My Time at Sandrock Refining Guide and Item Upgrades

In My Time At Sandrock, once your workshop reaches reputation level 2, you'll be able to see and change the quality of items through upgrading and refining them, which can impact your commissions and also give your weapons and defensive clothing a boost. If you're looking to see how My Time at Sandrock Refining works, we've got the details!

My Time At Sandrock Refining - What Does Upgrading Items Do?

Items in Sandrock come in three qualities - low, medium and high. These are represented by different colors in the game, and any item that has a green, blue or purple background indicates their quality. Basic items like Stone and Dinas are going to show grey backgrounds because these do not have qualities and cannot be upgraded.Items that you produce in your workshop as well as those bought in shops both have qualities attached to them.

• Green background means an item is of the lowest quality
• Blue background indicates an item is mid-tier quality
• Purple background shows that the item is of the highest quality.

My Time at Sandrock Refiner Machine

The Refiner machine must be researched at Qi's research lab in order to unlock it, and then you can set about changing the quality of your items. The machine only works in one way and can only upgrade items, not downgrade them. However, you do get to see what particular changes will be made to an item by upgrading it before you finalize the upgrade.

My Time at Sandrock Refining Materials

The Refiner uses a variety of minerals and stones to upgrade items. The most common materials needed for upgrades are:

• Quartz
• Bloodstone
• Rosestone
• Lapis Lazuli
• Flourite
• *Other materials can sometimes be requested.

These minerals can be found out in the desert after the bridge to Gecko Station is repaired or can be found in Gecko Station Ruins once they become non-hazardous. Bloodstone can also be found by breaking apart hard stone in the area of the desert around your house and Quartz is available in smaller quantities in the Eufaula Salvage Ruins. If you do not have access to Gecko Station Ruins or are not comfortable venturing out into the desert beyond the bridge, we recommend you also research and build an Ore Refinery machine for your workshop, which works similarly to the Recycler and can get you many of these items quickly, at the cost of other materials you have.

Certain items can be further refined once they hit high quality. For example, weapons can be refined again at the highest quality to swap out different benefits, though you don't get to choose which benefits are assigned in the upgrade.

My Time at Sandrock Item Quality and Commissions

Once you reach workshop level 2, commissions that you get at the commerce guild will also specify item quality. Currently, this is only shown by the picture of the item on the commission request - green, blue or purple. Citizens will not accept items of a lower quality than they requested for the commission, but if you give them an item of higher quality than they requested, you will get a small bonus in gols, reputation and friendship with the person who placed the commission. There is also a skill that improves your rewards for commissions based on item quality.

If you have the spare materials, refining item quality for higher tier commissions is definitely something that you'll want to do. However, for tier one commissions like basic leather for Vivi, it's not worth wasting minerals and resources to upgrade it.

My Time at Sandrock Upgrades - Recommendations

We definitely recommend upgrading your weapons and clothing first. While upgrading items for higher tier commissions is still recommended, you'll want to be as best prepared as you can when venturing into Hazardous Ruins. Additionally, Quartz is by far the easiest upgrade material to get and you'll come across plenty of it, so if you're looking to earn a bit more on commissions for just a little bit more effort, refining items that need quartz is the way to go.

That's it for our My Time at Sandrock Refining and Upgrade guide - check out more guides below!