Sandustry Updates and Patch Notes

Sandustry entered Early Access on 13 August 2026. This page tracks what has actually changed since, from the developer’s own announcements — not a copy of the patch notes, which are worth reading in full on Steam.

v0.5.3 — 14 August 2026

Billed as a hotfix, and the developer describes most of its fixes as theoretical: the aim was to get diagnostics out so the real crash work has something to go on.

What it added

• Logging and diagnostics, written to a file you can find and send. On Windows that is %AppData%\Roaming\sandustry\logs\main.log; the Mac and Linux paths are on the crash and FPS fixes page.
• A new launch option, --sandustry-no-overlay-gpu-flags, that may prevent crashes. It comes with a documented cost: the Steam overlay will likely stop working. Achievements keep working.

What it fixed

• Instructional videos now unmount properly, which was exhausting the video decoder.
• The clouds drawn when steam condenses into rain use much less memory.
• When a factory tier is blocked by an objective, the game now tells you why, and special objectives are visually clearer. Translations for that text were still pending at release.

What it did not do: touch balance. Neither did v0.5.4 or v0.5.5. The first patch to change a number was v0.5.6, further down.

The developer stated at the same time that work was ongoing on a larger patch targeting “the various crashes and problems people are reporting”. That work landed in v0.5.5 below.

v0.5.4 — 16 August 2026

Billed by the developer as “a smaller update with some bug fixes and QoL”, and the one worth knowing about if you were stuck.

• The Tier 5 softlock is fixed. “Fixed a softlock causing you to get stuck with Tier 5 being blocked even after the anomaly investigation.” Saves “should be repaired automatically”, so a save that was already stuck does not need restarting — see why your research is locked for what that gate is.
• Filters are editable in place. You can press the filter overlay label or “Edit last placed” to change a filter instead of overriding and replacing it, and Allow versus Block is now visually distinct.
• Red blocks can be removed. A root-cause fix “touches a lot of the core paths”, so rather than ship it early the developer made the blocks removable — though only when you delete 256 tiles or fewer, because scanning for orphans costs the demolisher something. On puzzle doors, closing and opening the door should restore them.
• The reset button in puzzles can no longer be deleted, and it comes back on reload.
• Zoom In and Zoom Out are rebindable, on the two keys left of Backspace. Zooming out past the default view is not supported yet.

v0.5.5 — 19 August 2026

The stability patch the hotfix promised.

• Much more logging, with the paths written out: %APPDATA%\sandustry\logs\main.log on Windows, /Users/<username>/Library/Logs/sandustry/main.log on macOS, and /home/<username>/.config/sandustry/logs/main.log on Linux.
• Optional Crashpad diagnostics. Crash dumps can carry sensitive information, so it is off by default and the developer approaches affected players individually about enabling it.
• Instruction videos are animated images now, which fixes GPU crashes and the loss of the OBS capture hook when hovering previews. The cost is stated: slightly lower quality and a somewhat larger install.
• Alt+Enter toggles fullscreen, and the game remembers which monitor you last used.
• A workaround for the right mouse button sticking on macOS — the Vacuum spraying forever. The proper fix is still pending.
• The tutorial radial menu can no longer softlock you.
• Aura Extractor controls have clearer hover guidance and swarm targeting indicators.

28 August 2026 — “Modding & What’s Next”

Not a patch, but the developer’s first status post since v0.5.5, and it set the shape of the next one.

• v0.5.6 was next, with the same focus as the two patches before it: “fixing bugs, improving stability, optimizing performance and working through requested features”. New content is explicitly deferred — “I don’t want to start piling new content on top until the foundation feels solid.”
• Modding now lives on two experimental branches. The updated framework and a new API document at sandustry.com/sandkit.html are on a 0.5.5 branch; a 0.5.2 branch stays for mods that have not been updated. What that means for installing mods is on the mods page and the mod loader page.
• The roadmap stayed unpublished, on purpose. “I don’t want to commit to or promise things I won’t be able to deliver.” Requests go to the suggestions board, where upvotes set the priority.

v0.5.6 — 3 September 2026

Update #3. The developer opens by explaining why the patches so far have been mostly fixes: with this many players, even rare bugs hit a lot of people. This one still sneaks in a few new things, and it is the first patch since launch to change the game’s numbers.

