This is a game that will easily take 150-200 hours to complete on your first playthrough. On subsequent playthroughs, you can reduce this because you will know not only what to expect, but when to expect it. But for your first playthrough, you are in for such a treat! This game can make the hours just melt away. It's a great way to just lose yourself in the game environment.

The world is handcrafted and it is simply an an awesome spectacle to behold. It is a very large world, has many unique biomes, and many dangerous fauna that will cause many a corpse run.

This is also a factory game - you will start out making 10, 20, 50 of something manually at a crafting bench and by the end of the game, you will have automated all this & be producing upwards of 900 a minute of the basic supplies to feed your ever growing factory that is producing ever more complicated things.

This guide will take you through Tier 3 - when you first get coal and powering up your first coal powered generator. Once you are at this point, you are no longer a beginner pioneer!

This guide is chronological from the on boarding tutorial through Tier 3. You can reference sections that are close to where you are at within the game.

Or, you can read ahead if you want to learn more about what to expect. The choice is yours!

When you first start the game, the first 2-3 hours is a pretty decent tutorial, having you learn how to find surface deposits, the basic of mining, and introducing the various factory things such as belts, storage, and power (electricity).

So I highly, highly recommend that you DO NOT SELECT "skip to level 1" and instead do the full game from the beginning.

And the beginning, while teaching you the basics, is kind of tedious. You'll be gathering minerals by running around, you'll be gathering sticks and bushes to make biomass that will in turn make electricity, and it will seem very manually intensive.

This part will get over quickly and you'll be automating so many things - but this manual collection will be needed in the future, so it's imperative that you learn how this works. So bear with it.

Picking the starting location - I would really recommend that you pick either the Grass Fields or the Rocky Desert.

1. You're going to have a AI companion called Ada, and she is witty, sarcastic and a bit condescending, and she's going to rattle off things as you're out & about, or when you research something new and you may miss what she says. You can review ALL the things she says by pressing 'O' and selecting inbox to see the history of what she has said.


2. Always be gathering branches & leaves. Whenever you are walking from point A to point B, gather. Press & release E while you walk around and you will pick up whatever you are aiming at. These create biomass and this is put into burners to create electricity.

3. There is a way to walk / run faster. It involves sliding then jumping. While running, press C to crouch (which will cause you to slide) and while sliding, press Space bar to jump and as you hit the ground, press C again. Combing these and chaining them together has your pioneer moving as fast as they can across the ground. You do have to be on level or a downward slope. It doesn't work going up hill.

I'm not going to mince words, when you first start out, the game just feels so suckwaddy. You can hardly jump, standing next to machines blocks your line of site, the weapon you start with takes forever to kill things, and it seems like you're always taking damage from animals or stepping off a small cliff. It is so darn tedious manually crafting things and the first factories take forever to produce any quantity whatsoever. I don't blame you if you have a bad reaction right off the bat - you can't believe this is called a game. I mean who wants to play this?

* It gets better. Way better in fact. Like jetpacks with rocket fuel better (not joking, rocket fuel is awesome in a jetpack!). Automation will quickly supersede manually crafting things. You'll have containers full of parts instead of waiting for 10 to be built. It just takes a few hours to get to a point where you'll feel the freedom this game will give you to design and build anything you want.

So give it a chance. Really it's worth it.

These are the key bindings that are not flat out obvious and gives some tips on how to use these.

After you have pressed Q and have selected an item to build, or have pressed a number on your hotbar:

• E will cycle through the rest of the items in the group. So for example, if you select a 1 high foundation, pressing E will cycle to 2 meter, then 4 meter foundations.
  
• 
  
• R will change the build mode from default to zoop to vertical and back to default.
  
• 
  
• LEFT Control will snap the item to the global grid. This is great so if you expand later, different bases / foundations will line up.

Pressing F will turn on Dismantle. Once this is turned on, you can press CNTRL to toggle mass dismantle, allowing you to highlight multiple things by just hovering your mouse over items you want to delete. Clicking and holding the mouse will delete all marked items. You can interrupt the delete by releasing the mouse key before it completes the delete.

M brings up the map (discussed in more detail in a later section)

V bring up the scan wheel. TIP: If you have unlocked the map, you can bring up the map and the resource nodes will be displayed on the map and you can examine them for purity!

B enables the flashlight to see into dark corners

ENTER allows you to chat

Pressing Center mouse button while pointing at something will begin to build that item. This is very helpful if you have a splitter already built for example, and you want to build another one. Just point at the splitter and press the middle mouse button. It's a very quick way instead of Q -> Logistics -> Scroll to splitter and select.

I think the tutorial does a decent, but not great job at onboarding. Here are some additional tips to get the most out of the tutorial section:

0. Follow the tutorial to the end and only venture to find nearby nodes (Iron, Copper, Limestone). Save adventuring for after you complete the tutorial!

1. Build 2-3 manual miners for each node. They take no electricity! So just manually go around and grab them & fill up the smelters. To place a manual miner, it must be in your hand, so press TAB to open up inventory, then click and drag a manual miner to your hand. Rotate the scroll wheel on your mouse until the miner is showing in your hands, then click the mouse to drop it on the resource node.

2. You need to come up to the manual miner and it will become interact-able so you can grab minerals from it.

3. CRAFT biomass at a craft bench from leaves or wood before placing into the biomass burner, as it is more efficient than straight leaves or wood. This may not be available until you kill something and collect its remains or complete tutorial Hub Upgrade 6.

4. When you unlock the MK1 Miner, you need to remove the mineral node on top of the resource node before it can be placed. Just go up to it and press E to mine it and this will remove it.

5. Build craft benches nearby your mining nodes. You can craft ingots / concrete while waiting for the manual miner to fill up.

6. You can relocate the Hub to be equidistant between the various nodes once you find them. Just dismantle (F) & rebuild it.

7. It's not entirely evident, but when you hit hub upgrade 5, you get an extra biomass burner on the hub, the same time you get a power pole. Place a power pole & connect BOTH biomass burners to it, then chain the power from here to your other machines. This will double your power.


