Manual Installation Process for SML, Bootstrapper, and Mods

We highly suggest you follow the directions here to use mods and SML instead, since it vastly simplifies the process of installing, testing, and using mods.

If you’re a mod developer, you should still strongly consider using the launcher. You need to change Configs to development to handle installing SML and the bootstrapper for you.

Installing Mods

If you don’t want to use the Launcher for some reason, or you are a mod maker and want to test your mod without it, continue reading below for instructions.

Installing Bootstrapper

Visit SMR/bootstrap-versions to find the bootstrapper version you want to use (usually the latest) and download it.

After that you just need to copy the xinput1_3.dll and the msdia140.dll to <game root>/FactoryGame/Binaries/Win64/

Installing SML

Now that you have installed the bootstrapper, you need to download a version of SML compatible with that bootstrapper version and with your game from SMR.

Once you’re on the GitHub releases page for the bootstrapper, download the file UE4-SML-Win64-Shipping.dll as well as the SML.pak and save it into the <game root>/loaders folder. As a player, you do not need any of the other files from the download page, only the .dll and .pak file.

If the folder doesn’t exist, just create it or start the game with the installed bootstrapper version once.

Installing Your Mod of Choice

On SMR, navigate to your desired mod’s page, click on versions in the upper right left corner and then click download on your desired version. Usually this will be the top version in the list.

Always check to make sure that the SML Version column for the version you choose matches the version of SML you have installed. You can attempt to install the mod with mismatched versions, but most of the time, it won’t work.

Now just copy the downloaded .smod/.zip file into <game root>/mods.

If the folder doesn’t exist, just create it or start the game with bootstrapper and SML installed once.

Installing "Raw" or WIP mods

If you don’t have a .smod/.zip of the mod and the proper data.json file you still can use them.

Just place the .pak, .dll and .pdb files if you need them into the mods folder and start the game with the SML config setting developmentMode enabled.

SML wont be able to handle dependencies!

That means if your mod has other mods as dependencies, we can’t be sure it will be loaded after the dependencies. This is another reason to use the launcher instead. But you can try to name your files so its name comes after the name of the dependencies if the mod list is sorted after names.

If you need to know how to enable developmentMode, please refer to the SML Configuration Page.

Installing mods on Linux (Steam) as a player - SML version 2.2.1

THIS IS UNSUPPORTED → NO SUPPORT SHOULD BE EXPECTED FOR ANYONE ATTEMPTING THIS.

  1. cd <game root>/FactoryGame/Binaries/Win64

  2. Navigate to https://github.com/satisfactorymodding/SatisfactoryModBootstrapper/releases/latest1 and download into the ./Win64 folder:

  3. . msdia140.dll

  4. . xinput1_3.dll

  5. mkdir -p <game root>/loaders && cd <game root>/loaders

  6. Navigate to https://github.com/satisfactorymodding/SatisfactoryModLoader/releases/latest2 and download into the ./loaders folder:

  7. . SML.pak

  8. . UE4-SML-Win64-Shipping.dll

  9. mkdir -p <game root/mods

  10. For each mod you want to install:

  11. . First navigate to its page on https://ficsit.app, and go to Versions tab.

  12. . Then download the version matching your SML version (step 4) into <game root>/mods3.

1: 22.07.2020 this worked for this specific version. 2: 22.07.2020 this worked for this specific version. 3: This does not account for any mod-dependencies resolving performed by SMM.


When launching the game via Steam, the following instructions (taken from here) are necessary:

  1. Right-click Satisfactory in your Steam Library

  2. Open Properties

  3. Click Set Launch Options…​ button

  4. Enter the following string into the text field and save: WINEDLLOVERRIDES="msdia140.dll,xinput1_3.dll=n,b" %command%

If you want to restore the game to its vanilla glory, (at the time of this writing it was enough to) re-name/move the <game root>/loaders folder!