What changed

• You can pet critters. Move over one and it gets happy, and its capabilities get a temporary boost. Voltblub energy output was also raised across the board. See critters.
• Lava density went from 75 to 200, and Lava now destroys Fluxite, Redsoil and Strataform terrain. The developer asks players to report it if the new density breaks their setups. See moving lava.
• A cold Thermal Buffer turns Lava back into Cinder. When the Buffer’s temperature is below zero, Lava adds less heat and reverts to Cinder instead of being used up. See heat.
• The Aura Extractor can be removed mid-crystallization. Its crystals go into a buffer and come back out as Auralite when you build it again. See the Aura Extractor.
• Runaway flowers are easier to deal with. Shooting or digging a growing seedling tries to turn it back into Wet Seeds, and a seedling stuck between buildings reverts on its own. See growing flowers.
• The Laser melts Ice.

What it fixed

• Several bugs that created red blocks.
• Conveyor Portals getting stuck.
• Thermal Buffers consuming Lava inside artifact rooms. A puzzle soft-locked by this should repair itself when the save loads.
• Renderer crashes caused by the Aura refreshing the whole Tech Tree, reduced.
• GPU diagnostics that caused problems on certain hardware, replaced with a safe alternative. Work on the remaining crashes continues on a separate branch; see crash and FPS fixes.

For modders: new hooks such as building:removing and meltAtCell, documented at sandustry.com/sandkit.html, and the mods branch moved to 0.5.6. See mods.

Research costs did not change. Nothing in the notes touches research, and the wiki’s research listing has had nothing but a link fix since before launch.

On what comes next, the developer says Major Update #1 “is still cooking”. The new content depends on big map changes and other overhauls, so he expected one more bug-fix and QoL update before it.

v0.5.7 — 14 September 2026

Update #4, one month after launch, and that expected bug-fix update.

The pipes overhaul

• Pipes no longer connect to neighbouring pipes automatically. To extend a network, start or end the new pipe on an existing pipe tile.
• Building across another pipe line creates a Pipe Bridge instead of joining the two.
• The pipe overlay shows each pipe in the colour of the last liquid that went through it.
• In Pipes Mode, the normal selection tools select, move, copy and paste pipes, and Undo covers pipes too.
• Holding Alt+C selects structures and pipes together, so a blueprint can include its plumbing.

What that means in practice is on moving water, controls and blueprints.

What it fixed

• Several unrelated bugs that made buildings stop working or stop passing things along. If something still stalls, the developer wants to hear about it, including whether a reload fixes it.
• Lava leaking through Advanced Filter Walls.
• Presence Sensors staying active after what they detected had expired.
• A way to make a pass-through Filter by picking a Filter Wall.
• Conveyor Portals attaching to the wrong partner after being mirrored with Ctrl+H.
• Moving the player blocking you from overriding structures, and the Override / Replace Structures key not rebinding properly.
• Open Doors now let airflow from Aerokinetic Fans through.
• The cursor tooltip now accounts for Cursor Size.
• Duplicating elements with the Vacuum, and filling the Vacuum with Clouds.
• Hauler Lines can no longer be assigned inside artifact rooms. If you already did it, the hotbar overlay buttons let you move the drop-off point.
• The Volcanizer icon flickering with its cooldown animation.

The developer’s own framing: “This will likely be the last minor patch before the first big content update.” He adds that 0.5.7 includes extra engine hardening that could have side effects, so a few small hotfixes may still follow.

v0.6.0 — 21 October 2026

Update #5, and in the developer’s words the “first real content patch”.

What it added

• Tier 7, Orbital Delivery. A new production chain for the next stage of sand refinement, involving magnets, electrolysis and photosynthesis.
• 16 new research nodes, 2 of them in the Aura tier, and 18 new elements and terrains.
• New content across the snow and mountain biome, with new puzzles that need new tools.
• New Artifact upgrade nodes, including a new building and item, and new Augment Schematics found underground that unlock new Augments.
• A new Strataform event, which adds another infinite source.
• New critters. One of them is required for progression.

