Search For The Needle: How to Win Fast Solo With the Demolitionist

Clearing a haystack by hand in Search For The Needle is slow enough that most solo runs stall out long before the needle turns up. Explosives change the math. One class, one bomb, and a fixed upgrade order turn the Farmhouse into a demolition job instead of a scavenger hunt.

Quick answer: Pick Demolitionist, get a TNT, buy Speed first, take one rank of Lucky Blast, max Power, then max Speed, and detonate the outer edges and tips of the haystack rather than the middle. Solo runs land between six and ten minutes.

What the solo demolition run requires

Three things decide whether the run is fast or ordinary. The class you pick at the start, whether you have a bomb in hand, and how your permanent gem upgrades are spent.

Requirement	Detail
Class	Demolitionist. Dynamite explosions have a 20% larger blast radius, which is the entire reason this route works.
TNT	Needed from the opening seconds. The item description is blunt about its job: blow a crater straight through the haystack.
Permanent shop	Put gems into Hay Value first. It funds every in-round purchase faster than Bag Size, Hand Grab Amount, or Gem Value.

Without the bomb gamepass you still get there, you just pay in time. Farm hay for roughly three minutes at the start of the round and buy your way into a stick, then continue exactly as below.

Open the menu from the farm area to select your class and check the shop rows before you commit to a spending order.

Farm area gameplay with the Tab prompt highlighted to open the in-game menu — The Tab prompt in the farm area opens the class and upgrade menu.

Upgrade order inside the round

The order matters more than the total spend. Speed comes first because you are constantly walking between hay, the cow, and the next blast position. Power comes before the second half of Speed because bigger craters mean fewer trips overall.

Order	Upgrade	How far
1	Speed	Early ranks only, funded by your first hay sales
2	Lucky Blast	One rank. Gives a 10% chance for TNT to split into three mini charges
3	Power	Max it out. This is the single biggest time saver in the run
4	Speed	Max the rest once Power is finished

Hand, Hold, Grasp, and Pitchfork are not part of this route. They improve manual clearing, and manual clearing is what the explosives are replacing. Skip them and put everything into blast output and movement.

Once Power is capped, return to the menu and finish the Speed ranks before you resume detonating.

Highlighted Tab button on the gameplay screen used to reopen the upgrade panel mid-run — Reopening the panel mid-run to finish the remaining Speed ranks after Power is maxed.

Where to place the explosions on the haystack

Start at the top of the pile. Detonate the crown of the haystack first, which drops the overall height and gives you a clear view of what is left standing.

Move to the outer parts. The needle rarely sits in the exact centre of the stack, so blasting straight down the middle wastes charges on the least likely area.

Work the tips and protruding spots. These are where the needle tends to surface, and they are also the sections that block your line of sight on the rest of the pile.

Clear the remaining edges in a set order rather than hopping around. Pick a direction and go around the stack so you never have to guess which side you already hit.

Recheck the top between detonations. A blast can throw the needle clear of where it was buried, so a section you already cleared can hold it a minute later.

Note: the throw is part of the mechanic, not a nuisance. Because charges launch the needle out of the hay, a systematic sweep with frequent visual checks beats hammering one spot until it is empty.

Confirming the find and finishing the run

The game tells you outright. A “YOU FOUND THE NEEDLE!” banner appears along with the instruction to equip it and take it to the farmer. Spotting the object on the hay is not the win condition on its own.

Thin needle highlighted on the hay pile as the player targets it after a blast — The needle sitting exposed on the hay after a detonation, ready to be picked up.

Equip the needle, then walk it back to the farmer to close out the round. The run only counts once the hand-off happens, so do not stop to clear the last of the hay after the banner appears.

Expected completion times, solo and in a group

Setup	Typical run time
Solo with the bomb gamepass	6 to 10 minutes
Solo without the gamepass	Roughly 3 minutes longer, spent farming the first TNT
Four players, all with the bomb gamepass	Around 2 minutes

Your finish time and total wins are tracked on the leaderboard, alongside hay collected, if you want to measure whether a route change actually helped.

Leaderboard set to NORMAL showing Time Record, Total Wins and Hay Collected columns — The leaderboard on the NORMAL selector, listing Time Record, Total Wins, and Hay Collected.

Why a solo run misses the six-minute mark

Picking any class other than Demolitionist, which removes the 20% blast radius that the whole route depends on.
Maxing Speed before Power. You move faster but clear far less hay per charge.
Dumping charges into the middle of the stack, where the needle is least likely to be sitting.
Never rechecking cleared sections after a blast has thrown the needle somewhere new.
Spreading gems across Bag Size and Gem Value instead of pushing Hay Value, which slows every in-round purchase.

The route is repeatable, which is the point. Demolitionist and a stick of TNT, Speed then one Lucky Blast then maxed Power, edges and tips before the centre, and a quick delivery to the farmer once the banner fires. Run it a second time and the six-minute end of that window stops feeling like luck.