8. When gathering bushes, you'll get some wood occasionally, but if you can find wood laying on the ground, PICK IT UP because it's so much more denser than leaves & creates a lot more biomass.

The game is absolutely abysmal in explaining how to modify your hotbar and create new hotbars.

Q brings up your build menu.

To modify / add things to your hotbar:

With the build menu (Q) open, press a number while your mouse is over any item and that item will be assigned to that number on your current hotbar.

Current hot bar? Yes! You have 10 hotbars (0 - 9) and can access the hotbars by pressing ALT-Mouse Scroll wheel to go between hotbars.

I recommend splitting out different things onto different hotbars, but always have power poles as #1 and wire as number 2, then use 3-9 for different things that are related.

There is no need to create hotbars for every thing, you can cycle within a group (row on the build menu) by pressing E. So you can assign a splitter to 3 for example, then when you want a merger, just press 3 then E to cycle to the merger.

You're going to die, probably multiple times from the dangerous animals, poison clouds, radiatiion and falling not necessarily in that order.

When you die, you will leave a death crate.

TIP: In game settings, you can modify what you lose when you die.

You can also adjust creature difficulty. If you want to skip the whole fighting and dying thing, you can even set creatures to passive so they will never attack you.

To improve your odds:

1. For falls and fauna, you want to get the research for the Blade Runners and equip these to your feet. They will allow you to jump higher, further, and you will take less fall damage. This is under the MAM research tree for quartz, so can be difficult to get early on. Note: Quartz won't even show up in the MAM until you've found and mined quartz!

2. For falls, you want to get to the research for parachutes in the M.A.M. under mycelia research, make one using the equipment lab, and equip it to your back. (Press Space Bar to deploy while falling). Note: Mycelia won't even show up in the MAM until you've harvested some Mycelia (they are mushrooms in caves mostly but in other biomes they take other forms)

3. For poison clouds (the gas pillars emitting green clouds and spore flowers), you want to to research the gas mask & associated cartridges in the M.A.M. under mycelia research.

4. For radiation (green rocks and monsters that emit radiation), you want to research the hazmat suit under the H.U.B. in phase 3.

The attacking fauna are really annoying and they get progressively harder to kill the more advanced the area / biome is. The good news is when you see any type of dangerous fauna, there is something important nearby. It might just be a mine, but could be a mercer sphere, a somersloop, a slug or a wreck.

A decent way to handle the more difficult fauna (Alpha Hog I'm looking at you), is to corral them in several equipment workshops to limit their movement. Sometimes you just need to get them out of the way. A jump pad placed in between you and them, and powered with a temporary biomass burner, can remove them from the area long enough for you to get whatever is there, if you can get them to run over the jump pad. It's pretty funny to see them launched! Note: Jump pads are unlocked in Tier 2.

For the flyers, the shatter rebar ammo using the rebar gun does wonders, as it's like a shotgun. Also, a really cool tip is you can slide into the base flying crab hatcher and kill it while crouched and it will not spawn the little flying crabs. But it's going to take a while to get that explosive rebar!

TIP: Create a hotbar for when you are exploring. Place power pole, power line, biomass burner, jump pads, equipment workshop, storage container on it.

Tier 1 is available after the tutorial. You have 3 choices to research:

1. Base Building
2. Logistics
3. Research (M.A.M)

I recommend going with logistics first because this gives you the splitter and merger so you can set up a fully automated line for your must need materials. This way, you can set up a line and do some minor exploration while the materials just accumulate for all the future milestones!

Base building is great because it allows you to start getting organized and the machines snap to the grids, making alignment a lot easier.

Research (M.A.M) is needed to start progressing down the tech trees.

They are all pretty easy to attain, so it's really your choice.

Each resource node has one of three purities, Impure, Normal and Pure.

You can tell what type of a mine something is by standing over it and looking down:


Alternatively, you can do a scan (V) and then quickly look at the map (M) and then mouse over a resource node while in the map. Note: Map is not available until you complete Field Research at Tier 1, so won't be available during the onboarding tutorial.

With a MK1 miner:

1. Impure -> 30 / min
2. Normal -> 60 / min
3. Pure -> 120 / min

With a MK2 Miner: (unlocked at tier 4)

1. Impure -> 60 / min
2. Normal -> 120 / min
3. Pure -> 240 / min

With a MK3 Miner: (unlocked at tier 8)

1. Impure -> 120 / min
2. Normal -> 240 / min
3. Pure -> 480 / min

In the beginning, you'll use whatever is nearby, but as you progress and adventure, it's a good idea to note down on the map for the pure nodes as they can really help you in later stages.

So now you can set up a production line that is fully automated!

Miner -> Smelter -> Constructor -> Storage

You should set up lines for all the things you can make:

Iron Plates
Iron Rods
Wire

Cement is special as it does not require a smelter

Screws and Cable require a slightly different setup:

Miner -> Smelter -> Constructor -> Constructor -> Storage

If you can find Normal or Pure nodes, they will give more materials, so you can adjust the line to accommodate the extra!

Miner -> Splitter -> Smelter 1 -> Constructor -> Merger -> Storage
-> Smelter 2 -> Constructor -> Merger -> Storage
or
-> Smelter 2 -> Constructor -> Constructor -> Merger -> Storage

You can also just set up a secondary line with storage as the input. This is helpful for screws, since you want to have some iron rods left over!

Storage -> Constructor -> Storage
(rods) -> (Screws) -> (Screw Storage)

Once you have foundations, the urge to grin mischievously and have a sparkle in your eye for making your GRAND base is overwhelming.

But let's be clear, you're on tier 1/2, you are just out of the starting gate and while yes, you are making a base, it will be the first of many.

A beginner base is something that creates all the things you need while exploring and it automates all the things that you unlock in Tier 1 and Tier 2.

NOTE: I recommend a few parts from the Awesome Shop (floor holes + ceiling conveyors) so if you want to jump ahead to that section, you can!

This is where home will be for a long time and it will be where to drop off materials you get while out exploring, quickly get new material to reload your stacks before venturing out.

