Moon Sweepers Early Game Guide: Best Tools, Crafting and Automation Priority

Okay, I need to vent. And then I need to help you. Mostly in that order.

I picked up Moon Sweepers the week it launched (late October 2026, DragDrop Games), expecting a chill little cleaning sim to unwind with after work. What I got was a first-person lunar janitor simulator that quietly turns into a full-blown logistics and factory game, with up to 16 players in co-op. You start with an underfunded toolkit and, I am not making this up, a literal toothbrush. On a moon. Dust everywhere. Dreams nowhere.

My first session was a disaster. I sweet-talked myself into “just one more patch” for almost three hours, hand-sweeping tiny squares of dust like a man possessed. Nobody warns you: the early game is a trap for the stubborn. If you spend your money in the wrong order, you will grind yourself into the regolith.

So here’s everything I wish somebody had told me before I wasted an entire evening. Some of it is community wisdom I picked up on the forums, and some I learned by faceplanting.

The Loop That Runs Your Whole Life

Before the tips, you need to understand what the game actually wants from you. Every single minute in Moon Sweepers boils down to this:

1. Collect Lunar Dust, by hand at first, then with machines.
2. Store and haul it. Your tool has a built-in container, and when it’s full you have to trudge back to a Depot chute.
3. Invest the cash from selling it into upgrades, the Building Tool, and automation.

Early on, your two enemies are width (how much ground you clear per pass) and capacity (how much dust you can carry before the walk of shame back to base). Fix both and you escape manual labor. Ignore either and you’ll be sweeping until your thumbs fall off.

Phase One: Escaping the Toothbrush

Every player begins the contract with the Lunar Surface Department holding the default Toothbrush. Tiny path. Tiny inventory. Pure humiliation. Getting rid of it is Job Number One.

The Household Broom ($25): Buy It Immediately

This is the single best purchase in the early game, and I will die on this hill. For a measly $25 you get a massive jump in sweeping width. I bought mine within the first few minutes on my second run, and it paid for itself almost instantly. Don’t hoard cash for some fancy mid-tier toy. Get the broom.

Upgrade the Capacity Before You Buy Anything Else

Here’s where my first run went wrong. After the broom, I got greedy and wanted the next handle up. Wrong! Look at the container modification path instead. Upgrading your carrying capacity means fewer trips back to the chute, and fewer trips means more sweeping and more money. Walking is wasted time, and wasted time is wasted cash.

The Nail Brush Trap

I fell for this one too, so let me save you the pain. The Nail Brush and other intermediate hand brushes look tempting, but they give only small improvements and get outclassed fast by proper long-handled brooms like the Wide Broom and Extra Wide Broom. My advice: buy the Household Broom, push its capacity to the early maximum, and save the rest for structural crafting. Skip the filler.

Hot take: it’s always cheaper to fully upgrade the capacity of the broom you already own than to buy a wider tool you’ll have to empty every five seconds.

Phase Two: Becoming a Factory Person

Once you’ve got a little cash buffer, the game flips. You can’t automate anything with handheld brooms. You need real infrastructure, and this is the moment Moon Sweepers goes from “cute” to “wait, I’m obsessed.”

The Building Tool ($50)

This is your gateway to the whole structural tier. For $50 you can place logic lines, conveyors, processing units, and logistics networks. Keep it on your toolbar and start sketching where your factory will sit, ideally close to your main Depot.

The Packager ($100)

Selling loose dust works, but it gets awful the farther you sweep from base. The Packager condenses loose Lunar Dust into dense cargo blocks. That boosts the shipment value and makes your output compatible with automated sorting lines. It’s your first real machine, and it feels fantastic when it starts humming.

Conveyor Belts: The Unsung Heroes

The moment you buy a Packager, grab some conveyor belts. Run a line from the Packager’s output slot straight into the Depot chute. Now every package gets sold automatically, with no carrying and no walking. I genuinely said “oh, that’s so satisfying” out loud to an empty room.

My Exact Roadmap (Steal It)

This is the order I’d follow if I started fresh tomorrow. It’s based on what veteran players recommend and what finally worked for me:

A few notes on that. In Step 1, don’t wander. Seriously. Step 3 needs a combined $150, so keep sweeping until you’ve got it. In Step 4, you’re still sweeping by hand, but you dump your broom into the Packager and the factory handles everything else.

Step 5 Is the Moment It Clicks

The Robot Vacuum Mk I ($250) is where the game truly changes. This little drone roams a fixed radius and cleans the surface without you lifting a finger. Park its docking station right next to your Packager and pipe its dust through conveyor nodes into the machinery. I stood there watching it work like a proud parent. Honestly, I got a bit emotional.

Mid-Early Game: Pressure Chambers, Power, and Overflow

Once your robot-and-Packager loop is humming, new problems show up. Good problems, but problems.

The Pressure Chamber ($500)

Save up $500 for this beauty. Feed it raw Lunar Dust and it squeezes it under intense force into Moon Sand, a higher-tier commodity with way better profit margins at the Depot. This is where your money really starts to snowball.

Power: Don’t Cheap Out

The Pressure Chamber eats 10 kW of power. My rookie mistake was buying low-tier generators and little solar panels, and then the lunar night hit and my whole operation stalled. Smaller panels can’t keep production running through the night cycle. Skip them and save for the Large Solar Tracker. Players on the forums swear by this, and I’m now a believer: a couple of Large Solar Trackers can power a Pressure Chamber and its conveyor nodes around the clock.

Build Overflow Lines (Thank Me Later)

Here’s a layout tip that saved my sanity. Your vacuums will eventually collect dust faster than your Pressure Chambers can process it. When that happens, your lines back up and your robots freeze. Not fun. The fix is an overflow line: a secondary conveyor that splits off before the processing machines and leads to a second sales chute. The excess dust gets sold for steady cash while your main line keeps making the good stuff.

Quick-Fire Tips From the Trenches

• Use the whiteboard. There’s one near your base station. Map out your conveyor loops before you spend money on expensive machines. I skipped this once and had to tear down half a factory.
• Leave a one-block gap between your machinery networks and natural lunar cliff faces. Otherwise your Robot Vacuums can run into pathfinding bugs.
• Co-op with roles. In a full lobby, split the work: a few people sweep with Wide Brooms to feed a central Packager line, while one or two focus on power grids and conveyor layouts. Chaos is fun, but organized chaos is profitable.
• Don’t buy wider tools you can’t fill. Capacity first, width second.

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Final Thoughts (a.k.a. My Verdict)

Is Moon Sweepers perfect? No. That first stretch with the Toothbrush can feel like punishment, and if you don’t plan your purchases it’ll eat your evening. But once you follow the path (Household Broom, then capacity, then Building Tool, then Packager, then Robot Vacuum), the game opens up into one of the most addictive logistics sims I’ve played in ages. There’s real joy in watching a lonely patch of dust turn into a humming lunar empire.

So please, learn from my three wasted hours. Buy the broom. Upgrade the capacity. Skip the Nail Brush. Build overflow lines. Use the whiteboard. And when your first Robot Vacuum starts cleaning on its own, take a moment to enjoy it.

See you on the moon, fellow sweepers.

Moon Sweepers Fully Automated Factory Basic Build