Hydroneer - Starter Guide

Introduction

From this point in the guide, you should already have a basic understanding of how the game works. You're going to need make some cash before the operation can work. This guide will provide you on how to get some quik bucks to get you started.

If you don't know where to start, we suggest to do the following steps first before going nuts on high tech systems and conveyer belts.

• Fill a bucket with dirt, Tip - advanced shovel carries twice the dirt and is highly recommended.
• Dump dirt from the bucket in the pan.
• Dump the pan in the water to fill it up and drop it back on the ground.
• Use the brush on the pan twice to clear the dirt and spawn minerals (or not).
• Sell minerals, or smelt them in the crucible and furnace for bars.
• Sell the bars, or turn them into swords and jewelry.

First Expansion

Time to spend those few earned cash into good profitable pure gold.

• Setup a workspace with foundations at ground level.
• To build foundations and use equipment. Grab them with E first, and then click to go into placement mode, you will see the block show up as blue or red a few feet away from you. The Entire dig site is an invisible grid, when placing pipes and foundations, they will all always be aligned on the same grid which is good as you do not need to worry about mismatching structures and misaligned pipes.
• As you build in general, you want to secure your blocks with the building hammer.
• The building hammer is used to lock a block in place, preventing you from picking it up when pressing E. It is essential you lock all blocks once they are in place to avoid removing furnaces and foundattions by mistake when working around them. Including pipes, tool racks, lights and your bed.

Get a water intake, straight pipes, angles and T junctions and a valve.

You should have 5 or 6 pans lined up on foundations, with pipes running over the pans to dump water in each of them.
Use the T junctions over the pans and an angle pipe for the last pan. I recommend laying the pipes three blocks high, if you lay the pipes just one block over the pans, they tend to make it awkward picking up and dropping things under the pipes.

Somewhere close to the workspace should be a valve, so that you can turn it on and off easily. The water intake is placed in the river next to you and connected to the workspace.
Fill the pans with dirt, and hit the valve on and off to dump water into all of them at once. You can brush the pans and collect. All of these foundations and pipes can be refitted underground once you secure more money to expand. Repeat the steps until you have enough money to get yourself more high tech related systems or to buy your first expansion. However, a new mining field is not recommended if you dont have at least 25K worth of cash.

Important to know!

• The deeper you go, the bigger the nuggets will be. Providing a high value and a better yield for the systems as well for your shovel. Use it to dig deep and chuck the dirt in the pans to make the most profits.
• The advanced shovel also has a significant range, from which you can dig and dump by clicking from far away, making it far less tedious. 
• If you have already some conveyer belts running, using the shovel to add dirt on the belt is also an option. Making it even more easier to make a quik few extra bucks on the side.