My Time at Sandrock is suspiciously lax about how quickly you need to reach your goals. It could be that it wants you to go at your own pace, but it also might be quietly judging you. I don’t want it to look unfavorably upon your crafting skills and work ethic, so here are some tips for beginners that will get you some good speed off the starting line.
Go to bed at a decent hour
It’s tempting to just keep cramming food into your face to keep your stamina topped up, but eventually, your character will putter out anyway. If you go to bed past midnight your character will complain the next day that they need to go to bed earlier. Stay up later until 03:00 and your lightweight digital persona will pass out. If you get a good night’s sleep, you’ll receive an experience and attack buff.
A decent strategy is to make a routine of having worktime and downtime. Worktime is anything that requires exertion, whether that’s exploration or resource harvesting. Downtime is the stuff that doesn’t drain your stamina, which includes shopping, crafting, or talking to NPCs. Then, just keep an eye on the time and get to bed at a good hour. An adult requires eight hours of sleep every night, and it doesn’t look like Sandrock has discovered coffee yet.
Meet the NPCs
It can take some time to get in close with the NPCs. There’s no need to rush straight into romance until you can impress them with your fishing and crafting skills. However, it is worth taking the time to meet them all for the first time. Every one of them will give you a gift to commemorate the moment just for talking to them. And when you’re starting out, you need all the help you can get.
If you’re wondering about relationships, only some NPCs can be romanced. You can tell which are available, as the meter under their relationship panel will show hearts instead of stars.
Increase your inventory space
Even after a short amount of time collecting resources in My Time at Sandrock, you’ll probably bump up against some pretty restrictive inventory space. You can build chests to hold your stuff. Conveniently, all those resources are accessible from your various tools, so feel free to cram all your resources in there. However, there is a better way.
When viewing your inventory, there’s a rather easy-to-miss icon at the very end of your stockpile. It’s a blank tile with a plus (+) symbol on it. Select this, and you’ll be presented with a prompt to buy additional inventory spots. It starts off at a meager 10 gol to upgrade but becomes more expensive as you buy more and more. Thankfully, it’s slow to become too pricey, so feel free to pack in as many spots as you can afford. Your wallet may hate you, but your pockets will be thankful.
Maintain your equipment
To keep things running smoothly at your workshop, you need to keep your gear in top shape. Each machine requires three things: fuel, water, and dusting.
Fuel is rather straightforward. When using the machine, you can select the fuel menu and choose what you cram into it. It can be wood, power crystals, or even just dregs. They don’t use fuel when they aren’t actively crafting anything, so don’t be afraid to just top them up.
The next requirement is water, and every active machine draws from your water supply. This is the big tank that sits next to your house. You can get water from two places: The first is by collecting dew from just about every resource node and crafting them into water. One unit of water takes a lot of dew, though this can be cut back on with the right upgrades. Most likely, you’ll need to buy your water from the store at the far edge of the oasis (facing the street). If you run out of water, all your machines will shut down, so make sure you stock up regularly.
As for dusting, you’ll run into this problem after your very first sandstorm. Piles of sand will build up on your machines and slow them down. To get rid of them, you first must craft a feather duster using the recipe sold at the commerce store. Then, just use that when the machine is highlighted, and it should clear the sand away. Even without sandstorms, the grit builds up in your works, so make sure you give them a dusting every now and then to make sure they’re in ship shape.
Only pick commissions you know you can complete
It’s very tempting to pick the highest paying jobs off the commerce bulletin board, but be careful. If you pick one that you don’t have the ability to complete, you’ll be stuck with it until it expires and then penalized for failing it. My Time at Sandrock has no qualms about throwing tasks at you that require equipment that you don’t have. Make sure you keep in mind what can be made easily. Easy commissions completed regularly will add up a lot faster than harder tasks that require you to scramble to upgrade your apparatus. Work smarter, not harder.
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