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 that upgrades your mining tools, weapons, and drones. See how to get fluxite for the fastest ways to farm it.
- Energy — powers late-game buildings.
Get gold flowing first, worry about fluxite and energy later.
Follow the gold production guide for the complete machine chain, then use the Boiler guide when you begin building the thermal part of your factory.
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.