Copper Ore spawns in brown veins deep underground. It never appears on the surface layer where you start, there’s no recipe to craft it and no shop to buy it from. The only way to get Copper in Sandustry is to dig down and mine it yourself.
Once you have it, the chain is short. Mine the ore, melt the Copper in a Smelter, pour the Liquid Copper into a Copper Mold and you have a Power Brick. This guide covers every step, including the part that stops most players cold.
Sandustry is a pixel-physics factory game by solo developer Lantto Games, published by Hooded Horse. It hit Early Access on August 13, 2026 on Steam, GOG, the Microsoft Store and PC Game Pass. Therefore, expect these numbers and unlock points to shift as patches land.
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Where and How I Can Get Copper Ore
Copper Ore doesn’t spawn on the surface layer with your starting Sand and Dirt.
It generates in pockets and veins found deeper underground, so the first step is simply digging down past the terrain you start on. I found my first copper near an early teleporter. Sometimes, it can be tucked into the walls surrounding a ruin room. This suggests the exact placement can vary somewhat between worlds, so don’t expect it in the identical spot every run.
A few practical pointers for the copper hunting:
- Dig downward, not just outward. Copper veins sit deeper than the layers you clear in your first few minutes, so if you have only explored sideways, that’s likely why you haven’t seen any yet.
- Look for a distinct, brownish-colored vein running through the surrounding stone or dirt. It stands out visually from the terrain around it once you know what to look for.
- Bring any digging tool. Copper Ore is tougher to break than plain Dirt. Use Drill or Laser.
- Check ruins as you explore them. Several players have found copper deposits sitting right at the edges of ancient ruin rooms. Therefore, it’s worth digging around the perimeter of any structure you uncover.
- Sand and Copper Ore are often found together. It means you can run a single digging and hauling route through an area and pick up both resources at once.
Since Sandustry Copper Ore is tied to natural world generation and there’s no crafting recipe or shop to buy it from, mining is currently the only way to get it. Treat your first vein as a resource worth protecting and mapping out rather than digging out carelessly.
Turning Copper Ore into Usable Copper
Digging out Copper Ore automatically produces raw Copper as a byproduct. There’s no separate refining step at this stage. That Copper is a solid material like any other in Sandustry. It can be picked up, carried, dropped onto conveyor belts, launched and moved through your factory the same way you’d move Sand or Stone.
Because Sand and Copper Ore frequently show up in the same underground areas, a handy setup is to haul everything back to your base on shared logistics and then use Filters to split the Copper from the Sand once it arrives.
How to Smelt Copper into Liquid Copper
Raw Copper on its own doesn’t power anything. It needs to be melted down first. This is done using the Smelter or by placing Copper on a Thermal Buffer near hot lava, either method converts solid Copper into Liquid Copper.
How to Move Liquid Copper to the Copper Mold
This is where most copper lines stall. You’ve got a Smelter producing Liquid Copper and a Copper Mold that needs filling and belts don’t carry liquids.
You have three options:
Pump + Pipe: the standard automated setup and what you want for a permanent line.
Liquid Vent: useful for releasing the liquid at a specific point when the geometry works in your favor.
Grabber: the fastest way to test a layout before you commit to plumbing. Grabbers handle Liquid Copper like any other liquid.
Build the Smelter above the Copper Mold if your terrain allows it.
The Copper Mold costs 2,000 Gold to unlock in Sandustry. It becomes available in Tier 5 Research, but you’ll first need to unlock both the Smelter and Florinol Battery before you can research it. Once unlocked, the Copper Mold lets you cast Power Bricks using Liquid Copper.
Gravity does a lot of the work in this game and a short vertical drop beats a long pipe run every time. Liquid Copper is also inert. You can’t freeze it or combine it with other materials. It has exactly one destination.
What Sandustry Copper Is Actually Used For: Power Bricks
Once you have Liquid Copper, its main purpose is producing Power Bricks, one of two distinct energy sources in Sandustry. Power Bricks are made by pouring Liquid Copper into a Copper Mold, which casts it into a usable energy block for powering machinery.
It’s worth noting that Power Bricks are a completely separate energy chain from Florinol Batteries, which are made through an unrelated process involving Amethelis petals processed into Florinol liquid.
The Florinol chain is considerably longer and runs entirely on plant processing:
Amethelis petals > dry with steam > Dry Amethelis > apply heat > Florin (gas) > cool to condense > Florinol (liquid) > Florinol Battery
If you’re also tracking down other core resources, water is also an important item in Sandustry.
One important sequencing note: Energy unlocks at tier 5 of Research and the Florinol Battery is the first energy source the game gives you. Plan on building the Florinol chain first because that’s the order the tech tree hands them to you. Then, add a Copper > Smelter > Copper Mold > Power Brick line as a second, lower-maintenance source once your mining is automated.
Depending on how your factory is laid out, you’ll likely end up running both.
