You land on the planet as a Prospector, and the game's own beginner guide describes the job honestly: it starts with sifting gold from sand and ends with an automated planet. This page is the first hour — the loop, the exact prices, and the two rules the game undersells.
The three currencies
Everything you earn is one of three things, and they do not overlap:
- Gold buys Research — every machine and tool unlock.
- Fluxite buys Upgrades for the items you already own (see the fluxite guide).
- Energy powers late-game structures; ignore it for now.
Advanced research tiers are additionally gated by Factory Level, a milestone track your production feeds. Early on, gold is the only bottleneck.
The rule the game undersells: Collectors
Gold pixels on the ground are not money. Gold only counts toward your bank while stored in Collector blocks — which need a solid foundation, and are consumed from when you spend. Your actual first build order is therefore: a hole, a Collector at the bottom of it, and only then a gold source above. Every design on this site assumes gold falls toward a Collector.
The dirt-to-gold loop
- Dig Dirt to expose Sand. Sand is the raw ore of the early game.
- Wet it. 1 Sand + 1 Water = 2 Wet Sand — find a surface pool, or dig sand into water.
- Shake it. The Shaker (your first machine, 20 Gold) takes Wet Sand on top and pays out Gold through its underside at a 25% rate, pushing Residue off the top. Details and layouts in the sifting guide.
- Store it. Gold falls into the Collector; your research budget grows.
Do not discard the Residue piling up — it is the feedstock of your second gold machine (the slag guide covers the burn-and-press line).
Tier 1 research, in buying order
The full Tier 1 board, with official prices:
| Research | Gold | What it gets you |
|---|---|---|
| Shaker | 20 | The first machine — buy instantly |
| Logistics | 30 | Conveyor Belts + Launchers |
| Hover mode | 50 | Space to hover; mobility that pays forever |
| Map & Minimap | 100 | Stop getting lost |
| Flare Gun | 150 | Light for deep shafts |
| Sprint Boost | 200 | Shift to sprint |
| Filter | 250 | The sorting block every later build relies on |
That order is also a sensible buying order. After Tier 1, the milestone unlocks to aim at: Flamethrower (400) and Kinetic Press (500) to start the residue line, Fluids (1250) for pumping, Planter Box (2000) for farming, and eventually Hauler Drone (3000) for hands-off transport.
Controls worth knowing on day one
All documented officially: 10 hotbars of 10 slots each (Alt+number or Alt+scroll to switch); C selects a placed structure and Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V copy-pastes builds; Shift while dragging reverses a conveyor's direction; Ctrl is the replace hotkey; hold V for the construction ruler; Space toggles Hover once researched. If a cave or vault ever physically traps you, the pause menu has an unstuck command.
Your first Fluxite
You will trip over trace Fluxite while digging. The wiki's own recommendation for spending it: Grabber capacity first — the bigger your grab, the faster everything else goes. Two more early standouts: the Grabber's Sponge upgrade (200 Fluxite) lets you pick up water above ground, which simplifies the whole wetting loop, and the Material Scanner shows how any hovered resource can be refined — a built-in wiki, cheaper than alt-tabbing to this one.