Now that Satisfactory 1.0 is out, hopefully everyone has had some time to sink their teeth into the new content. There is a brand new story to follow, a new technology tier, new recipes, a huge increase in polish, and many more smaller changes. In this article, we will get into all of it.

WARNING: The last section of this article will spoil most of the new content, including several story beats. If you want to experience the story as intended, make sure to go play it.

Overview

In my previous article on Satisfactory 1.0, I went over what we knew at the time about the updates, as well as my hopes for the content of the release. Now that 1.0 has finally arrived, let’s take a look at how it measures up to my predictions and expectations.

I will be going over the full changelog step by step, in addition to an overview of the story of the game and my opinions on how everything turned out. I will save the story section for last, as it will contain spoilers. I will mark it clearly, so feel free to continue reading up until that point if you want to experience the story on your own.

There are a lot of changes in 1.0. I’ll break them into categories. First, we have content additions, which includes a new tech tier, achievements, many new machines and other buildables, additions to the space elevator, and an expanded research system with a new hard drive menu.

Next, we have the changes that aren’t new content that instead consist of improving the game’s polish, fixing bugs, optimizing performance, changing recipes, improving the dedicated server software, changing things on the map, and more.

Finally, at the end of the article, I will give a brief overview of the story content, which will contain spoilers.

Content Additions

The biggest and best part of this update is, of course, the new content. So let’s get into it. I won’t go over every new piece of content or this article would be massive, so I’ll cover the most important ones.

Tier 9

Satisfactory’s progression is broken into tech tiers. Over the years, new tiers have been released, but there has still been a missing piece toward the end. However , with the release of Tier 9, that’s no longer the case and the game feels more feature complete. Tier 9 is unlocked with Phase 4 of Project Assembly. It includes 5 milestones to work towards as well as many new buildables.

The Converter can almost magically transmute raw materials into other materials, allowing for more efficient use of resource nodes. It can also create Ficsite and Excited Photonic Matter, 2 resources needed for further progression. The quantum encoder is Tier 9’s production machine, used for progression-related parts. The new blueprint designer mk. 2 and mk. 3 are just bigger blueprint designers, going up to 6x6 units.

My favorite part of this tier is the new improved conveyor belts. These bad boys can transport 1200 items per minute, or send you flying into a wall at breakneck speeds if you accidentally land on one (which I definitely haven’t done several times for fun). To cap off the tier, you have a new nuclear power fuel, Ficsonium, which is made from plutonium waste, and portals, which can enable teleportation across the map at a huge power cost.

Research

An update as monumental as the game’s full release would feel lacking without all new research. With this release, the MAM can now use Mercer Spheres, Somersloops, and SAM to research alien technology.

The Dimensional Depot can store items, which are then made available for crafting and building, as if they were in your inventory.

The Alien Power Augmentor can increase power production on a grid multiplicatively. The more you produce manually, the more it produces.

Finally, you have the Production Amplifier, which boosts the production output of various machines, without any increase in input cost other than power.

All of these things and more can be unlocked in the MAM with mandatory research nodes scattered in between them.

Cosmetics

There is a huge list of cosmetics, so I’ll list some of them here. In the HUB we have player outfit skins, custom coloring, build gun skins, and trinkets. In the AWESOME shop we have new steel windows, construction fences, safety barriers, and paint options. All of these categories include many individual options, too many to list! So go check them out and see how cool you can make your factory look - unless you’re like me, and just build stuff all over with complete disregard for organization or aesthetics.

Achievements

The final piece of content I’ll talk about is Achievements! There are now Steam and Epic achievements in the game - 44 in total, including 4 hidden achievements (which I immediately looked up in the wiki because I have no self control). You can view details about all achievements here.

Quality of Life, Polish, and Everything Else

The game got a major polish pass in the 1.0 update, as we all expected.

The build system got tons of tweaks. This includes things like allowing conveyors and railways to be built completely straight, placing signals anywhere on tracks instead of set points, and dismantling entire blueprints at once. They’ve also changed the clearance of all buildings, making it easier to place certain things, and added 2 more types of guidelines to make building easier.

