Industrial Alchemy: Real Ores & Chemistry — 0.4.0

Industrial Alchemy is a Factorio 2.0 full-overhaul alpha that rebuilds the vanilla production fantasy around real ores, beneficiation, industrial chemistry, metallurgy, petrochemistry, gases, catalysts, and purpose-built process machines.

This is not intended to be a lightweight additive side-chain mod. The long-term goal is a proper production overhaul where vanilla plates, circuits, chemicals, intermediates, and science are increasingly replaced by readable real-world industrial routes.

What is in 0.4.0?

0.4.0 is the first Mod Portal release candidate for the current overhaul foundation. It focuses on making the package look and behave like a real public alpha release rather than an internal patch chain.

• Clean Mod Portal metadata and description.
• Root thumbnail.png for the portal listing.
• Updated README, credits, attribution, dependency notes, and release notes.
• First-hour route gate covering burner power, crusher bootstrap, primitive plates, early components, electronic circuits, lab, automation science, Automation, and assembling-machine-1.
• Native external asset metadata gates for Angel, Py, and Artisanal Reskins icon/entity references.
• No silent graphics fallbacks.
• No new systems added on top of the 0.3.112 release-candidate baseline.

Gameplay identity

The current alpha focuses on a readable starter-to-midgame industrial spine:

• field-grade starter ore handling,
• named mineral ores such as hematite and chalcopyrite,
• crushing and dry concentration,
• wet ore processing,
• primitive plate bootstrap,
• industrial components and early electronics,
• inorganic chemistry,
• hydrometallurgy,
• gas processing,
• petrochemistry,
• ceramics and refractory materials,
• advanced process machines,
• rare earths, precious metals, and nuclear chemistry foundations.

Graphics policy

Industrial Alchemy intentionally depends on curated graphics packs rather than silently substituting placeholder art.

Required graphics dependencies include Angel's graphics packs, selected Py graphics packs, and Artisanal Reskins standalone asset packs. The mod references those assets as hard dependencies and does not bundle or edit them.

The only bundled third-party derivatives are the Unused Renders crushed ore / starter concentrate icon family, credited under CC BY 4.0 in the included attribution files.

Alpha warning

This is a public alpha foundation. The early route is deliberately guarded, but overall balance and late progression are not final. New saves are recommended for testing.