How to start a new game of SteamWorld Build - part 3: Dusty Caverns

If you followed along with part 1 and part 2 of this tutorial series, you'll have a thriving village full of Workers and Engineers. You'll also have a basic mine, providing you with the necessary materials to produce some advanced goods.

In part 3, we'll automate the mine. We'll also fulfil more Engineer's needs and get them ready to upgrade to Aristobots. 

Let's go!

TL;DR: a list of buildings

What will be building today? Here's the list!

• 15 tiles Mechanic Quarters
• 25 tiles Workshop
• 3 Scrap Extractors
• 2 Ironium Extractor
• 3 Dirty Water Extractor
• 3 Water Purifier
• Wash Service Shop
• Uncovered 2 Rocket Parts
• 24 tiles Miner Quarters (optional, could use an item too)
• Several Bridges
• Surveillance Facility (optional)
• 16 Worker Residences
• 12 upgrades to Engineer Residences
• 1 Cattle Farm + 3 fields
• 1 Burger Meister
• 2 upgrades to Aristobot Residences
• 18 tiles Prospector Quarters
• 1 Cactus Farm + 3 fields
• 1 Glassblower
• 1 Moonshiner
• 1 Charcoal Kiln
• 1 Repaired Mineshaft
• 2 Pillars

Step 1: Mine automation and clean water

To automate your mining endeavour, start by building Mechanic Quarters of at least 9 tiles. Mechanics are the one with the Green hard hat. Their job is to build and repair machines and to revive Guards and other Steambots knocked down in battle. 

There won't be any fighting on this floor, so also no reviving downed Guards. Machines don't break so quickly that they constantly need repairing and Prospectors still carry the materials from the machines to the Mineshaft. Having 1 Mechanic should be enough on this floor, but you can always upgrade to 15 tiles for a second Mechanic. 

Next, build a Workshop. As with Quarters, you get space for 1 machine at 9 tiles. Each additional machine will need 4 tiles more. For now, build a Workshop of at least 25 tiles. This will give you space for 5 machines. 

Then, build the machines. Place a Scrap Extractor, a Dirty Water Extractor and a Ironium Extractor. You should have all of them discovered by now. Mechanic(s) will build the Extractors. The machines will automatically extract the resources and available prospectors will start collecting and transporting them to the Mineshaft, so they can be used in the City.

3 Active extractors in SteamWorld Build: Dirty Water & Ironium at the bottom and a Scrap Extractor at the top.

Talking about the City, time to clean up that dirty water and make our Engineers happy! Build a Water Purifier, which will use the Dirty Water extracted down in the mine and fulfil the Engineer's need.

While on the topic of water: you should have enough Sheet Metal to build a Wash Service Shop too. Both Engineers and Aristobots require access to it, so maybe you can plan ahead and envision where you'll build your Aristobot part of town.

The last thing to do in this step is to make your Scrap and Dirty Water production meet their demand.

Each Scrap extractor produces 4 scrap per minute. Together, the Toolmaker, Pickaxe Maker and Spare Parts Maker demand 7 Scrap per minute. 

There are actually 5 Scrap Veins on this floor. About 11 tiles left and 4 tiles up from the Mineshaft, you'll find one of them. Expose it, then build another Scrap Extractor against it. This will bring the production up to 8 Scrap per minute, enough to cover all expenses for now.

All the Engineers we've gathered so far have a Water demand of 2.7 per minute. As the Water Purifier only produces 1 every 30 seconds, you'll need 2 Purifiers to meet the demand. Build another Dirty Water Extractor in the mine and Water Purifier on the surface.

With 5 machines, it's a good idea to have (at least) 5 Prospectors. If you haven't done so already, expand the Prospector Quarter to 33 tiles. 

Step 2: Exploring the mine

While all those Machines are keeping your robot population happy, let's start exploring the mine. 

Just start digging left and right. Maybe you've noticed the coloured lines running across the floor? Try to follow them and don't be afraid to build a bridge if you need to. 

Some doors in SteamWorld Build need to be opened by pulling levers, connected by a power line.

On the one end, you'll find the 3 lines will come together at a closed door. But if you follow all those lines, you'll end up at 3 different levers. 

As you follow the blue line, you'll also uncover your first Rocket Part! Use the dig tool and select it to start excavating the Rocket Part. You will need at least 6 miners to do so. If you need to, enlarge your Miner Quarters to 39 tiles, or apply a Recruit Bonus Miners item to their Quarters. 

The 6 miners will gather around the buried Rocket Part and start digging. After about 2 minutes, they're done and you can click on it to claim it. It'll trigger a rather ominous cut scene after which you'll resurface in a new part of the map on ground level where the Astrodome will have appeared for you.

This Astrodome in SteamWorld Build has 1 discovered Rocket Part.

Nothing much to do here, but you can excavate the rest of the mine. When you toggled all three levers, the door will open up and you can access what's hidden behind it.

