Hand Pump
Complete guide to the Hand Pump in Starsand Island. Covers function as a watering can refill point, blueprint location in a treasure chest near Hopeland, crafting recipe (6 Stone Bricks + 2 Copper Ingots), placement strategy, and the related decorative Snail Pump variant added in patch 0.4.9467.
Hand Pump
The Hand Pump is a craftable utility item in Starsand Island that lets you fill your watering can from a fixed point on your property. Every player starts with a Hand Pump already placed on their Hopeland farm during the tutorial, but additional Hand Pumps can be crafted and placed wherever you need a refill source. As your farm grows beyond the starter plot, placing extra Hand Pumps near distant fields cuts down the time spent walking back to a single central refill point.
Hand Pumps are not the only valid water source. Natural ponds, rivers, wells, and the ocean shoreline all refill the watering can the same way. The Hand Pump's value is convenience: it puts a refill point exactly where you want one, on land you control, instead of forcing you to walk to a natural water tile.
How to Get the Blueprint
The Hand Pump Blueprint is found inside a treasure chest south of your Hopeland starter farm. Starting from the house, follow the path that runs out of the back of the property heading south. Continue along the trail until you reach the area where copper ore deposits begin to appear near the cliffs. The treasure chest sits along this path and contains the Hand Pump Blueprint along with other early-game rewards.
You do not need any special tool, profession tier, or quest progression to open this chest. It is reachable on day one, although you may want to delay collecting it until you have a Wooden Watering Can crafted, since the Hand Pump itself only matters once you actually have a can to fill.
Crafting Recipe
Once you have the blueprint, the Hand Pump is crafted at the Worktable using stone and copper components. Both inputs go through processing chains, so you need a Charcoal Kiln and a Furnace running before you can build one.
Component | Quantity | Source |
|---|---|---|
Stone Brick | 6 | Process Stone in the Charcoal Kiln (4 Stone per brick) |
Copper Ingot | 2 | Smelt Copper Ore in the Furnace (4 Copper per ingot) |
Crafted at | Default tutorial Worktable |
The full raw-material total is therefore 24 Stone, 8 Copper Ore, plus the Charcoal burned during the kiln and furnace runs. Stone is plentiful from breaking rocks anywhere on the island; Copper Ore is gathered from the copper-vein cliffs south of Hopeland and around Green Meadow.
Placement Strategy
Where you place your Hand Pumps directly affects how much daily time you spend on farm chores. A few rules of thumb:
Place one near the center of every crop block. Each Hand Pump only matters within a short walking radius. If you split your farm into separate plots, each plot benefits from its own pump within roughly a screen's width of the crops it serves.
Keep one near the trees and ore. If you also use the watering can on rare crops planted out by your forest or mining areas, putting a Hand Pump there saves the long return trip to the house.
Watering does not cost stamina, but refilling does. Every refill at any water source consumes a small amount of stamina. Fewer trips means more stamina kept for the rest of your day.
The starter Hand Pump can be relocated. If the default tutorial placement does not match your final farm layout, you can pick the original Hand Pump up in Build Mode and place it somewhere more useful instead of crafting an extra one.
Sprinklers replace pumps over time. Once you reach Intermediate Farmer and unlock the base Sprinkler blueprint, automated irrigation removes most of the need for manual watering. Hand Pumps remain useful for crops outside sprinkler range and for filling decorative ponds.
Pump Variants
The Hand Pump has decorative variants that perform the same refill function but differ visually. As of patch 0.4.9467, two pump models exist in the game:
Variant | Function | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Hand Pump | Refill watering can | Default model. Blueprint from treasure chest south of Hopeland. |
Refill watering can | Snail-themed cosmetic variant added in patch 0.4.9467 with its own Codex entry. |
Both pumps function identically for filling the watering can. Choosing between them is purely a decoration decision, the same way different scarecrow models perform the same pest-deterrent role with different visual styles.
Tips
Pick up the blueprint before you upgrade your watering can. The Bronze Watering Can blueprint at the Happiness Seed Shop costs 400 Coins, but the Hand Pump Blueprint is free. Grab it on your way south for early ore farming and you save yourself a return trip.
Don't over-build. Two or three Hand Pumps cover most farms comfortably. Past that, the diminishing returns are not worth the Stone Brick and Copper Ingot cost.
Decorative pond placement. A Hand Pump placed near a small decorative pond reads visually as part of a rural farmyard scene. Build mode players sometimes pair a Hand Pump with stone tiles, wooden buckets, and a Stump Stool for a country-cottage corner.
Pumps are not consumed by the Sprinkler recipe. Unlike the Bronze Watering Can, which is destroyed when crafting a Sprinkler, the Hand Pump is a placed structure and remains exactly where you put it.