Tips & Tricks

Hands-on wisdom collected from real Sandustry players. Energy, heat, gold, water, creatures, tools and late-game shortcuts.

Energy & Power

Two ways to make Energy: Florinol (slow but early) and Copper (much more efficient late-game).
Place a Condenser with Snow on top of it for infinite renewable power — the Snow supplies constant cold with no manual feeding.
Any damage to a battery recharges it — Gun, Shovel, Rocket Launcher or Flamethrower all work. A tiny lava pool at the bottom auto-reignites it whenever you spend Energy.
The Steam Turbine depletes Steam after one pass. Stacking multiple turbines on the same Steam does nothing — give each generator a fresh source.
Recharging rockets returns all of them at once, not one by one.

Heat does not regenerate automatically — it is a constant problem. Plan a renewable source early.
A large flat lava field radiates Temperature through its flame bits, feeding burner belts and pyro dispensers nearby.
Thermal Buffer placement matters: lava on top heats fast but is consumed; lava below heats slowly but never runs out.
The Volcanizer creates lava on demand with no caveats — once unlocked it solves nearly every heat problem.
A Steam–Water–Lava interface cycles forever and rains steam over your factory. Use a Block-water filter or wall it off.

Molten gold counts for two gold. When Gold backs up on belts, melt it and move it with pipes.
Gold only counts as banked once it sits in a Collector — scattered flakes rolling into pits are lost.
The three currencies (Gold, Fluxite, Energy) are not interchangeable. A factory must eventually support all three.

Water decays over time. Tap a large source or add a steady producer instead of relying on a sealed pool.
Capture Lumblings (blue) with a Corraller — enough of them produce a constant water supply.
You can also make water manually by creating Snow and burning it with a Flamethrower.
A single pipe can carry multiple liquids, but a Liquid Vent always outputs the closest one — use dedicated pipes.

Lumblings (blue) make water. Shinelets (glowing) make light. The Red Weaver produces red sand while looking like part of the terrain.
Capturing unfamiliar creatures is usually worth it — they can introduce new resources or production processes.

The Drill is slow but precise and cheap on Energy. The Laser drains ~2000 Energy/second but blasts through rock instantly.
The Grabber's Hydro Sponge upgrade lets you pick up liquids including water and lava, but only above ground.
Right-click with the wall tool to pick up lava without it turning into Cinder.
The replace hotkey (default CTRL) swaps buildings in place — great once you unlock Mark 2 belts and launchers.

Use the C key to select a structure, then CTRL+C and CTRL+V to copy/paste repeated systems.
Ctrl+Z undoes a bad paste — use it immediately before building around a misplaced module.
Build for gravity: leave collection chambers below Shakers and keep them tilted so Residue slides away.
Use Filters to isolate byproducts on busy lines. A chain of filters turns one mixed line into ordered outputs.
Do not treat byproducts as waste — the next stage of your factory often needs them.

The Synthesizer converts Florinol into Oricite at a heavy Energy cost. Oricite feeds a Shaker to produce Aura.
Aura is the late-game currency, spent on advanced research and upgrades.
The Flux Emanator still makes Fluxite, but the process is more involved than in the demo.