Despite still being in Early Access, Satisfactory is already shaping up to be one of the most robust base building games on PC, allowing you to create massive production factories with automated machines and even vehicles.
While that makes it a great addition to any library, the high degree of complexity involved with the game’s numerous systems and mechanics can be hard to wrap your head around, especially as a new player just getting started.
In this guide, we’ll share beginner tips and tricks to help you along your way to becoming a production overlord in Satisfactory. So grab a seat on the nearest conveyor belt and strap in for a Satisfactory crash course in automation, exploration, and production.
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Use The Hotbar And Hotkeys
Satisfactory features’ hotkeys’ that allow you to quickly switch between different tools and build equipment. By default, the hotkey actions are as follows:
- Tab – Open Inventory
- Q – Open Build menu
- F – Enter Demolition mode
- V – Turn flashlight on or off
- C – Take out Resource Scanner (Hold down C to select resource type)
- C (while in a vehicle) – Open Vehicle menu
- X – View Schematics and message inbox
- Z – Open Map
- Space (while crafting) – Hold down to craft continuously
- P – Enter Photo mode
In addition to hotkeys, you can use the hotbar to assign certain building recipes to different numbers on your keyboard. It works best with buildings you find yourself making over and over again, letting you create them without having to pull up the Build menu.
Watch Out For Wild Animals
There are various faunas roaming about each biome and some are more threatening than others. While you can usually tell if a creature is hostile or not by just looking at it, at some point you’re going to have a run-in with flying crabs, so why not get it over with now.
Every animal has specific behaviors and attack patterns you’ll have to learn to kill them before they kill you. Hogs, spitters, and the aforementioned flying crabs pose the biggest threats early on, so keep an eye out for them as you explore.
Heal Yourself With Nuts And Berries
In the likely event you’ve taken damage from any number of hazards, remember you can heal yourself using Beryl Nuts and Paleberries. They can be found growing naturally in each biome and appear in the form of small bushes or trees.
Give Yourself Enough Room To Build
When building your first base, there are some things to keep in mind. You may be tempted to build your base near the first resource you find. Although that’s not a bad idea by any means, you should also consider the surrounding area.
Look for mostly flat ground, which will make the process of putting down equipment much easier. Additionally, you should try to avoid building too close to trees or bushes since they can occasionally clip through conveyor belts, make it challenging to place equipment, and obscure your vision.
A third option that becomes much easier to do later on is building a vertical base high in the sky using foundation tiles. While you may be tempted to redo your base upon reaching certain milestones, we recommend keeping the original and instead building a secondary base using all your knowledge gained.
Stick To Harvesting Resource Nodes With ‘Pure’ Ratings
Satisfactory assigns either an “impure,” “normal,” or “pure” rating to every resource node. It’s important to draw a distinction between the three. Impure nodes produce the lowest output of materials, precisely half that of a normal node, whereas normal nodes produce half the amount of pure nodes.
Therefore, you should prioritize using pure nodes in order to keep things as efficient as possible. Keep in mind that every node requires you to harvest the surface chunks of material before building a miner on top of them.
Build Smelters And Portable Miners As Soon As Possible
Speaking of miners, you should set out to build portable miners and smelters as soon as you unlock the blueprint for each. Portable miners can be carried to resource nodes and help speed up production in the early game. With that said, you should upgrade to the Miner MK.1 as soon as you can.
In order to turn raw materials into ingots and eventually crafted items, you’re also going to need smelters. We recommend placing them near your miners to easily connect conveyor belts and start automating your workflow.
Plan And Organize Ahead Of Time
Even if you’re staring at bare soil, it’s always good to think about what you want your factory to look like in the future and start taking measures to reach that goal. As you gain experience with different equipment and materials, consider your current base’s layout and how it can be improved.
Since efficiency is king in Satisfactory, you’ll want to maintain paths and walkways for your Engineer to get from A-to-B as quickly as possible. Keeping things organized from the start will make your life a whole lot easier once you’re swimming in power lines and conveyor belt spaghetti.
Set Up Biomass/Biofuel Automation Lines
Although power consumption isn’t too much of an issue in the early game, it’s always good to stay on top of your game to avoid headaches in the future. Eventually, you’ll find yourself with dozens of biomass burners that need to be constantly fed in order to power your equipment.
While biomass can be crafted easily by hand using leaves, wood, mycelia, and alien organs/carapaces, the process becomes very tedious by the time you unlock solid biofuel. Therefore, we recommend setting up an automated process for producing the stuff.
Build yourself a storage container and connect it to a constructor that you’ve assigned to produce biomass or, more ideally, biofuel. Next, send the produced biomass or biofuel to a storage container for future use.
With this system in place, you should only have to fill up the initial storage unit with relevant materials and let the machines do the rest of the work.
Using The MAM And Power Slugs
Once you have your factory set up with automated machines and your power situation is sorted, you should focus on two areas: conducting research and gathering power slugs. Research is done via the MAM, or Molecular Analysis Machine.
Feeding material into the MAM will allow it to be analyzed over time, unlocking new technologies in the form of craftable tools or equipment. One of the most critical specimens to research are power slugs, which emit a green or yellow hue and appear throughout the world.
Researching power slugs grants you access to overclocked production along with the ability to create power shards using slug material. With both unlocked, you’ll be able to push your machines to work harder, or inversely, reduce their production rates to conserve fuel.
Focus On Research And Completing Milestones
The primary way to progress in Satisfactory is by completing milestones and conducting research. Since we’ve already discussed how research with the MAM works, let’s shift our focus to the HUB Terminal. It’s one of the first workstations you’ll make in the game and acts as a sort of liaison between you and FICSIT HQ.
At the HUB Terminal, you can browse through and select from all available Milestones as well as deliver any materials needed to fulfill its requirements. Depending on the Milestone you’ve chosen, fulfilling its requirements will reveal new equipment, buildings, tools, emotes, and more.
General Tips To Boost Efficiency
Here we’ll be highlighting some general tips that can help speed up production, exploration, and generally make your Engineer’s life easier. Check back for more tips in the future!
Production Tips
- Hold the spacebar instead of the left mouse button to speed up manual crafting.
- Hold shift and click to either take or add an entire item stack from/to your inventory.
- Press shift before adding an item to your to-do list to add +10 instead of +1.
- Many items can be crafted using vehicles, removing the need to make multiple craft benches.
- Unlock and craft the chainsaw early on to speed up biomass collection.
- While manually harvest material with E, hit tab to open your inventory and your Engineer will continue gathering on their own.
Exploration Tips
- You can double click tools in your inventory to instantly equip or remove them from your Engineer.
- Upon falling from a considerable height, enter a nearby vehicle before landing to nullify any fall damage
- Place raw materials like limestone on the ground to create makeshift stairs and ladders.
- Conveyor splitters/mergers are another cheap alternative for making stairs on the fly.
- Along with power slugs, Hard Drives can be researched at the MAM to unlock additional recipes.
- The best time of the day to find power slugs is at dusk and night when their glow is most visible.
