In the game Boundless there are many different materials with which to make tools, weapons and machines with. These range from wood to three types of stone to five different metals and six different gems. Finally, once you've reached end-game, there is a class of materials called Lucents. There are three Lucents: Rift, Blink and Umbris. These materials are only found on Tier 7 (Savage) and Tier 8 (Brutal) exo-worlds, and exo-worlds only exist for a limited amount of time, typically around 6 days or so. That means you will need to find the planet, warp to it from the nearest public world - which will cost you 3,500c - and require you to open portals at a minimum of 42 blinksecs. You will need the Portal Epic skill and you will need to max your warp distance skill by 3/3. Furthermore, exo-worlds require atmospheric protection to be at level 7 for either Potent, Caustic or Volatile. Meaning you will need to max your protection skill in atleast one of these atmosphere types in your skill page to 5/5. Since this guide is about the Blink lucent, we will need a max protection level for Potent atmospheres because that is the atmosphere type that Blink exo-worlds tend to have.

First, let's look at what you will need in your skill page. You will want a mining-dedicated skill page and in that page you should have a maxed 8/8 Power attribute as well as ideally a maxed 8/8 Dexterity attribute and a maxed 8/8 Zeal attribute. This is to make your hammers easier to use and will allow you to do more with them. You will want Hammer Mastery maxed to 5/5 and you will want the Hammer Epic skill. In addition to that, you will want the Damage Epic and Durability Drain Epic skills as well as the Energy Epic and Energy Regeneration Epic skills. Adding these skills to your Mining page will make your hammers last longer and do more damage, they will make you able to use your hammers longer without running out of energy, and they will allow you to use heavier hammers as well as to use them more quickly which will save you time when you're mining.

Then we want to look at what you should be bringing with you, starting with the types of hammers you will need. Gem hammers or Lucent hammers are a necessity since anything made with a metal will not be enough to break blocks on a Tier 7 planet. Furthermore, you will need to make sure that damage is atleast 5472 without any temporary Extra Strength buffs added from taking strength brews. If you are looking to buy your hammers, you will want to look for forged hammers that say T6 on them. That indicates they will be forged with atleast +20 damage on them and hence should be able to handle a Tier 6 or Tier 7 planet, provided you have the appropriate setup for your Miner page.

Speaking of Strength brews, you will want to make sure you bring a few dozen of them in order to reduce how many hits you need to make on a block. You will also need Persisting Pies or Persisting Loaves in order to reduce the drain on your tools.

Finally, you will need an atlas and one rough Blink. I will reveal why you need these things a bit later.

As mentioned in Section #1, exo-worlds are only temporary. They exist for about 6 days and the Tier 7 exo-worlds will typically spawn one at a time, with each new exo-world spawning about 1 day or 24 hours after the last exo-world disappears. They only spawn in one region at a time so if the next exo-world does not spawn in your region then you will need to go to a different region's server in order to visit it. This can contribute to server latency (lag) and possibly some FPS issues if your internet performance is not particularly strong.

With that out of the way, travelling to an exo-world is quite simple but it might take a while to figure out how to do it without prior instructions to guide you. You will need two warp conduit blocks and a warp augment. Both are easy to make and can be made in the Workbench. The warp augment is dragged and dropped onto a totem. This is one of the first things you did when starting a new character at the beginning of the game.

Each exo-world has a public world neighbor and you will want to know which of the public worlds it has for its closest neighbor in order to reduce the travelling cost, though the absolute minimum cost will still always be 3,500c so make sure you have that many coins to spare. As mentioned previously, your current skill page should have the Portal Epic and three warp distance skill points available.

You can check out https://forum.playboundless.com for information on the current exo-world, like what its closest public world neighbor is.

Once you know the name of the closest neighboring planet, find your way to the TNT hub on Circaprous I and enter the T6 network to find that planet. Once you are there, find an unplotted area and place your two warp conduit blocks. The next part can be a bit tricky. You need to look up at the sky (easier to do at night) and watch for a large moving planet. If your cross-hair is on the planet, the tooltip should identify the name and tier of the planet. With your augmented totem equipped, point it at the planet and hold down the respective mouse button until you see a landing site on the planet. Then all you need to do is place your warp conduit blocks - one on top of the other - and press "E" on the warp conduits you placed. Select "Warp Destination" in your list of Locations under the Locations tab. The warp conduit should activate and you will be able to use your hammers to break it once it is done loading.

As soon as you enter the exo-world, you will need to act fast to find a digging site because any nearby mobs will aggro on you. If the skill page you used to get to the planet is not your miner page, you will need to switch fast. My character's miner page includes the Shadow Effect Skill Epic which will help to keep mobs from aggroing too quickly, biding you some time. Maxing your Control attribute - which is super useful in mining anyway - will help as well.

Now, as mentioned earlier in Section #1, you will need an atlas and one rough Blink. Drop the rough Blink onto the atlas and equip the atlas on one of the cycle-able hotbars at the bottom. Use it by pressing the appropriate mouse button for whichever hotbars the atlas is on.

