Published help only
The Crust Guides
All 29 published guides, grouped by what you are trying to do. Pages are added only when their answers can be traced to an official source.
Start Here
The Crust Beginner's Guide: What to Do First on the Moon
A starting checklist for The Crust built only from official material: what the game asks you to build, the official order the tutorial pushes you through, the three systems that stop new players, and what 1.0 changed for first-time players.
Read guide →Start HereThe Crust Game Modes Explained: Prologue, Story Campaign and Sandbox 2.0
What each of The Crust's three entry points actually is, which one to pick first, what the official patch notes confirm about difficulty tiers, and the parts of the difficulty system the developer has never documented.
Read guide →Start HereThe Crust: Release Date, Price and Platforms (Checked September 2026)
What The Crust costs on Steam right now, which platforms the developer officially supports including macOS and Linux, the exact system requirements, and a straight answer on console versions.
Read guide →Start HereThe Crust Story Choices and Endings: What Is Confirmed and What Is Not
The Crust's campaign branches, the connection between choices and Earth's politics, the officially confirmed names of the Aurora project and CRUST Corp., and an honest split between developer-confirmed facts and community-only claims.
Read guide →Start HereThe Crust Walkthrough: Campaign Structure and the Official Quest Order
How The Crust's campaign is actually put together, the quest names the developer confirms, the endgame laser cannon chain recorded in the official mission log, and an honest map of how far most players get.
Read guide →Colony
The Crust Base Layout Guide: Planning Mode, Roads and Room Design
How to lay out a base in The Crust without rebuilding it three times — Planning Mode, the required-resources tracker, roads for trucks, room wall and floor rules, and the constraint that catches people building underground.
Read guide →ColonyThe Crust Colonists Guide: Hiring, Professions, Skills and Salaries
How hiring actually works in The Crust — the five professions read straight off the official interface, what hiring price and cost mean, how skills and levels grow, and why your colonists can now walk out on you.
Read guide →ColonyThe Crust Colony Guide: Life Support, Oxygen, Water and Food
How a colony in The Crust actually stays alive — the oxygen, water and food loops, what the official notes confirm about epidemics and morale, and the one warning every new base ignores.
Read guide →ColonyThe Crust Vehicles & Routes Guide: Rovers, Cargo Trucks and Roads
How transport works in The Crust — truck routing over roads, splitting loads across trips, vehicle upgrades that cost credits, and the difference between the small and large vehicle assembly facilities.
Read guide →Systems
The Crust Conveyors and Logistics Guide: Crossings, Directions and Storage
Why a conveyor in The Crust stops moving and how to fix it — the six real causes, what happens at a crossing, how to change direction with the V key, and which of the game's storage buildings actually solves your problem.
Read guide →SystemsThe Crust Drones and Automation Guide: CPU Limits, Priorities and Idle Drones
How drones work in The Crust — the two drone types, why building more of them stops helping once CPU is the cap, the four priority levels including Super-Priority, and a diagnostic order for drones that idle, stop building or stop repairing.
Read guide →SystemsThe Crust Power System Guide: Grid, Batteries and Surviving the Lunar Night
How power actually works in The Crust — every building in the in-game Electricity menu by its own name, why the first lunar night used to wipe colonies, what a Solar Flare does to surface batteries after the 1.0 rework, and what to do when the game tells you there is not enough power.
Read guide →SystemsThe Crust Regolith Mining Guide: Veins, Deposits and Placing Your Extractor
How mining works in The Crust — the difference between underground excavation and surface deposits, what regolith richness means and why it makes every yield table conditional, how gas veins behave differently from ore veins, and why an extractor stops producing.
Read guide →SystemsThe Crust Research Guide: Science Points, Branches and What to Unlock First
How research works in The Crust — the official names of the three branches versus the colour names players search for, seven documented sources of science points, why 'research order' has no fixed answer, and the difference between researching an upgrade and applying it.
Read guide →SystemsThe Crust Resource Refining Guide: Oxides, Slag and Single vs Multi Refinery
The full refining chain in The Crust by its official module names — how regolith becomes oxides, how oxides become steel and titanium, the two real uses for slag, and an honest answer on why nobody can give you a fixed refinery ratio.
Read guide →Moon
The Crust Expeditions Guide: Rovers, Trucks, Drones and Why a Trip Fails
Expeditions are how you reach the markers on the orbital map. What the Expedition Control Center actually unlocks, how to crew a run with trucks, drones and colonists, how to split a load across vehicles, and the documented bugs that look like your own mistakes.
