Sandustry Research Planner

How to read this

Research is bought with Gold. Tiers are the order things become available, but they are not hard gates in the way a dependency is — within a tier you can buy in any order you like, and cheap tier 1 unlocks stay useful long after you have moved past them.

Only two unlocks in the whole tree genuinely require something else first:

• Drill needs the Rocket Launcher and the Florinol Battery, which makes its real cost 6,000 Gold rather than the 2,500 on the label
• Copper Mold needs the Smelter and the Florinol Battery

The planner accounts for both when you pick them as a goal, which is why the Drill looks more expensive here than the research screen suggests. That is the honest number.

Where the Gold comes from

Everything above is priced in Gold, so the planner is only half the picture — the other half is your throughput. The beginner guide covers the sand-to-gold loop, but the short version:

How far you process	Gold you get
Shaker only	1 Gold per 2 Sand
Also pressing the residue	1 Gold per 1 Sand
Full chain, including planting the seeds	3 Gold per 2 Sand

Tripling your gold per sand costs two research unlocks — the Kinetic Press at 500 and the Planter Box at 2,000. If you are saving for something expensive, those two pay for themselves before most of the things people buy instead.

Buying advice the tree does not give you

• The Gun does not break Crackstone. It costs 1,500 Gold and a lot of people buy it for exactly that. The Rocket Launcher at 2,000 does. See how to break Crackstone.
• The Filter at 250 Gold is the best value in tier 1 after the Shaker itself. Sorting is what turns a pile into a production line.
• Advanced Filter is the only way to filter liquids. If water is contaminating your lines, that is the 1,500 Gold that fixes it — see wet sand versus water.
• Logistics Mk.2 is a speed upgrade, not a capability. It is worth 2,500 Gold when throughput is your bottleneck, and worth nothing when it is not.

Related

• Sandustry Beginner Guide — funding the tree in the first place
• How to break Crackstone — the most common misspent 1,500 Gold