Lets Go To Fulgora

Lets go to Fulgora and get some nice tech. Mech Armor, Quality Modules, Recyclers and awesome tech for the personal grid.

The beauty of Factorio lies in its endless opportunities for optimization. But what happens when you’re dropped onto a planet like Fulgora, where the only resource is scrap? It’s a question that forces you to rethink everything you know about building in the game.

Fulgora doesn’t play by the usual rules. Most planets in Factorio offer a standard progression: find resources, extract them, and build. Fulgora, on the other hand, flips that on its head. There’s no iron, copper, or coal to mine. Instead, you start with piles of scrap. And from those, you extract everything you need. It’s like solving a puzzle where the pieces come from breaking down the board itself.

This changes the way you think about efficiency. Normally, you focus on production—how to scale up mining operations, how to optimize smelting ratios. But on Fulgora, the bottleneck isn’t production; it’s recycling. Every piece of scrap you process gives you a fraction of the resources you’d normally mine. So the challenge is building a system that recycles scrap fast enough to keep up with your needs while avoiding jams.

Fulgora, however, offers tools to help. The Recycler is the heart of the process, turning scrap into essential resources. For power, the Lightning rod and Lightning collector harness the energy of dramatic storms, providing electricity in bursts stored in accumulators. For science, the Electromagnetic plant unlocks the powerful Electromagnetic science pack, paving the way for advanced technologies. And for the adventurous builder, Fulgora is also home to the awesome Mech armor, which pairs beautifully with the Personal battery MK3 and Personal roboport MK2. These tools aren’t just luxuries; they redefine what’s possible in this challenging environment.

Recycling on Fulgora also comes with a strange freedom. Because there’s no coal or plastic, you don’t have to worry about things like managing fuel supplies. But this freedom comes with tradeoffs. No coal means no explosives, which limits some advanced production paths. And no raw plastic means every circuit or advanced material you make has to come from recycled components. The constraints force you to get creative, which is where the fun begins.

Then there’s power. Fulgora introduces a unique system where your electricity comes from lightning. It’s dramatic and unpredictable. Lightning rods capture power in bursts, which you store in accumulators. Between strikes, you rely on those accumulators to keep your factory running. It’s a setup that requires a delicate balance: too few accumulators, and your factory grinds to a halt. Too many, and you’re wasting resources on something that doesn’t scale. The lightning storms, with their bursts of energy, make every decision feel high-stakes.

What makes Fulgora really interesting is how it pushes you to think in loops. Scrap becomes components, components become products, and products feed back into the system to be recycled again. It’s a constant cycle of transformation, one that feels oddly alive. And because every part of your system is interconnected, you’re always tuning and adjusting, making sure no part clogs or stalls.

This is the essence of Factorio: solving problems by building better systems. Fulgora just makes the problems more interesting. It’s not about building the biggest base or producing the most items. It’s about learning to work within limits, turning scarcity into abundance. And in the end, that’s what makes Fulgora so satisfying. It takes what you think you know about the game and forces you to see it differently. And that, in a game like Factorio, is the most valuable resource of all.

Which planet you visit first, is totally up to you.

From various videos, I collected a list of items you want to bring along to make things a bit easier when you first arrive on Fulgora.

Blueprints

All blueprints I use on Fulgora can be found in this blueprint book: Fulgora BP

Minimum Things You Should Bring

Most of the items you’ll need to bring to Fulgora can be taken directly from the list of essentials for Vulcanus. However, there are notable exceptions. Some items, like Solar Panels and Pumpjacks, are unnecessary on Fulgora due to its unique environment and resources. Instead, focus on tools and equipment tailored to Fulgora’s reliance on scrap recycling and lightning-based power systems. Prioritizing the right gear will make all the difference in establishing a sustainable base on this challenging planet.

The things I would bring are:

  • 100 to 200 Pipes
  • 100 to 200 Underground pipes
  • 20 Storage tanks
  • 200 Electronic Circuits (Green Chips)
  • 300 Steel Plates
  • 50 Electric Mining Drills or better
  • 20 Big Mining Drills
  • 50 Long-handed Inserter (Red)
  • 50 Fast Inserter (Blue)
  • 20 Chemical Plants
  • 10 Offshore pumps (half a stack)
  • 10 to 20 Roboports
  • 100 to 200 Construction robots
  • 100 to 200 Logistic robots
  • 50 of each logistic chest (Active-, Passive-, Storage-, Buffer-, Requester-chest)
  • 50 Substations
  • 100 Accumulators
  • 400 Transport belts (any type you have and want)
  • 50 Underground belts (any type you have and want)
  • 50 Splitters (any type you have and want)
  • 1 Cargo Landing Pad (Important to bring!)

