Sandustry Beginner Guide

How to use this guide

Sandustry opens with a small surface area, a handful of sand, and a long list of things you cannot yet do. The fastest path forward is to pick a small, observable goal (mine copper, fill your first battery, reach the underground), do it, then pick the next one. This guide is structured that way: research order first, logistics next, energy after that, and a first-week checklist at the end.

Research order

Research is gated by Gold, with Fluxite upgrades for inventory slots. A research order that holds up:

1. Mining upgrades that let you dig past Dirt. Stone blocks your Drill upgrade path; clearing stone is the first real bottleneck.
2. Conveyor throughput and Filter basics. Filters are the single biggest leverage point in the game — almost every factory chain runs through a filter.
3. Smelter, Copper Mold, and Power Bricks. The first reliable energy chain replaces the fragile Florinol batteries.
4. Drone tiers (Hauler, Sweeper, Digger, Recon). Drones replace hand-collected materials once your mining stabilises.
5. Steam Turbine and the Florinol backup chain. Two energy sources beats one — plant the Florinol route first because the tech tree hands it to you first.

Logistics that survive

The mistake new players make is to route everything on one big belt and hope. Sandustry's pixel physics means sand and copper clog belts differently; water and steam go up; residue falls. The patterns that survive are:

• One material per belt. Resist the urge to share. Filters work better when the upstream is pure.
• Buffer with a small silo, not the conveyor. When input spikes, the silo absorbs it.
• Vertical pusher lifters next to presses, not over them. Lifters directly above a Kinetic Slag Press do not stop it from working.
• Test one chain end-to-end before scaling. The most common stall is a smelter running with no mold under it.

Two energy chains, both running

Plan on running both energy sources in parallel rather than picking one:

• Power Bricks (Copper chain). Mine copper, smelt it, pour into a Copper Mold, connect via Energy Connector. Reliable, mid-game.
• Florinol Batteries (Amethelis chain). Longer chain — petals to dry petals to gas to liquid to battery. Plan this first because the tech tree hands it to you first.
• Snow-driven Steam Turbines. Snow as a condenser topper; steam turbines stop generating when snow runs out.

Habits that prevent stalls

• Keep a Cinder stockpile visible. Heat systems slowly consume lava; without a Cinder buffer your factory goes cold mid-cycle.
• Filter sand out early. Sand mixed into a Smelter is the most common clog.
• One missing wall pixel and lava rains into your factory. Double-check containment.
• Treat lava as a consumable heat source. There is no vanilla infinite lava — only Cinder round-trips.
• Use the debug console only as a last resort. Sandustry is a sandbox — designing a small chain teaches more than spawning everything.

Your first week, day by day

• Day 1. Surface clean-up, first Research unlocks, first Gold credits, set up a small sand-conveyor loop.
• Day 2. Dig into Stone. Get the drill upgrade. Run a Filter that separates sand from copper.
• Day 3. Build a Smelter + Copper Mold + Power Brick chain. First reliable energy source.
• Day 4. Plant the Amethelis → Florinol chain. Energy backups.
• Day 5. Open your first underground cave. Locate lava; build a Cinder chamber with a Cryoblaster.
• Day 6. Drones (Hauler, Sweeper, Digger). Begin automating transport.
• Day 7. Steam Turbine setup. Map reveal. First underground ruin exploration.