Best upgrades to prioritize in Homeland
Priority guide · Updated 31 October 2026
When you cannot build everything at once, the right upgrade is usually the one that removes a bottleneck, not the one with the biggest number attached to it.
The short priority list
- Farmland and support for Farmland when crops are limiting your whole plan.
- Woodlands and Mines when RV materials are the blocker.
- Storage when your overnight production keeps capping out.
- Power, lighting and climate support once you reach the stage where layouts and utility workers matter.
- Specialized processors when your chosen goal needs them, not just because they unlocked.
How to decide in your own Homeland
The question is not "which building is strongest?" It is "what is my current bottleneck?" If your next RV asks for refined ore and you are short on mining throughput, adding a side crafting facility probably will not help. If the solver is warning you that specific worker jobs are overloaded, the better upgrade might be a utility building or a roster change instead of a new recipe chain.
Utility workers are a hidden cost
Heaters, Coolers, Sunlamps and power support are easy to underestimate because they look like placement tools, but in Aniiland they also cost workers. That means a "better" layout can still be worse if it eats too many worker slots.
Separate an unlock from a useful upgrade
When a building becomes available, that only means you can build or upgrade it. It does not mean your current plan needs it. A newly unlocked workshop might be excellent for one recipe-focused goal and nearly irrelevant for another. First check which resource the planner cannot produce quickly enough. If the shortage is Wood Blocks or Mineral Sand, spending your remaining resources on an unrelated workshop will usually move the next RV upgrade further away.
The same logic applies to leveling a facility you already own. More capacity on one step is wasted when the next step cannot process the extra material. An additional field is useful when crops limit a chain, but not when a fully staffed mill is already waiting on power or another ingredient. Upgrades should fix the slowest part of the chain rather than make its fastest part even faster.
Use two planning runs instead of guessing
Open the planner with your actual RV level and settings and calculate the plan. Record the output that matters to you, such as Home Coins per day, RV upgrade readiness or a particular recipe. Add only the upgrade you are considering in Custom Setup and calculate again with the same worker roster, goals and duration. Compare both results. This is a much fairer test than comparing two cards from different settings and trying to remember what changed.
If the second run barely improves the goal, the upgrade is probably not the priority right now. If it removes an explicit bottleneck, reduces required workers or makes previously unreachable production possible, then it is much more interesting. Remember that an upgrade has a purchase cost too: an increase in daily output is not automatically worth delaying your RV progress for several days.
Materials have an opportunity cost
Home Coins are only part of the bill. Wood, ore, refined materials and sometimes an additional facility upgrade are also needed. Those materials would otherwise be available for your next RV level, so spending them on a side improvement is a trade. Check the full required list in the RV upgrade window, not just the coin figure. A material stockpile that looks healthy can vanish quickly if several facilities need the same intermediate component.
This is especially important when you have a target date or are preparing for a fresh event. A building that makes more coins may be the wrong purchase if you need its materials for the next level or for event-focused production. The right answer changes with your goal.
My practical priority rule
I would rather build one thing that fixes a confirmed shortage than three things that might help someday. Check your stock, verify the next RV requirement, and see what changes in a controlled test. Then buy. If the solver warns that the layout or staffing is invalid, solve that warning before treating any predicted gain as real. The RV cost table and facility unlock list give the baseline numbers; the live plan explains which of them matters to your own setup.
Want the site to tell you what is holding you back? The planner and Important Upgrades sections do that directly.
Open the planner