28 Solarpunk Tips, Tricks & Hidden Mechanics

These are the small, easy-to-miss details that the in-game tutorial skips and most wiki pages bury. Save this page on your phone — you will reference it for the first 20 hours of any new save.

The 28 Tips

1. Hold E on a crop to bulk-harvest the entire 3×3 plot at once.
2. Press F5 to toggle the building grid — it makes 4×4 foundations snap perfectly.
3. The Trader accepts "broken tools" at 2x value. Always break tools before selling.
4. Drone jobs pause automatically during storms. No need to cancel manually.
5. The "Sleep Through Weather" option is on by default. Disable it if you want the stamina bonus to be optional.
6. You can rename chests by clicking the nameplate. Use it — "Mixed Ore" saves you 5 minutes per hour.
7. Wood respawns 3x faster on islands you have built a base on. Stay on your main island for the first week.
8. The Airship propeller is the only part that breaks. Carry 1 spare per trip after hour 10.
9. You can drop items from a moving airship. Co-op players use it for fast base supply drops.
10. Beds have a 6-hour cooldown on respawn. Build a bed per player, not a shared one.
11. Solar panels work at 80% efficiency during light rain. Stop dismantling them in the cloud season.
12. The recipe for "Cloud Storage" is a joke item — the model exists, but the chest is invisible. Skip the research.
13. Right-clicking a chest with an empty hand opens the quick-transfer UI. Faster than drag-and-drop.
14. Animals do not need food in winter. The "winter food shortage" panic on Reddit is a hoax.
15. Drones can run 2 jobs if the second is "passive" (carrier, sorter). They cannot run 2 active jobs (harvester, crafter).
16. The starter island respawns all fiber plants on a 2-day timer. The "infinite fiber" trick is to leave and come back.
17. Pressing the map key (M) while flying the airship opens an overhead island selector.
18. Trader refreshes every in-game week. Set a calendar reminder — you will forget.
19. You can place a foundation underwater. Used for "underwater base" speedruns, but the air does get stale.
20. Crops planted on tilled soil grow 30% faster than crops on untilled soil. Always till.
21. The "Advanced Drone" research is the single biggest mid-game unlock. Prioritize it.
22. You can place a drone charging pad in mid-air. The drone will float to charge — looks cool, costs the same.
23. Foundations can be placed on the side of any solid block. Used for cliff-side bases.
24. The "Boring" review crowd on Steam is wrong about pacing. Skip them and play past hour 8.
25. You can build a second airship at any workshop. The first one is free; the second costs 200 wood + 80 iron.
26. Right-clicking a sleeping player with food wakes them up and applies the food buff.
27. Drones are the only entities that can cross island boundaries without an airship. Use them for long-range item transport.
28. The "Tranquility" setting in the audio menu is a hidden cheat — it makes storms quieter. Veteran players all use it.

The 3 Tips That Change Everything

If you only read 3 of the 28, read these. They are the highest-ROI tricks in the entire game.

1. Tip #21 — Advanced Drone research. Doubles your automation capacity for the cost of one research node.
2. Tip #16 — Infinite fiber trick. Free cloth for life; scales to any co-op size.
3. Tip #7 — Faster respawn island. Cuts your wood grinding time in half.

Next: Gear Up

Now that you have the tricks, make sure your tools match. Read the Tools & Weapons guide for the best-in-slot picks.