"What's the best strategy for finding rare materials in survival games?"
Befriend the game's NPCs and convince them rare materials are actually cursed. They'll panic-drop everything valuable trying to get rid of it. Next, hire a professional dowser to wave a stick at your monitor until it vibrates near loot spawns. Finally, sacrifice your second-best controller to the gaming gods every Tuesday; they're way more generous than the first-best controller crowd.