Biomes and Resource Nodes

The Satisfactory world is one large hand-crafted island, roughly 47.1 km2 across its full extent including sea and void, with a playable land mass around 5.4 km by 5.4 km. There is no procedural generation. Every resource node sits in a fixed place, the same on every save, unless you switch on the new 1.2 World Randomization Game Mode. That fixed layout is what makes the map a planning problem rather than an exploration one: you are not hunting for randomly scattered ore, you are routing known nodes into your factory. There is no pollution mechanic, and machine smoke is purely visual.

Node purity, the rate multiplier

Every resource node has one of three purities that set its base extraction rate: Impure, Normal, or Pure. The same miner pulls faster from a Pure node than an Impure one. On top of purity, miner tier (Mk.1, Mk.2, Mk.3) and overclocking with Power Shards multiply the rate further. In 1.2 the Game Mode menu can override purity for a whole world (All Pure, Mostly Pure, Average, Mostly Impure, All Impure, or Random) and randomize node placement, but on a default world the purities are fixed and worth scouting before you commit a factory to a node.

The four starting areas

You pick your start at world creation. The official wiki rates them, and two are friendly to first-time pioneers.

Start area	Recommended for	Terrain	Resources	Notes
Grass Fields	First-timers	Very flat	Moderate	Open and flat, but often impure nodes, so transport lines run longer. Hogs common.
Rocky Desert	First-timers	Fairly flat	Moderate, good diversity	Balanced, very close to the sea for easy water. Holds the world’s highest point.
Northern Forest	Experienced	Hilly	High, excellent diversity	Lush and rich, with lots of height variation to build around.
Dune Desert	Advanced	Fairly flat	Very high, low diversity	Lots of open space and mining, but scarce water and foliage make early power harder.

The biomes and where late resources live

The map has 21 named biomes, four of which are the starting areas. The rest include Blue Crater, Crater Lakes, Desert Canyons, the Eastern and Western Dune Forest, Jungle Spires, Lake Forest, Maze Canyons, Red Bamboo Fields, Red Jungle, Snaketree Forest, Southern Forest, Spire Coast, Swamp, Titan Forest, and Western Beaches. A few are worth calling out:

• Western Beaches holds many Oil nodes.
• The Swamp has Poison Gas, large caves, and tougher fauna like Elite Stingers and Alpha Spitters.
• Red Jungle and Red Bamboo Fields are among the most hostile biomes.
• There are exactly 4 Uranium nodes in the world. One sits in a Grass Fields cave, one in a Swamp waterfall cave, and one on the highest peak, which is impure.
• SAM and raw quartz are comparatively rare and scattered in the later-game biomes.

The late resources (bauxite, uranium, raw quartz, SAM, nitrogen) sit in specific biomes, so the map naturally pushes your factory footprint outward. Plan early factory placement with the knowledge that you will eventually be reaching across the island, and leave room for the trains and drones that will connect it.

Node counts, with a caveat

One reputable guide cites the fixed 1.0 map as having roughly 120 Iron Ore nodes, 69 Copper, 50 Coal, 31 Caterium, and 20 SAM, each rated Pure, Normal, or Impure. The official World wiki page does not tabulate these by type, so treat those per-type counts as guide-sourced and verify against the wiki’s Resources page before relying on them. The 4 Uranium nodes figure is well supported.

Caves, crash sites, and points of interest

The island has extensive cave systems, often holding the deepest or richest nodes for a biome. Scattered across it are 118 Crash Sites (one Hard Drive each), Power Slugs that yield Power Shards, and the alien Somersloops and Mercer Spheres used in MAM research and late buildings. The AWESOME Sink and AWESOME Shop loop lets you spend excess production on Coupons and cosmetics. Because nothing on the map gates you by danger the way a survival game would, the real gate is always whether you have unlocked the building and recipe and routed the resource home.

Related: MAM, Exploration, and Hard Drives for what you collect out in the world, and Trains, Drones, and Vehicles for connecting distant nodes.