Coffee Stain’s first-person open world factory building game Satisfactory finally has a 1.0 launch date, over four years after its debut in early access (originally on the Epic Games Store).
The Swedish development team, also known for the Goat Simulator franchise, announced a September 10 PC release date. They also detailed several key changes that will be introduced with the launch version, starting with many changes to the resource modes available on the world map.
According to Coffee Stain, most node reductions have been made in the Northern Forest to encourage expansion from there as players progress into the later stages of the game. At the same time, nodes have been scattered throughout the map, placed where it makes geographical sense to achieve a more even resource distribution. The main materials addressed are Caterium, Sulfur, and Quartz.
In addition, Iron, Copper, and Limestone nodes and water Geysers have been spread across the map to help with basic resource income wherever you build a factory. Coal has also seen changes, with a number of them added in close proximity to The Abyss while also being removed in a few spots around the map.
Changes to recipe costs will be made in Satisfactory 1.0 to foster smoother transitions between phases and levels, especially in the later stages of the game. Requirements are generally being relaxed; for example, Programmable Splitters will use AI Limiters and Geothermal Generators will use Highspeed Connectors, whereas both used to be made through Supercomputers.
Critically, Coffee Stain claims to have made major optimization strides when it comes to stuttering and memory requirements, especially for textures. The game, which was upgraded to Unreal Engine 5 last year with great visual benefits, has now been brought up to version 5.3 of Epic’s engine. VRAM, NVIDIA DLSS/ AMD FSR, shadow rendering, level streaming, and actors in the world have all been optimized. Moreover, foliage will no longer be destroyed by vehicles as players drive through it, which not only saves a ton of computing power but also looks a lot better, according to the developers. Last but not least, dedicated servers won’t be considered experimental anymore and have had a ton of bugs fixed.
These are just the highlights of Satisfactory Update 1.0. More detailed notes will be published closer to the September 10 launch.