There's some gold and an Ironium Vein. Good to know for later 😉 Cross the chasm with a bridge and you'll find the second rocket part on this Mine floor. Excavate it and send it up to the Astrodome by interacting with it, then head back down to the mine and cross the chasm with another bridge.

Do a little digging and behold, another Mineshaft has been found! Unfortunately, it requires 10 Aristobots to repair it. So, we'll leave the mine for now and go back to developing the City. 

A note on Surveillance Facilities

You don't need to build a Surveillance Facility... but why wouldn't you? It makes it a lot easier to determine where resources are.

For room size, the Surveillance Facility is a bit of an odd one. Most of the rooms have some sort of start up cost involved. Quarters need to be 9 tiles for the first miner, but 6 tiles for the second, third and so on. Workshop 9 tiles, but 4 for the next ones.

The Surveillance Facility can be 1 tile and work fine. But, if you want to place extra Radar Machines (which you will), you will need to go in multiples of 9. So for the first Radar Machine, the facility needs to be 9 tiles. For the second, it needs to be 18 and so on. 

But what does it even do? The Surveillance Facility will initially tell you how many resources you will find on this floor of the mine.

If the range is large enough (either by itself or expanded by a Radar Machine), it will even tell you where to find those resources. 

I've been guiding you to the necessary resource deposits so far, which is great if you've been playing along on the default map generated by SteamWorld Build. But, if you chose the random generation, those locations are all different and you will need to figure out where all resources are. 

Step 3: Robo Burgers and Aristobots

As with Engineers, Aristobot Residences aren't built, they're upgraded. 

To get a decent Aristobot suburb going, build 12 Worker Residences with access to General Store and Service Shop. Upgrade them to Engineers as soon as the Satisfaction Level reaches 100%. 

FYI: Aristobots do need access to a Wash Service, but not to the Surveyor Office. If you can place the Wash Service on the border between your Engineer area and the upcoming Aristobot suburb, you can service them both with just the 1 Wash Service building. 

While you're waiting for that, let's satisfy that last missing need of the Engineers: Robo Burgers! Yes, even robots need food in SteamWorld Build!

It's the largest production chain we've seen so far with 5 buildings needed to cater to this need. Luckily enough, 3 of they are already taken care of: a Forester to provide Logs to a Charcoal Kiln, the Kiln to provide Charcoal and an Ironium Extractor to provide Ironium to the Cattle Farm.

Let's get the Cattle Farm built first and see if the production of Charcoal and Ironium will meet the demand later.

A Cattle Farm, like the Cactus Farm, needs 3 Fields. In this case, both the Farm as well as the Fields are 4x5 tiles, so they're easily placeable in either a straight line or a square. 

A robotic Cattle Farm in SteamWorld Build

After you've built the Cattle Farm, build a Burger Meister. Their chefs will use the Robot Steaks from the Farm to make Robo Burgers to sell to the Engineers. 

As soon as they are and the first Engineers are ready to be upgraded, a small cut scene will show and you know you're ready for the next step. Select the Aristobot Residential upgrade button and click on 2 of the available Engineer Residences you want to upgrade.

Your city now has 16 Aristobots. Congratulations!

Step 4: Wrapping up Dusty Caverns and fixing demand issues

For the last step of this part of the series, lets solidify our production down in the Dusty Caverns and get to the next floor. 

You might have noticed the production of both Ironium and Purified Water are no longer enough to provide all your robocitizens and factories. Build another Ironium Extractor and Dirty Water Extractor on available spots. You might need to extend your Workshop for this, as we'll bring the total up to 7 machines. 

You should also enlarge your Prospector Quarters to make sure you have enough Prospectors to carry all those resources back and forth. Aim for 8 or 9 recruited Prospectors, they should be able to do all the heavy lifting. 

Up in the City, build another Water Purifier to match the Dirty Water Extractor you just built. 

You may have noticed the demand for Moonshine has increased quite a bit and reserves are running low. Build another Cactus Farm, Glassblower and Moonshiner to remedy this. No need for a Sand Sifting Factory this time around, the production was already high enough to sustain 2 Glassblowers.

Build another Charcoal Kiln. You shouldn't need to build a Forester as the production of all Foresters should meet the global demand now.

By now, you've probably run out of enough Workers for the Cactus Farm. Build 4 Worker Residences, enough for the current jobs but also to have a little bit of a buffer.

With that all out of the way, production/demand ratios should all be positive. That means we can go back down to the mine.

Repair the Mineshaft you found! It will add another button next to the mini map, with which you can venture down to the Marshy Ruins. 

It looks... disgusting down there. You'll immediately need 2 pillars and can start setting up a basic mining operation like in Step 3 of the last tutorial. But we'll get to that in the next post!

Just keep diggin'

It doesn't look like we did a lot in the last 4 steps. Still, we achieved some great progress. Mainly:

• automating the better part of our mining endeavours
• getting Engineers ready to upgrade to Aristobots
• making sure all production meets demand

In part 4, we'll start on exploring the Aristobots. We'll also start a much needed defence in the mine and get to eat mushrooms? 🤔