3 simple steps to make your conveyor belts work in SteamWorld Build

As soon as conveyor belts are unlocked, you should really use them in your mines. For a few reasons, most notably: they're awesomely cool.

And your Prospectors deserve a break too. Poor guys, just lugging around all that water...

Step 1: Unlock the Conveyor Belt

You can't just build the conveyor belt from the get-go. It needs to be unlocked, which is done by finding the blueprint. 

The conveyor belt blueprint can be found in Marshy Ruins, the second layer of the mines. 

Once you've found the blueprint, you can build the Conveyor Belt in all three levels of the mine. So definitely track back to Dusty Caverns and use them to improve your Scrap, Ironium and Dirty Water production!

Step 2: Connect the Conveyor Belt

Building Conveyor Belt track is oddly satisfying. Having to find a way from the resource to the mineshaft can be tricky though! But, once you've laid out the track it is definitely, it's a victory for your productivity. 

Each piece of conveyor belt costs:

• 60 money
• 1/4th tools
• 1/5th plastic
• 1/6th sheet metal

You should take these numbers in to account when placing the track, to see which resource is better to optimise for. 

There will always be some kind of loss there. If you build 12 pieces of conveyor belt, it will only cost 3 tools and 2 sheet metal. But it will also cost 3 plastic, which (at 1/5th plastic per tile) would get you 15 tiles. So you loose out on 3 tiles. 

If you're really into the math: the sweet spot is at 60 tiles, as that is the lowest common multiple for 4, 5 and 6. 

Anyway, when placing down the conveyor belt, make sure the belt actually connects to the extractor, mine shaft or whatever you are trying to connect. 

3 different stages of connecting conveyor belts in SteamWorld Build

In the left side the of the image above, the conveyor belt is not connected to the Ironium extractor. It seems like it is, but it's actually 1 tile off. 

Select the conveyor belt from the build menu and you'll see blue striped area (middle image). At least one tile of conveyor belt needs to be in that area for the belt to activate. 

Once the conveyor belt is active, like in the right side of the image above, it will have yellow arrows pointing in the direction the products are carried. 

As you can see, the yellow arrow markings only appear once the conveyor belt is active. This is an easy way of checking if you placed your conveyor belt correctly!

Step 3: Check for earthquake damage

Once the conveyor belt is placed down, connected and active, nothing will stop your produced goods from automatically being brought up to the surface... Right? 

Well, technically yes, but also no. 

Earthquakes are a thing. If you have parts of your mine that are unstable and your conveyor belt travels through them, falling rubble from an earthquake might destroy one or more tiles of conveyor belt. This will rendering it useless for that part. 

Did you build a massive network of extractors connected by conveyor belts? Don't worry! Unaffected parts of the conveyor belt network will still work without interruption.

So if you do see the red 'high instability' notification pop up, be sure to place down an extra pillar as soon as you can. It will save you from having to follow each belt to see if any rocks have fallen on your conveyor belt track. 

Bonus tip: protect your pillars

Enemies from the hive have a tendency to hit your pillars as soon as they encounter them. 

Having one of your pillars destroyed might make the difference between having a stable mine and running a high instability risk. 

That means that if your pillars are destroyed, falling rubble might kill your conveyor belt, essentially crippling your production. 

To remedy this, either have guards close by or protect pillars with turrets from your armoury.