Sandustry Walkthrough: Objectives From Start to the Aura Field

Your current objectives are in the Objectives panel, and the Beginner’s Guide notes that each one also gets a yellow arrow on the minimap. Since v0.5.3, a factory tier blocked by an objective tells you why. The production quantity for every tier is on why your research is locked; this page is the route around those numbers.

The route, tier by tier

The task that opens each next tier comes from the official wiki. The objectives along the way are the order one player recorded on a full run. CommunityObjective order from a Steam achievement guide, matched against Steam discussion threads. Nothing forces this exact order; the tier task is the hard gate.

Tier	What the objectives walk you through	Task that opens the next tier
1	Shaker, Logistics, Hover, the Map, the Filter, Sprint Boost, Flare Gun	Shake Wet Sand
2	Find Fluxite and upgrade a tool; get the Flamethrower and use it to burn Residue, vaporise Water, melt Ice and make it rain; Kinetic Press, Thermal Buffer, Burner Belt; your first artifact	Press Burnt Residue
3	Planter Box and your first flower, then Fluids and the Pyro Dispenser to automate it	Grow Flowers
4	Gun and Rocket Launcher, the Corraller, investigate the anomaly, Drying & Condensing	Condense Florin into Florinol
5	Florinol Battery, Smelter and Copper Mold, then a Steam Turbine on an Energy Connector	Peak Energy
6	Secure the Stratacore, the Synthesizer, Aura Extraction	Aura

Artifacts are not on this chain; you pick them up as you explore. The puzzle rooms they sit in are on artifacts and puzzle rooms.

The boiler, and the make-it-rain objectives

CommunityEarly on you uncover an old boiler structure with water inside, and a pop-up about water that is easy to click past. It is there to teach the steam loop. Stand at the bottom of the structure and aim the Flamethrower down into the water. The Steam rises as high as it can and turns back into rain once it reaches the sky, so channel it with blocks until the rain lands where you want a reservoir. The structure’s own water runs out, and that does not matter.

The method is what you keep: every underground pool works the same way, and later so does Snow from the Cryoblaster. Moving water has the rest of the water options.

Investigating the anomaly

This is the objective behind most “I can’t unlock Tier 5” posts. The official FAQ puts it plainly: Tier 5 needs the condensed Florinol goal and the Find the Anomaly goal. Producing more Florinol will not get you past it.

• It is required even though it looks optional. CommunityThe objective is labelled as a secondary one, which is why so many players skip it.
• No Drill needed. The FAQ says so directly. CommunityThe walls players get stuck on are Shatterstone and Ice. Shatterstone ignores the Shovel but breaks to the Gun, and the Flamethrower melts Ice.
• What to do there. CommunityThe anomaly is a large purple structure with an orb inside it. Picking up the orb completes the objective. The achievement for it is Void Touched: “Investigate an anomaly.”
• It also unlocks the Void Rift. CommunityThe Void Rift research stays unavailable until you have picked up that orb, even with the rest of the tree done.

If you did both and Tier 5 still would not unlock, that was a bug fixed in v0.5.4, and the fix repairs affected saves when they load.

Late-game spoilers below: the Stratacore, the Aura Field and what happens after the last objective.

Securing the Stratacore

Tier 6 opens with Secure the Stratacore. The achievement for it, Stratacore Secured, reads “Neutralize your first Strataform event.”

CommunityThe Stratacore is surrounded by Strataform growth. Blast through it, the Rocket Launcher works well and a Fluxite upgrade helps, until you reach the core and stand on it. The objective then completes on its own. Since v0.5.6, Lava destroys Strataform too.

What you get is worth more than the objective suggests. CommunityAfterwards the Stratacore has its own tab in your tools menu. Place it anywhere and it keeps regrowing a ball of terrain around itself, and breaking that terrain gives you sand-making material without end. Digger drones can chip at it on their own, and heavier weapons clear it much faster. That makes it the answer when you run out of dirt on the map. It is easy to forget it is in the tab at all.

Controlling the swarm and saturating the Aura Field

The last stretch is the Aura line, covered in full on the Aura Extractor page. In objective terms:

1. Unlock the Synthesizer (tier 6) and feed it Florinol to make Aurixite.
2. Shake the Aurixite for Auralite, which the Aura Extractor pulls in and turns into Auralite Crystal. CommunityThe objective at this step is Reach 1000 Auralite.
3. Unlock Aura Extraction. The achievement is named Aura Extractor: “Unlock Aura Extraction through the Swarm Console.”
4. Control the swarm. Click the extractor, then drag the nanobot target onto a forming crystal. The swarm breaks crystals down into Aura. Nothing else can mine them.
5. Saturate the Aura Field. CommunityThis is the objective’s in-game name. It fills as the swarm eats crystal, and new research opens at stages along the way, including swarm upgrades. Keep checking the research tab, because those upgrades are what stop you having to steer by hand. The official wiki names one of them, Swarm Zoning, which makes the swarm target crystals automatically.

Filling the circle is the Full Circle achievement, “Fill the whole Aura circle so the next factory tier becomes available”, and the wiki puts the Aura task at 10,000.

After the last objective

CommunityCompleting the Aura Field is the end of the Early Access story, and players report a thank-you message for playing Early Access when they get there. The developer has said the first big content update, Major Update #1, comes next, without a date; updates tracks it.

What is left to do in the meantime:

• The rest of the achievements. Final Schematic wants every node in the tech tree, including the Void Rift. Conservatory Curator wants one of each creature. Vaultkeeper and Heliodyne Tycoon want 100,000 and 1,000,000 Gold held in collectors at once.
• The remaining artifacts, if your Augment tree is not full. See artifacts.
• If you came here looking for “the vault”: SandustryVault is the fan-run site for blueprint strings, and the blueprint library lists everything on it.

Can you get under the desert?

Not in any way that matters yet. The east side of the map is dunes, and Dune reforms after you dig it. CommunityMost of what lies beneath is closed off by indestructible rock. One player who found a way underneath reports nothing there but more desert sand and rock: no puzzles, no resources worth the trip. The dune surface is still worth crossing, because your first artifact achievement names the dunes.

Related

• Why Your Sandustry Research Is Locked — the quantity for every tier
• Sandustry Artifacts and Puzzle Rooms — the rooms you find along the way
• Sandustry Aura Extractor — the last production line, in detail
• Sandustry Research Planner — costing the unlocks on this route