Money & Selling Guide

There's no gold in Solarpunk — you trade goods for vending-machine currency and airship parts. Here's the most profitable thing to sell, and the loop that keeps the currency flowing.

How you earn currency

Solarpunk's economy runs through trader-bots and vending machines, not a wallet of gold. You hand over goods and earn the currency that unlocks vending-machine stock (including new airship colors), while the airship upgrade components you buy from the merchant go straight into your Key Items to extend your flight range.

Because of that, the fastest way to "make money" is to build a steady supply of the highest-value goods and feed them in — and a few items are worth dramatically more than the rest.

“Airship upgrade components acquired from the merchant are added to your Key Items inventory. They can be used at a dock to increase the airship’s range.”

“Once unlocked new colors in the vending machine, they can be selected at the dock.”

The food-basket money loop

The single most valuable item in the game is the Foodbasket — its value (500) is more than triple the next-best item. A Foodbasket is crafted from 5 Eggs, 5 Sheep's Milk and 5 Truffles at the Kitchen.

Here's why it matters: those 15 raw animal products are worth about 300 on their own (20 each), but combined into a single basket they're worth 500. Bundling your produce into baskets before selling is a free ~67% markup — so once your animals are running, route their output into baskets rather than selling it raw.

“Happy animals produce ressources that can be collected in the basket at the shelter.”

Build the produce engine

Baskets are only as good as your animal supply, so the real money-maker is an automated farm. Keep chickens (Eggs), sheep (Sheep's Milk) and pigs (Truffles) happy — each species in its own shelter with a filled feeding and water trough — and collect from the basket by each shelter.

Pair two happy animals of a species with a spare shelter standing by and they'll breed, scaling your output for free. From there it's a loop: produce → baskets → currency → vending-machine and airship upgrades.

Most valuable items

Ranked by recycle value — the clearest in-game signal of what each item is worth. Everything below is worth far more than the flat value of 1 that most items carry.