The experience title is the Factory Update. The machines named for that update are the drill, the steel mill, the copper press, and the steel press. Pick copper parts or steel ingots before you buy every machine.
Copper on your own island
Copper is not described as an open node on the combat islands. Deposits appear on the personal island, placed at random, so there is no map coordinate to copy. One factory note also says resource islands can appear on a 20-hour cycle. That interval comes from a single writeup. Use the deposit you can already see.
Put a drill on the deposit and send its output to storage or to the next machine. A chest on that belt matters because a drill that cannot unload will stall. Keep this ore off the food belts.
Smelt copper with coal, then run ingots into a copper press. The press does nothing useful until a mold is inserted. The same three molds are described for copper and steel:
| Mold | Output | When it is the right mold |
|---|---|---|
| Bolt | Bolts | Lowest mold cost among the three, for assembly parts |
| Rod | Rods | Needed for the steel press recipe and other builds |
| Plate | Plates | Needed in bulk for the steel press |
Steel mill, then steel press
A steel mill is reported to cost 100 iron and 50 gold ore ingots. After it is placed, conveyors feed iron ingots and coal, and the mill makes steel ingots. That is a different job from the copper drill, even if both lines use belts and chests.
Steel rods are described as no longer being made straight from raw iron at the anvil. They come from steel ingots through a press with a rod mold.
The steel press recipe is stated as:
- 100 copper plates
- 250 copper rods
- 25 steel rods
Insert a mold, then send steel ingots into the press and finished parts into a chest. The plate calculator counts only the copper plates. Rods are a second pile.
Gear boxes are the late sale tied to these parts. They are reported to sell to the merchant mechanic for 30,000 coins each. That is a specific merchant figure in the press notes, unlike player-shop prices, which move.
A layer ratio players publish
These numbers are from builder layouts, not from a developer patch note. One repeating floor uses:
- 2 industrial smelters
- 4 steel mills
- 4 iron totems and 1 coal totem per smelter, so 8 iron totems and 2 coal totems on that floor
- Input chests and a center beach-ball splitter with stairs facing inward so ingots fall toward the four mills
Reported output for that floor is about 500 steel an hour. Two floors about 1,000. Four floors up to about 2,000, close to where dropped iron starts to despawn. A first floor is reported around 30 minutes to build, and later floors around 15 minutes once the bottom belts exist. Start the next floor one block above the totems below it.
Industrial smelters are described as turning iron ore plus coal into iron ingots. Steel mills take the iron-and-coal step onward to steel. A combat note also lists pink sticky gears as a component for industrial stations, including smelters, but it does not give a count. If the craft menu asks for gears, use the menu count rather than guessing from that sentence.
What not to build from a rumor
Gold nodes are a Buffalkor Island trip, not a drill deposit on the home island. A creator guess about a future resource is not a machine you can place. If the craft menu does not list a press or mill, the part is not available yet. Combat keys and gold smelting are on the combat island route.