Neodymium FAQ

What does Neodymium add?

A rare-earth chain from stone to magnets: wash stone for heavy mineral sand, sort out the monazite, leach it, and separate the neodymium in separator banks. Magnets go into motors, belts and machines. Cerium and lanthanum come with every magnet and feed optional, better recipes. Later tiers add dysprosium for high-temperature magnets, a magnetic separator for iron, and direct-drive wind turbines.

Factorio 2.1.20 or later in the 2.1 series is required. Space Age and all other mods are optional.

Do I need a new ore patch?

No. The chain starts from stone and water. With Krastorio 2, AAI Industry or crushing-industry, sand replaces the stone. Krastorio 2's rare-metal enrichment also yields a little monazite, and Gallium's purified ash can be leached straight into monazite liquor.

What are the basic recipes?

Standalone recipes before productivity, at crafting speed 1. Integrations may change the reagents.

The mineral spiral has crafting speed 4.

How do I lay out the separator hall?

Per magnet per second, you need:
- a fifth of a mineral spiral;
- one rough-cut bank and 0.4 neodymium-cut banks (5 rough-cut banks to 2 neodymium-cut banks);
- about four chemical plants;
- one and a third assembler 2 for the magnets.

The inputs are about 4 stone, 0.8 iron plate, 2.35 sulfuric acid and 0.7 petroleum gas, and you get 0.6 light oxide and 0.2 iron ore back.

Pipe the neodymium cut's monazite liquor back into the rough-cut input. That reflux is part of the design: without it half of your neodymium is lost. If the reflux backs up, the rough cut is starved of fresh liquor or the neodymium cut is out of extractant.

Which recipes need magnets?

Only machines researched after Neodymium processing. Their research gains Neodymium processing as a prerequisite, so the magnet is always available when the recipe unlocks.

Space Exploration adds its spaceship console, space telescopes, meteor defence and fluid burner generator. Recipes are always changed from the pack's final version, so other mods' ingredients stay.

What are the "much better" magnet recipes?

Machines you get before Neodymium processing keep their normal recipe. After the Magnet motors research, each also gets an optional magnet recipe with reduced materials plus magnets. Pumps keep one engine per pump, and locomotives keep half their engines. In 0.1.4, pumps and fast inserters share a magnet across two outputs; offshore pumps share one across three. Other materials and crafting time scale with the batch. Examples from the base game:

Pumpjacks and bulk inserters get one too, and so do the machines of the family mods: Cadmium's fume scrubber, Gallium's crystal puller, precision slicer and ashing kiln, and Phosphorus's conversion kiln. Recycling these machines gives the normal recipe's ingredients back, never magnets.

What happens with Manganese and Bismuth?

Bismanol is the rare-earth-free magnet: about half as strong, so it takes two for each neodymium magnet. With trikop's Manganese and Bismuth, mining drills, pumpjacks, pumps, offshore pumps and fast inserters get their cheaper recipe with bismanol instead of neodymium magnets, after the Bismanol motors research. Electric engines, belts, locomotives and the other required machines still need neodymium magnets.

The magnetic separator is then built with 10 mangalloy instead of 10 steel: manganese steel is non-magnetic and hardens under impact, so it lines the drums.

What is the Neodymium motor?

In packs with a motor part (If I Had A Nickel's motor, or AAI Industry's electric motor, which Space Exploration brings and trikop's bismanol goes into), the magnet goes into a new part: the Neodymium motor. The ingredients of two normal motors, without the bismanol, plus one magnet make three.

It replaces the normal motor in every recipe researched after Neodymium processing. Earlier recipes (inserters, assemblers, labs, science packs) keep the normal motor, and each gets an alternative recipe that takes the Neodymium motor instead. Bismanol still carries the early game, and the manganese and bismuth it uses have other jobs.

What do I do with the light oxide?

Every magnet brings 0.6 light oxide. Use it before it backs up your hall. None of these recipes is required; each is a better version of something you already make:

At one magnet per second, treated solid fuel alone uses all the light oxide at 6 solid fuel per second.

