When you start a new game ofSatisfactory, one of your first jobs is to fuel the biomass burner that appears on the back of the Hub building. you’re able to do so by clearing all the bushes in the area and burning the leaves, which is easy enough.
However, you’ll eventually want to gather a lot of woodand remove trees that grow too close to your factory areas and truck paths. The best tool for this job is the chainsaw, but the chainsaw inSatisfactoryhas some unusual quirks that you might want to know about.
How to Unlock the Chainsaw
The chainsaw is part of the “Obstacle Clearing” milestone. This reward set is on the Tier 2 list, and it unlocksafter you complete the first onboarding tutorial objectives. To earn the chainsaw, you’ll need to spend:
This milestone also comes with three bonus inventory slotsand access to the solid biofuel recipe. The biofuel alone makes this milestone worth picking up since it’s the most energy-efficient fuel for biomass burners. Just make sure you keep some for yourself because the chainsaw needs solid biofuel to operate.
How to Create and Operate the Chainsaw
Once you earn the right milestone, you may craft a chainsaw in an equipment workshop. You’ll find it in the first section, “Tools.” The chainsaw recipe calls for:
Once you craft your chainsaw, you’ll need to equip it. From your inventory, click on the chainsaw and drag it into one of your “Hands” slots. you’re able to then swap between hand items by scrolling the mouse wheel up or down.
However, your chainsaw won’t work unless you have solid biofuel in your inventory.No other biomass or fossil fuel will work: unlike biomass burners, the chainsaw can only use one kind of fuel.
Once your chainsaw has enough fuel to operate, you may use it to chop down trees that you can’t otherwise remove. This includes small trees that are only slightly bigger than bushes, and giant trees that stretch into the sky. No matter how big the tree is, the chainsaw can cut down around 2.5 trees for each unit of solid biofuel. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to keep even numbers of biofuel in your inventory.
The chainsaw also has two modes you may switch between: Single Mode and Area Mode.
There are no real benefits to leaving a bush or tree alone, so Area Mode is what you should use most of the time, and the chainsaw defaults to using this mode. Chopping down two trees at once costs the same as chopping them one at a time, and bushes don’t use any fuel, so there aren’t any downsides to using Area Mode.
One last chainsaw suggestion is to always carry a weapon in your other Hands slot. Unlike certain other video games, the chainsaw inSatisfactoryis just a tool, and it won’t do anything to hostile animals. You have a good chance of coming across dangerous animals when you go out chopping trees, so it pays to be wary.
