From playing with mods for years to a pure vanilla game

[Jeff]

Have played over 3,200 hours with Satisfactory doing about 70 play-through's using up to 45 mods at a time. Was on my fourth save with Satisfactory Plus and had an challenging idea:

Go to experimental and play a vanilla game (no mods - because you can't) and didn't even add any of the cheats the game allows you now. Just went with the default mode. It's been 12 hours so far and having a blast, except the creatures still hate me.

[killerdeath101]

you make the creatures passive so they wont attack you

[Jeff]

I realize that, but I'm playing this save with one rule; No mods or cheats.

[killerdeath101]

I understand and its in the options for the game so its not a cheat or a mod also I'm sorry if I question your motives

[Jeff]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3008484238

I understand. Its just a personal challenge. Have played for over three years almost every day for several hours (retired). Try to make my games as hard as possible (used to play RTS games on insane difficulty.

[Taco Cat]

You want to be praised for playing the game in Vanilla now Jeff?

[Abisha]

Originally posted by Pineapplowl:

You want to be praised for playing the game in Vanilla now Jeff?

yes because this game is only good with mods think of it like skyrim without mods

[Jeff]

Skyrim is a joke. Couldn't go on with my mage and the unrealistic hands out in front (stupid).

Not praised, as I have played other vanilla games in co-op occasionally over the years, but they never last. The team breaks up somewhere between 1 hour to 4 days. None of them have any intention of going past tier 5/6 (wimps). They should have been here before Update 4.

Playing a pure vanilla game is much easier than say, Satisfactory Plus, but I had 37 other mods with that exceedingly hard mod. Playing Vanilla (no mods) solo is something I haven't done in at least four years, but never at Tier 8 with the humongous map and all of the really tough creatures playing at default. You take on the over-sized radioactive hog once. I've killed two of them so far. Have spent over 20 hours the last two days, exploring the new areas (total 39 hours in this save so far - about to open tiers 5/6). Pretty much memorized the old areas.

When you've played with mods as long as I have, you feel kind of naked without them, but I'm gonna complete this save.

[Justinian]

First time playing a game like this. I haven't used or even seen any mods and am loving the hell out of it so far. About 30 hours of game time. I'll look at mods after I finish the vanilla version of the game.

[Jeff]

After playing the original game a few times, I became bored (needed more content). Almost quit the game forever, but when I tried that, I missed it. Didn't want to do the same thing again so I started looking at mods for content. Wanted more resources, more components, more equipment and more fun. Found that I could change the mods anytime I wanted so every save would be different.

First came into the game right before Update 4 and 3,000 hours later I'm still playing it a few to several hours daily. Satisfactory allows you to be as creative as you want. I normally use 35 to 40 mods at a time these days. but as this post stated, I went back to a vanilla game (Update 8 experimental in default mode) after playing with mods for years. After this save, I'll be continuing with my 4th Satisfactory Plus save.

The big difference between a vanilla and modded games, instead of having four milestones (unlocks) per tier, you have 20, 30 or over 100. Which of course makes the game take much longer to complete. The ultimate mod, Satisfactory Plus (SF+) (almost 1 gigabyte) not only adds milestones, but the higher up you go, the harder the game becomes. Later game components may take 10 to 15 machines to finally make the single component. There are many more machines to learn about. An average save takes 250 to 400 hours to complete (tiers 1 and 2 take me 35-50 hours). I don't bother with cosmetics. I got to much to do already.

[❤ Sly Succubus ❤]

Originally posted by Jeff:

After playing the original game a few times, I became bored (needed more content). Almost quit the game forever, but when I tried that, I missed it. Didn't want to do the same thing again so I started looking at mods for content. Wanted more resources, more components, more equipment and more fun. Found that I could change the mods anytime I wanted so every save would be different.

First came into the game right before Update 4 and 3,000 hours later I'm still playing it a few to several hours daily. Satisfactory allows you to be as creative as you want. I normally use 35 to 40 mods at a time these days. but as this post stated, I went back to a vanilla game (Update 8 experimental in default mode) after playing with mods for years. After this save, I'll be continuing with my 4th Satisfactory Plus save.

The big difference between a vanilla and modded games, instead of having four milestones (unlocks) per tier, you have 20, 30 or over 100. Which of course makes the game take much longer to complete. The ultimate mod, Satisfactory Plus (SF+) (almost 1 gigabyte) not only adds milestones, but the higher up you go, the harder the game becomes. Later game components may take 10 to 15 machines to finally make the single component. There are many more machines to learn about. An average save takes 250 to 400 hours to complete (tiers 1 and 2 take me 35-50 hours). I don't bother with cosmetics. I got to much to do already.