While it may be a beginner base, I'd like to humbly suggest that you follow ADA's lead and build vertically and to make it larger than you may have thought...think 16x16 or so.


To make sure that no rocks will be protruding, it's a good idea to elevate the first floor so it is above any large rocks, etc before laying it out like the picture below. Leaving room underneath is great b/c you can also route conveyor belts where needed without getting in the way!


TIP - By pressing CNTRL while in build mode, it will force the foundation to snap to the global grid, and this is important so that if you have two nearby areas, you can eventually join them up seamlessly.

I suggest making the 2nd floor 5 stories taller than the main floor. This is to be able to hold 4 small or 2 large storage containers one on top of each other and it will accommodate a train later on.


Use ramps to get from one floor to another.

Here is a shot of an empty two floors ready for factories!

You can continue to expand by adding more floors! I recommend 4 stories for each floor to allow for ceiling mounted conveyor belts.

You're on your way! Here is a fully operational beginner base with just the first few factories automated:

The bottom floor of your beginner base can be used to create a "mall" where all the parts you are making on all the floors comes down and is available for quickly grabbing and/or restocking parts for making more things:

Below is a very early mall with plates, rods, wire, cable and cement:


TIP: Signs will be unlocked later, but for now an easy way to tell at a glance which container hold what is to create a very short belt and the parts will automatically flow out so you can see them:


Expand this as you build more factories and route parts down here.

Satisfactory has two primary ways of getting new recipes for equipment and parts:

1. Tier Objectives within the HUB
2. MAM research center (available on Tier 1 Field Research).

The Tier Objectives, called Milestones, are always in pairs. You started out with 1 & 2, and 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 will follow as you complete each space elevator request, called Phases.

The MAM is kind of strange in that certain "trees" of research (the list down the left side as you're looking at the MAM) only become visible as you collect a new type of resource. And each tree only shows you the current nodes, so it's impossible to see the full list of items unless you use an reference outside the game. The following is a bit of a spoiler, but I think that having goals is important in the game, so am highlighting some of more interesting research areas:

Alien Megafauna becomes available as soon as you kill something and collect the remains. The Protein inhaler and the rebar gun are the most important on this tree.

Alien Technology becomes available as soon as you collect a Mercer Sphere, a Somersloop or a SAM material. The Dimensional Depot and Power Augmentor are the two most important items on this tree.

Caterium becomes available when you collect Caterium. New parts (AI Limiter, Hi Speed Connector), New logistics (Smart splitter, Programmable Splitter), new power poles and the Steam Generator are highlights of this tree.

Mycelia becomes available when you collect Mycelia. Cloth, Parachutes, and the Gas Mask (to avoid poison damage) are on these trees.

Nutrients becomes available when you find a beryl nut, a paleberry or a bacon agaric. This has the medicinal inhaler which can really heal you after damage.

Power Slugs becomes available when you find a power slug. Overclocking is the absolute best thing on this tree.

Quartz becomes available when you collect some quartz. Blade Runners is the BEST part of this tree, but you also get new parts (Crystal Oscillator), new ammo (Shatter Rebar - the best ammo in the game bar none), Radio Signal Scanning, which can highlight crash sites, and Radar Technology, which will uncover all resource nodes in a very large area.

Sulfur becomes available when you collect sulfur and the most important for now is the Nobelisk Detonator while Compacted Coal and Turbo Fuel will be very important later.

As a beginner, the absolute most important for you are the Parachute (Myscelia) and the Blade Runners (Quartz) but uncovering new parts and automating them should be a secondary goal throughout the game.

Tier 2 begins to get interesting. You have more choices:


I recommend getting Obstacle clearing so you can set up an automated Biomass burner factory to create electricity easier than you do currently. It unlocks solid biofuel, which can be manufactured in a constructor and fed through belts to the biomass burners. It also unlocks the chainsaw, so you can quickly gather wood or clear an area from trees. NOTE: You must have solid biofuel in your inventory for the chainsaw to work!

Then you have the resource sink bonus program, which allows you to purchase certain parts that will enable more streamlined factories.

Part Assembly gives you the assembler which is required for to make your first parts for the Space Elevator, and copper sheets which you'll need for Tier 3 onwards.

Logistics Mk.2 gives you faster belts and the all important stackable conveyor pole which can be used for a very awesome ladder early game.

Finally, Jump pads give you a way to reach high spaces fast and gives you another option for getting rid of those annoying beasts.

Biomass burners have an input for hooking up belts.

Solid Biofuel is the absolute best fuel for these generators, so getting Obstacle clearing researched in Tier 2 is important, so that you can be less bothered by hand feeding the generators and automate electrical generation from leaves and wood you gather while exploring.

I'd recommend setting up two storage containers, one for leaves and one for wood and have each of those feed a constructor that creates biomass. Then have a merger that feeds those into another constructor that creates solid biofuel. This can then be routed to a storage container, which in turn feeds as many biomass burners as you need.

This way when you come back to your base, you just drop the leaves in one cointainer, the wood in another, and go about your business.

Here are some ideas - a two story where the inputs and conversion are below and the electrical generation is on the upper floor (and you can continue to build more floors if needed)

Throughout the game, you're going to be creating more material and parts than you can use or store. The Resource Sink Bonus Program gives you the Awesome Sink (tm) which gives you coupons for the parts and materials you sink and the Awesome Shop (tm) where you can buy new parts, customization's, the coffee cup (tm), and the factory cart among many other bewildering products to enhance your factories.

Awesome Sink

The Awesome Sink has one belt input which you can feed any excess materials. This can be all the way from raw ore to assembled parts, with the more complex parts giving you more points.

There are some things you should not try to sink. If you try to send something to the sink that is not allowed, the belt will jam up and you will have to remove the offending item before the rest of the items can be sunk.

The points awarded for everything you sink is complex and the points needed for each coupon is ever escalating. It is quite complex and not going to be discussed in this guide, but if you are interested, you can read all the details here[satisfactory.wiki.gg].

I recommend to get this going early on so you can get your first 5-13 coupons to buy what I consider some of the most helpful parts when creating your first beginner factory.

