How to Build a Portable Miner in Satisfactory

Satisfactory is the new factory building game from the video game studio behind Goat Simulator. In this game, players find themselves on an alien planet working as engineers for a company called FICSIT. It’s your job to harvest the planet’s resources and automate the production of material goods. One of the first tools you will need to build is a Portable Miner. In this guide, we will show you how to build a Portable Miner in Satisfactory.

How to Build a Portable Miner in Satisfactory

Portable Miners are pieces of equipment that can be placed on resource nodes to harvest ore. These miners are also a requirement for building the more powerful Miner Mk. 1 and subsequent builds. To start the game, you will need to build a few of these, so you don’t have to manually mine for ore with your hands. 

Building a Portable Miner requires first making an Equipment Bench. You can do this when you first upgrade your hub. Combine Iron Plates and Iron Rods to create the Portable Miner from the Equipment Bench. After doing that, you can now equip and use the Miner to automatically harvest ore. Press the V key to scan for resources nearby.

Head to the nearest resource and click on the portable Miner to equip it and place it somewhere on the ore. If it’s your first time at a specific resource node, you need to manually mine part of the node to make room for the Miner, or you will be an “Encroaching Others Clearance” error.

You can place multiple Portable Miners on the same node, and you can also pick them up whenever you want. Eventually, you will want to pick these up and use them to create a Miner Mk. 1 and a Smelter to automate the ore mining and ingot creation process. That should be everything you need to know for how to build a Portal Miner in Satisfactory.