Satisfactory's first major update in a year brings back rain, adds fuel trucks and overhauls vehicle pathfinding, but Steam Deck players should approach with caution

It's been a long, dry year since Satisfactory last received a major update. Version 1.1 of Coffee Stain's hugely popular factory sim launched almost exactly twelve months ago, bringing proper controller support, an improved photo mode, better resource transportation, and more. Yet outside of a few hotfixes, that's been it for fans of building enormously convoluted assembly lines.

Now though, Coffee Stain is back. Update 1.2 is even more substantial than 1.1, adding one major new feature, one major returning feature, and a massive overhaul to an existing system.

The headline addition is rain, which was already added to Satisfactory once with Update 6 during early access. However, Coffee Stain has folded in a new, more advanced rain system that will now give buildings and characters a proper wet look. According to Coffee Stain, rain will also be occluded by "most" buildings, meaning you should see effects clipping through your factory walls and ceilings far less often.

As for new stuff, 1.2 adds fluid stations and fluid trucks, giving players an alternative to pipes for transporting liquids across your factory. These come bundled with a vehicle pathing system that has been "completely remade from the ground up". This basically lets players build vehicle paths in the same way they'd build railways, plotting out the route and then plonking the vehicle on top of it.

Other additions include a selfie mode in photo mode, a buildable Portaloo that acts as spawn point, a T-junction piece for pipelines, and a crossbeam.

It's a sizeable update. But there's one thing to be wary of if you play Satisfactory on a Steam Deck: Other Steam Deck players have reported that the new weather effects cause significant slowdown on the device. Fortunately, the effects can be adjusted or switched off entirely.

If you're yet to check out Satisfactory—which you absolutely should as it's one of the best games on PC, as explained by Jonathan Bolding in PC Gamer's Satisfactory Review —it's currently on a 30% discount at $28 (£25.45). The discount ends tomorrow.