Mindustry: Complete Guide

This guide covers Mindustry's factory-plus-tower-defense loop from your first conveyor to late Serpulo tech, how the v8 campaign works, Erekir basics, and the habits that separate a smooth run from a lost sector.

Researched September 2026 — current as of v8 (Build 160, released 2026-09-11; the official wiki lists 160.5). Live games change; check the linked sources if something differs.

Quick Start

Your core is everything. Drills and conveyors feed the core, the core pays for construction, and if the core dies the sector is lost. Protect it first.
Mine copper and lead by hand, then automate immediately. Mechanical Drills on copper, lead, sand and coal ore, conveyed straight into the core, are the backbone of every early sector.
Feed turrets with conveyors, not by hand. A Duo takes copper (cheap), graphite (harder hitting) or silicon (homing). Run a conveyor past a line of Duos and they pull ammo automatically.
Research is spent from your core's stockpile. Open the tech tree with J. In the campaign, research costs are paid from items stored in your sector cores, so a healthy economy speeds up research.
Silicon is the first real bottleneck. The Silicon Smelter needs coal, sand and power. Get it running early; silicon feeds units, better turrets, and many blocks.
Graphite comes from coal via the Graphite Press. Graphite ammo roughly doubles your early Duo effectiveness and is needed for pneumatic drills and more.
Space pauses the game. Use it constantly to plan builds while a wave is incoming. You can queue blueprints while paused.
Save schematics (F). Select an area with F to save it; press T for the schematic menu. A good silicon or graphite block is reusable across every sector.
Sectors you leave keep producing, but v8 changed the rules. As of Build 154, sectors that are not under attack are frozen for waves but still export items, and Serpulo invasions are disabled by default.
Difficulty modifiers exist in v8. If the reworked campaign is too hard (or too easy), adjust difficulty rather than quitting a sector.

Default Controls (Desktop)

These are the defaults from the game's source. Everything is rebindable, and v8 added a button to unset keybinds.

Action	Default key
Move	W A S D
Build / select	Left mouse
Cancel / deconstruct area	Right mouse (drag)
Rotate block before placing	Scroll wheel
Rotate a placed block	R
Pick block under cursor	Middle mouse
Diagonal placement	Left Ctrl (while dragging)
Clear build queue	Q
Pause building	E
Schematic select / menu	F / T
Flip schematic X / Y	Z / X
Rebuild destroyed blocks (select)	B
Pause game	Space
Research tree / planet map / minimap	J / N / M
Command mode (units)	Left Shift
Select all units / all unit factories	G / H
Ping a location	P
Respawn in core	V
Toggle power lasers / block statuses	F5 / F6
Block info	F1

Core Systems

Resources and processing (Serpulo)

Item	How you get it	Main uses
Copper	Drill copper ore	Everything early, Duo ammo
Lead	Drill lead ore	Power nodes, kilns, scatter ammo
Sand	Drill sand/darksand, or Pulverize scrap	Silicon, metaglass
Coal	Drill coal ore	Graphite, silicon
Scrap	Drill scrap walls/ore	Separator and pulverizer input
Graphite	Graphite Press (coal)	Ammo, pneumatic drills, research
Silicon	Silicon Smelter (coal + sand + power)	Units, turrets, logic, solar
Metaglass	Kiln (lead + sand + power)	Liquid conduits and tanks
Titanium	Pneumatic Drill or better	Titanium conveyor, mid-game everything
Thorium	Laser Drill or better	Reactors, heavy turrets, walls
Plastanium	Plastanium Compressor (titanium + oil)	Plastanium conveyors, advanced units
Phase Fabric	Phase Weaver (thorium + sand)	Phase conveyor, overdrive, top units
Surge Alloy	Surge Smelter	Late turrets and walls
Spore Pod	Cultivator (water + power)	Oil, blast compound, combustion fuel
Pyratite / Blast Compound	Pyratite Mixer / Blast Mixer	Incendiary and explosive ammo

Drill tier matters. The Mechanical Drill handles copper, lead, sand, coal and scrap. You need a Pneumatic Drill for titanium and a Laser Drill for thorium. Drills speed up with water supplied (and larger drills with more ore tiles under them).

