Satisfactory – Manual Modding Guide

This guide will walk you through how to mod your Satisfactory game manually. This guide is intended for the average user, not a mod developer.

Guide to Modding

Please note: all credit goes to PhillyCh3zSt3ak!

Overview

Satisfactory is a wonderful game. But, since it is in a pre-release state there’s only so much content in a single playthrough before you get bored or want something new. Or, you’re trying to do little quality of life fixes and the like. Unfortunately, at this moment in time Satisfactory doesn’t have mod support from the Workshop. But this doesn’t mean you can’t use mods. No siree Bob, you can still use mods; that is, if you’re wiling to download and move some files around in your system’s game folders. I will preface this in stating that there is a mod manager coming from the Satisfactory community, but it is being rebuilt to work with the Steam version.

This guide’s text is mostly ripped from the Ficsit.app website but has screenshots to show context and updated information as some of the information on the website is outdated and has yet to be updated by the site.

Mod Loader

Installing Bootstrapper

The current version of this as of 6/10/2020 is v2.0.8. You will be taken to a Github page where you need to download the xinput3_1.dll and msdia140.dll files. Your computer may flag it as harmful by default, so you will need to elect to keep it.

After that you just need to copy the xinput3_1.dll and msdia140.dll files to:

  • <game root>/FactoryGame/Binaries/Win64/

Installing SML

  • Now that you have installed bootstrapper you need to download a version of SML compatible with that bootstrapper version and with your game from SMR

The most recent version as of 6/10/2020 is v2.1.2. You will be taken to another Github page where you need to download UE4-SML-Win64-Shipping.dll.

After you have downloaded it, you need to place the file into <game root>/loaders. If this is a fresh install you’ll need to either create the folder or run the game with the bootstrapper once and it will create it for you.

Installing Your Mod of Choice

  • On SMR, navigate to your desired mod’s page, click on versions in the upper right left corner and then click download on your desired version. Usually this will be the top version in the list.

Always check to make sure that the SML Version column for the version you choose matches the version of SML you have installed. You can attempt to install the mod with mismatched versions, but most of the time, it won’t work.

Now just copy the downloaded .smod/.zip file into <game root>/mods. If the folder doesn’t exist, just create it or start the game with bootstrapper and SML installed once. You’ve installed the mod, it’s as simple as that. Now start your game. NOTE: It may take several minutes to launch due to having to load mods in even with a SSD. Just be patient, it’s doing its thing.

The way you can tell if you’ve been successful is if you see new lines of text on your main menu, they’ll look like the screenshot below.

Conclusion

In the end, modding the game isn’t too difficult; it’s just moving three .dll files and creating two folders then dropping the mod files that you wish to use. The biggest downside is that these mods will not update so you may have to check regularly on the mod page to see if the mod you’re using has updated and will have to swap the file out.

I’d keep the old one sequestered away just in case there are changes that are made that you don’t like although from what I’ve seen most mods have improved over time. Another thing to keep in mind is that this is meant for more casual persons and not for people who want to create and test their own mods, that has a very specific installation methods not covered in this guide.

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 15056 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices.

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