To start with, just grab any resource node, put a smelter in line with a constructor, make something from the ingot and sink everything. Eventually you can come back and repurpose this resource node to something else, but for very early game, you need those first 10 coupons!

Awesome Shop

There are many things to buy and it's really similar to online stores you already buy things from. You put things in your cart and then pay for them with coupons THAT MUST BE IN YOUR INVENTORY.

Here are some of the early parts I recommend with 1-3 being the most important:

1. The floor hole makes lining up belts vertically very easy. (1 coupon)

2. The conveyor ceiling mount allows you to hang belts from the ceiling. (1 coupon)

3. The factory ladder gives you vertical without needing ramps everywhere (3 coupons)

4. The wall outlet allows you to attach power to walls and ceilings. (3 coupons)

5. The modern catwalk gives you a better solution for making elegant ramps around your factory (5 coupons)

Assemblers introduce new parts that you can now build:

• Rotors (Iron rods + screws)
  
• Reinforced Iron Plates (iron plates + screws)
  
• Modular Frame (reinforced iron plate + Iron rods)

It also requires reinforced Iron plates and Rotors to build which you must craft manually until you can automate these.

This is your first hint that you are going to need a HUGE amount of screws, so you might think about setting up a resource node to produce nothing but screws as these will get used in a LOT of parts!

Assemblers are your first machine to have two inputs. It's not clear how to connect these without clipping belts. While you can clip belts, it's better to place belts so they don't clip so you can verify at a glance whether a line is stuck or not.

Routing materials requires utilizing conveyor lifts to go over one line, but how to do this is a trick in itself as Ada is no real help here.

First you create two assemblers next to each other, then line up splitters going from left -> right or right -> left, depending upon where you're feeding them from on the holes of of each assembler.

Then, pick one input and add two more splitters on top of it in the same orientation.

Then you can place a conveyor lift from the top to the entry in the Assembler like so:


Then you can remove the two bottom splitters, as they were only needed for spacing and alignment, and connect the splitters together with conveyor belts like so:

This is the first thing you'll be ask to build that takes a lot of resources. Fortunately, if you've automated everything to this point, it should be fairly trivial to gather what is needed from storage.

The space elevator is HUGE, like ENORMOUSLY HUGE, so it's going to take a lot of land.

The thing is you only visit this thing about 20 times throughout the game, so it doesn't need to be that close. So find some empty land and build it!

Building this gives you your first delivery - 50 Smart Plating.

Space elevator parts can not be crafted manually, they must be built in the appropriate machine.

The cool thing about the space elevator is that is a visual reference for you for your now current base - the vertical line going to space is visible everywhere on the map, so it will point you towards home at all times.

You can deconstruct and rebuild it as many times as you want!

TIP: Build a storage container near your base and have a belt feed from it to the space elevator is a way to drop off parts without having to actually visit it. But you will have to visit it once the parts are all delivered to pull the lever! (discussed later in this guide when delivering smart plating)

Smart plating is made with an assembler, and it requires a Rotor and a Reinforced Iron Plate, both of which require Assemblers to make. Now you can understand why we needed such a large area for our base.

You have a few choices:

1. Automate Reinforced Iron Plates and Rotors and feed those lines into the assembler line for Smart Plating
2. Automate Smart plating and siphon off some Rotors and Reinforced Iron plates for making more assemblers.

Here is a picture of #2 above:


This utilizes two assemblers each for Rotors and Reinforced Iron Plates, which then merge together and then split to create a storage for each before continuing on to the Assembler for Smart Plating.

The advantages are that you are absolutely going to need a LOT of reinforced iron plates and Rotors to build more assemblers, and this creates a storage for you. You can easily route these back down to your "mall" where these can be picked up together with all your other parts.

If you do #1 above, you risk using all the rotors and reinforced iron plates for smart plating and you won't have them when you need them.

PS: You're going to need thousands of smart plating

Manifold lines are a great way to produce parts and minimize the routing of those parts. They are also ultimately extendable, provided you leave enough space at the end of the line for more machines.

If you just look at Iron Rods and screws as an example:

Smelters produce 30 Iron ingots per min (30/min)
Constructors for Iron rods need 15/min and produce 15/min
So one smelter can feed two constructors, using a splitter.

Screws take 10 Iron rods per min (10/min) and produce 4 screws a min.
So two Iron rod constructors can feed 3 screw constructors.

If we took a typical attempt at this, it might look like this:

But this is so specific, any new miners or overclocking that gives us more iron, it's going to really make us re-do this entire setup.

Now let's look at a manifold line:

Same amount of constructors and smelters, but now this is ultimately expandable if we get a better miner or overclock. We can just add more smelters & constructors at the end of each line and it just expands so nicely.

Downsides for the manifold line:

1. It can take 10-30 minutes to get fully loaded. This is because constructors can hold 100 ingots and it's going to take a bit to fill the first one up before the ones down the line get fully loaded.

2. If you expand this, you're going to need to upgrade belts because T1 belts only handle 60/min and this layout is at the max for 60/min. If you add more smelters / iron rod constructors, you'll need to upgrade the belts to be T2 to get the 120/min the belt can handle.

While it is not needed quite yet, you're going to need many of these and you should have noticed this new recipe on the Assembler. Go ahead & automate it now. You may need to find another iron resource node and tap it to build these out.

Modular frames take Iron Rods + Reinforced Iron Plates.

With your now complete automation of everything that is available, it's time to go exploring in earnest!

You may have done some small adventuring to find the resource nodes and collect biomass, but now that you've got all the parts automated, you can go out adventuring while those parts get built!

It's VERY IMPORTANT that you take the following with you!

500 Concrete
200 Iron Rods
200 Iron Plates
10 Reinforced Iron Plates
10 Rotors
200 Cable
500 Wire
200 Solid biofuel
Chainsaw
Xeno Zapper
A good stack of Beryl Nuts and/or paleberry

This will allow you to build an workshops, craft benches, ramps, and more while you are out.

