New to Sandustry? This guide covers how to get your first factory running without wasting hours. The core loop is: mine sand, add water, make gold, spend gold on research.
The three currencies
Sandustry gates your progress behind three resources:
- Gold — the main currency. You spend it on Research to unlock machines and tools.
- Fluxite — the rare purple resource. It upgrades your mining tools, weapons, and drones.
- Energy — powers late-game buildings.
Get gold flowing first, worry about fluxite and energy later.
The core recipe: sand to gold
The most important number in Sandustry is the material ratio:
2 sand : 3 water : 4 red sand = 3 gold : 8 fluxite
In practice, this means water and sand combine to make gold, and gold is the input that eventually produces fluxite. In the early game, gold comes out probabilistically from a Shaker; later machines produce it deterministically every cycle.
The three gold producers
Gold comes from three machines, and each one leaves a by-product that feeds the next stage of your line:
- Shaker — the first and simplest gold machine.
- Kinetic Slag Press — drops Burnt Residue from 25+ blocks high and turns it into 1 Gold + 1 Seed per press.
- Planter Box — grows Seeds into Flowers, whose stems are Moss and whose flowers give Gold and Amethelis.
These three chain together, so a complete gold line runs residue → press → seed → planter → gold.
Your basic UI
- Hotbar — 10 rows of 10 slots each. Press Alt + number to switch rows.
- Minimap — your overview of explored terrain.
- Objectives — a yellow arrow points you toward your current goal.
How logistics work
- Conveyor Belt moves materials horizontally only.
- Launcher throws materials vertically or diagonally; it drops them from its highest point.
- Filter allows or blocks a single resource. The Advanced Filter can also filter liquids and gases.
- Pump + Pipe + Liquid Vent move fluids. Give each liquid its own vent — a Liquid Vent always pulls from the nearest liquid, so sharing one vent between two fluids causes contamination.
Thermal processing: hot and cold
Thermal machines refine materials by temperature. Hot machines move a material from solid → liquid → gas, and cold machines reverse that direction. This matters for lava and steam, which are key to later production.
Research, upgrades, augments
- Research costs gold and is gated by your Factory Level. It unlocks three tiers of machines.
- Upgrades cost fluxite and improve your Grabber, Flamethrower and Drones.
- Augments are scattered upgrades around the planet that boost your Gun, Rocket, Shovel and movement speed.
Beginner tips that save hours
- Press C to copy a machine, then Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V to paste it — this is far faster than building each machine from scratch.
- Upgrade your Grabber first. It is your most-used tool and the upgrade pays for itself immediately.
- A Corraller catches creatures; a caught Lumling produces water.
- Don't haul lava by hand. Freeze it with a Cryoblaster into cinder, transport the cinder, then re-ignite it.
- To dig surface terrain fast, use a laser.
Follow these steps and you will have an automated gold line running within your first session, then you can start the real game: scaling it into fluxite.