This is what you should see:

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2978163737

The light blue areas are locations where Blink will spawn. The lighter the location is, the more common it should be. Areas in black will not spawn Blink. You will only be able to see the region you are currently in unless you've explored more than one region on the exo-world so if you want a good site and are willing to do some exploring, it may be worth your while to map as many regions as you can before deciding on a digging site.

Once a digging site has been chosen, you will want to dig down to atleast Layer 20. According to Boundlessinfo.com, Blink is found between layers 20 and 0. Layer 0 is the lowest you can go and at that level you will encounter the mantle layer which you cannot break or otherwise get through. Boundlessinfo.com also tells us that Blink is found anywhere from 10 to 85 blocks below the surface so if you want a more approximate way to tell when you've reached the right depth then you can use that indicator instead.

There are two ways to find out what layer you are currently on. The first is through your character menu. Pressing TAB will bring up that menu. From there, you want to go to the Places section, then the Location tab to find your current coordinates at the top of the list.

The second method involves using the F1 key to open your game's troubleshooting menu. This will be a very thin grey bar at the top of your screen. You will want to click on "(F1) Menu" and then click on "Debug Information." From there, click on "Selection" to get a drop-down list of information about your location and whatever your cross-hair is pointed at. You can then press F1 again to move around while that information is on-screen. Once you find your coordinates, you can then shrink the menu window to where it only displays your coordinates line. You can keep this on your screen so that you will know exactly where you are in realtime as you are moving about.

Unfortunately, lava is also found at the depths where Blink is generated. Speaking from experience, lava typically starts to show up on Level 15 so if you are on Level 16 and you power-mine straight ahead, anywhere all around you or above you, then you should be safe. Below this level you should watch out for lava spilling out of the wall if you mine the wrong block. This is where different mining strategies come into play. The best and probably safest way to mine for Blink is to check your atlas once you've reached Layer 16 and find a patch of light blue or white nearest to you. Dig in a straight line in that direction using your compass, and once you are in your desired location you can power-mine the entire area on that layer. Then, once Layer 16 for that area is mined out, you can mine downwards one or two layers at a time, being careful to note where the pockets of lava you've found on Layer 16 are and avoiding them.

Another quicker way to reach the lower levels is to travel to the area on your atlas where you want to mine and dig down in columns, making sure you have a way to get back up after the lower levels in that vicinity are cleared.

You may also come up with your own strategies for mining safely without running into lava. Blink can be generated as high as Layer 20 but I've found that it tends to show up more frequently the lower you go. Whatever the case, if you do break a wrong block and come into contact with lava, you will want to make sure you are somewhere higher than the layer that the lava spills onto. The liquid physics in Boundless allow for a single liquid block to spread and fill up holes or lower layers that the resulting flow comes into contact with but the liquid will never overflow so being one block higher than where the liquid is flowing will ensure your safety.

You can also plug the hole back up which will halt the original flow and the rest of the liquid should dissipate once this happens. If you brought a dedicated Solidifier (a tool forged with the Solidify boon which allows you to solidify liquids) with you then all you do is hit a lava block with it to convert it to igneous rock.

Blink is a light dull yellow colour with distinctive spiral patterns when it is found in a seam. It does what its name implies. It blinks. Or, more rather, it flashes on and off.

Here is what the seam looks like:

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2978162909

Typically Blink is either found in a single one-block seam or in clusters of up to 3 or 4. It can take a while to find because obviously it is intended to be rare. The best method if you've got a good hammer, good dexterity, and lots of Persisting Pies and Strength Brews, is to power-mine everything in the nearest immediate vicinity. The faster you mine, the more often you will run into a Blink seam.

It is unclear whether the blinking animations that show up on your screen happen when you are close to a Blink seam, but once uncovered, it will glow bright yellow even without any other forms of light. So it is hard to muss once uncovered. A useful trick when trying to find an uncovered Blink seam from a distance is to put away any lootstick, torches or anything else that glows and then watch for any glowing light nearby.

Of all three lucents, Blink is found deepest underground and therefore can be the trickiest lucent to find. With Umbris found relatively close to the surface and Rift found somewhere in the mid-layer, neither will put you at risk of coming into contact with subterranean lava. That makes Blink the most precarious lucent to find. Blink tools and weapons also do the least damage of all three lucents, but they are lightweight and fast. This places them in the "Swift" class of tools and weapons whereas Rift tools and weapons are placed in the "Heavy" class - they are heavy and slow but they do a lot of damage - and Umbris is placed in the "Balanced" class and is somewhere between the other two. I have a personal preference for swift tools and weapons because maxed DPS along with a Crit chance modifier can make all the difference when you need to take care of a mob or a block within a limited amount of time or when you need to be mobile while using the tool or weapon. Obviously this makes Blink my favourite lucent and a material I am quite partial to, so obviously I won't miss an opportunity to acquire it myself through mining or buying Blink tools and weapons if I see them. I can't be sure whether or not this lucent will be as worth your time or coins to acquire but if it is then I can only hope this guide will have been a help to you in your search..

Thank you for reading.