How to Build a My Time at Sandrock Crane Lift in ‘Picking Up the Slack’

One of your first major missions in My Time at Sandrock is to build a Crane Lift in “Picking Up the Slack.” While it is a simple task, collecting all the items might be a bit intimidating for new builders. 

How to start “Picking Up the Slack” in My Time at Sandrock

Some of the first missions in the game have you heading to the Commerce Guild to get your builder’s license and get accustomed to how things work in the game. As part of this, after getting the license, you’ll see a marker on the guild hall for “First Day on the Job.” This introduces you to Rocky following you getting your license from Yan and getting settled. 

It turns out Rocky isn’t happy, because Eufaula Salvage was supposed to get some Crane Lifts to help with their excavation work. That didn’t happen, so this emergency commission now falls to you and Mi-an. Since there are two new builders, you’re only tasked with making one of the two Crane Lifts at your workshop, with you getting the Crane Lift Diagram for your Assembly Station. 

How to build a Crane Lift in My Time at Sandrock

The first thing you need to do to prepare for this whole questline is head to the Commerce Guild Store. It’s the cash register right next to Yan’s desk when you walk in. You need to buy the Thick Rope book recipe for 16 Gols, as you will need six Thick Ropes for this recipe. 

Next, you need to build a Furnace and Recycler. You might already own a Recycler from earlier introductory missions. If not, build one at the Assembly Station out of two stone troughs from your Worktable (12 stones total), three pieces of wood, and two grinding saws (2 stones and 8 dinas total). Dinas can be found in junk piles, stone can be found in stone scrap junk piles with a pickhammer, and wood can be found at wooden scrap junk piles with a stone axe. 

As for the Furnace, I’ve found its necessary for the bricks you’ll eventually need. (Bricks can allegedly be gotten from stone scrap in a Recycler, but it’s rare.) You’ll need two more stone troughs, two pieces of quartz, and two wooden sticks for it. Quartz can be found when you hit gravel with a pickhammer. You can turn three pieces of wood at a Worktable into one wooden stick. Combine those at the Assembly Station, you’re set.

Now that you have the preparatory stations you need, you can start getting items. Here’s a list of what you need and how to get each item.

• 4 Bearings – Head to Eufaula Salvage. Each morning, there will be a pile of salvage beyond the gate that you can mine for items. Mechanical scrap will be one of the items you can get from hitting the pile with your pickhammer, and a bearing is a common find you get from it when putting that in the Recycler.
• 5 Copper Sticks – I had great luck getting copper scrap from the daily Eufaula Salvage trips. Popping that into a Recycler means pretty solid odds of getting a Copper Stick as a spoil. So do that and you’re set.
• 5 Wooden Sticks – Again, going to Eufaula Salvage and digging through the salvage may net you wood scrap. When put in the Recycler, you’ll usually get either wood you can make into a wooden stick or even an actual wooden stick. The wood piles on the ground near your workshop can also be hit with an axe to get the wood to make these.
• 6 Thick Ropes – Since you have that recipe I told you to buy earlier, head to your Worktable. If you’ve been gathering from nearby Oregano or Sandberry, or using your axe on the Yakthorn near your workshop and Eufaula Salvage, you might have already gotten enough plant fibers. Since you need six thick ropes, you need 24 pieces of plant fibers to make enough for the Crane Lift.
• 8 Bricks – This is what I found to be the most difficult part of this quest, because initially I was trying to rely on stone scrap dumped into the Recycler. However, even though the odds of getting a brick that was was 50%, I had no luck. So, go to the Furnace you built earlier and dump in 32 stones. You’ll make the eight bricks you need.

With the Crane Lift made, head over to Eufaula Salvage with it in your hotkey bar. Walk up to the designated spot where you’d be digging at the daily scrap, then set it down to complete the quest and see a cinematic. You’ll get 600 EXP, 600 Gols, +20 reputation in town, some Seaside Casual Shorts, and will be better friends with both Rocky and Mi-an after. You’ll also get Abandoned Ruins in My Time at Sandrock access once “Picking Up the Slack” is done too.

My Time at Sandrock is available on the PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC. A PS4 version is also in development.