Now, you've experienced the wild hogs and have defeated them. As you venture further out from the starting area, you'll encounter tougher and meaner fauna. You'll find things that you can't quite reach, or you'll come upon gaps / caves that may require you to build bridges to access or get out of.

I strongly suggest creating a hotbar just for adventuring with the following on it and make it your active hotbar! by using ALT-Scrollwheel till this hotbar is active.

1. Wire
2. Power Pole
3. Biomass Burner
5. 4m Ramp
6. 1m Foundation
7. 2m Foundation
8. Equipment Workshop
9. Craft Bench

Before setting out, make sure your biomass burners are loaded up and you have enough solid biofuel to keep them running for a bit. If biomass is getting low, better to do a quick run before heading out!

You should familiarize yourself with the map - access by pressing M

When the map is opened, you can:

1. See minerals that you've scanned with V - they disappear after 25 seconds
2. Place markers on interesting things (resource nodes, wrecks, caves, etc)
-> Click the "+" button and then you can pick an icon, color and place text with the marker
3. Remove markers

As you adventure, more of the map will be revealed. When you first start out, it will look like this:


As you venture further afield, it will expand as you uncover more land:

This is the beginner guide, assuming you have at most a rebar gun and more than likely just a xeno zapper, so many of these you're just going to need to avoid / run until later in the game when you have been weapons (rifle, nobelisk) and way to avoid them (jet pack). Here are your available weapons (better weapons come later down the tech trees, although Rebar gun with Shatter is pretty darn good.

Weapons that are avail to you and their damage:

Xeno Zapper - 5 dmg
Xeno Basher - 9 dmg (unlocks at Tier 3)
Rebar gun with iron rebar - 15 dmg (unlocks in MAM under Alien Megafauna)
Rebar gun with Shatter - 30 dmg (unlocks in MAM under Quartz)
Rebar gun with Explosive - 50 dmg (unlocks in MAM under Sulfur)

Note: Pressing R allows you to switch between different ammo types while the rebar gun is equipped.

TIP: The only good use for a vehicle is that hostile animals ignore you if you are in one, so this can be a way to get in / get out.

Enemies you can encounter while out adventuring. Just a note they have HUGE aggro range and will chase you considerable distance once aggro'd.

Hog - 20hp easy, run and hit them 3 times, chase after them. Don't fight on cliffs, they can knock you off.

Alpha Hog - 80hp Super tough, box them in with a workshop, use the doors of the workshop to get zaps in on them. It's going to take 12-15 hits to kill them. Can also use jump pads to get them out of the area.

Cliff & Nuclear hog - Tougher than Alpha Hog and shoots rock projectiles. Avoid.


Spitter - 20-30hp depending upon variant. Fairly easy. Close the gap & kill them. They are deadly at range. If you have the Xeno Basher, you can hit the fireballs out of the air if you time it correctly.

Alpha Spitter - 60-80 depending upon variant. Avoid unless you have a rebar gun. If you have a rebar gun, you can place a workshop down & snipe from the doorway while avoiding the spit.


Stinger baby - 10hp easy but they travel in packs. Back away while zapping them

Stinger Alpha - Avoid. These things can leap huge distances and hit hard. They can pierce through the top of a workshop. Side strafe away from them when they leap. Later when you get the stun rebar it's more effective as a 1-2 punch (stun / basher to kill them) and you can engage them.


Flying Crab Hatcher - 10hp You've got to prioritize killing the hatcher and ignoring the crablings as they spawn 1-2 crablings every 5 seconds. These are very dangerous when there are 2-3 around something. Use a rebar gun from distance. You can jump / slide to them and stay crouched to kill the hatcher. In groups, shatter rebar is your friend.

Elite Crab Hatcher - 45 hp. Spawns 6 at first then 3 every 5 seconds. Shatter rebar is your friend.

When you're out, you're going to see things that you'll want to access, but the will not be reachable without building a bridge or a ramp.

The Zoop Mode when building is a great way to build long ramps and / or bridges to reach inaccessible areas. They are imperative to avoid fall damage.


You can build these ramps, grab whatever you want, then remove the ramp when completed.

The factory ladder that you can buy from the Awesome Shop is a good way to reach heights where a ramp is not a good choice. Later on, the conveyor pole is another great option for going vertically.

When you see something that is currently unreachable such as this mercer sphere, build a bridge by zooping foundations over to it!

While you're out & about, you're going to run discover so many new things. Here are some of the things you will likely discover and what to do with them!

1. Standing Resource nodes - These are resources which are not mineable, but will unlock new areas with the MAM and help you go further down those MAM research trees:

Quartz:

Sulfur:

Caterium


Coal


Go up to these nodes and collect them using E. The first time you get this new material, Ada will remind you to take it to the MAM to analyze it.

Note: You'll find common nodes for iron, copper, and limestone. No need to collect these.

2. Mercer Spheres - These are rocks with a glowing orb that will talk to you in a kind of gibberish and it's one of the story elements of the game. It gets weirder the more you collect and they have a special use later on, so these are a TOP priority to find & collect!

3. SomerSloops - These are red / blue crystals that have a humming and sometimes will have a similar vocalization as when you collect mercer spheres. These are also highly collectable and have a special use later.


4. Wrecks - these have various parts littered about and a container which you can open that may require parts in your inventory or may need a certain amount of electricity to feed it to open. They are ALWAYS guarded by something mean. Collect the parts and open the container if possible. If you don't have the part or lack the parts to create the biomass burners to create electricity, place a marker on the map to remind you what to bring the next time when you come back.

5. Cracked rocks blocking access to something:
These require a nobelisk detonator to open, which you'll get later on. Again, mark these on the map to return once you've unlocked the detonator.

6. Edge of map / abyss in the middle of the map.

These both have a signficantly darker outline on the map that normal features. These are basically no-go zones and nothing of interest is going to be there, so there is no reason to try to "get down" to these edges.

7. New resource nodes

There are a LOT Of new resources on the map that you will find. These include Caterium, Coal, Bauxite, SAM, Sulfur, Uranium, Quartz and liquid / gasses such as Water, Oil, Geysors, and Nitrogen.