Read guide →MoonThe Crust MDR Guide: Mobile Drilling Rig Mining, Routing and Unloading
The Mobile Drilling Rig is the game's surface miner — a vehicle, not a building, which is why it needs a route instead of a conveyor. How the interface works, how to select where it mines, how to unload it, and why the developers spent a year making it need less attention.
Read guide →MoonThe Crust Moon Map and Scanning Guide: Locations, Probes and Magnetic Anomalies
The Crust does not have one map, it has three — the orbital view, your base surface and the underground. Here is what each scanning tool actually does, what the scan overlay is showing you, what a magnetic anomaly is and why both of the game's rarest achievements are scanning achievements.
Read guide →MoonThe Crust Outpost Guide: Rent, Science Points and How to Remove One
Outposts are the second economy in The Crust — remote sites you rent, staff and specialise. What the management panel is showing you, why an outpost earns Science Points, what changed about removing one in 1.0, and the two known ways an outpost refinery stops working.
Read guide →Story & Events
The Crust Contracts Guide: Unlocking Organisations, Urgent Contracts and Empty Contract Lists
An empty contract list is usually one of three things: a filter left on, a reputation gate you have not met, or one of the five separate display bugs the developers have fixed over the game's life. Here is how contract access actually works, what an urgent story contract is, and why the Launch Station requirement changed twice.
Read guide →Story & EventsThe Crust Global Events Guide: Meteorites, Solar Flares and Epidemics
Three events are announced by name in the 1.0 notes, and each one punishes a different kind of neglect — bad siting, bad power planning and bad hygiene. Here is what each event actually does, what the Anti-Meteorite Laser Cannon costs per shot, and why the official announcement history is the wrong place to look for event triggers.
Read guide →Story & EventsThe Crust Laser Cannon Guide: Quest Stages, Triggers and Why the Wiki Is Out of Date
The final quest in The Crust is a staged construction project with a deadline, and its two names — laser gun in the interface, laser cannon in the patch notes — are both official. The in-game mission log shows a 7-stage build; the community wiki still documents 6. Here is the stage structure, the trigger chain, and the reputation link that decides how much help you get.
Read guide →Story & EventsThe Crust Money and Market Guide: Market Price, Base Capitalisation and Earning Credits
The Crust does not have a 'market capitalisation' stat — the leaderboard tracks base capitalisation and its growth rate, and what counts toward it changed twice. Here is how market pricing actually works, why prices move, the official routes to credits, and the two money exploits the developers have already closed.
Read guide →Reference
The Crust Achievements Guide: All 28, Their Official Unlock Rates and the 7 With No Published Description
Every achievement in The Crust, with the developer's own description and the live Steam unlock rate for each — plus the seven whose conditions are hidden, the two that only exist because 1.0 shipped, and the achievement that was unobtainable for months until a hotfix fixed it.
Read guide →ReferenceThe Crust FAQ: Straight Answers to the Questions Players Actually Search For
The short answers to the questions this game generates most — release date, price, platforms, whether Early Access saves work, how many achievements there are, why drones stop and where the patch notes live — each one traced to an official source and linked to the page that covers it properly.
Read guide →ReferenceThe Crust Performance and Settings: What the Two Optimisation Passes Actually Changed
Where The Crust's frame rate went, from the two official optimisation passes — a near-doubling from the conveyor rework and a further large gain on big bases in 1.0 — plus the settings the patch notes confirm, the hotkeys, the official system requirements, and the searches that lead nowhere.
Read guide →ReferenceThe Crust Troubleshooting: What Breaks, What Was Fixed, and Which Patch Fixes Your Symptom
A symptom-first troubleshooting guide built from the developer's own fix log across 147 official patches. Drones stuck, saves that will not load, crashes, contracts that never appear, the macOS black screen workaround, and the AMD graphics fix — each one tied to the patch that resolved it.
Read guide →ReferenceThe Crust Patch Notes: All 101 Official Releases, 2023 to 1.0.12
Every official patch note for The Crust, dated in UTC and linked — 101 numbered releases plus 46 other official posts, from the 2023 demo hotfixes through Update 1.0.12, including the numbering errors the developer published themselves.
Read guide →ReferenceWhat's New in The Crust 1.0: Planning Mode, Roads, the Finished Campaign and the Save That Won't Load
Everything 1.0 added, grouped and quoted from the developer's own release notes — Planning Mode, the road tool, the completed story campaign, global events, interior styles, the optimisation pass and two new modules — plus the one launch fact that catches every returning player: Early Access saves do not carry over.
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