Some of these depend on your mods:
- Polishing powder only exists when there is something to polish: Tellurium's crystals, BZ's sapphire and silicon wafers, MDbob's wafers or Space Exploration's observation frames. The base game and Space Age have none.
- With BZ Gold, the light oxide stabilises the recipes that make its platinum and palladium catalyst instead (twice the catalyst per precious metal), and Neodymium's own cracking catalyst is not added.

Cerium separation (blue science) splits the light liquor into ceria and lanthanum oxide:
- Ceria treats twice as much solid fuel and makes twice the polishing powder per unit, and rocket fuel with half the light oil. It never adds fuel energy: treated fuel burns exactly like solid fuel, and treatment does not accept productivity modules.
- Lanthanum oxide makes twice the cracking catalyst. With BZ Gold it triples the precious-metal catalyst instead. Packs with nickel also get metal-hydride accumulators.

How do I get dysprosium?

Research Heavy rare earths (red, green, blue and yellow science). The heavy cut takes neodymium liquor and splits off a little heavy liquor; the dysprosium cut concentrates it. Both return stripped neodymium liquor, which still makes oxide but can't be stripped again.

That gives one dysprosium oxide per 1,000 neodymium liquor, the liquor of about 200 magnets. Ten magnets and one dysprosium oxide make ten high-temperature magnets. With Gallium installed, the recipe adds gallium and needs half the dysprosium: 20 magnets, 1 dysprosium oxide and 1 gallium make 20. A spidertron's ten take the heavy cut of about 200 seconds of a one-magnet-per-second hall. The heavy tier grows with your neodymium throughput; productivity does not apply to the two heavy cuts.

How does the wind turbine work?

The direct-drive wind turbine is a 5×5 generator that gives a steady 150 kW on Nauvis, day and night, with no fuel. It costs 40 magnets.

Its power follows the air pressure:

Quality raises the power like other generators: an uncommon turbine gives 195 kW on Nauvis. Other mods' planets use their own pressure.

If you don't want wind power, switch off Wind turbines in the startup settings. That removes the turbine, its recipe and its research.

What does Space Age add?

• Vulcanus: magnet casting in the foundry, 1 oxide and 20 molten iron → 7 magnets.
• Fulgora: magnetic scrap sorting in the magnetic separator (10 scrap → 1 salvaged magnet), then magnet recovery in the electromagnetic plant (4 salvaged → 3 magnets). Normal scrap recycling is unchanged.
• Gleba: bio-separation in the biochamber splits monazite liquor with bioflux in one step, replacing both cuts.
• Aquilo: fusion generators need high-temperature magnets.
• The electromagnetic plant can also sort sand.

Does productivity or Quality break the loop?

No. The neodymium cut's reflux is ignored by productivity, so modules can't multiply liquor around the loop. The heavy and dysprosium cuts take no productivity at all. The other chain steps, including the magnets, take productivity and Quality normally. Fuel treatment rejects productivity, and alloyed low density structures have a productivity cap of at most 200%, lowered when a pack's recycling returns require it.

Can I add Neodymium to an existing save?

Yes. If your save has already researched something that now needs Neodymium processing (for example express belts), you get Neodymium processing, and Heavy rare earths where needed, for free. The machines you already built keep working. New ones need magnets, so build a hall soon.

Removing Neodymium from a save removes its machines and items, as with any content mod.

Can I keep a recipe unchanged?

Yes. The startup setting Recipes Neodymium leaves unchanged takes a comma-separated list of exact recipe names. Neodymium adds no magnets to those recipes and makes no optional versions of them. List Neodymium's changes in the log writes every recipe and research change to factorio-current.log.

Which mods does it integrate with?

Neodymium supports these game modes and mod families:

• the base game, and Space Age;
• Cadmium, Tellurium, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Gallium, alone and together;
• Brevven's BZ mods, with and without Space Age;
• Timeken; Planetfall/Ashier; bismuth and manganese (trikop);
• Krastorio 2, Space Exploration, and both together.

Each mod keeps its own dependencies and exclusions. Space Exploration and Space Age are separate configurations.

Why does Neodymium load after the other family mods?

It is the newest of the six. The newest mod owns the links between them, so Cadmium, Tellurium, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Gallium don't need to change when Neodymium is installed.