Geysors are super useful later on once you've unlocked geothermal electrical production!

Mark these on the map for later utilization, particularly if they are Pure nodes.

There are 118 crash sites spread throughout the world with 108 alternate recipes. When you get a hard drive from a wreck, take it to the MAM and research the hard drive.

TIP: The MAM will be unavailable during the time (10 min) to research the Hard Drive, so research other things before starting the hard drive.

When the hard drive analysis is complete, it unlocks an alternate recipe where you can choose one of two presented. Or you can re-roll, Or, you can not do anything and wait till later.

Alternate recipes give different ways of creating the familiar parts you already are producing or may be producing in the near future. Deciding if an alternate recipe is "worth it" depends upon many things - where you are currently at, whether you would mind redoing a factory with a new recipe, or if it uses a mineral / fluid that you have excess of.

Recipes are random and are predicated on what tier you are currently at *and* what MAM research you've completed. So if you decide to go out & make it a priority to find these hard-drives, it's highly likely you will be blocked (text "no rewards currently available" will be displayed) until you unlock more tiers or MAM research.

There has been a lot of attempts at identifying "good" alternate recipes. Probably the best list I've come across is this list on reddit.

However, after unlocking every one of those and building an end-game massive multiple story building utilizing all those recipes, I can say confidently that you will always run short on some kind of part and things that are rated highly couldn't always be used because it had a chain reaction in causing shortages elsewhere.

I can also state with confidence that if you don't use any alternate recipes, you're going to have to build out massive and I mean massive factories for:

Screws
Cables
Copper Sheets
Plastic

So in my opinion, any alternate recipe that reduces the need for any of these 4 would be high on my personal list to use.

The problem is the randomness of getting alternate recipes. Youtube is full of people with "THE BEST FACTORY" where they have 4 alternate recipes that are required and it sounds so good but then you can reach the end-game without that recipe being discovered.

IMO, this is a huge weakness in the game. They also made it worse with the 1.0 release by giving only two options and a re-roll. The mechanics of the current 1.0 mean that if you don't get a recipe you're looking for, it is better to do nothing to prevent those same recipes from coming up again and again. Which, if you're looking for a specific recipe, improves your chance.

As a final comment, I'd recommend collecting these & researching them and when you're getting to build some new fangled part that requires a sub-part, look carefully at the alternate recipes you've unlocked to see if you can take advantage of them.

Once you come back from exploring, the 50 Smart Plating should be complete and you can collect them and head over to the space elevator. Drop the parts into the space elevator and grab the handle and pull down.

Ada will give you a small presentation, then you can pull the lever once again to launch the parts upwards.

Completing Space Elevator requests are big accomplishments, and the graphics that come along with it are some of the most gratifying in the game:

LOOK UP and watch how the parts build the launch platform. I think it's pretty cool!

Once you complete this part, you will notice the new Space Elevator requsts:

1,000 Smart Plating (makes 50 seem so quaint!)
1,000 Versatile Framework (WTF is this you ask?)
100 Automated Wiring (WTF is this you ask?)

So this is where I think the game drops the ball a bit. You get asked to build new parts and the normal way of finding parts is to go up to your machines and look at the recipes, automated wiring and versatile framework are no where to be found. This is typically where people start googling to find answers but this guide will save you that effort:

New parts are made with parts or machines you haven't unlocked! In this case specifically, you have to unlock Basic Steel Production on Tier 3 before you can see these parts in the assembler because one uses steel beams and the other uses steel pipes.

With your first space elevator delivery, you have now unlocked Tiers 3 & 4, which bring a whole boatload of new techs, new parts, new machines, new vehicles and new weapons!

In fact, you can research anything from either tier and don't have to do them in order. I would humbly suggest these 3 in order:

Coal Power
Basic Steel Production
Hypertubes


Tier 3


Coal Power so you can stop feeding your biomass burners and this will be the major item that completes this beginner guide and really allows you to start exploring and expanding in earnest.

Basic Steel Production so you can get started on automating the next phase of the parts needed for the space elevator.

Enhanced Security Asset for a new, more powerful melee weapon

Vehicular transport if you really want to subject yourself to pain and suffering. I thought long & hard about trying to introduce this to you and you know what, I hate these and if you want to throw yourself at this piss-poor implementation of moving materials, be my guest, but it will be without my help. Just belt everything. Seriously, it takes way less time, is infallible, and can be upgraded as your belt technology improves.

The tractor is actually not bad as a co-explorer vehicle as you stay immune to poison when you stay in it and the bad beasts will ignore you while you are in it and it provides a decent storage and craft bench!


Tier 4


Hypertubes is S tier for tying together your bases so you can get from point A to point B super fast.

Logistics Mk.3 is super important once you have steel beams on board to get those faster belts! Now you can feed more coal power plants and expand your power infrastructure to 8 or 16 coal plants with this belt speed!

Advanced Steel Production so you upgrade all your miners to MK2 and get double the output from your resource nodes plus a few new parts to automate!

Expanded Power infrastructure gives you power storage and the new awesome power tower!

FICSIT Blueprints is complete & utter trash. It's only 4x4x4 and is not compatible with the next MK2 blueprints that are 5x5x5, so I would recommend just completely skipping this. It sounds cool, and the idea of building modular factories is super appealing, but just wait until the MK2 Blueprints later on in Tier 6.

Coal power is your first of several fully automated power generation you can create. Fully automated means that, if you set it all up correctly, it should run and produce a "flat line" of power that is reliable and will run until the end of time.

Several caveats apply to this and reading this section will make ALL your other power / oil / aluminum down the line a lot easier if you can apply what are you going to learn with setting up coal.

Youtube / twitch streamers will give you "BUILD the PERFECT Coal Power Plant" and this is so click-baity because what is perfect is reliant upon all the techs you've unlocked and the most importantly, the quantity of parts you have available.

The simple fact is when you first unlock coal power, you can build FOUR Coal power plants and it is super important to understand WHY only four?

