Our Factorio guide for 1.0 hopes to solve this problem for newfangled players, as we delve into our top 15 Factorio tips covering everything from quality of life improvements to building strategies, and much more .
Factorio guide: 15 top tips for beginners
Factorio is an enormous game with lots to learn before you can create a colossal factory, but there are lots of little tips and techniques you can employ to help speed up your progress and get you started on the right foot.
here are our 15 clear tips for Factorio players who are barely starting their first factory :
Tip #1: Set to Peaceful Mode for an easier start
While you might be the only human on the entire planet in Factorio, you surely are n’t the only life matter. autochthonal creatures called Biters will start to attack you as your factory grows and starts to pollute their home – and they can make life reasonably unmanageable for you, peculiarly in the early game before you have proper defences set up .
If you ‘re precisely starting with Factorio, we ‘d recommend you set your first world to Peaceful Mode in the game options. This means that Biters wo n’t attack you until you attack them for the first time. This gives you lots more breathe room to expand your factory and receive set up with some basic weaponry and defences before you go and pick a fight with the nearest biter nest .
Tip #2: Set your Research Queue availability to always
Another thoroughly choice to set before you ‘ve even started your first game is to head into the Advanced tab of your game frame-up and set your Research Queue to be constantly available. For some rationality, by nonpayment you will only be able to queue up research once you ‘ve finished the game ( by launching your beginning rocket ) – but that just seems strange to me. Why not have this dainty small quality of life feature from the identical begin, so that you can queue up all your craved technologies in the inquiry corner ahead of time rather of having to hop back into the research riddle every time you finish your latest engineering ?
Tip #3: Plan your goals out ahead of time
Factorio is an fabulously open-ended crippled, and there is very little hand-holding. thus, it ‘s up to you to set your own goals .
Your end-goal is to build and launch a skyrocket, but that is far besides large a project to tackle in a single step. What we ‘re talking about when we say “ goals ” is the adjacent bantam dance step you can take to develop your factory, preferably something you can complete in the future twenty dollar bill minutes or possibly the current bid seance .
If you need some help figuring out what your initial goals should be at the depart of a crippled of Factorio, you should absolutely check out our Factorio early game walkthrough guide !
Tip #4: Don’t be afraid to spread things out
A key err that new Factorio players make when they start their inaugural factory is that they do n’t spread things out enough. Factorio worlds are enormously large, and you always have more than enough room to outer space out smelting modules from mining patches, and leave plenty of board for belts and belated improvements to your factory .
Problems arise if you build your factory besides compendious : often, you ‘ll find yourself having to deconstruct far more than necessary in regulate to make a childlike change to one function of your factory. so do n’t be afraid to spread things out .
Tip #5: Use both sides of your belts
Belts are fantastic things in Factorio. They are unbelievably versatile, and you can use them to do about anything you want when it comes to shipping demand quantities of resources in claim orders to exact positions .
But for now, let ‘s just start with one mighty moral about belts which beginners may not have realised : you can use each side of a belt to carry different types of resources. For example, if you want to get an iron smelt module up and running, you can feed it with a single belt carrying iron ore on the forget and coal on the right, quite than having to use two break belts for each resource .
Tip #6: Know the most useful ratios
In order to make the most effective factories possible and be perpetually unblock of resource bottlenecks, you ‘ll need to commit at least a copulate of handy Factorio ratios to memory. I ‘ll list a few downstairs :
- Red belts and blue belts are 2x and 3x faster than yellow belts, respectively.
- It takes 30 Electric Mining Drills to completely fill a yellow belt with ore (excluding Uranium).
- It takes 48 Stone Furnaces (or 24 Steel Furnaces) to smelt an entire yellow belt of ore.
- The optimum ratio for steam power is: 1 Offshore Pump to 20 Boilers to 40 Steam Engines.
- The optimum ratio for solar power is: 25 Solar Panels to 21 Accumulators.
- The optimum ratio for oil cracking is: 20 Advanced Oil Processing to 5 Heavy Oil Cracking to 17 Light Oil Cracking (but simplifying the ratio to 8/2/7 will work well enough for most implementations).
If none of that makes feel to you even, do n’t worry. It ‘s here for when it becomes applicable to you and your factory. For more handy ratios I ‘d recommend you take a look at the Factorio Cheat Sheet on-line, which lays out many ratios in a handy ocular format .
Tip #7: Make sure you have enough power before starting a new project
Over the naturally of many hundreds of hours playing Factorio, I ‘ve noticed that new projects tend to be split into smaller phases, and the first base phase of pretty much every new undertaking should be ensuring you have enough power to accommodate your approaching builds .
The huge majority of your factory requires energy to run. There are several different potential sources of energy – some renewable, others non-renewable. Our Factorio energy guide contains everything you need to know about these different types of energy and how to ensure your power production always exceeds your power demand .
