Gold Production

Gold funds every Research unlock, and the game hands you a four-stage loop to mass-produce it. This is the full chain — Wet Sand to Shaker to fire to press to planter — with every verified number in one place.

Why Gold Matters

Gold "is one of the two major materials required for early to mid game progression" (the other being Fluxite). Two rules define how it banks: Gold only counts when stored in Collector blocks, and one pixel of Gold is worth 1 unit of currency — Liquid Gold is worth twice as much and still counts in Collectors.

The Loop at a Glance

Stage 1 — Shaker

"Residue is produced by dropping Wet Sand on a Shaker." Every Wet Sand becomes Residue, and one in four also drops a Gold that falls through the machine. This is the only probabilistic step: "Gold yield is probabilistic at Shaker stage but deterministic at later stages." Full layout advice in the Shaker guide.

Stage 2 — Burning Residue

Residue "must then be burned, typically with Lava or a Flamethrower, to produce Burnt Residue." Each pixel has a 25% chance to convert — the rest burns away — which works out to roughly 4 Residue per Burnt Residue.

Ignition options: manual (Flamethrower, or the Rocket Launcher's napalm upgrade) or automated (a Pyro Dispenser, or running Residue over Lava trapped in Filters). Once lit, "a pile ignited by the player can burn continuously" as long as you keep feeding it.

Stage 3 — Kinetic Press

"By dropping Burnt Residue onto a Kinetic Press from 25+ blocks high, the Burnt Residue will be transformed into 1 Gold and 1 Seed." The output is guaranteed — 1 Burnt Residue always yields exactly 1 Gold and 1 Seed. Too-low drops just pile up on top and block the press; the official fix is a row of angled Launchers along the top.

Stage 4 — The Planter Loop

The Seeds from stage 3 close the loop. Combine Seeds with Water to make Wet Seeds — tricky to handle, because Wet Seeds share water's density and stay suspended in it instead of sinking.

"When a Wet Seed touches a Planter Box it will grow into a Flower." Each Flower carries a head of 4 Amethelis and 1 Gold — destroy it with weapons or fire to collect. Only Gold and Amethelis pass through the Planter Box itself.

Collecting & Storing

Gold is the heaviest pixel in the game (density 300), so it always sinks to the bottom of any pile — easy to isolate with an Allow-Gold filter. For storage, smelt it: Liquid Gold saves space at double the value per pixel.

The Big-Picture Ratios

"Final outputs are highly dependent on the yield from burning Residue" — stage 2 is where your real-world numbers will drift from theory.

Endgame: The 1,000,000 Gold Achievement

The wiki's own math: one million banked means 62,500 pixels of solid Gold in Collectors (a 250×250 block), or 31,250 as Liquid Gold. Player reports on the Steam forums put a fully mined map at roughly 500k–920k gold — usually short of the million.

The community consensus route (player reports, not verified facts): mine the whole map, then use the Stratacore — "once you defeat the 'boss' thing you get its core which can produce unlimited sand" — melt everything to Liquid Gold, and idle the loop. Completion reportedly sits around 1% of players at roughly 40 hours.