Sandustry Buildings
The wiki's 17 categorised buildings in unlock order — what each does, what it blocks, and which research node pays for it. Five are not in the tree at all.
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The seventeen buildings in the wiki’s Buildings category, listed in the order you unlock them. Five of them appear nowhere in the research tree. The rest are paid for by nodes that come in bundles — one node buys the Conveyor Belt and the Launcher, another buys the Pipe, Pump and Liquid Vent — which is why a building’s price is not on its own page.
If you have ever tried to look up what a Pump costs, you will have found that you cannot. The official building pages do not carry unlock costs, and the research tree prices nodes, not buildings — and there is no node called Pump. It is inside one called Fluids, along with two other buildings.
That join is the last column of this table.
The category, in unlock order
| Building | What it does | Interacts with | Blocks | Unlocked by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Not in the research tree — no node sells them | ||||
| Block | A basic block foundation. | — | Liquid, Gas, You | Not in the research tree |
| Collector | A tile that will count any gold inside to be part of you available cash. | Gold | Nothing | Not in the research tree |
| Demolisher | Used to remove player-placed blocks from the world. | Player-placed blocks (excl. Pipe) | — | Not in the research tree |
| Light | A light that illuminates the area around it. | — | Nothing | Not in the research tree |
| Marquee | A tool that can be used to select player-placed blocks to be copied, moved or deleted. | Player-placed blocks (excl. Pipe) | — | Not in the research tree |
| Tier 1 | ||||
| Conveyor Belt | Transports solid pixels around your factory. | — | Liquid, Gas, You | Logistics · 30 Gold |
| Filter | A Conveyor Belt that can be configured to allow a certain pixels to pass through instead of carried onward. | — | You | Filter · 250 Gold |
| Launcher | Will launch solid pixels upwards (straight or to the sides). You can build a column of launchers to create a vertical conveyor lift. | — | Nothing | Logistics · 30 Gold |
| Shaker | Used to process Wet Sand into Residue and Gold | Wet Sand | You | Shaker · 20 Gold |
| Tier 2 | ||||
| Thermal Buffer | Stores and transfers heat energy. | Fire, Lava | Liquid, Gas, You | Thermal Buffer · 1,000 Gold |
| Tier 3 | ||||
| Liquid Vent | Deposits Water supplied by connected Pipes | Pipe | Nothing | Fluids · 1,250 Gold |
| Pipe | Used to transport Water between Pumps and Liquid Vents. | Pump, Liquid Vent | Nothing | Fluids · 1,250 Gold |
| Planter Box | Used to turn Wet Seeds into Flowers. | Wet Seeds | You | Planter Box · 2,000 Gold |
| Pump | Consumes liquid (excluding Lava) within the tile of the Pump and sends to attached Pipes. | Water, Pipe | Nothing | Fluids · 1,250 Gold |
| Tier 4 | ||||
| Conveyor Belt Mk.2 | Transports solid pixels around your factory faster. | — | Liquid, Gas, You | Logistics Mk.2 · 2,500 Gold |
| Steam Dryer | Converts Amethelis into Dry Amethelis. | Amethelis, Steam | Liquid, Gas, You | Drying & Condensing · 2,500 Gold |
| Tier 5 | ||||
| Flux Emanator | Converts Voidbloom into Fluxite. | Voidbloom | Liquid, Gas, You | Flux Emanator · 2,000 Gold |
Names link to their own official page, so any single row can be checked at the source.
Five buildings are not in the research tree
Block, Collector, Demolisher, Light and Marquee appear nowhere in it — not as a node, and not inside any node’s description. The table shows that rather than a price, because that is the fact the sources establish. Nothing official states outright that they are available from the start; what is established is that no research node sells them.
It is worth checking early, because two of them are the ones people go hunting for an unlock for. The Marquee is how you select player-placed blocks to copy, move or delete, and the Demolisher is how you remove them. Both are what make blueprints usable, and no node in the tree charges for either.
The bundles, and why they matter for planning
Four nodes hand you more than one building:
| Node | Cost | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| Logistics | tier 1, 30 Gold | Conveyor Belt and Launcher |
| Fluids | tier 3, 1,250 Gold | Pipe, Pump and Liquid Vent |
| Logistics Mk.2 | tier 4, 2,500 Gold | Conveyor Belt Mk.2 and Launcher Mk.2 |
| Drying & Condensing | tier 4, 2,500 Gold | Steam Dryer and Condenser |
This changes how the prices read. Logistics at 30 Gold is not a belt, it is horizontal and vertical transport together — 30 Gold buys the entire ability to move solids around, for ten Gold more than the Shaker that starts your economy. And Fluids at 1,250 is not an expensive Pump; it is the whole water-plumbing kit, and there is no way to buy a smaller piece of it.
The research planner shows what each node costs once you count its prerequisites, which is the number that actually decides your order.
What “Blocks” means
The official infobox records three separate fields — Blocks Liquid, Blocks Gas, Blocks Player — and the table above folds them into one answer, because the question you have is what a building stops rather than three yes-or-no facts.
Two entries show a dash instead. The Demolisher and the Marquee record N/A on all three, which is not the same as blocking nothing: they are tools rather than placed structures, so the question does not apply. Writing “nothing” there would be answering something the wiki did not.
There is no clean rule to memorise here — the column is worth reading per building, because the pairs that look alike do not match. The Conveyor Belt blocks liquid, gas and you. The Launcher blocks none of the three. They are the two halves of one research node and they behave oppositely, which is why a Launcher column does not dam water the way a belt does, and why a vertical run is not also a wall. Belts and launchers covers what that means for a layout.
The other groupings: Block, both Conveyor Belts, the Flux Emanator, the Steam Dryer and the Thermal Buffer block all three. Filter, Planter Box and Shaker stop you walking through but let liquid and gas pass. Collector, Launcher, Light, Liquid Vent, Pipe and Pump stop nothing at all.
The category is not everything
This page covers the seventeen buildings in the wiki’s Buildings category. The Condenser, Aura Extractor, Kinetic Press, Smelter, Cryoblaster, Corraller, Synthesizer, Copper Mold, Advanced Filter and Florinol Battery all have their own official pages and are plainly buildings, but they have not been added to that category.
The scope stops at the category deliberately. What the category contains is something you can check against the wiki in one click. “Every building in the game” would mean us deciding what counts as a building, and that answer would carry an official-looking label while being our judgement. Those machines are covered where they do their work — the aura chain, gold and the planter box chain.
Related
- Sandustry Research Planner — what a node costs with prerequisites counted
- Sandustry Materials — what these buildings take in and give back
- Sandustry Conveyor Belts and Launchers — the two the first node buys
- Sandustry Factory Layout — where to put them so the line keeps moving
- How to Move Water in Sandustry — what the Fluids bundle is for
