Things We Wish We Knew Before Starting Satisfactory

Summary

• Keep an eye on developer updates for game changes that can affect your factory setup.
• Avoid using tractors due to issues with speed, stability, and fuel consumption.
• Learn to "ski" with Blade Runners for efficient movement in the game world.

Getting started in Satisfactory can seem a little overwhelming at first. There's a large list of items to build and although the game does ease you into it with more complex machinery and equipment unlocked through milestones, it can still be a bit overwhelming.

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Throw on top of that the often intense crafting recipes alongside the various plants and animals primed to kill you and Satisfactory can seem like quite the difficult game to start off fresh in. But, there are a few things worth keeping in mind if you're a beginner that can make getting started a little easier and smoother. Ensuring that you hit the ground running when your drop pod lands on the planet's surface.

Updated September 18, 2024 By Matthew Mckeown: The 1.0 release is finally here and after years of waiting Satisfactory is finally out of Early Access. It was a long wait but it was worth it as the game they had in the oven was cooked well. Not perfectly, but well enough that it’s worth picking up if you haven’t.

The onboarding process for newbies is a lot to take on, and if you start wrong you probably won’t realize until you’re several hours in. So to help you save time and make sure you hit the ground running, whilst also avoiding rookie mistakes, here’s an updated look at our list of things we wish we knew before starting Satisfactory.

20 Keep An Eye On The Developer's Social Feeds

So first up we have a big recommendation for anyone that’s dipping into Satisfactory is that it’s worth checking in on what the developers are up to. The game drastically changed a lot as it was in Early Access and it will continue to be overhauled as there’s still lots of features left to come.

Why it’s worth tracking the devs is that often changes like refurbishing areas, changing machine operations or tweaking manufacturing rates will completely wreck your factory. During Early Access it was common to come back to your game after a break to find machines inside new geography or not working because somewhere in your setup is a broken part because of an update.

Checking the community threads through Steam, Discord, X or the official Satisfactory Reddit is a good way to track when big changes are coming as the devs are very communicative with the community.

19 Don’t Bother With Tractors

There are a few options for getting around in Satisfactory and you may be tempted to use a Tractor, do yourself a favor, don’t. They’re slow, require fueling, and on top of being unstable, they have some funky collision that can send them skyrocketing into the stratosphere without warning.

If you need to get around, use a Truck if you absolutely have to drive. But in general, you can get around much faster on your own two feet or by investing in one of the two jetpack variants. Or if you’re really brave, jump on top of your flying drone or moving trains in your network if you want to get across your factory a bit quicker.

There is a mod that turns Tractors into bio burners which is handy.

18 Learn How To Ski

On the topic of moving, in the early game, you really should learn how to “Ski”. This is an old technique from a game called Tribes that involves you using the landscape and momentum to slingshot yourself. In Satisfactory you can manage this with the Blade Runners.

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The Blade Runners improve your jump height and speed, then if you time a slide downhill, or a slight gradient, with crouch into a jump, you’ll launch yourself extremely far. If you can master this technique you’ll find getting from one side of your factory, or the entire map, an absolute breeze.

Don’t launch yourself too high as fall damage will still catch you if you go too far.

17 Label Everything

It may seem like an obvious tip, but you would be surprised how many people don’t do this and it will come back to bite you. Especially when you start to get flooded with literally hundreds of items.

Quite often you’ll find yourself hunting through boxes for the item you need, only to find it in the last place you thought. So stick labels on absolutely everything and keep it organized. You can manage this by using Signs.You can unlock them in the AWESOME Shop and the small ones cost Iron Plates and Quartz, whilst the larger signs can require Crystal Oscillators, Copper Sheets and Encased Industrial Beams.

16 Don’t Be Afraid To Leave The Game Running

The best thing about these kinds of factory automation games is that you’ll quickly reach a point where the game basically plays itself. In Satisfactory, especially mid-game, there’s going to be times where you’re standing around waiting.

Whether that’s for unlocks or parts to craft, you’re going to have time to kill. A good tip is to just stick the game on and leave it running overnight or in a tab in the background. There’s no external threats so you can safely take your hands off the wheel and let things build for you.

The game will also build up items after shutdown. It acquires “digital automation time” and you can extend through upgrades and will add these items on when you next load up.

15 Aim To Be Self-Sufficient Quickly

Automation is the game in Satisfactory and being able to get things up and running without too much meddling in-between is ideal. For the first few hours of the game, you’re going to be stuck using bio burners that you’ll need to regularly fill up by hand to keep the lights on.

The best thing you can do is to aim to get coal or fuel-based power as quickly as possible. This is the first step to self-sufficiency as the fewer things you need to stop and refill the better. The longer a supply chain to your foundry goes uninterrupted, the more efficient you become as resources climb, allowing you to focus on other projects, scouting new areas, or unlocking better machines.

14 Keep Your Supply Lines Upgraded

One of the simplest Satisfactory beginner tips you can get is to remember to keep your supply lines upgraded. When your factory grounds start to outgrow your initial site, and you have miles upon miles of pipes and conveyor belts stretching everywhere, the quicker you can get items to your machines, the better.

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For example, if you stick more machines onto a supply line or fire in some Overclockers to increase production, but the lines aren’t upgraded, the machines will burn through the resources quicker than they can get to them. Which in turn causes production to stop or worse, create havoc with multiple machines if they’re linked together to create complex items. So always make sure to check that your pipes and conveyors are at the highest possible upgrade level when you start tinkering with your machines.

13 Don't Fight, Just Run

There are a lot of nasty critters in Satisfactory that can tear you apart in seconds, light you up like a matchstick, or punt you off a cliff like a screaming human football. Whilst you can murder most of them fairly easily, you're better off running away in most cases.

Fighting them can be dangerous if you’re not prepared and the drops from aliens, whilst good for biomass burners or for making Medicinal Inhalers later on, aren't worth the hassle. You'll rarely find yourself in need of their organs, and a fight could lead to either death or being knocked off an edge. So if you see something big and ugly running at you, just head the other way.

12 Don’t Stay In One Spot

Probably one of the most important Satisfactory tips is to not stay in one spot for too long. Whilst you can spend hours upon hours setting up a mega-factory in one particular area, it helps to expand your influence over other parts of the map.

As time goes on the types of machines you’ll be making will require more and more resources that local nodes just won’t be able to keep up with, so you’ll have to start shipping more in from further afield. Building up other sites and then linking them together with trains, or Tractors if you’re still really early game is a necessity that you can’t overlook. So start thinking about expanding that supply chain once you get those big machines on the go.

11 Get The Jetpack ASAP

Satisfactory’s map is big, it really cannot be stressed how absolutely, mind-numbingly gigantic it is. All of it is tricky to navigate and filled to the brim with hostile critters guardian exotic resource nodes. Being able to circumvent this easily should be another goal of yours when you’re starting out.

Using foundations to build essentially a sky pavement is an easy workaround, but it leaves the landscape looking ugly. The best fix for this is the Jetpack. Fuel-based, it allows for jump jet style movement that can get you up some fairly tricky slopes, save you from falls and allow for a faster escape from fireball tossing aliens or chittering spider hordes. Whilst the Runners Legs do provide a boost to jump height and speed, the practicality of having a Jetpack safety net on hand will always win out. It’s unlocked at Tier Six so rush the research to get it as quick as you can.