Sandustry Artifacts and Puzzle Rooms

This page covers what artifacts give you, the rules every puzzle room follows, and the rooms players most often ask for help with. It does not list every room with a map position, and no honest page can: the official FAQ says the start area is built from randomised tiles and everything outside those tiles is fully procedural, so rooms do not sit in the same spot in every world. What stays the same is how each room works.

What an artifact gives you

The official Beginner’s Guide describes artifacts as something you spend resources hunting for in exchange for their benefits, and separately describes Augments: upgrades for the Gun, the Rocket Launcher and the Shovel, plus faster movement and a longer, faster boost.

How the two connect comes from players rather than the developers. CommunityEvery five artifacts fill one Augment socket, where you pick an Augment, and each artifact also adds a skill. A world spawns with exactly enough artifacts to fill the whole tree. Some of the rooms are on the dune side of the map.

For a first Augment, Communitythe Gun’s triple shot is the common pick, because it is useful straight away and it speeds up digging through the dunes.

Rules every puzzle room follows

These hold for every room, and most “this puzzle is broken” threads come down to one of them.

• Yellow blocks are buildable. Foundations go on the yellow background blocks, and that is where the path, ledge or dam the room wants from you goes. This is the official FAQ’s own hint.
• Only some tools work inside. CommunityEach room turns off most tools and drones and leaves on the ones its solution needs. If a tool does nothing inside, that is intentional, not a bug.
• Blue pools are teleporters. CommunityTouching one sends you back to the entrance. After you take the artifact, the pool is also the way out.
• The room keeps its contents. CommunityYou cannot take Water, Snow or anything else out of a room. Pouring things in is how rooms get soft-locked: players have filled one with Lava and frozen Lava into Scoria in another’s doorway.
• Some rooms need a later tool. The Beginner’s Guide says so directly and suggests leaving and coming back. It also points out that freezing a bridge across a teleporter gap often works.
• If you are sealed in, use unstuck from the pause menu. It puts you back outside.

The developers have fixed several room problems since launch. Since v0.5.4 a room’s reset button can no longer be deleted and comes back on reload, and red blocks on puzzle doors should clear if you close and reopen the door. Since v0.5.6 Thermal Buffers no longer consume Lava inside artifact rooms; a puzzle soft-locked that way repairs itself when the save loads.

The rooms players get stuck on

Rooms have no official names, so these go by what you see when you walk in. Each solution below is confirmed by at least two separate players.

Lava, a door switch and a snow bridge

What you see: Lava behind two doors that a button toggles, a burnable orange block holding up Snow, and a pool between you and the artifact.

CommunityBuild foundations on the yellow blocks to give the Lava a path to the right. Press the button to open the door, and toggle it again if the Lava does not move. The Lava runs along your path, sets the orange block alight, and the Snow it was holding drops onto the pool, so you can walk across to the artifact without being teleported.

Mooncrystal over green sensors

What you see: blue Mooncrystal hanging above green sensor blocks.

CommunityShoot the Mooncrystal with the Gun. The Gun works inside this room; the Rocket Launcher and drones do not. Keep firing, because it takes a while. The pieces fall into the sensors, and each sensor has to be completely full before it signals.

Water into green collectors

What you see: a water supply, yellow blocks and two green collectors wired to the door.

CommunityBuild a channel on the yellow blocks that carries the Water into the collectors. Both have to fill completely. The water is limited, so route it into one collector first and lose as little as possible on the way. If the water runs out before both are full, use the room’s reset button if it has one.

Fire over a snowy pool

What you see: an orange target near the entrance and pools you cannot cross.

CommunityBoth the Gun and the Flamethrower work here. Set the orange block burning, and the Snow above falls onto the pool so you can cross. It is the same idea as the lava room: burn the support and let the Snow build your bridge.

Finding the rooms you have not reached

• Look for rock your tools will not touch. Rooms are ringed by indestructible walls, so a patch of it in the middle of ordinary rock is worth a closer look.
• Get the Locator. It is a tier 5 unlock at 3,000 Gold. Charge it by holding the button inside Void Juice, and it shows the rough direction of the nearest artifact. One fill lasts for many scans. Its Fluxite upgrade, Triangulation Lens, switches it to exact guidance. The Juice comes from the void line.
• Bring the right tool for the wall. Stone and Copper Ore need the Drill, Laser or Void Gun, and Ice needs fire or the Laser. Maps and terrain has what breaks what.
• The dunes are slow going. Dune reforms after you dig it, so the east side takes patience. The achievement for your first artifact names the dunes, so it is worth the effort.

Related

• Sandustry Maps and Exploration — which tool breaks which wall on the way in
• Sandustry Walkthrough — where artifact hunting fits in the objective chain
• Sandustry Void Materials — Void Juice, which the Locator runs on
• Sandustry Controls — the unstuck command, and the keys for building