Sandustry water

Wetting without a flood

One Sand plus one Water yields two Wet Sand. That doubling is why an open hose across a dune deletes your dry buffer. Build a narrow tank. Drop Sand in. Pump or vent Water in. Scoop Wet Sand from the floor onto its own belt. If the tank is too shallow, incoming Sand shoves product out the wrong side. If it is too deep, you wait for pixels to settle and the Shaker starves.

Sand drinks limited reservoirs. Steam’s store copy says this outright. A pretty lakeside factory dies when the beach is gone. Keep a dry Sand stockpile and a Water stockpile as two belts, not one mixed trench.

Ice, steam, snow

Ice melts when heated. Flamethrowers and redirected lava are the official answers to thick ice walls in vaults. Steam rises from boiled water and can stall a wet line if it occupies the same shaft. Cover tanks. Vent heat sideways. Official Water notes also mention evaporation on the order of 45 seconds for exposed pixels, which is why a shallow decorative moat is a bad warehouse.

Snow burns to Water. Firn, in community writing, is packed snow that must be dug first. Snow plus Water makes Ice, useful if you need a plug. Snow plus lava makes Scoria and eats the snow, which is a heat-relocation trick and a way to lose your water source in the same minute. Cryoblaster is the tool that writes Ice on purpose.

Pipes and lava sharing

Pipes, Pumps, and Liquid Vents unlock on the Pipes research node. Early demo hotfixes once deleted water inside pipes and later fixed it. Current Early Access expects ordinary routing. Do not share a pipe between Water and Lava unless you like steam explosions in the manifold. Liquid Vents dump into tanks. Pumps lift standing fluid.

Lava is a tool and a hazard. It burns Residue, cuts ice, and ruins a Gold pit. Put burn lanes in their own trench with Blocks as curbs. Scoria and Cinder exist so you can move heat as a solid instead of as an open lake.

Water in vaults

Ancient vaults, per Steam, hide behind puzzles the civilization left. Ice walls are the common water-shaped lock. Flamethrower, redirected lava, or a boiled steam pocket will open them. Do not pump your factory lake into the vault unless you can drain it. Indestructible pixels will not let you dig a new drain through the shell.

Cryoblaster Ice is a plug you can write. Use it to stop a flood you caused, then melt it when you want the path back. That is the whole vault water kit: heat to open, cold to seal, pipes to keep the factory out of the cutscene.

More detail worth keeping

Water is the quiet destroyer of pretty bases. It is also the only reason Wet Sand exists. Treat every exposed puddle as inventory that is evaporating. Forty-five seconds is the official order of magnitude for exposed water pixels, not a stopwatch you should overlay on a speedrun. Cover tanks. Pipe from snow burners or ice melts. Keep lava in a different color trench so you can see a leak. If steam rains onto a Shaker, you built a weather machine, not a factory. Vault puzzles will tempt you to dump a lake through a hole. Carry a Cryoblaster so you can write a plug when that idea goes badly. Then go back to the tank and count your Wet Sand.

Practice that survives a patch

A covered tank with one vent in and one Wet Sand belt out is an entire mid-game water system. Everything else is flavor. Snow burners are a second inlet, not a second factory. Ice walls in vaults are a third story. If you connect all three to one pipe because the screenshot looked clean, you will boil a farm, freeze a Shaker, and call it physics. It is plumbing.

Close the loop

Snow burners belong outside the factory silhouette. Carry Water in. Do not carry fire weather in. A snow field under a rocket test range is how you lose both the renewable water and the test range.

If you must boil, boil in a chimney that is not your launcher stair. Steam occupies volume. Launchers occupy volume. They cannot share without becoming a lottery.

Frequently asked questions