How to Use Timberborn Explosives

Are you wondering how to use Timberborn Explosives? These delightful destructive devices can help you reshape the land in new and interesting ways, but it takes a while to unlock them.

One of the key late-game elements of Timberborn is reshaping the world to fit your needs. Explosives are central to that philosophy -- they allow you to dig new holes to create artificial canals, lakes, or water reservoirs. Actually unlocking those Explosives, however, can be a bit of a challenge.

How to Unlock Timberborn Explosives

Unlocking Timberborn Explosives takes a fair amount of work -- don't expect to get them right away. Here's a step-by-step guide for what to do:

1. Get the basics of your town set up.
2. Build a Water Wheel or Power Wheel to generate Power.
3. Build a Lumber Mill, connect it to the Water Wheel(s)/Power Wheel(s), and start producing Planks.
4. Once Plank production is underway, build a second Lumber Mill -- you're going to need the extra production.
5. Unlock the Gear Workshop for 100 Science. Build a Gear Workshop, connect it to your Power network, and start producing Gears.
6. Build a third Lumber Mill.
7. Unlock the Paper Mill for 250 Science. Built the Paper Mill, connect it to your Power Network, and start producing Paper.
8. Unlock the Scavenger Flag (under Metal) and start collecting Scrap Metal from Ruins. (You may need to establish a new District if the Ruins are too far away from your starting District Hall.)
9. Unlock the Shredder (under Metal) for 300 Science. Build a Shredder, connect it to your Power Network, and start producing Metal Blocks.
10. Unlock the Explosives Factory (under Landscaping) for 400 Science. Build an Explosives Factory, connect it to your Power Network, and start producing Dynamite.
11. Unlock Dynamite (under Landscaping) to get the ability to build Dynamite and destroy terrain.

You might be wondering why you're building multiple Lumber Mills. Lumber Mills produce Planks, and both Gears and Paper require Planks. This ensures that you have one Lumber Mill dedicated to Gear production, one dedicated to Paper production, and a third Lumber Mill for general use (such as building).

How to Use Timberborn Explosives

Using Timberborn Explosives is the easy part; the hard part is actually unlocking them. Once that's done, it's simply a matter of producing enough Paper to crank out as many as you need.

Build Dynamite above a piece of terrain you want to destroy. Once that's done, click on the Dynamite and push the button to destroy the tile.

There are two final things to note: the first (and perhaps most important) is that Dynamite will detonate any adjacent Dynamite. This makes it easy to clear out large swathes of land, but take care not to accidentally destroy something you never intended to.

The second point is that Dynamite, despite its size, only destroys a single tile. You're going to need a lot of Explosives if you have ambitious plans such as building a massive canal or water reservoir.