Tip #8: Get yourself a vehicle as soon as possible
You know how throughout history certain inventions and discoveries have catapulted refinement forwards by an holy order of magnitude each time ? Well, Factorio is the like – and the foremost true leap forward in my mind comes when you obtain your first base vehicle .
traditionally, your first vehicle will be a simple car. But this cable car immediately allows you to travel huge distances far faster than you could ever do before. It allows you to more promptly expand your factory and bargain with Biter threats. Getting your first car is the point where I would say Factorio ‘s early game ends and its mid-game begins ; and so I would heartily encourage you to race towards this goal ampere quickly as possible .
Tip #9: Make use of blueprints
Blueprints are a boom in Factorio, and one of the game ‘s principle quality of life features. If you ‘ve seen that it exists but you ‘ve never looked into it because you do n’t in truth know what it ‘s about, then you should absolutely take a look at our Factorio blueprints guide so you can see precisely how blueprints can make your life therefore much easier .
Tip #10: Don’t rely too heavily on manual construction
This was a mistake I made throughout my beginning few Factorio games : I would manually construct far besides much, when I could have spent 5 minutes putting together a little solicitation of assemblers and inserter arms to automate the process .
The problem is n’t that manual structure is slower ( in fact, until you get to tier 3 assemblers, manual construction is faster ). But you can only construct one matter at a clock time, whereas with assemblers you can construct dozens or even hundreds at a clock. If you put besides a lot stock in manual construction like I once did, you ‘ll find yourself having to wait 10 minutes for your manual of arms construction line up to finish so you can build that one extra furnace you need for the caper you ‘re doing right immediately. Trust in the assemblers. automation is the overarching theme of Factorio .
Tip #11: As your factory grows, consider building a main bus and mall
The Factorio community has come up with so many brilliant ideas over the years that Factorio has been in early Access. Prime among these ideas are the main bus and the plaza, both of which will help dramatically improve the efficiency of your factory as you head into the mid-game .
- A main bus is a large, orderered collection of belt lines carrying various basic resources in a single direction. Its purpose is to make it very easy for you to expand your factory by drawing on your main bus for easily-accessible resources.
- A mall is a section of your factory which is dedicated to the automated construction of various frequently used items, such as belts, inserters, miners, and more.
The construction of a main bus and a plaza is a key expression of Factorio ‘s mid-game, and something you should plan ahead for ( in terms of distance and the handiness of items ) when you are first setting up your factory .
Tip #12: Don’t get complacent around Biter nests
Biters are firm, poisonous, ample, and more than adequate to of completely fucking up your plans if you do n’t treat them with due respect. And this is true of pretty much every stagecoach of a Factorio game, because as time goes on, Biters will not only expand and settle new nests, but they will besides evolve into far stronger types .
You ‘ll need to evolve with them in order to defend your factory from the threats that Biters pose. And do n’t get complacent in those moments where you ‘re ahead of the swerve. You may have discovered that circling nests in your car and throwing grenades out of the window is a great direction of dealing with Biters for the clock time being, but soon they ‘ll grow excessively solid for this tactic, and unless you ‘re careful you ‘ll be overwhelmed. Be careful around Biters. seriously .
Tip #13: Learn how to use trains
I touched upon the power of trains earlier when talking about vehicles in tip # 8, but trains are so mighty a tool in your factory that I need to make it into its own dedicate tap. There is sol much that you can do with trains – not only does it enable you yourself to travel huge distances in the fastest potential manner, but once you understand enough about train systems you can create networks of wagons that mechanically transport resources across your entire factory .
If you want to discover how to use trains to dramatically improve the efficiency of your factory, look no further than our Factorio trains guide .
Tip #14: Learn the hidden functions of basic objects
Factorio is filled with bang-up short promote features and functions of basic objects which you may not realise or understand at beginning. But they ‘re indispensible in certain situations for making your liveliness easier .
here are a match of examples : did you know that you can click the bolshevik X inside a chest, and then click one of the thorax ‘s storage slots to limit how a lot that chest is allowed to be filled automatically ? Or that you can click on a knock rail-splitter and prioritise the left or right lane for both input and output, and even have the splitter prioritize a particular type of item ?
Try clicking on unlike casual structures in Factorio and playing around with what is offered in their UI. You may find a cool new feature that makes life easier for you when designing and optimising your factories .
Tip #15: Use mods to expand the game and improve quality of life
ultimately, it ‘s worth noting that, while developers Wube Software have done an amazing job offering lots of choice of animation features, there are many more to be gained by introducing Factorio mods into your game. There are mods that allow you to squeeze between buildings, to keep racetrack of things like Biter evolution levels, to more easily detect bottlenecks in your factory, and much, much more .
once you ‘ve played a fair amount of Factorio, you may besides find that sealed pass mods are precisely what you need to help reintroduce that element of discovery back into this infinitely addictive game.
And with that, we ‘ll wrap up this Factorio tips number – or else I ‘ll be going on and on all day, and I have early guides to write after all ! Speaking of which, if you ‘re looking for a more in-depth guide on a particular aspect of Factorio, feel dislodge to check out the links below .
