Official guide · Finding Needle in the Stack
Best upgrade order: what to buy and when
There are 15 things to buy in Classic mode, plus up to six machines, and almost no one buys them in the best order the first time. This guide gives you the order that makes the most money early, explains why it works, and lists what everything costs in total.
The one rule
Buy whatever makes your next sale bigger or faster. At the start you earn money by finding valuables and selling them. Anything that lets you dig faster or carry more is paying for itself the quickest, so it should come first. The things that only help you find the needle, such as a detector, come second.
A good order
- Hay Hook, $90. Almost twice the digging speed of bare gloves, and the first stack is built so the first minute pays for it.
- Backpack 2, $200. It goes from 12 to 30 slots. Fewer trips to the Trading Post means more time digging.
- Detector Mk I, $250. Dig toward metal instead of guessing. It makes every dig more valuable.
- Running Boots, $350. A 30% speed boost, which adds up over every walk to the Trading Post.
- Pitchfork, $900. About five times the speed of your gloves.
- Detector Mk II, $1,400, and Backpack 3, $1,500. A longer range and 80 slots.
- Auto-Sifter 1, $4,000. From here the game starts earning for you while you dig somewhere else.
- Leaf Blower, $5,000, then Detector Mk III, $7,000. Mk III is when the detector can tell you a signal is the needle.
- Everything else as you can afford it: Boots 2, Magnet Gloves, Backpack 4, the Hay Vacuum 3000, Detector Mk IV and the other five machines.
Every price in one place
| Item | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Hay Hook | $90 | About 1.8x gloves speed |
| Pitchfork | $900 | About 5x |
| Leaf Blower | $5,000 | About 10x, holds to blow |
| Hay Vacuum 3000 | $25,000 | About 50x, holds to suck |
| Backpack 2 / 3 / 4 | $200 / $1,500 / $8,000 | 30 / 80 / 250 slots |
| Running Boots 1 / 2 | $350 / $2,500 | 130% / 165% move speed |
| Magnet Gloves 1 / 2 | $3,000 / $14,000 | Pull in metal within 1.6 m / 3.2 m |
| Detector Mk I / II | $250 / $1,400 | Range 2 m / 4 m |
| Detector Mk III / IV | $7,000 / $32,000 | Range 7 m / 12 m, can spot the needle |
| Auto-Sifters 1 to 6 | $4,000, $6,800, $11,550, $19,650, $33,400, $56,800 | Machines that dig and sell by themselves |
Speeds are rough estimates worked out from each tool's digging values in the game.
What does everything cost?
Adding it all up, every tool, backpack, boots, magnet, detector and all six machines comes to about $234,000. A single stack holds roughly $14,700 of valuables on average (see What is a haystack worth?), so a full set of upgrades takes several stacks to afford. The machines are by far the biggest part, at $132,200 for all six. The good news is that your tools and upgrades carry over when you find the needle, so every stack after the first is faster.
Common mistakes
- Rushing the Hay Vacuum 3000. It is wonderful, but $25,000 early means a long wait with nothing new. Smaller steps pay back sooner.
- Skipping the backpack. A 12-slot backpack fills up in a minute and sends you back to sell again and again.
- Buying every machine before Detector Mk III. The machines find the needle for you too, but you still need to know when a signal is the needle.
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