Most numbers represent whole stacks of items.

Upon Landing

Upon landing on Fulgora, the first priority is to find a larger island to build your base on. Fulgora’s fragmented landscape requires careful planning to ensure you have enough space to construct a functional and scalable base.

Step 1: Deploy the Cargo Landing Pad

  • Upon landing, request some robots from the spaceship to make mining resources as easy as possible.
  • Begin by deploying your Cargo Landing Pad. This will serve as the primary point for receiving supplies from space. It also offers some radar coverage which should help in finding a location, a larger island, to built on.
  • Position four substations around the landing pad and enlarge to a 3-by-3 sub-station grid with roboports to create an efficient power grid, simplifying the distribution of electricity to your machinery.
  • Once a larger island has been found, setup the cargo landing pad and request more resources from the space ship.
Cargo Landing Pad with power grid on Fulgora

Step 2: Establish an Initial Power Grid

  • Mine more resources if not done so to get the science done for the lightning rods.
  • Expand the power grid with the help of a blueprint.
  • Place a Lightning Rod nearby to harness the planet’s lightning-based energy.
  • Set up accumulators in a large field slightly away from the main base to store electricity from lightning strikes. This ensures consistent power supply during gaps between storms.
Powergrid with lots of accumulators

Step 3: Start Recycling

  • Begin constructing Recyclers to process scrap into usable resources. These will be the backbone of your production pipeline.
  • Ensure belts and inserters are set up efficiently to move materials from the recycling process into production lines.
  • Find scrap fields to mine and feed it to the recyclers.
Recycling Monstrosity

Step 4: Focus on Essential Production

  • With some basic assembler setups it should be easy to produce the first electrmagnetic plant.
  • Only produce one, as the electromagnet plant itself gives a 50% bonus in production and should be used as early as pissble.
  • Setup basic mini production factory blocks to produce holmium plates, superconductors, supercapacitors and electromagnetic science packs.
  • Build some rocket silos to send the Electromagnetic Science Packs to space so that a space ship can bring them to Nauvis for research.
  • Build a small rocket fuel production line as it is the only out of three items which cannot be recycled from scrap.
Essential Products Producing rocket fuel in an acceptable amount.

Step 5: Prepare for Long-Term Goals

  • Reserach Mech Armor, Personal Battery MK3, and Personal Roboport MK2 for enhanced mobility and automation capabilities.
  • Scale up production of modules. Start with quality modules to gain as many higher quality items as possible.
  • Plan for interplanetary exports by scaling up production of modules, beacons, and advanced circuits.
Crafting higher quality Quality modules

Summary

By following these steps, you’ll establish a solid foundation on Fulgora, ensuring your base is well-prepared to thrive in this challenging environment.

Next steps would be to establish a better recycling setup. For example recycle with quality modules to get higher quality items. Start with quality modules and then scale up to the others ones as well.

Bring in more scrap from other islands by setting up a decent train network.

  • 50 Roboports
  • 400 Construction robots
  • 400 Logistic robots
  • 100 Passive provider chests (red)
  • 50 Yellow, Blue, Purple (Storage-, Requester-, Active-) logistic chests
  • 100 Lamps
  • 200 Substations
  • 200 Accumulators
  • 20 Offshore pumps
  • (100 Electric mining drills) not needed better bring
  • 80 Big Mining Drills
  • 1 Cargo landing hub
  • 2,000 transport belts (Turbo (green))
  • 250 Underground belts
  • 100 Splitters
  • 200 Underground pipes
  • 200 Pipes
  • 50 Pumps
  • 200 Bulk-inserters (green)
  • 100 Long-handed-inserters (red)
  • 50 Storage tanks
  • 100 Assemblers (MK3 green)
  • 50 Chemical Plants
  • 50 Electronic furnaces
  • 40 Beacons
  • 200 MK2 Modules for each Speed, Efficiency, Production, Quality
  • 50 Radar
  • 600 Processing units (blue chips)
  • 1,000 Advanced circuits (red chips)
  • 200 Light density structures
  • 200 Rocket fuel
  • 400 Electric engines

Some Screenshots from Fulgora

Fulgora Quality Module Production Recycling and Sorting into chest Recycling and Sorting into chest with quality modules A good start base to produce all needed materials.