Satisfactory Tier 1 Guide: Expanding Your Factory, Power & Logistics

In Satisfactory, it takes a bit of time to unlock many of the key parts and machines for your factory. The milestones gradually grant you new components so you can keep building and unlock new resources. After the Tier 0 introduction, Tier 1 now follows with new options and improvements for your first production lines. If you still need to finish Tier 0 and want to learn some of the basics, check out our guide (Satisfactory Beginner's Guide: Tier 0, HUB & Automation) . Let’s take a closer look at what you should focus on now!

Satisfactory Tier 1 power: Biomass Burners and energy management

Before you expand your machinery, make sure you have enough power available. The two biomass burners in the HUB won’t carry you much further now. Together they can produce only up to 40 MW. It’s time to set up a separate power production!

With Tier 0 completed, you’ve unlocked standalone Biomass Burners and can build them away from the HUB. They’re not only quicker to set up, they also produce 30 MW each. We recommend building two of them to raise your total capacity to 100 MW.

At the same time, switch your burners to Biomass, which you also unlocked in Tier 0. Manually craft both Leaves and Wood into Biomass to generate power longer and more efficiently. You can automate this later, but you’ll have to gather the organic resources yourself for now. Watch out for overloads: if consumption exceeds capacity, the grid will trip and you’ll need to restart the generators.

Use Miner Mk.1 efficiently: node purity and extraction rates

There’s also a major upgrade for your drilling: switch all your extraction spots to Miner Mk.1 to increase resource throughput. Now, the purity of the ore node matters. You can see it by hovering your cursor over the node.

• Impure: produces 30 ore per minute
• Normal: produces 60 ore per minute
• Pure: produces 120 ore per minute

Scale production: build out concrete, iron, and copper chains

For the Tier 1 upgrades you don’t need brand-new materials, just a lot more of what you already know. With more power and better miners, you should be able to scale up production. Don’t overdo it though—you also need enough power to bring all machines online and run them at full capacity.

Prioritize automation: parts you should automate early

New milestones can cost you hundreds of resources. If you set things up well, that shouldn’t be a problem. Keep focusing on the three key resources used to make almost everything. By the way, you can copy and paste machine recipes with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. Collect end products in Storage Containers at the end of your lines.

Limestone

• Concrete: Limestone (Miner Mk.1) → Concrete (Constructor)

Iron:

• Iron Plates: Iron Ore (Miner Mk.1) → Iron Ingots (Smelter) → Iron Plates (Constructor)
• Iron Rods: Iron Ore (Miner Mk.1) → Iron Ingots (Smelter) → Iron Rods (Constructor)
• Screws: Iron Ore (Miner Mk.1) → Iron Ingots (Smelter) → Iron Rods (Constructor) → Screws (Constructor)

Copper:

• Wire: Copper Ore (Miner Mk.1) → Copper Ingots (Smelter) → Wire (Constructor)
• Cable: Copper Ore (Miner Mk.1) → Copper Ingots (Smelter) → Wire (Constructor) → Cable (Constructor)

Satisfactory Tier 1 milestones: rewards and a smart order

With Tier 0 done, all Tier 1 and some Tier 2 upgrades are now available. You can complete them in any order and carve your own path. With the production lines above, that should be straightforward!

Once you’ve chosen a milestone, bring all resources to the HUB and launch the pod. Unlike Tier 0, where you could do everything back-to-back, there is now a cooldown of a few minutes before the pod returns. In-game, the materials are sent to your employer FICSIT, which naturally takes some time.

Next, let’s look at the key upgrades waiting for you in Tier 1 that you can immediately integrate into your factory.

Base building in Satisfactory: foundations and a clean layout

Complete with:

• 200x Concrete
• 100x Iron Plates
• 100x Iron Rods

This milestone unlocks Foundations and various other building elements. They’re extremely useful for keeping your factory organized and building on a single level. You should start using foundations right away and properly align your machines! If you want to put up a small base, go for it—your building options just expanded a lot.

Optimize logistics: conveyor splitters and mergers

Complete with:

• 150x Iron Plates
• 150x Iron Rods
• 300x Wire

Arguably the most important Tier 1 unlock is logistics. Here you get Conveyor Splitters and Conveyor Mergers, which let you split and recombine production lines. That’s especially useful now, since you’re likely extracting more ore than a single line can process. For example, you can smelt only 30 ore per minute into ingots per Smelter, but even an impure node outputs 60 per minute. That’s obviously inefficient!

You can now split one iron node into two production lines—or even more if it’s a pure node. You can also insert a splitter into an existing conveyor. For instance, you could store Iron Rods on one branch and continue crafting them into Screws on the other.

Unlock research: make good use of MAM and the map

Complete with:

• 300x Wire
• 300x Screws
• 100x Iron Plates

The third Tier 1 path focuses on research and exploration. It unlocks both the MAM and the map.

With the MAM (Molecular Analysis Machine), you can unlock further progress and recipes by researching various resources found on the planet. After all, you’re on an alien world and owe FICSIT a full report! We recommend unlocking everything you can at this stage.

You can also open the map now and explore your surroundings more effectively. See where you are and what’s nearby. You can place markers to remember important locations. Going on scouting trips will definitely become important later.

Conclusion: master Tier 1 efficiently

Tier 1 is where Satisfactory really opens up, giving you many ways to push deeper into automated production. You can now split lines to produce a variety of materials in parallel. With these fundamentals, you’ll be in great shape.

Play together with your friends and rent a Satisfactory server! That way you can work on milestones as a team and build an efficient factory.