Sandustry Guide & Wiki — Plan a Factory That Keeps Running

Sandustry is easiest to learn when the first factory behaves like a visible experiment. Begin with a small amount of raw material, a controlled way to introduce water, one processing stage, and separate destinations for every output you can observe. Do not begin by copying a huge screenshot layout. A compact line lets you see where material waits, where it changes, and where it stops. The goal is not a perfect ratio in the first hour; it is a production loop that teaches you what the current Early Access build is doing.

Give the line room above, below, and beside each transition. Falling pixels and liquids make geometry part of the machine. A narrow outlet can be buried, a shared chamber can mix two feeds, and a reservoir can reach a path that looked dry while the factory was empty. Keep the main water reserve isolated from the test chamber. Provide manual access to both sides of the process, then run a small batch from input to collection before increasing supply.

A reliable commissioning check has four parts. First, watch normal flow long enough to distinguish sustained output from a short burst. Second, stop one input and confirm the other cannot flood or bury the module. Third, fill the downstream buffer and confirm overflow remains contained. Fourth, save, reload, and restart at reduced input. If the line recovers, you have a useful module. If it fails, change one boundary at a time so the next test explains what fixed it.

When output slows, adding machines is rarely the best first move. Walk the chain from the final collector toward the input. A full destination can block the stage before it. A blocked stage can make its input buffer rise. That rise can cover an outlet, redirect fluid, or let an unrelated material enter a shared lane. The visible symptom may appear several steps away from the original constraint.

Use buffers as instruments. A consistently full upstream buffer points toward downstream restriction. An empty buffer points toward missing supply. A level that swings between both extremes suggests bursty delivery, insufficient separation, or a process that does not recover cleanly. Mark a normal fill line and an overflow line. Keep the overflow route away from the raw feed, because returning unknown material to the beginning can turn one local fault into a factory-wide contamination problem.

Player discussions repeatedly focus on wet-sand supply, water behavior, filter direction, byproduct accumulation, underwater transport, and lines that work for hours before stopping. Those complaints are valuable demand evidence, but each save can have a different cause. This Wiki converts recurring symptoms into controlled checks: stop input, isolate water, preserve the blocked state, inspect the lowest outlet, clear downstream capacity, and restart slowly. Community shortcuts remain labeled as experiments until supported by stronger evidence.

Use the guide directory by problem rather than reading every page in order. New players can start with the first-hour route and falling-sand physics. Material pages explain how to sample, label, separate, and verify feeds without relying on color alone. Machine and logistics pages own specific transport or processing questions. Automation pages focus on buffers, interfaces, overflow, and recovery. Troubleshooting pages begin from a symptom and order checks from reversible to risky.

Each article states its task boundary near the top, gives a quick answer, exposes its evidence context, and links to the next useful task. A page about Water should not compete with a page about Wet Sand, and a Shaker page should not become a generic beginner guide. Keeping one canonical page per intent makes answers easier to maintain and prevents contradictory advice after a patch.