Satisfactory

The game takes place on one enormous map with infinite resource nodes. The four starting areas are different starting locations on the map. Go Northern Forest if you want close resources and are OK with restricted building space or the Dune Desert if you want a lot of flat places to build. Rocky Desert is a balance of the two and I'd recommend against Grass Fields as you do have a lot of building space and are in a central location however basic resources are farther away than the other starts.

You can customize a lot of game options to your personal taste; two notable options are changing enemy aggro and keeping inventory on death.

Building

• All buildings can be deconstructed with no loss in materials.

• You will regret using the last socket in your power pole. Build a second pole and chain them together. You'll be making poles for every second machine until you unlock Mk2s.

• After you unlock foundations, you should align them to the world grid using CTRL and build all your machines on them. Place a 4m foundation as your first foundation to snap vertically as well (important when connecting building sites with rails later). Hitting R allows you to change building modes - Zoop mode builds things side-by-side and is great for building foundations. If you want to build vertically, you'll want at least 3 "walls" worth of height between floors.

• Most people build in manifolds, which is a line of machines with a perpendicular belt on the front and back and one splitter/merger per building. You can place splitters/mergers in-line on already existing belts and snap them to the machine holding CTRL. You can get more compact than you think with splitters and mergers; the yellow build ghost warning of clipping does not break functionality.

• In general, you'll probably want to create separate chains including sub materials for each item rather than pulling from a shared pool of resources and stealing from an already-existing factory. Factory planner websites such as https://www.satisfactorytools.com/1.0/production are a great help when trying to figure out how much/little to build.

• Each item required for the space elevator is used in future phases and while that first 1000 is a shock you don't actually need massive factory complexes to win. 1-4 buildings consistently building the latest elevator parts will get you to late/end game, especially with somersloops doubling. Once you build your factory, let it craft in the background and go explore!

• Always sink your overflows! Once you unlock the smart splitter, it's free tickets when you make an "overflow" belt. It's also mandatory for certain processes like oil derivatives, where waste materials are used to generate power that you want to remain on 100% of the time.

• It's a decent idea to create disconnected backup emergency power, either in storage or those old bioburners you have lying around. Power shutting off cripple your factory because you need power to supply water to your coal power plants and can be a real PITA to get working again.

• Don't underestimate how much time even small blueprints can save you - being able to create and then place even 4 constructors or refiners with their splitters and mergers is much faster than building everything by hand. You'll probably want a foundation blueprint at the very least. You can also deconstruct an entire blueprint at a time with one of the R modes.

Exploration

• There are wrecks scattered around that generally require power or materials to open and grant their HDDs. Researching the HDD in the MAM takes 10 minutes, locks out other research, and unlocks alternative recipes. Alt-Rightclicking in the world allows you to quickly place a map pin, you might want to pin wrecks you find but can't open yet (and a different pin for the ones you've already looted).

• Each HDD offers two options from pool of recipes based on your tier progression and can be rerolled once (which can also be savescummed), so don't pick a recipe until you are actually going to use it to keep those recipes out of the pool. Useful recipes early are anything that removes screws such as stitched plate, recipes that replace iron with steel, and "Pure" recipes that use water during the smelting process for additional resources.

• You can build the MAM, equipment bench, and crafting table in the field as they don't require power.

• Build that MAM on-site at the wreck to start that 10 minute research countdown as soon as you get a HDD, research continues if the MAM is deconstructed.

• After you unlock Tier 3 and have the chainsaw, scanner, and a rebar gun it's a good time to start exploring in your local area with the aim of finding wrecks and unlocking some of the MAM tech tree, especially the Dimensional Depot. Buy the ladder at the fixit store for ease of traversal and optionally take a tractor. You might want to breadcrumb power lines behind you or bring enough materials for ~4 biomass burners to open wrecks. Once you get the zipline, you can travel up/down on the powerlines you made. If you find a node, you might want to mine + refine into a storage container and/or dimensional depot. Most unlocks only require a few stacks but SAM is a notable exception.

• You can build and carry multiples of each item - For example, carrying two rebar guns for extra firepower or two scanners, one on summersloop and one on mercer spheres is convenient.

Important Things to look for when exploring early (and their useful unlocks in the MAM research tree):

• Wrecks (HDDs and raw materials to feed early research trees and other wrecks)

• SAM Vein and Mercer Spheres (Dimensional Depot)

• Caterium Vein (Power lines are now ziplines)

• Somersloops (resource doubling and later power)

• Quartz Vein (Blade Runners to run faster)

• Mycelia/Fabric by chainsawing mushrooms in caves or mushroomy plants (Parachute, Gas Mask)

• A few slugs of each color (Overclocking Machines)

• A little Sulfur+Coal for black powder (Nobelisk to blow open rocks, Explosive Rebar)