They found themselves around Planet U, a planet rich in mysterious Power Crystals.

The fuel supply was drained in the failed attempt to escape, and the LMS Explorer was flung into a distant Galaxy. The ship was badly damaged and, to make matters worse, a wormhole caught the ship in its gravitational pull. They had just finished their journey and were headed home, when they drifted into an asteroid field. The Rock Raiders were travelling on their spaceship, the LMS Explorer, mapping the whole Galaxy. The models and minifigures of the respective set the comic was included in played a major role in the story. The sets of the first wave, which were also the only ones of the theme that appeared in the catalogs, all included Rock Raiders comics. Rock Raiders introduced also several new pieces, such as the chrome drill, blade saw, hollow boulders and an electric light-producing cannon piece that served as a laser cutter. Here, the Rock Monsters had just minor appearances and were not named characters, merely bearing the name 'Rock Monster'. The setting had several elements that were reprized, and also somewhat further developed, in the Power Miners theme ten years later, such as the occurrence of Rock Monsters and collection of crystals.

This was the third theme (the first was Time Cruisers and the second was Adventurers Egypt) whose Minifigures were individual characters with names. During their excavations, they would occasionally encounter Rock Monsters (included in two different sets), Slimy Slugs, and numerous other monsters, who would often attack the Rock Raiders or their bases, usually for Energy Crystals (although some, like Spiders and Scorpions, were merely aggressive towards the Raiders). They had several specialized mining and transport vehicles at their disposal, and were based at various locations around Planet U, where they processed rocks to extract the powerful Energy Crystals with their refinery stations.

The eponymous Rock Raiders were a team of miners that searched for energy crystals in the underground.

Lego rock raiders game pc