Nadiya, but most people dont look for translocators to go to Nadiya, they either settle neither it or just use an elk/walk).

I built tropics homes on my previous world and translocators only successfully got me about 1/5 of the way there and I had to walk the rest, so they weren't even very useful for that. I would find more underground on the way south, but they would always go due west or east, obviously.

 

6 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

1. I don't really bother with fixing up the place; I just loot what I want, repair the translocator, and break clutter that's in the way. I may also fortify the area to keep monsters from creeping in, if the area is particularly dangerous.

2. I don't bother with connecting translocators. The most I do is dig a shaft to the surface, if necessary, to make access easier, and otherwise mark translocator pairs with different colors and pin the destinations so that I can easily tell what goes where.

I should probably fortify my translocators too. I keep telling myself that the walls on three sides should be enough, but eventually I slip up and forget a torch then get mobbed by tier 1/2 enemies repeatedly knocking me off of the translocator as I try to get back.

Exclusively pinning the destinations and not the start points is a practice I go by as well. It's much more useful to know how to get back to wherever you came from without being misled by the wrong waypoint thousands of blocks away.

 

3 hours ago, cjc813 said:

TLs are pretty key in multiplayer, where folks tend to spread out. A network of known TLs can cut travel distance by orders of magnitude.

If traversing a large forever world in single player is important to you, by all means, set them up.

Also, if you'd like to explore what's on the other side for funzies, then do it.

Otherwise, I wouldn't bother.

Translocators are fun for most of the game, but after late game and having repaired more than about 8 or 9 they start to become a bit redundant or useless, often going back to that one single undiscovered chunk directly adjacent to the existing map that you could have walked to by now but didn't because there's 'definitely nothing new over there.'

If translocators were more likely to go a certain cardinal direction based on the way they were facing when repaired (perhaps they could be rotated with a wrench to make this fun and repeatable), then I would give more of them a try instead of opting to spend all my end-game gears on Jonas devices and placing dozens of spawn points. This would also be a game changer for lore exploration, as the player could spend temporal gears to cut the distance, which could be better or worse than just walking there (still have to grind for the gears if you want to skip walking, or the translocator could put you in a bad spot).

Edited April 21 by Jacsmac

[EnbyKaiju]

I usually do the bare minimum with translocators. Clear only enough stuff to get to them, ladder from the surface. But thinking my next long-term world any translocator that I intend to use (either as a mine or transport) I want to do up to kind of represent what it's there for. So I might turn them into little outposts, or as mining operations. Give them a bit more charm.

Looking at doing a much larger world this time around and part of me is hoping to find a translocator network going north to south, because I'd love to do up a full roadhouse setup. They can be incredibly useful though, especially on the worlds I play where there's not a ton of land cover.

[Broccoli Clock]

I like polls that use check boxes rather than tick boxes, as it allows me to choose every option and because I can, I did... sorry, but those are the rules!

As for a proper set of answers..

1) Check the boxes, clear out around the translocator, the only reason to destroy stuff is either for the metal parts (for repair) or if I'm in the mood for aged wood.

2) I don't, if they are connected already then that's fine (ie: in the same cave system). In general almost all my translocators end up with direct access from the surface, I've gotten lost far too many times trying to "refind" one.

3) Translocator destinations come in two variants. Either it's exactly what you are looking for or it's a new piece of land to discover. Sure, the longer you go in your world the more chance of uncovering parts of the map before a translocator takes you there, but in general it's only ever been a positive. Sometimes it's an absolute godsend, I've found all the stuff I've struggled with from iron to chalk to whatever. IMO, translocators are always worth fixing.

Edited April 21 by Broccoli Clock

[LadyWYT]

10 hours ago, Jacsmac said:

I should probably fortify my translocators too. I keep telling myself that the walls on three sides should be enough, but eventually I slip up and forget a torch then get mobbed by tier 1/2 enemies repeatedly knocking me off of the translocator as I try to get back.

It's not the tier 1/2 enemies I'm worried about, as much as it is tier 3+. In my current world, one of the translocators I repaired is safe to access, but teleports to a cave at bedrock several thousand blocks away. 

[HalfAxd]

The game is mostly about exploration for me...  I love finding a TL and seeing what's out there. 

[john_p]

I mine out a decent bit to the side so others can whistle their elk in and ride it through. If I find one or several chained together and it takes me way South, I can start a farm or live down there in the winter.

Right now there's one right below my home, which leads to another in the cave, which leads to another. Nothing spectacular, but cool.

[OBAMFSpike]

Every locator is different and each is treated dependent upon its necessity. Some I clean up and facilitate for travel while others I ignore all together. 

I develop a series of tunnels between translocators that I can ride my elk between because it's a marvelous way to capture and attain any and all resources. Ive dubbed it The Network and it has hubs that lead to different areas about the map. So many endless possibilities.

This allows orchards that require freezing and orchards that require temperate climates. I have an apiary that is year round and I harvest the most bountiful harvests from terra preta gardens and my pumpkin patch is quite spectacular too. Far north where my base is I also make bleu cheese in a ruin I discovered while drift mining through quartz for intrinsic metals and I only get it to work during the winter (far north (our server has spawn on the equator)the snow and blow sets in around October and clears out come may and June of the following year). 

I believe the translocators add easy travel all about the map when diligence provides many locations that a Seraph can chose its destination from. Wonderful uses indeed. 

[Banch]

I activate them, add colour-coded map markers, and then just... forget to ever use them again. In theory I'd want to wall them off and dig a shaft up to the surface, and put some kind of building up there to use as a travel stop. On my current world, the first translocator I repaired sent me straight into a bauxite cave though, so I will be back eventually.

[Fawkesian]

Took me about four in-game years to find out that translocators existed! There was one in the cave nearest to my base, too, I just... don't ever go in caves, haha. So far I've been closing off the translocator rooms and digging straight to the surface. I love to name landmarks while exploring, so I label both endpoints with what they're near - something like "Wolfstone Camp to Mount Atara". Saves me a lot of headache that way.

Is it common to find a cave system with more than one translocator in it? I've found two that were about 250 blocks apart on the surface, but no direct neighbors. Then again, as I said, I really don't touch caves unless I spot something interesting when I'm walking by the entrance, so there's probably lots that I haven't seen yet.

The most useful translocator I've found was just a long-distance warp, about 7k north and 2k west. It's fun to explore around the newly-generated areas, but they haven't been much help as shortcuts to existing places.

On 4/22/2026 at 12:43 AM, john_p said:

I mine out a decent bit to the side so others can whistle their elk in and ride it through.

That's a great idea, thank you!! I just recently got access to elk and am still learning what they're capable of. I hadn't considered that you could bring them through a warp point!

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Fawkesian said:

Is it common to find a cave system with more than one translocator in it?

I would say that your mileage will vary heavily. Caves might have none, one, or more than one--the larger the cave, the better your chances of finding multiple translocators. Typically, translocators are similar to trader spawns, in that they'll have a "buffer zone" between them, but occasionally you might find a couple that are very close to each other.