You do not need to start over. Your save is retrofitted with the new content, though it may not place everything optimally. Two things can go wrong. If you kept playing past the original ending, the resources you built up can throw off the balance. If you dug and built all over the underground, the update can overwrite structures as a last resort, or drop new terrain across your belts; pre-Tier 7 tech can destroy that terrain. The developer asks for your pre-0.6 save with any report of missing or badly placed content.

What works differently now

• Filter interactions follow one rule. Two elements across a filter edge only interact if both of them and the output are allowed inside the Filter. The developer expects this to break some designs that relied on the old behaviour. See filters.
• Diagonal Foundations build as a stair-stepped line. A single line of angled Foundations leaks liquid, which kept catching new players. He offers to bring the old mode back as an option if people want it.
• The gas density rule is inverted. Lower density now rises above. Every gas density was updated to preserve the old behaviour, so gases stack as before under different numbers.
• Procedural generation now spawns approximately the same amount of critters and finite resources.
• You can zoom out in the Tech Tree.
• Most of the UI was reworked.

Performance and stability

• Optimizations for Collector tanks holding Liquid Gold, big conveyor belt passes and energy consumption in large power networks.
• A rewritten lighting engine and rendering improvements. The developer says the rendering work mostly addresses edge cases at scale, so how much you gain depends on your factory.
• Two more launch options for crashes, --sandustry-worker-count=N and --use-angle=d3d11. See crash and FPS fixes.
• Building a pipe on a machine no longer stops the machine’s processor, and the Corraller no longer hijacks every scroll event.

The developer adds that he did not get to some reported bugs he should have fixed, and that the coming updates will focus on them.

For modders: the modding branch for 0.6 “will be released shortly”, with a lot of additions to the API. New API documentation is also coming. See mods.

Before Early Access

The game’s public history goes back further than launch week, and it is useful context for how quickly fixes land:

Date	What happened
Feb 2025	A run of demo hotfixes, through Demo Hotfix 8
17 Jun 2025	Sandustry joins Hooded Horse as publisher
25 Jun 2026	Release date announced for 13 August 2026
13 Aug 2026	Early Access launch, with a 35% launch discount
14 Aug 2026	v0.5.3 hotfix
16 Aug 2026	v0.5.4, Update #1
19 Aug 2026	v0.5.5, Update #2
28 Aug 2026	“Modding & What’s Next” — v0.5.6 in progress, mod branches split
3 Sep 2026	v0.5.6, Update #3
14 Sep 2026	v0.5.7, Update #4
21 Oct 2026	v0.6.0, Update #5

What Early Access is meant to add

The developer’s own answers on the store page set the shape of what is coming, and they are the only forward-looking statements this page treats as reliable:

• Early Access is planned to run for about a year, subject to change based on how development goes.
• The procedural generation will be refined further so generated content is more detailed.
• As players explore deeper, the plan is to add buildings, resources, production chains, quests, biomes and technologies.
• Feedback from the Steam community hub is explicitly what the additions will be shaped around.

No dates are attached to any of that, and none are invented here. v0.6.0 is the first delivery against that list, with a new tier, a new production chain and new biome content. On what comes next, the only statement is the one in its notes: the coming updates will focus on bugs he did not get to.

How this page is kept

It is worth saying plainly, because an updates page that quietly goes stale is worse than none:

• Sources: the developer’s Steam announcements, plus the store page for the Early Access commitments. Nothing else.
• Checked: on every version change, and at least once a fortnight otherwise.
• Scope: summaries only. Patch notes are not reproduced in full here.

The date at the top of this page is when it was last verified against those sources.

Related

• Sandustry Crash and FPS Fixes — the launch option and the log paths
• Sandustry Beginner Guide — what to do with the version you have
• Sandustry Research Planner — costs, unchanged through v0.5.7
• Why Your Sandustry Research Is Locked — the Tier 5 gate v0.5.4 unstuck