Unrailed! Tips and Tricks
Each entry below is one mechanic, what it costs you, and the update it was last checked against. Filter by category or difficulty to narrow the list, and use the anchor beside any heading to link straight to a single tip.
Lava
#A Lava Blob can only be doused three times before it leaves
A doused blob runs to the nearest lava and reignites, so you can extinguish the same one more than once. After the third it loses its fire ability and walks off the map. Ten extinguishes therefore needs at least four separate blobs, not one patient one.
Verified on Underwater Update
Desert
#Camels seek out and drink from your water bucket
That turns a mild animal into a sudden resource crisis, because a Camel draining the bucket moments before the engine overheats hands you a fire. Keep the bucket away from them unless you are deliberately milking one.
Verified on Underwater Update
Fire
#Putting a fire out does not clear the heat that caused it
Heat capacity is cumulative. Let the engine burn 10 seconds, extinguish it, and the next wagon catches after 5 seconds rather than 15. Only rain or reaching the shop clears it, and rain falls in the Plains and nowhere else, so from the Desert onward the station is your only reset.
Verified on Underwater Update
Animals
#Park the Ghost wagon's radius over the Milk wagon
The attached animals turn ethereal too, which stops them detaching or being crushed at one-tile pinches. Only Camels and Lava Blobs keep pace with a fast train anyway, and Cows and Walruses stop to rest. Gentle loops rather than straight lines also help them keep up.
Verified on Underwater Update
Bridges
#Bridges switch from wood to stone at the Lava biome
Wood works in the Plains, Desert, and Snow. Lava, Space, and Mars all need stone, though only Lava needs it because wood burns, since neither Space nor Mars has any lava. Start stockpiling in Snow so the first lava flow does not catch you empty-handed.
Verified on Underwater Update
Superchargers
#Superchargers cover six wagons but never boost each other
Each one raises the effective level of nearby wagons by one, pushing them past the normal Level 3 cap, and multiples stack. Three limits bite: they do not boost one another, they do not raise the Milk Wagon at all, and each burns iron that no other wagon can deliver for it.
Verified on Underwater Update
Wagons
#You never load the Crafter, you load the Storage wagon
This trips up almost everyone, because the Crafter is the wagon that visibly makes track. Drop wood and iron into Storage, Storage feeds the Crafter on its own, and finished rails stack up on the Crafter for you to collect. Storage is the input end, not the overflow bin.
Verified on Underwater Update
#Levelling the Light wagon does nothing, one Supercharger halves it
Unboosted it melts once every 10 seconds whatever its level. Put a single Supercharger beside it and that becomes once every 5 seconds, and further Superchargers add nothing. In Snow, that one placement beats any amount of levelling.
Verified on Underwater Update
#A Level 1 Buckinator gives you no carry buff at all
The 12-resource carry begins at Level 2. A team that buys the wagon, stands in the ring at Level 1, and waits for something to happen will wait all run and conclude the wagon is broken.
Verified on Underwater Update
Superchargers
#A second Supercharger costs 3 bolts, not the 2 the first did
Its upgrades then cost 3 and 4 once the first is at Level 3, so the pair runs to 10 bolts rather than the 7 most build orders imply. Both also need iron carried to them by hand all run, because a Collector cannot feed a Supercharger.
Verified on Underwater Update
Wagons
#The Dynamite wagon is not a free-running producer
It consumes one iron per stick and turns one out roughly every 35 seconds once loaded. That changed in October 2019, five weeks into Early Access, so older guides describing passive production are wrong. A team that buys it and never loads it concludes it is broken.
Verified on Underwater Update
Endless
#Without the orange bolts, Endless simply never ends
There is no lesser ending for arriving at the Final Biome short. Endless keeps generating Mars sections until you crash. Collect every orange special bolt you pass, the Underwater one included, since each is worth two regular bolts and they buy the final engine.
Verified on Underwater Update
Engines
#A new engine is a brake, not a threat to brace for
The speedometer climbs as you clear sections, and buying an engine resets it to the next biome's starting speed. Base speeds creep up only slightly between biomes. Top players hold off until the train outruns the team, then buy. Entering the Underwater mineshaft resets it too.
Verified on Underwater Update
Controls
#Your hands hold a tool or resources, never both at once
Chopping a tree means setting down whatever you are carrying and picking up the axe, and running that wood to Storage means putting the axe back down. That swap is the tax on every single trip, and handling it well is most of what separates a working team from a trainwreck.
Verified on Underwater Update
Level Start
#The train sits still for 15 seconds at every level start
Add the 1.5m of track you begin with and that is 45 seconds before a crash is possible on the first level. Spend it pre-gathering resources and laying the opening rails rather than watching the engine.
Verified on Underwater Update
Saving
#Checkpoints are a setting you turn on, not an automatic feature
With them enabled you get one autosave at the first station of each new biome, while Kids mode autosaves at every station. Since April 2021 that checkpoint survives being loaded, but there is only one slot. A manual mid-biome save is still single use and vanishes the moment you load it.
Verified on Underwater Update
Wagons
#Rearranging your wagons costs nothing at all
Once you connect to a station, pick a wagon up and drop it on whichever one you want it to swap with. There are no bolts and no penalty involved, so treat the layout as something to revise at every stop rather than a decision you commit to at the moment of buying.
Verified on Underwater Update
Buckinator
#Step outside the Buckinator ring carrying 12 and you drop 9
They land on the nearest free ground and you walk on with the base 3. The charge is just as unforgiving: it starts draining the moment the bucket leaves its dock and recharges at the same rate, so a Level 3 Buckinator buys 12 seconds out for 12 seconds back.
Verified on Underwater Update
Mineshafts
#A mineshaft you did not enter explodes when the level loads
Look for the streams of a nearby waterfall to spot one. Levels 3, 4, or 5 of the Plains, Desert, or Snow may hold one, and from level 6 onward one is guaranteed every five levels. Collect that biome's orange special bolt before you commit to going down.
Verified on Underwater Update
Terrain
#Difficulty mostly controls how much indestructible rock spawns
Perma-rock, also called black rock, resists every tool and dynamite alike, and how much of it the map generates is the main thing your difficulty setting moves. A day and night cycle also runs in the Plains, Desert, Snow, and Lava, while Space and Mars never get dark.
Verified on Underwater Update
What to Read Next
- Wagons and Upgrades. Every wagon, the Supercharger rules, and what each level actually buys.
- Biomes and Progression. All eight biomes, mineshafts, perma-rock, and the orange bolts.
- Getting Started. The resource chain, the heat meter, and the first 45 seconds of a level.
- Co-op and Strategy. Role splits, the ping tool, and what changes at two players versus four.
- Achievement Guide. All 53, including the ones that need a single unbroken session.