Planet Nauvis

Nauvis is where you crash land at the start of the game. It is vaguely similar to Earth in its gravity and its geography. It has no significantly large moons and it is part of a solar system with a handful of other planets and a high concentration of asteroids everywhere, which would help explain your crash landing.

Geography of Nauvis

While Nauvis has significant water bodies like Earth does, it has more land than sea. Days on Nauvis are 7 minutes long, with about 4 minutes of strong sunshine at mid day and around 1 minute of complete darkness at mid night. There are sparse clouds in the sky but it never rains heavily. There are various rivers, lakes, and small seas that are pretty calm. The landscape ranges between dry deserts and wet grasslands, with plain dirt in between. There are hills and valleys that consist of gentle slopes you can even build on or sharp cliffs you can't even walk on (and nothing in between). The landscape is pretty smooth for the most part, but you can run into large rocks often, and more interestingly, you can find patches of concentrated metal deposits and oil wells spread out across the surface.

The flora of Nauvis includes various kinds of grasses, shrubs, and trees. Trees form groups from small clumps to dense forests, and they are found predominantly in the wetter areas. If a tree is cut, it leaves behind a stump that gradually fades away. Trees do not spread on their own but they can be grown at meaningful speeds if you use advanced technology to do so.

The fauna of Nauvis includes striped green fish that slowly wander in the water bodies, and various tiny creatures that do not attract much attention. However, one can also find hives of large insects, often in groups, spread out in several colonies across the world. These insects are often hostile, depending on the rules of the land. Some of them can spit acid. Some larger worm-like ones can borrow into the ground but do not move much. Most of them have large pincers that can wear down even rocks with persistent biting. This trait has lead many to refer to the large insect groups as "the biters".

As you spend time on Nauvis, you are able to significantly modify the landscape by mining the rocks and ores, cutting the trees, fighting the biters, and paving over the ground with stone and concrete. The machines you build often pollute the landscape but how intensely this happens can shape the world. Heavy pollution can cause the trees to wither and die, the water to turn murky, and the biters to get rather cross with you.

Terrain tiles

The terrain can be described using individual square tiles that are about a meter in size. This helps with navigation and also standardization in building placement.

Individual tiles might be areas of grass, areas of sand/desert, or areas of dirt. Grass and sand are almost never adjacent to each other, and they instead have gradients of various dirt types in between. The most sandy dirt is Dirt 1 and the most grassy dirt is Dirt 7 and values in between are mixed accordingly. Meanwhile, the most sparse grass is Grass 4 and the most lush grass is Grass 1. This knowledge can help with navigation. For example, if you know you have mostly sand to the east and mostly grass to the west, the current dirt or grass number under you can give you a sense of where you are in between the two regions.

You can also pave over the terrain with tiles of stone bricks or various kinds of concrete. Read the page on Paved Paths for more about this.

Water tiles you encounter can rarely be shallow water that you can wade through but generally you find moderately deep water or truly deep water, both of which you cannot walk through. The good news is that biters cannot walk through it either, and so water bodies can be used as natural barriers.

You can fill in water bodies one tile at a time with landfill, although this requires a lot of stone.

Cliffs

Cliffs can be found around the world. They usually span across multiple tiles. They can form small walls, long ridges, and even pits or plateaus. Cliffs cannot be crossed unless you are flying, and this makes them natural barriers that can be annoying or useful depending on your strategy. You cannot mine cliffs but they can be collapsed into gentle slopes by using specialized explosives.

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See also:

• Natural Resources
• Mining

External links:

• Official Factorio Wiki: Nauvis