Why Your Sandustry Research Is Locked

The publisher’s Beginner’s Guide states both halves in one breath:

Research is your progression through the game, unlocking more structures and inventory items. Research is unlocked with Gold, with more advanced Research locked behind your Factory Level. Your Factory Level represents tiered access to new tools, structures, and technology granted to you by your superiors based on reaching performance milestones.

So there are two currencies, and only one of them is a currency. Gold you accumulate. Factory Level is granted, on evidence that you have mastered what you were given already.

How to see what is holding you

Since the v0.5.3 hotfix the game tells you, which it did not at launch:

When a factory tier is blocked by an objective it now shows why (translations pending) and special objectives are visually clearer to highlight it.

Your current objectives are listed in the Objectives panel, and the guide notes one more signpost: “objectives will also have a yellow arrow in the Minimap to point you in the right direction.”

If the game is not showing you a reason, the first thing to check is your version — this only arrived on 14 August 2026. It is not proof of an old build, though: the message covers tiers blocked by an objective, not every gate, and the patch note itself says translations were still pending, so a non-English client can come up blank on a current build.

Tier 5 is the one gate with published requirements

Two objectives, and you need both:

To unlock Tier 5, you must have achieved both the Florinol condensed goal and the Find the Anomaly goal. When these two goals are met, Tier 5 will be available to unlock.

If you have done both and it is still locked, that was a bug. It was fixed on 16 August 2026:

Fixed a softlock causing you to get stuck with Tier 5 being blocked even after the anomaly investigation.

The patch note adds that “Saves should be repaired automatically”, so the fix reaches a save that was already stuck — update and reload rather than starting over.

Tier 5 is the only tier whose requirements the developers have written down. For the others they have published the definition of the system and no numbers, which is why you will not find a milestone table here.

How far the research tree goes

The wiki’s research listing runs to six sections, and the last of them holds a single entry:

Tier 6	Synthesizer, 7,500 Gold

No seventh section appears there, and none appears anywhere else official either. Take that as what it is — the documented tree, which is not certainly the whole tree. One node we know of, Swarm Zoning, is described on another official page and is missing from the listing entirely, and the listing prices everything in Gold while its own introduction names Energy and Auralite as research currencies too.

It is worth being precise about what the numbering does and does not settle, because two different things get called tiers:

• The research tree is what the wiki lays out in six numbered sections. In game it is the Tech Tree, one of two subtabs under Research (T) alongside Conservatory — and the interface itself does not label those sections with numbers at all. The numbering is the wiki’s way of presenting the tree.
• Your Factory Level, which the patch notes also call your factory tier, is the other axis. It is what objectives raise, and what blocks nodes you can afford.

The developers have never mapped one onto the other, and this page will not do it for them. The FAQ says “Tier 5” without saying which of the two it means; the patch note speaks of a factory tier being blocked by an objective. Both are quoted here as written. What matters in practice does not depend on resolving it: two objectives open Tier 5, and no amount of Gold will.

The two achievements that touch progression

Of the sixteen Steam achievements, exactly two say anything about advancing:

Achievement	Description
Full Circle	“Fill the whole Aura circle so the next factory tier becomes available.”
Promotion Protocol	“Earn your first factory promotion.”

Full Circle is the most concrete published thing about any gate other than Tier 5: filling the Aura circle opens the next factory tier. Note the wording — the next one, with no number attached.

The other fourteen describe things you do, not gates you pass. It is tempting to read progression into names like Void Touched or Stratacore Secured, and several guides do; their descriptions say nothing about tiers. Void Touched is “Investigate an anomaly.” Four of them — Gold in the Bin, Quartermaster, Vaultkeeper, Heliodyne Tycoon — quote round numbers that look like research prices but are not: each asks you to hold that much in your collectors at once.

What this means for planning

Spend on what you can reach, and treat the wall as a signal to go do something rather than to grind more Gold. When a tier is blocked, more money does not move it.

Node prices come from the community-maintained research listing on the official wiki; the research planner works out the cheapest path from where you already are.

Related

• Sandustry Research Planner — the cheapest route to any node
• Sandustry Energy Unlocks — what the Tier 5 energy set costs
• How to Get and Use Copper in Sandustry — one full line from ore to Power Brick, with its unlock bill
• Sandustry Updates and Patch Notes — the patches referenced above
• Sandustry Beginner Guide — the first hour