25 Satisfactory Beginner Tips
Epic Steam EA EX Beginner
Satisfactory can be bewildering when you start your first game. This guide will help you get to the space elevator tier whilst covering 25 need to know tips all beginners need to know.
TotalXclipse 93365 2021-02-24
Firstly, welcome to Satisfactory, the objective of this guide is to give you a selection of 25 tips that all newcomers should know, that will help you quickly get out of hub tier 0 and set you on the path to unlocking the first space elevator tier.
Video Guide Available:
Satisfactory Tips - Beginners Guide
Tip #01
A Better Start Location.
There are four start locations on the planet. Choosing a good location can mean the difference between a comfortable start and hours of hellish grinding. As a new player you’ll want to learn the ropes without too much stress. So here’s the basic break down;
The Grassy Plains.
With an abundance of open space, this is a great place to practice building factories without worrying about constraints. This site also has plenty of biomass for early power, and has few larger enemies in the vicinity. The downside however is the lack of pure resource nodes meaning you’ll be forced to explore earlier on, which in itself isn’t a bad thing.
The Rocky Desert.
Here you have a good selection of pure resource nodes and a relatively large amount of space available. Despite being a desert, biomass is relatively easy to come by, once again the enemies are relatively small however there is a substantial amount of flying crab hatchers, which can be frustrating for newer players to handle early on.
The Forest.
Without doubt one of the best locations to start in game, the forest has a lot of pure nodes relatively close to one another, there is also an abundance of biomass. The downsides however are the lack of space compared to all other start locations, and you are more likely to encounter larger enemies compared to the Grassy Plains and the Rocky Desert.
The Dunes.
Here you can find a large selection of pure nodes and similar to the plains, a huge amount of space to work with. The downside’s are the substantial amount of larger enemies bordering the biome, and though there are areas with large amounts of biomass, the dunes themselves have very little biomass, which is important for power in the early game.
So where to start, as a new player, I’d recommend the Grassy Plains, though there aren’t many pure nodes in the biome, there are plenty of nodes available. The space is great for learning how to build factories, and the lack of larger enemies means you do not need to worry about handling them as often. With easy access to biomass, power will be easy to come by to start and though the area forces you to explore, this is a good thing as it’s a relatively safe environment, scaling with difficulty the further you venture out.
Tip #02
Hub Placement.
It goes without saying but it’s better to place your hub closer to ore nodes early on as you’ll be doing a lot of hand crafting. Easy access to the ore will decrease the travel time between hand crafting items.
Also pick an open space so that you can expand in that area, there’s no point placing the hub on top of a mountain if your factories at the bottom.
Tip #03
Deleting Is Free.
If you’re not happy with your hub or factory placement, don’t worry, you can delete any structure you build and all resources used in its creation will be refunded to your inventory.
Tip #04
Deleting Multiple Structures.
Following on from our last point, you can delete multiple items by pressing CTRL whilst hovering your curser over the chosen structures. As a note, for the time being there is no way to undo a single structure highlighted by mistake.
Tip #05
Facing Fluffy Tail Hogs.
Your first encounter will most likely be with fluffy tail hogs, these creatures are relatively easy to take on once you know how and are often found at resource nodes. When they charge, jump above them and stun them with your zapper. They will take four hits to kill, you can normally hit them twice before they charge you again. They are often found in sets of two, sometimes as many as five in one group have been spotted.
Tip #06
Healing.
If you find yourself succumbing to damage, you can find and consume beryl nuts, berries and mushrooms to regain health. Do note that currently in experimental the berries and nuts grow back and this should be moved to early access hopefully by steam launch.
Tip #07
Move Faster, Jump Higher.
If you want to run faster in game I recommend holding down shift as you move to sprint, quickly follow this by pressing and holding C, this will take you into a slide. You can now jump and repeat the three movements, this will boost your speed so that you are travelling at almost the identical speed to that with someone with blade runners equipped. Do note you cannot do this up steeper slopes.
Tip #08
Resource Node Purity.
