You officially unlock Sulfur in Tier 7, but you can seek it out and mine it earlier. And it’s worth it, because Sulfur research is the longest tree in the entire game, so you should start early to get the best rewards. You’ll find not only new ammo, weapons, and fuel, but also more space for your inventory. Sulfur is indispensable, and even if it only becomes truly relevant later, you should get familiar with it early. We’ll show you where to find Sulfur quickly and which parts of the research are most worthwhile.
Satisfactory: Finding Sulfur — locations, resources, and mining tips
Sulfur isn’t easy to find, as across almost the entire map there are mostly one-off deposits, and pure nodes are rare. That already makes efficient mining tricky. You have two primary ways to get Sulfur effectively: the northern edge of the Spire Desert and the area west of the Blue Crater. The latter is the best choice, as you’ll find an impure, a normal, and a pure node clustered together.
It’s also worth setting up a factory at this crater, as you can find many other valuable resources there. That’s especially important for Sulfur research. After the Caterium research you can not only generate power from a geothermal vent (Satisfactory Caterium Research: Zipline, Power Grid, Geothermal) , but also extract Nitrogen, allowing you to produce several fuels on site.
Satisfactory Sulfur research in the MAM: recipes, fuel, and weapons
We recommend getting into Sulfur before Tier 7, because this MAM tree contains many great unlocks that can become extremely important later. These include not only all kinds of explosive items, but also many alternative and significantly better fuel variants. Tier 7 focuses more on producing Batteries and Sulfuric Acid, which isn’t the focus here (Satisfactory Tier 7 Guide: Aluminum, Hoverpack, Sulfur) . One key point: you’ll want to have several Hard Drives on hand for this research.
Fuels in Satisfactory: Compacted Coal, Turbofuel, and Rocket Fuel
Let’s look at the right branch of the research tree first, as it’s all about the different fuels you can get thanks to Sulfur. We already have a complete guide if you want to know which one is best (Satisfactory Fuel Guide: Biomass, Coal, Oil, and Nuclear Power) .
You must first unlock this branch with 10x Sulfur, and then again with 25x Sulfur, 50x Modular Frames, and 100x Rotors. Only then do you gain access to the following recipes — but you should be able to do this by Tier 2.
- Compacted Coal: Use a Hard Drive, Sulfur, and Coal to unlock this improved coal. It’s mainly great for alternate recipes and less as a direct fuel.
- Turbofuel: After that comes Turbofuel, which provides 2000 MJ. You’ll need to wait until Tier 5 and Oil before tackling this branch. Production also relies entirely on alternate recipes, which you can obtain via Hard Drives.
- Rocket Fuel: At 3600 MJ, Rocket Fuel is a tier above but correspondingly harder to unlock. In terms of time investment, it’s likely the best fuel you can get.
- Ionized Fuel: Ionized Fuel yields 5000 MJ, but its production is significantly more involved. You’ll also need Power Shards for this branch, which means investing into Power Slug research.
Black Powder in Satisfactory: Nobelisk and an extra hand slot
Fuel is important, but it will take some time before you can fully research it. So also focus on the left branch, which leads you to explosive items. The foundation for everything is Black Powder, which you craft from Coal and Sulfur. With it, you can then create all sorts of useful things. You can unlock the next three points in any order; they don’t depend on each other.
- Black Powder: The basis for later grenades and for progressing to Smokeless Powder in combination with Heavy Oil Residue.
- Smokeless Powder: An improved variant of Black Powder with greater explosive power, which is especially important for section 3.
- Nobelisk: With Black Powder, Steel Pipes, and Cables you can unlock Nobelisks, which are essentially remote-detonated grenades. This is available from Tier 3, which we recommend doing right away. Nobelisks are part of your core weaponry for exploration.
- Hand slot: More space in your hands is always welcome. Use Black Powder and Encased Industrial Beams for this research.
Explosive weapons in Satisfactory: Rifle, ammo, and Nobelisk
After unlocking Smokeless Powder, the last major section of Sulfur research in the MAM becomes available. This section focuses on explosive weapons, which are absolutely worth it sooner or later. If you want to defend yourself against creatures, leverage Sulfur to your advantage.
- Cluster Nobelisk: A kind of cluster grenade that first explodes in the center and then triggers five smaller explosions.
- Nuke Nobelisk: Another type of Nobelisk, but you can only unlock it with Tier 8 and nuclear material. It has the highest damage output in the entire game.
- Explosive Rebar: Explosive ammo for your Rebar Gun that’s absolutely worth it. Deals significantly more damage than normal rebar.
- Rifle: Unlock this weapon with Tier 5 and Rubber to replace your Rebar Gun. It also has different ammo types.
- Turbo Rifle Ammo: This includes Turbo Ammo crafted from the corresponding fuel from section 1. It’s the best ammo for the Rifle, but you need Tier 7 to unlock it.
- Inventory slots: You can also get these with Tier 7 and Computers. You’ll receive 6 new slots, which is absolutely worth it.
Conclusion: Sulfur research for explosive items and efficient fuels
Sulfur research is, alongside the MAM branch for alien technology, the largest tree you can progress through in your game. It primarily revolves around explosives, because Sulfur is great for crafting Black Powder. But you’ll also find several important fuel sources here that become extremely important in the late game. Sulfur is therefore essential not only in combat, but also for advanced factories.
Play together with your friends on one of our Satisfactory servers and explore Sulfur research in the MAM together. This lets you get started as early as Tier 2 and work your way up step by step until you can even unlock nuclear bombs.
