The Crust the Crust Game Layouts — Wiki & Guide
the Crust Game Layouts explained: Base layout ideas, zone planning and efficiency setups. Facts sourced from official pages, wiki and community discussions.
First, a search-term honesty note: The Crust has no world map screen — the game plays out across three fixed views (subsurface mining, lunar surface construction, and a planetary overview). So "The Crust map" in practice means base layout: how you arrange extractors, refineries, smelters and belts in the space you've excavated. The layouts below come straight from the game's community forum and long-running video series.
The pattern everyone converges on: the refinery row
The multi-regolith refinery is the layout centerpiece (it processes multiple resource types at once), and a dedicated forum thread — "Mass Multi Regolith Refinery set up" — collected the working designs:
| Layout | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Split-side row (forum user Nargon) | One input belt on the right feeds regolith and slag together on the same belt; slag processing runs down the left side, smelting across the top; new refineries extend downward and more smelters left/right | Expandable mid-game bases — "easily expandable" is the design goal |
| Underground-bus rows | Run underground belts between rows so surface lanes stay clear — "just use the underground belts and the layout gets easy" | Anyone drowning in crossing belts |
| Flipped-building pairs | Place two processors back-to-back and use the T-flip so adjacent machines share one feed belt | Tight spaces; the player who discovered it mid-thread: "I completely missed that you could flip buildings! That actually helps a ton" |
| Splitter-fed furnace lines | Once you research the Programmable Splitter (deep in the engineering branch), one mixed ore belt can feed a whole furnace row — splitters route each ore to its matching smelter | Late-game smelting halls; one player's verdict: "that should be at the start" of the tree |
| Loose variant with bigger inputs | A less space-tight row with "increased regolith input capacity" and correctly merged outputs | Players who find dense rows starve their refineries |
Screenshot builds from that thread include an 8-refinery setup ("some efficiencies could definitely be made but worked pretty well overall") and several shared via Steam screenshots — useful as visual references if you paste their URLs into a browser.
Principles behind the layouts
- Plan for rebuilds. Every few tech unlocks (new refinery type, smelter upgrade, splitters) layouts get reorganized — forum regulars treat the rebuild as part of the loop, and 1.0's Planning Mode with copy-paste exists precisely for this.
- Share belts for byproducts. Ice miners output slag alongside ice; the community rows run regolith and slag on one belt and split at the machines — fewer belts, fewer crossings.
- Leave expansion space. The split-side row's whole point is extending "another refinery to the bottom, more smelting left and right" without demolishing the row.
- Underground for crossing, surface for feeding. Underground belts are point-to-point — perfect for crossing lanes, useless for distribution; surface belts do the local drops.
- Storage feeds machines, not the reverse. Bulk storage takes belt in/out; small general storage doesn't connect to belts at all — build rows around bulk/large storage interfaces.
Video walkthroughs of full layouts
| Series / video | What you'll see |
|---|---|
| Caledorn — "Multi-Regolith Refinery Chain Layout — Base Rebuild" (EP8, 5,808 views) | A full base rebuild around a refinery chain |
| Caledorn — "Multi-Regolith Bus — Smelting Furnace Rows" (EP9) | The follow-up: bus design feeding furnace rows |
| Surtr Plays — "Perfect Multi-Regolith Refinery Setup" (E3, 28K views) | The series' dedicated refinery arrangement episode |
| GamerConsultant — "My TOP TIPS & GUIDES to master this Lunar Automation game" (Feb 2026) | Near-1.0 tips tour including layout logic |
For the machines these rows arrange — belt tiers, drone types, power — see the automation guide; for what to unlock and in what order, the research tree guide.