To start with, let's look at a coal power plant:

At the top, there is a picture of coal, with 43 (the number the coal power plant has in inventory) and below that it says 1 coal 15 per minute. Similarly with water, it shows 35.8/50 (holding 35.8 out of possible 50) and 45/min below that.

These (coal 15/min and water 45/min) are what the coal power plant requires to run continuously.

So if you find a coal resource node, a normal one produces 60/min without any overclocking. And more importantly, your MK1 belts have a capacity of 60/min (you likely do not have enough Reinforced Iron Plate to make a conveyor belt using MK2 from the mine to the coal power plant).

So, if a single coal power plant requires 15/min and you can adequetly supply 60/min on a MK1 belt, you can supply coal to 4 power plants (15 * 4 = 60).

With Water pumps, a single water pump produces 120/min. 4 Power plants require (45*4 = 180/min). So you need 1.5 water pumps. You can do this by building one and overclocking 150% or build two and underclock one of the 2 to 50% (recommended).

It is joked that Gamers playing Satisfactory have a calculator between their keyboard and mouse and it's not a joke. If you want to fully understand how to load factories (a coal plant is a factory that produces electricity), you need to know and understand math and calculating loads will become second nature.

To Do Lists are incredibly powerful and you should get used to utilizing this feature set within the game. It allows you to plan out in advance all the things you need, tells you immediately whether you have enough material of each type to actually build it, and as you build these things, it removes them from the list.

I think Coal Power is a great place to start utilizing this because you'll likely have to travel a fair distance to set this up and using a to-do list will hopefully eliminate trips back to base to get more material and parts.

To utilize to-do lists:

Once you've brought up the build menu via Q, each part you can build has a "+" sign in the upper right corner for the icon of that part. You can click this and it will add one for each click or hold SHIFT while clicking and it will add 10 with each click or CNTRL for 100 of each click.

As you do this, a "to-do" list starts floating on the right side with all the items to build along with their associated parts and it continues to add these up so you have a single total per item to bring with you and it is immediately obvious which parts you are lacking.


Let's start with 4 coal power plants (Q -> Power -> Coal Power Plant -> click 4 times on the "+" sign:


Now do the same thing for the other parts:

2 Water Pumps
4 Biomass Burners
14 splitters
200 pipe
6 junction
4 pipe supports
20 power poles
200 wire
600 Mk1 conveyor belts
80 foundations (1 thick)
1 MK 1 miner

When you are finished, go gather all the parts so that everything has a checkmark next to it

Now you can go build 4 coal power plants and get that sweet, sweet fully automated power!

While we are building 4 coal plants, having 8 is easily extendable soon afterwards and 16 is down the line with MK3 belts + 2 coal nodes so it's a good idea to locate this where you can continue to extend it.

With that said, it's time to find coal!

This is likely going to be a long way away. You also need to find water and they are rarely close to each other and will require VERY LONG belts to move the coal (you want to move water as little as possible).

Hopefully in your exploration you have found water that is deep enough and large enough for 2 water pumps now & 6 later when expansion to 16 generators is possible.

Build the foundations + place the 4 coal generators

I recommend connecting coal first by setting up a biomass burner near the coal MK1 miner and load it up with 100 solid biofuel to get the miner working & the belt fed. This way while you are building out the water, the coal can travel and fill up the coal generators.

Use the same connection method for coal as you did the assemblers and feed in the coal from the top (or bottom using floor holes!).


Setup the water pumps with TWO biomass generators nearby to power them so they can begin to pump water & fill up the pipes.

TIP: When placing a pipe support, you can click the placement and then lift your mouse up to elevate it by notches until it's the height you want.



Water is a bit tricky and I've found the easiest way to connect, is to create a single long pipe just a bit away from the coal plants using the Pipe supports.


Then you go down the line, lining up pipe junctions to the hole in the coal power plant

At the end, you have a nearly completed coal power plant!


If you go up to the coal plant at this point, it will say "no power" or "no fuel" and this is because even though you have everything hooked up, Generators won't run without being hooked up to a power pole! So hook them up.


Now comes the tweaks you need to get used to with liquid and material feeding a generator. They are very twitchy and one way the community has found to reduce the twitchiness is to pause ALL the generators until ALL the coal and ALL the water is completely filled up on ALL machines.


So go down the line and with each coal generator, put in on PAUSE:


Wait a few minutes and once all the generators have 100 coal and the water is completely filled up on each one, then go back and unpause them.


Hey! Now we have 300MW continuous power!

Once you have all 4 coal generators running, it's time to connect it to the grid and power the rest of your factory.

LEAVE THE BIOMASS BURNERS IN PLACE you put down for the coal miner and the water pumps. This is because the likelyhood of having a power outage that stops everything is highly likely and when that occurs, you might need to jump start the generators again using these biomass burners.

If there is one thing that will drive you crazy, it is when you hear the machinery crashing sound that indicates a grid has shut down. This is pretty common in the early game as you may have several biomass generators that you're hand feeding and they run out of fuel.

Once coal power is hooked up, you're going to get a false sense of security because it's going to run pretty reliably. Until it doesn't.


You should get into the habit of going over to power poles and examining them as every power pole will tell you how power is going:

Production: This is what you are currently producing in power
Capacity: This is your total power capacity. If all your power generation was running. Typically Coal + biomass
Consumption: Power you are currently consuming
Max Cons: If every machine you had was turned on and running, this is the power you would consume.

So biomass burners, for all their trouble, are pretty cool in that they only produce power when needed.

Coal, OTOH, will produce power constantly regardless of your power needs.

When your power consumption exceeds your coal + biomass power production, you get the dreaded power breaker trip. In the beginning of the game, there is no leeway. If power goes over, even by 1mw, the breaker trips. Later on power storage is a technology you can unlock at tier 4 Expanded Power Infrastructure and if you build enough power storage, you can survive power consumption exceeding supply temporarily.

IMPORTANT: Always make sure you have enough biomass to run your biomass burners. The capacity line is only accurate if you have biofuel to run the biomass generators!!

TIP: It's good to isolate factory floors so you can turn them off / on as needed. Typically when you trip the power breaker, if you can restart it quickly, you won't have to "prime" the coal generators. Being able to unhook a floor to a factory to reduce your load is a great way to get power back up and running quickly.

