How do you unlock Treasure Crackers?

slime-rancher

Solution 1:

Seems to be based entirely on Extractor Cycles (get items from drill/pump/apiary buildings) now that I've played more.

Mk1 (Green) Treasure Cracker:

Unlock the Lab ranch expansion
A few (10?) Extractor cycles

Mk2 (Blue) Treasure Cracker:

Buy the Mk1 Cracker
~50 Extractor cycles

Mk3 (black) Treasure Cracker:

Buy the Mk2 Cracker
~100 Extractor cycles

Slime Rancher Wiki found the exact(?) numbers.

You usually have to sleep to get the unlock to pop, but one time I did not--might check every X hours or Y time of day instead of whether you slept.

Solution 2:

With the 0.5.0 update, three new achievements were added to the games for fabricating 1, 35, and 100 Slime Science gadgets. After seeing this Tweet from the developer stating that Treasure Crackers are unlocked after fabricating items, I decided to see if I could unlock them by reaching the achievement milestones. Sure enough, a day after fabricating a single extractor, and not even placing it down, I unlocked the first Treasure Cracker. One day after fabricating 35 gadgets of any kind, I unlocked the second. And finally, one day after fabricating 100 gadgets, I unlocked the third.

With that experience, it's confirmed that Treasure Crackers are unlocked like so:

Treasure Cracker Mk1 after fabricating 1 gadget
Treasure Cracker Mk2 after fabricating 35 gadgets
Treasure Cracker Mk3 after fabricating 100 gadgets

Since Treasure Crackers are unlocked depending on gadgets fabricated, fabricating the advanced extractors is actually detrimental to unlocking Treasure Crackers. It's more beneficial to use regular extractors, which cost less plorts to fabricate and will get used up faster.