Same here, I beat the game starting with myself and 2 friends in the North East Desert, we did finish the base game and decided to use mods, we used the 100+ milestones when it was around, Ficsit farming and other odds and ends. By the first week our original 7 skyscrapers that made up our hub, yes skyscrapers, turned into nearly 20 and we had skybridges connecting them, we got to a point where we also started auto producting Nodes and just started seeing who could make each other fly the farthest away in a cart!

[Jeff]

My second and third game back then were played with two friends as well. I completed !00+ Milestones solo. Took me 6.5 weeks beyond what the rest took to unlock everything else. I believe there are 720+ unlocks in Milestones +100. Ficsit Farming, Blueprint Designer Plus, Refined Power and a few others are included with Satisfactory Plus. I've built two huge power plants using Refined Power. One coal (25 GW) and the other solar (24 GW). Heh, you should see my skybridges. Some are over 10 miles long and house factories, roads, rail and dozens of conveyors. In one save I used over 180,000 concrete to make one skybridge.

You know how you can jump on a Mk 5 belt and ride quickly across the landscape? Prior to update 6 killing it, there were belts up to Mk 11 that would carry 24,000 resources per minute (max is 3,500 now). One day I jumped on one of them. When I looked to the side, the landscape was a blur. Problem was eventually the conveyor made a 90 degree turn and I was thrown miles through the air out into the ocean. It was quite a swim back to shore - lol.

If you and your friends would like to try Satisfactory Plus, I would be glad to introduce you to it, It turns the game completely upside-down.

In a vanilla game to make steel you just combine iron ore and coal in a foundry to make the steel ingot (basic recipe).

In SF+, one of the ingredients to make steel is air. But to build an air collector you need molten brass (combination of molten iron and molten zinc). This leads you down a difficult path of making brass ingots and components. When you get all that done, you can build the air collector which has to be really high up in the sky to be effective. You'll need to power it and pipe the air back to the ground. Then you can start the process of making molten steel. After two to three hours total (solo), you finally make steel ingots and can go ahead and make steel beams and pipes like normal. It's difficult, yes, but very interesting.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2795667342

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2789656676

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2730427335

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2880377950

[❤ Sly Succubus ❤]

That is beyond beautiful Jeff, as one with ADHD that second image alone is just so pleasing to the eyes to look at, I love the design you went with to, and I admit that solar power farm is not bad either! You know you can overlap steel frames with the pole itself right to later it? I did that for some of my areas!

[Jeff]

My refined power, power plants don't look like that anymore. They are more spread out and uniform. You can easily walk between all of the equipment and anywhere else in the facility. The building is about a half mile long though, so bring a factory cart :) The last fuel powered power plant I built was 500 gigawatts with a one terawatt power storage Took a few days to fill up.

Here is the miner on Satisfactory Plus. You can't overclock it, but you can upgrade the drills and add modules to it to increase its yield.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2957015892

Here is a miner from another mod (not compatible with SF+). You need the refined power mod to produce enough power to run these and other machines.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936149484

[Remnar]

I am not sure how any one would want to play with Satisfactory+ mod. The game is hard enough in the vanilla state. But if you like that complicated aspect of the game, and are totally bored with vanilla, then more power to ya.

I usually quit when I reach computers; but now I quit after making aluminium, as I see no point in continuing. The amount of complicated items the space elevator wants is also demotivating; when it takes minutes to produce one of those.

I am hoping, while playing update 8 (experimental), I will get past those issues and finally try to finish the game, if possible. I already set up my main bus and now it's just building the equipment to add items to it.

I have never played with mods, but I never really felt that I needed to. I am sure there are plenty of good ones that'd make the game easier and provide more content; but I have yet to beat the game as is.

[Jeff]

Any game you play would get boring after repeating the same parts over and over again. In order to break this cycle, you need to add content so that your interests are focusing on something new and a different way to play the game. Satisfactory Plus should is so huge, it should have been a DLC or an expansion to the game itself. Either way, i would have paid money for this. It's like Satisfactory 2. No longer are you reaching an aluminum or computer milestone.

When you start download Satisfactory Plus and play the game, everything changes. Even your starting screen. It's not a mod for any existing game. You must start a new game. Even the part when you comedown in the spaceship. If you try to skip this, the game will crash. When you land and build the HUB, you have to do the hub upgrades.

At HUB upgrade 1 you need 10 iron rods, but there are no iron nodes on the map. You have to check the Craft Bench recipes to figure how to get the 10 iron rods. This is the first challenge and one that you will solve quickly.