The Can Em All tips that matter in the first hours are about time, not damage. Five things carry you through the opening stretch: unlock the vacuum first, buy multipliers instead of raw damage, ignore the shift timer, keep the factory floor clear, and learn the two vacuum inputs by hand because the game has no tutorial. Damage upgrades are the last thing you should spend money on.
Can Em All tips that actually save you time
- Get the vacuum as early as you can.
- Buy the multipliers, not only damage.
- Do not treat the end of the timer as the end of the shift.
- Keep the factory clean.
- Expect no tutorial, and learn the wheel.
Everything else is optional. Those five are what turn the first hour from fighting the controls into running a factory.
Get the vacuum before anything else
The vacuum is the single biggest time saver in the game. Once you have it and a conveyor belt running straight to the hole, the timer stops mattering, because you can empty the vacuum and let the line finish the work.
The two upgrades to buy straight after it cost $50 each and pay for themselves immediately: Bigger Bag takes your capacity from 20 to 40, and Long Shot takes the range from 3m to 4m. Details are in the vacuum upgrade guide.
Buy multipliers, not only damage
The game values better creatures and multiplication upgrades far more than raw weapon damage. A money multiplier or a creature upgrade applies to every can for the rest of the run; a damage upgrade only makes one swing hit harder.
Save this rule for when you are choosing between two nodes with the same price. The full purchase order is in the weapon upgrade guide.
The clock is not the deadline
A day is only about three and a half minutes, and when the timer runs out you get a night period of nearly a minute of overtime. You can still collect and sell cans, and you can still get creatures into the grinder. Only the clock stops.
- Do not rush the last cans down the tube when the timer is nearly out.
- Keep working through the night period.
- If you want to end a shift early, jump into the delivery tube once there is nothing left to do.
The full shift cycle is in the day length guide.
Keep the factory clean
Bodies and cans left on the floor, still sitting in the vacuum, or piled up in front of the tube all count as objects in the factory, and while that count is high the game sends no new trucks.
- Empty the vacuum before it is full.
- Keep the chute clear.
- Kill the creatures from the previous load before the next one arrives.
This is also why a cluttered factory feels like it has stalled. The truck not spawning guide explains the counting rules in full.
Expect no tutorial
The game ships without one, and the first stretch of play is where most players get stuck. Two things to learn by hand:
- Scroll the mouse wheel to switch the vacuum between bodies and cans. The active mode is marked by an arrow next to the icon on the right.
- Release the left mouse button before switching from a weapon to the vacuum, or you shoot your own animals.
The full control list is in the vacuum controls guide.