Hydroneer – Beginner Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Useful Tips for Beginners

No one can not drop their entire pile of ore. This should help.

When dropping in a smelter focus the drop target in the smelter and keep the aiming away to avoid creating a bar and dropping creating the above disaster.

If you must use a hand sorter and a conveyer belt keep an eye on it. BTW you can place a crucible on the eject end of the hand sorter if you place it 1/2 a block away from it (look at the picture).

There is a furnace under the concrete block.

To fix this issue:

1. Turn off any drills and pickup what fell.
2. Move any open bucket away from the sorter.
3. Buy a magnet and gently click to nudge the ore back into the sorter.
4. Pickup and drop the excess.
5. Wrap up any loose ends (replacing the bucket/pan/smelter, fixing the pipes ect.)
6. Turn the drills back on and continue to keep an eye on it.

In relation to step 2. Keep the magnet away from open buckets because it re-engages collision and makes the ore explode. Don’t use magnets on loose ore.

After 3.0 this is useful if you accidentally dump the pan

To fix this. There are 3 ways:

• A. Reload the last save (easiest).
• A1. (Pre DLC) Hit alt+F4(win) then restart the game.
• A1. (Post DLC) click quit without saving then reload the save.

• B. Use the clear all button (you may loose some ore) this won’t work with polished gems.
• B1. Collect all bucket of ore and smelt.
• B2. Grind all gems you want to keep.
• B3. Click the clear all raw resources.

• C. Do it manually (hardest).

With Smelter

• C1. Grab a smelter and use a magnet to drop all of the ore in.

Without a Smelter

• C1. Grab a crucible and drop all the ore in and melt.
• C2. Repeat until all ore is in bar form.
• C3. Combine bars in crucible.

Without Either or With Gems

• C1. Pickup each resource and drop it in the bucket.

If you have 2 or more drills use a filter.

Btw you should add a filter after the valve to avoid damage when the system is off. 5 filters keeps the water clean.

Keep the harvester repaired. To fix:

1. Turn off any belts or drills before the harvester.
2. Repair the harvester.
3. Remove any large chucks.
4. Use the magnet to nudge the small chunks into the harvester.
5. Break the large chunks into smaller ones with a pickaxe.
6. Place the cut chunks into the harvester.
7. Buy 5 filters to prevent further breakages.

In extreme cases use remove all dirt chunks.

Not a mistake but a helpful tip for starting. You can place a pan with bars under the crucible. It takes about 30s to heat a bar to full.

Always carry water in the back of the truck so you don’t end up stranded. The best is the watering can.

4 way pipe system:

[Mid-Game]

Low/No Clearance to lower undergound mines. It isn’t always easy to keep clearance to an underground mine.

The fix:

• You don’t have to rebuild.
• Just build a side tunnel.
• Look at left side of below image.

If you have low clearance you can also crouch. By default:

• Ctrl on Keyboard
• B on Xbox
• Circle on PS4/PS5
• A on Switch

Forgeting what to buy at the store:

[Using Steam to assist] Assuming you are playing on Steam (this only works if the game isn’t launched in Big Picture mode).

Open the steam overlay (Shift Tab by default) and make a shopping list with the recently added notes widget (use steam help for more help using notes).