Logistics

Conveyor, Junction, Router are your first tools. Junctions cross two lines without mixing; routers split items in all directions (including backwards, which is the classic cause of clogs).
Sorter / Inverted Sorter filter a specific item. Overflow / Underflow Gates send items sideways only when the front is blocked (or the reverse).
Bridge Conveyors jump gaps and are ideal for crossing lines neatly. v8 lets you view items inside bridges and improved auto bridge placement.
Titanium Conveyor is the first real throughput upgrade; Plastanium and Phase conveyors come much later.
Unloaders pull items out of the core or containers. An unloader next to the core set to graphite, feeding a conveyor to your turrets, is the easiest ammo supply in the game.

Power

Start with Combustion Generators (burn coal, spore pods or other flammables) linked with Power Nodes. Move to Steam Generators, Solar Panels for trickle power, then Thermal Generators on heat vents and eventually the Thorium Reactor or Differential Generator. Store surplus in Batteries. The Thorium Reactor explodes if it overheats without cryofluid cooling, so do not build one next to your core.

Defense

Turret	Role
Duo	Cheap all-purpose starter, hits air and ground
Scatter	Anti-air only, flak
Hail	Ground-only artillery, long range
Arc	Short-range power turret, no ammo
Lancer	Power-based piercing shot vs ground
Wave	Sprays liquid; water extinguishes fires
Salvo, Ripple, Cyclone	Mid-game ammo turrets
Fuse, Swarmer, Segment	Specialist options (Segment shoots down bullets)
Spectre, Meltdown, Foreshadow	Late-game heavy hitters

Put walls in front of turrets, Menders behind them, and later a Force Projector for a shield bubble. Many turrets accept optional coolant (water, then cryofluid) for a big fire-rate increase.

Units

Ground, Air and Naval Factories build tier 1 units; Additive, Multiplicative, Exponential and Tetrative Reconstructors upgrade them. Key lines:

Dagger → Mace → Fortress → Scepter → Reign (ground assault)
Nova → Pulsar → Quasar → Vela → Corvus (mechs that can hover and repair)
Crawler → Atrax → Spiroct → Arkyid → Toxopid (legged units that walk over walls)
Flare → Horizon → Zenith → Antumbra → Eclipse (air assault)
Mono → Poly → Mega → Quad → Oct (support: Mono auto-mines copper/lead, Poly rebuilds destroyed blocks)
Risso → Minke → Bryde → Sei → Omura and Retusa → Oxynoe → Cyerce → Aegires → Navanax (naval)

Hold Left Shift for command mode to select and order units. v8 added command queuing, stances (hold fire, patrol, boost, hold position and more), and mine-specific-resource commands. Monos are one of the best early purchases: free copper and lead forever.

The Serpulo Campaign (v8)

v8 overhauled Serpulo: most maps were reworked, generated enemy bases were replaced with player-submitted maps, several maps gained core zones (extra cores allowed on marked tiles), and launch pads now need landing pads at the destination. The core progression path in the current tech tree runs:

Step	Sector	What it teaches
1	Ground Zero	Drills, conveyors, Duos
2	Frozen Forest	Junctions, routers, graphite; has an extra basic tutorial in v8
3	Cratered Battleground	Menders, combustion power
4	Ruinous Shores	Kiln, pumps, naval threats
5	Windswept Islands	Pneumatic drills, silicon, steam power, bridging water
6	Salt Flats	Desert sector with enemy presence; needs Fungal Pass and Frontier cleared first
7	Tar Fields	Oil, coal centrifuge, Wave turret
8	Impact 0078	Thorium, Lancer, Salvo, Core: Foundation
9	Desolate Rift	Very dangerous, cramped; thermal and thorium power
10	Planetary Launch Terminal	Final objective; needs Nuclear Production Complex, Extraction Outpost, Mycelial Bastion and Littoral Shipyard

Side branches include Humid Coastline, Naval Fortress, Biomass Synthesis Facility, Stained Mountains, Overgrowth, Fungal Pass, Frontier, Testing Grounds, Perilous Harbor and several marked optional objectives (Atolls, Tainted Woods, Weathered Channels, Sunken Pier). v8 builds also moved or hid some sectors between betas, so if a guide from 2024 mentions a sector you cannot find, that is why.