In this game, resource nodes come in three purities which dictate the production speed of the said resource by a miner. For now all you need to know is that inpure nodes give the least a total of 30 items per minute, normal will give you double the yield compared to inpure nodes, and pure nodes double the yield to normal nodes, giving a total of 120 items per minute.
Once you have a handful of ore you’re going to want to use the crafting bench in order to create ingots and then rods for the next hub tier. At hub tier 0 upgrade 1 you can build an equipment workshop.
Tip #09
Set Up To-Do Lists
If you’re not sure what you’re going to need to build a structure, you can select the building tab by pressing q, then next to the equipment workshop press the plus icon. This will then give you a to-do list on the right side of the screen, highlighting what items are needed.
Tip #10
Start Automating.
One of the direst traps in the game is depending on yourself to hand craft items. Yes, it is faster hand crafting a single item, but the sooner you automate the production of an item, the sooner you can spend your time elsewhere in game.
Start automating as soon as possible. The first opportunity is to build portable miners, these cute drones will mine raw resources automatically for you whilst you concentrate on manufacturing the items.
Over the following hub upgrades you will be introduced to new resources such as copper and limestone. I recommend you build one or two portable miners for each type of resource you have.
Tip #11
Full Resource Automation.
Once you’ve unlocked hub tier 5 you have everything you need to run a factory.
Automation starts off simple, using a layout such as:
Miner > Smelter > Constructor > Container.
At this point you will want to automate iron rods, plates and concrete as well as some copper.
A note on screws, cable and reinforced plates. Screws and cables require you to feed ingredients that have already been crafted. Therefor on a constructor line, you would need two constructors, one after the other. A rod constructor would feed to a screw constructor and a wire constructor would feed a cable constructor.
As for reinforced iron plates, these will require an assembler which will be available in tier 2 part assembly.
Tip #12
Don’t Focus Copper.
Copper is not hugely important in the early game. As soon as you can, setup a factory line for wire and one for cable. You’ll have very little need to come back to it prior to unlocking coal, other than to pick up some wire and cable.
Tip #13
Make Neat Factories With CTRL.
If you want the structures to be in line you can easily do this by holding down the CTRL key, this will snap the structure in line with another nearby structure.
Tip #14
Don’t Be Afraid To Seek More Help.
This game will get gradually more complex, though I encourage developing your own ideas, if you need help there are plenty of factory layouts and guides on this site and you can find even more on our youtube channel.
If you’re still stuck, why not join our discord channel, we have plenty of very helpful members always willing to give a hand.
Tip #15
Prioritise Milestones.
Once you’ve unlocked hub tier one and two, I highly suggest prioritising these milestones:
Base Building.
This is one of the most important milestones for the game as it allows you to place foundations, these are great for organising factories, and also allow the building along several floors rather than just one.
Logistics.
This milestone is the first logistic milestone and is super important as it allow you to split and merge conveyor lines. This may not sound important, but if you have a miner on a normal iron node, you’re producing 60 iron ore per minute. A smelter can only smelt 30 ore into ingots per minute. Unless you hand feed the extra iron into another smelter, you’ll quickly find the line backing up, and your factory’s efficiency dropping. With a splitter you can split the line into two, allowing you to run the production line at 100% clock-speed and efficiency.
Logistics 2.
Following on from the previous point, logistics 2 offers the conveyor MK2, which boosts the throughput to 120 items per minute. Therefor if you have a miner on a pure node, you can now run the miner at 100% clock-speed.
It should also be taken into account that in this game, there will only ever be two bottlenecks. Raw resource production and conveyor/pipeline throughput. So unlocking the highest throughput belts is a priority.
Tip #16
Build A Second Factory With Storage.
By this point I bet you’ve embraced enough of the spaghetti mess. (don’t worry very few of us get through the early game without a bit of spaghetti)
However rather than tearing down this factory, it’s better to keep the factory producing items whilst you setup a second, neater more organised factory nearby. If you haven’t already by this point, try to automate: Iron rods, plates and screws; wire and cable; as well as cement and biomass. All of these items should be finding there way to a centralised storage area for ease of collection.