The world itself has undergone some changes too. Geometry has gotten a much needed polish pass, making it harder than ever to get stuck and improving the rendering from far away. Water has been updated everywhere to improve visual consistency. Many resource nodes have been moved around to improve balance and reduce visual inconsistencies. Unfinished areas have been finished finally. These areas include the jungle spires, southern forest, bamboo fields, and the paradise island, which is now fully accessible. Previously, the world border ran right through the middle of this island, making only half of it usable.

Game and server performance has been optimized to reduce stutters, lag spikes, and memory usage. These optimizations also include things like saves being quicker, buildings taking fewer system resources to process, conveyor rendering improvements, and multiplayer vehicle syncing.

Many settings that were only accessible in single player are now changeable for multiplayer. The dedicated server software has been completely reworked, and now runs with less RAM, CPU and network usage! Because of this, Akliz has lowered the minimum required RAM for Satisfactory from 12gb all the way down to 6gb. And that should get you through most of the game just fine, for the majority of users.

The server manager UI has also been improved by adding several more settings. These include all settings that you would normally access in-game as well as the ability to download your server’s world saves for easy sharing and offline play.

Finally, this update brings with it a massive number of bug fixes (Finally, no more server crashes, right? Right??). According to the devs, there would be more than 50 pages of bug fixes if they included all of them in the patch notes. Luckily for both you and me, I also will not be including the bug fixes in this article, but you can get a quick list here.

Yes, I know this image was also in the last Satisfactory article, but I like the joke so much I'm using it again.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Story Content

If you’ve made it here past the several spoiler warnings, I will assume you are okay with, wait for it, spoilers. So let me talk about the story, or rather, the lack thereof. We were promised a story mode,when 1.0 was set to be released. What we got instead was a collection of audio logs, text logs, and a single endgame event. The story is so small, it’s not even worth going through the major beats. The non-optional story content consists of building a spaceship to “save humanity” and sending it off to do its job. How will it save humanity? What is humanity doing right now? Why didn’t you come with it? The world may never know.

There is also a side plot with alien technology and some sort of alien intelligence with a loose connection to humanity. But this side plot is entirely up for interpretation and really has no bearing on the “main story”. For reasons unknown, it’s confined to optional audio logs tied to mercer spheres, so it’s possible to never hear any of it.

Satisfactory did not need this story. It feels like the game developers made it up at the last second just to say that they had a story. The game is fantastic, and would still be fantastic if they added no story at all. So it feels like they wasted their effort and our expectations with the plot. However, I still plan to play the game and just ignore this part.

Final Thoughts

I’ve been waiting for this release since the very beginning, right when Satisfactory went into early access. Now that it’s out, I can finally judge it as a finished game, and I think it shaped up into almost exactly what I wanted it to be. I feel like Satisfactory took a gameplay-first approach, which is exactly what it needed to do. Story came second, which is okay. I didn’t expect there to be a story at all, to be honest. It’s the type of game that can stand on its own just by the quality of its gameplay.

Back before 1.0, I had some serious problems with the game. The multiplayer server was buggy, constantly desynced, and had many other bugs that caused things like lost inventories and crashes. I’m glad to find that 1.0 fixed all of these issues as far as I can tell. I’ve only experienced 2 server crashes so far. While still annoying, that’s far less often than before, and not nearly enough to be a real problem for me.

The additions to the game are exactly the kind of thing I was expecting, and wanted. I am excited that they fleshed out the space elevator and research systems. And the additions to production and logistics filled the hole that was missing before release.

The only thing I am slightly disappointed about is the final result of the space elevator. If you’ve read this far, you’re surely okay with spoilers so I can say that just having a single space ship blast off into the unknown is somewhat anticlimactic. Not to say that I need more story, but it feels like a gameplay reward is deserved for accomplishing the entire goal of the game, but once that ship leaves, you are left with your factory and no goals or motivation. You can’t even make more space ships, when you clearly have the materials required.

All in all, this is a fantastic game, and the 1.0 release was not a letdown by any means. I am excited to keep playing and see what the future holds for the game and its developers.

If you’d also like to check out this fantastic game with your friends, grab a server from Akliz! We’ve halved the required RAM since before 1.0, from 12gb down to 6gb, so it’s easier than ever to jump in.