Campaign tips

Each sector remembers what you built. Leave a sector with a self-sufficient economy and defenses before moving on.
Launch/landing pads move resources between sectors. Use them to ship silicon or titanium from a rich sector to the one you are fighting in.
Pyratite is locked behind Cratered Battleground in v8, and Build 155 made loadout schematics build automatically when you land on Serpulo.
Sector loss is recoverable: relaunch, rebuild, and bring a better loadout.

Erekir in Brief

Erekir is the second, more structured campaign (The Onset, Aegis, Lake, Intersect, Atlas, Split, Basin, Marsh, Peaks, Ravine, Caldera, Stronghold, Crevice, Siege, Crossroads, Karst, Origin). It plays very differently:

New resources start with beryllium, then tungsten, with silicon, graphite, oxide and carbide later.
Plasma Bores mine walls rather than ground ore; items travel in Ducts instead of conveyors.
Power is carried by Beam Nodes in straight lines; heat is a separate resource for advanced crafters.
Your first turret is Breach. Units are built from dedicated fabricators and cannot be freely spammed the way Serpulo units can.
Build restrictions are tighter; many sectors limit where you can place cores. Read the sector objective panel.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Routers feeding back into themselves or into a conveyor that feeds them. Use sorters, overflow gates or bridges instead of router chains.
Mixed-item belts into turrets or factories. A Duo line carrying sand clogs forever. Keep ammo belts pure or filter with sorters.
Ignoring air. Flying waves bypass ground walls. Put a few Scatters near the core and production.
Overbuilding power with no storage. Batteries smooth out power-hungry turrets like Lancers.
Putting a Thorium Reactor or big generators next to the core. v8 also improved generator explosion effects, and they hurt.
Researching everything at once. Prioritize graphite, silicon, pneumatic drills, titanium conveyors, and Monos.
Skipping coolant. Water into turrets is nearly free extra DPS.
Leaving sectors half-built. Unfinished exports and unprotected cores cost you later.

Advanced Tips

Schematics are the real tech tree. Build one clean, compact silicon smelter block and one graphite block, save them, and paste them everywhere. The Steam Workshop has thousands of community schematics.
Unloader + sorter at the core lets you use the core as a giant buffer: feed everything in, unload exactly what each line needs.
Overdrive Projectors speed up everything in range, including drills and turrets, at a power cost. Pair with phase fabric boosting late.
Use the new target dummy block (Build 160) to measure turret DPS before committing a layout.
Polys rebuild destroyed blocks automatically; a couple near your front line saves constant manual repairs. B lets you select destroyed blocks to rebuild yourself.
Logic processors can automate unit control, turret targeting and displays. Start with the official logic introduction on the wiki.
Plan with pause. Queue an entire expansion while paused, then unpause and let your core unit build it.

FAQ

Is Mindustry free? The game is open source and free on itch.io and to build yourself; the Steam and mobile versions are paid and include Steam Workshop and achievements.

What is the latest version? v8 left beta on 2026-04-14, followed by Builds 158, 159 and 160 (2026-09-11). The official wiki currently lists 160.5.

Why are my other sectors not being attacked anymore? Build 154 removed the background wave simulation and disabled Serpulo sector invasions by default. Idle sectors still produce exports.

Can I play the campaign in co-op? Yes. You can invite friends to your campaign session, and v8 syncs building plans between players.

How do I make silicon? A Silicon Smelter fed with coal and sand plus power. Graphite presses and pulverizers upstream are common in compact designs.

Do my v7 saves carry over? Build 157 added a sector migration warning for players upgrading from build 146. Expect reworked maps; some old sector saves may not match the new layouts.

Are mods supported? Yes, both JSON and Java mods, plus server plugins. v8 added data patches and a map/server asset system (Build 159), and Build 160 lets plugins show custom UI on clients.