Tip #17
Segment Power Plants.
At this point you will no doubt need several biomass generators, try to position them next to one another so that when you need to refuel them, they’re all nearby to one another.
Tip #18
Collecting Biomass.
Biomass generators require biomass to run so whenever you leave the area, collect as many leaves and wood as possible, you can refine these into biomass or solid biomass later, which is extremely useful as it increases the energy produced per unit.
If I leave the area I will spam E collecting anything laying about on the floor, but if you find bundles of wood on the floor, collect it. Wood is much more efficient than leaves are and so you can produce more biomass with less inventory space available.
Tip #19
Scaling Fuel Consumption.
Fuel consumption increases with power consumption, so the more power you use, the more fuel you will require. This sounds basic, but it will be super important later on.
Tip #20
Next Tech Priorities.
Eventually you will want to unlock all milestones but the following two are also very important and should be focused next:
Field Research.
You’re about to explore the map, the MAM is very important as it allows you to research various tech trees that will allow you to create weapons, scanners and the map. It will also, with the right items give you the opportunity to unlock structure clock-speeds.
Part Assembly.
This goes without saying as it’s the only way to unlock the items required to unlock the next space elevator tier.
Part assembly allows the construction of assemblers which will allow you to automate the next tier of items that require two resource inputs, such as rotors, and reinforced plates as well as the smart plating.
Tip #21
Space Elevator Items.
With part assembly you also unlock smart plating created by merging reinforced iron plates with rotors in an assembler.
It is important to know that you cannot craft space elevator items by hand. You will need to use an assembler for manufacturing this.
Tip #22
Exploration.
Once you have a factory that is creating items for you passively. Explore the local area, you will find useful items such as power slugs these can be researched in the MAM and refined into power cells to allow for adjusting the clock-speed of your factory structures.
You should also collect resource deposits such as caterium and quartz. These will be used in research unlocking advanced electronics as well as the exploration tech tree.
Crashed drop pods, are also scattered around the map, these normally require you to power them or to deposit items in them, to unlock them. In return you will receive a single use hard drive, which will unlock alternate recipes for later in the game once researched in the MAM.
Tip #23
Clock-speeds & Power Consumption.
Overclocking and under-clocking is incredibly useful for maximising resource node output however overclocking a structure requires exponentially more power and an under-clocked structure requires exponentially less power.
Tip #24
Climbing Vines.
Every now and then you will encounter vines like the one shown above. This can be climbed to reach other areas, often leading to a slug or a rare item. Afterwards, should you wish you can collect the wood from them, removing their scalability.
Tip #25
Exploration Inventory.
Take some iron rods and plates with you as well as concrete. You can use the rods and plates to scale heights by building stackable containers and using the ladder located on its side. You can also use the concrete to span areas, like bridges, when you’re unable to use containers.
BONUS Tip #26
Coal Power.
Once you gain the 50 smart plating you require, you’ll be able to proceed to the next tier by depositing the items in the space elevator. At this point I highly recommend researching coal power.
Coal power is arguably the most important milestone in the game. The reason for this is that it allows you to set up a fully automated factory. Replacing the hand fed biofuel generators with coal powerplants run with the help of coal miners and water extractors.
Once you do this, you’re well on your way to automating an entire mega factory. I will not go into the detail of coal power in this guide but I will mention that coal power requires water to be used. So as soon as possible I recommend that you start producing copper sheets.
Also it’s important that you remember Tip #18 Scaling Fuel Consumption as with other forms of fuel generation, both water and coal scales with power consumption. At this point you may not need more than a single water extractor to your coal power plants, but as soon your power consumption increases, you will need to ensure that you have enough extractors to power generators. I find the perfect balance is 3 water extractors split between two pipes feeding into eight coal power generators, which we will cover in a later layout & guide.
So there we are guys I hope you found this guide useful, full of tips to help you get started in Satisfactory. If you want more Satisfactory content keep an eye on this website as we will be updating content weekly and don’t forget to check out my youtube channel, where all this started.
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