Right now, you have Power poles that only support 4 lines. This is very limited and chaining them together means you can only supply two machines with each power (with one line powering it and one line feeding the next in line only 2 are really available). Later on you will get MK2 power poles by researching the caterium MAM line which allow for 7 connections and late game MK3 has 10 connections.

FInal thoughts: Build power generation BEFORE you need it. RESEARCH the Geothermal Generator on the MAM caterium line to get FREE energy.

Ever want parts faster out of a machine? Have enough material for 2.5 of something & how do you get the 0.5 so you're only using the power you need?

PowerShards are your key to doing these.

You unlock Overclocking / Underclocking in the MAM under power slugs

You can make power shards at the craft bench or in a constructor:



Once you have powershards, you can overclock by inserting up to 3 power shards in the machine.

After you have inserted the powershards, you can adjust the overclock in one of two ways:

1. Click and drag the bar under the 100% on the scale
2. Click where it says 100% and change the 100 to any number you want

Note: Overclocking will result in a FASTER production and increased power consumption more so than doing two machines. So one machine overclocked to 200% will produce the same amount of parts as two machines that are not overclocked, but will use quite a bit more power to do so.

You can only Underclock a machine by #2 above.

Underclocking is useful on a manifold line feeding machines where the machines are making different things - for example, iron plates, iron rods & cast screws (if you've unlocked that alternate recipe), if you want to make just the right amount for subsequent assemblers.

TIP: Overclocking is best used on mineral and oil extraction to increase the output of raw materials in the early game before you get more advanced Miners.

Upgrading things is really easy provided you have all the necessary parts in your player's inventory. Just select the upper tier miner and or belt, and when you mouse over the existing miner / belt, it will highlight it and then just click to completely overlay the new one on top of the old one. Existing power & connections will remain.

Materials from the previous one will be put in your inventory. If your inventory is full, it will leave a crate with the parts on the old miner / belt.

I've played many a game and used the inventory space within my backpack to transport parts to various factories by using hypertubes connecting between factories and having large storage container to drop off all the things in my backpack so that I have all the inventory available to carry.

For more complex parts, it may take many hours of ingame time to fill up a storage container and while carrying the parts manually may seem like a burden, in my opinion, it is worth it to avoid vehicular transport until you get to trains or drones later.

The game loop is very compelling and generates a real feeling of progression:

Start

Research and or find new things (wrecks, new minerals, new enemies) and go to the MAM to see what was uncovered and begin the new research tree.

Complete milestones at the HUB to unlock new parts, new machines and new equipment.

AUTOMATE EVERY NEW PART. Even if you don't know what it will be used for, automate it and throw it into storage. You're going to need LOTS of EVERYTHING.

Build more power infrastructure

Build better equipment

Use transport options to move stuff instead of belts

EXPLORE! This is such a huge area with so many biomes. Get more somersloops, get more mercer spheres and wrecks. Unlock new recipes.

Repeat

While this guide has hopefully prepared you for the journey ahead, here are some things that will entice you to continue exploring, researching and building to unlock!

• Trains that can move prodigious amounts of material
  
• Jetpack to allow you to fly up to those high ledges
  
• Different fuels for the jetpack to get you even higher, faster
  
• A Dimensional Depot Storage which allows you to instantly access parts from the cloud!
  
• A hoverpack which gives you any height provided you are in range of electrical connections
  
• More complex factories that take 4 inputs
  
• Even more complex factories that take in liquid and solids
  
• Conveyor belts with speeds up to 1,200/ min
  
• Somersloops DOUBLE machine output so when you have to make 1,000 of something, if you put a sloop in it, you only have to make 500 because the sloop will double it to 1,000.

I wrote this guide because Coffee Stain Studios (who made Satisfactory), relied too much on their fans to answer all the questions and think you should just go and ask questions to find out everything or go to the wiki that's pretty extensive. Well, that takes time, not everyone responds as quickly as you'd like, there is too much snark and worthlessness in many answers, and most importantly you have to know what to ask for using the right vocabulary.

So my guide will be a help, but there are a LOT of resources out there for you to get more information as you progress beyond the beginner stage.

Satisfactory Calculator (abbreviated SCIM): https://satisfactory-calculator.com/

-> This has an interactive map where you can IMPORT your own map as an overlay.
-> It has the best planner where you can put in how much you want to build of something and it will show you all the machines / resource nodes needed. If you've uploaded your map, it will take into consideration any alternate recipes you've unlocked.
-> Blueprint resources

Satisfactory WIKI: This has all the details on everything: https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/

Reddit Satisfactory: https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/

Other guides on steam

Dimensional Depot

- The upload is worth 10x over speed or quantity. Once you have upload, you can upload one stack of EVERYTHING. This is great when you are out adventuring, if you find some new material at a wreck site, just upload it.

Your first Depot will likely be a common storage where you will load stacks in of everything - but if one of those puts you over the stack limit, it stops EVERYTHING behind it.

As soon as you can afford, get iron plates and concrete hooked up independently. Eg, build a dimensional depot & hook it up directly to your concrete storage. This way they are always refilling and you're not using a common repository.

FLUIDS

Remember - put everything on pause until ALL the pipes are full

When you put a pump on a line, it shows you how far up it will lift it. Put another pump just below this to continue pumping.

Pay careful attention to the capacity of the MK1 pipe. It's only 300 and that will become a hard limit in many setups until you get to MK2 and the 600 per pipe, which will still be a limit on certain setups like Aluminum.

Read this [satisfactory.wiki.gg]to get all the tips on fluids.

BLUEPRINTS

Once you unlock blueprints, you have to create ONE bluerprint and then you can download them from the public sites like the Satisfactory Calculator.

My favorite launcher is this [satisfactory-calculator.com]awesome cannon.

My favorite hypertube entrance / exit to speed you up is this[satisfactory-calculator.com].

Hopefully this has helped you. If so, please consider giving this a thumbs up or favoriting it so it moves up the list for others to find!

Thanks!