Sandustry Material Ratios

Sandustry’s pixel physics mean exact yields swing with layout, tick timing, and phase changes. Still, community ratio charts give you planning anchors so you do not under-build water lines or over-mine sand before RedSand appears. Treat every number here as a target band—log your factory output and adjust belts rather than chasing perfect spreadsheet cells.

Core wetting ratio

The hard rule from game mechanics: one Sand plus one Water yields two Wet Sand (Sand and Wet Sand). That doubling defines early water demand. If you mine two sand per second, you need one water per second mixed at the pool—not two—because each water tile pairs with one sand tile to output two wet tiles.

Early community planning often phrases demand as two Sand to three Water before deeper materials appear. The extra water headroom covers steam loss, ice freezing, and pool spill—not a different crafting recipe. When steam vents are missing, you may need closer to three water stored per two sand mined.

Shaker gold yield band

Wet Sand through a Shaker produces Gold and Slag. Reported gold recovery clusters around twenty to twenty-five percent of Wet Sand input in player tests. Slag takes the rest plus any mis-routed dry sand you mistakenly fed.

Improve yield less by “better shakers” and more by clean feeds: diagonal input, separated outputs, no slag burying gold. Compare shaker chest counts over a fixed demo minute and note results beside your layout sketch.

Mid-game sand-water-redsand benchmark

Spreadsheets shared in Discord and wiki discussions summarize a mid-game planning ratio:

• 2 Sand mined
• 3 Water managed (including steam/ice losses)
• 4 RedSand mined

…producing roughly 3 Gold and 8 Fluxite when slag burning and press lines keep up (RedSand and Fluxite).

That 2:3:4 input mix is not a single crafting table row—it is an empirical balance point. If slag backs up, gold per hour drops because shakers stall; if burners outpace shakers, you lose fluxite side inputs that depend on slag derivatives. Tune burners before blaming redsand mining rates.

Density ordering reference

Sorting buildings exploit density stacks. Community charts commonly order (light to heavy among core materials):

Sand / Wet Sand → Slag → RedSand → Lava → Gold (with Steam and Ice as water phases behaving differently).

Use this when configuring Filters or designing vertical drop towers. Amethelis and Burnt Slag sit in mid-game bands—verify against your current patch when Early Access updates land.

Slag burning efficiency

Slag → Burnt Slag → Kinetic Slag Press ties back to fluxite and advanced outputs (Gold and Slag). Under-burning leaves slag piles that block logistics; over-burning without press throughput wastes fuel and heat. Buffer one screen of slag between shaker and burner so efficiency swings smooth out.

Community fluxite numbers assume slag rarely backs up for more than a few seconds. If your logs show otherwise, fix Slag Processing before changing sand or redsand mine rates.

Logging your factory in five minutes

Pick one shaker bank and run a timed test: note Wet Sand fed, Gold collected, and Slag hauled across five real minutes. Divide totals by five for per-minute rates. Compare gold per minute to your research spend rate—if research outpaces income, fix wetting before mining more sand. Store results in a personal note; wiki charts are planning bands, not save-specific promises. Re-test after every demo patch listed on Demo Patches.

How to use this page in practice

1. Size water storage using sand mine rate and the 1:1 pairing rule, plus ~50% headroom for steam.
2. Size shaker count so Wet Sand feed matches ~four times desired gold output divided by 0.22 (mid yield guess).
3. Add redsand belts when gold research needs fluxite unlocks—start near four redsand units per two sand units mined.
4. Re-measure weekly after patches; update personal notes, not just this wiki.

Cross-read Water, Ice, and Steam for phase losses, Buildings Hub for machine limits, and Research Priority Tier List for unlock order. Full material descriptions live on the Materials Hub.