With the 1.0 release of Satisfactory comes the first “true” version of the annual FICSMAS event. The inaugural rendition came in December of 2020, right at the time I’d just bought the game… which made for a slightly odd first impression, indeed. The developers tinkered with it a bit once or twice since then but mostly it was just a low-priority side-project amusement for the team.

Now, though, it’s fully fleshed out and polished to a higher sheen. Let’s get into it.

Starting on December 1st you gain access to a “find the number” puzzle at the Hub. This is an advent calendar which provides various goodies, including parts required to access event-related research at the MAM, unlocked each calendar day until the 25th. Also, as you look around the game world you’ll notice neatly-wrapped gifts parachuting down from the sky. (The provenance of these gifts is left as a mental exercise for the player.)

In fact, many things about this event fall into the “don’t overthink this” category. (We’ll get to one of those in a moment.) Pick up these airdropped gift bundles to amass the raw materials (gifts) needed to craft holiday stuff. (ADA will give you sass about all of this, by the way. All of it.) Candy canes, ornaments, a whole range of holiday-themed objects will come out of the various machinery you’ll need to build.

Speaking of machinery, once you’re far enough into December (there are parts of the event gated behind particular days on the advent calendar puzzle thing) you gain access to the “gift tree” buildable… machine? Object? Mysterious piece of hyper-advanced technology? It’s hard to say, and when you unlock it the game makes an actual point of lampshading how weird this thing is:

I mean. It’s a holiday tree that generates gifts, complete with a port for conveyor belt connection. Don’t think about it. Just build and belt up a bunch of them since you’ll need their output to properly automate your event goodies.

An interesting side-effect of building a bunch of gift-making trees is that after a certain point the airdropped presents stop coming. I suppose it’s a way to cut down on clutter, since they’d just start piling up due to the player no longer needing to grub around on the ground for them as raw materials for production. It’s kind of sad, though, because they’re an entertaining sight. And this year they added a sparkly “light pillar” indicator above each landed present to aid in locating them. No more of that for the rest of the event? Sigh.

At any rate: As of this writing it’s the 8th of December and I’ve automated all the ornaments. The red, the blue, the… iron and the copper, plus the “ornament bundle”. (Again, don’t think about it.) Today is when we all received the capability to make both kinds of snow machine as well, and I’m looking forward to incorporating them into the overall design.

So far, so good, really… but there’s plenty of work yet to do so the “big tree” can look properly festive.

Hopefully there are more surprises yet to unwrap this year!