Tellurium FAQ

What does Tellurium add?

A small copper-byproduct chain: refinery residue becomes tellurium dioxide, then optical crystals or tellurium metal. Metal makes tellurium copper. Installing Bismuth adds bismuth telluride and thermoelectric components. With compatible mods, tellurium also improves synthetic rubber yield, supplies optical instruments and goes into power regulators. Factorio 2.1 is required.

What are the basic refining recipes?

These are the base recipes before optional integrations and productivity bonuses. Quantities of acid and water are fluid units.

Tellurium processing unlocks recovery, extraction, reduction and copper alloying. Tellurium optics unlocks crystals. Bismuth adds Tellurium thermoelectrics. These are the only two or three Tellurium technologies, depending on whether Bismuth is installed. Optional recipes use an existing Tellurium or provider research unlock; their ingredients enforce access to the other production chain. Tellurium does not add new prerequisites to broad upstream polymer, gold or atmosphere technologies.

With Space Age, thermoelectric assembly remains available in assemblers and can also be crafted in an electromagnetic plant. Crystal growth remains available in chemical plants and can also be crafted in a cryogenic plant. These are alternate machines for the existing recipes.

Where is the tellurium ore?

There is no new ore patch. Select the dedicated copper-recovery recipe in a chemical plant. Ordinary copper smelting remains available and does not produce tellurium residue.

How rare is it?

The baseline recovery recipe consumes 20 copper ore and produces 20 copper plates, plus a 10% chance of one residue. Five residue make one dioxide: an average of 1,000 ore per dioxide before refining productivity. Chance means individual batches can take more or less time. A speed-one chemical plant takes 8 seconds per batch, averaging 6 minutes 40 seconds for five residue.

Why did coal reduction disappear?

When supported coke, charcoal or graphite production is enabled and reachable in the technology tree, Tellurium uses that processed carbon instead. If multiple processed reductants are supported, each has a recipe. Coal is only the fallback when no supported processed route is active. Upstream settings are respected. Other materials follow the same rule: an enabled, reachable earlier source is preferred over optional enrichment or a late route that would unnecessarily gate the branch.

Which vanilla recipes change?

• Substation: +1 tellurium copper.
• Beacon: +2 tellurium copper.
• Laser turret: +1 tellurium-dioxide crystal.
• Vanilla satellite, where applicable: +4 crystals.
• With Bismuth, speed module 3 and personal laser defense: +2 thermoelectric components each.

Other ingredients are preserved. Personal laser defense already consumes laser turrets, so no extra direct crystal requirement is added. Power switches, generic circuits and science recipes remain outside the intended consumer set.

What does tellurium-assisted rubber do?

With BrimStuff, the optional synthetic-rubber recipe produces a third more rubber: four instead of three per ordinary batch. It preserves petroleum gas, sulfur, toluene, waste, processing time and machine category. Add one tellurium metal as a reusable charge: each batch returns it with 99% probability, averaging one lost charge per 100 batches. Loop the returned metal back to the input and provide replacement charges. Returned tellurium cannot gain productivity. This is a gameplay abstraction of rubber additives, not an industrial mass balance. It uses the existing polymer research and requires the tellurium material when selected; it does not rewrite the upstream polymer technology. Ordinary rubber, belts and seals stay available without tellurium.

Do I need every listed integration?

No. Bismuth is recommended for the thermoelectric branch, so Factorio offers it during installation; you can deselect it. All other integrations are optional. Choose the mods you want to play.

What changes with other mods?

The description lists the supported families. Here are the recipe changes for each one; they only apply when a suitable Factorio 2.1 version is installed.

Crushing Industry

Dedicated crushed-copper recovery preserves the effective plate yield. At the inspected defaults, 30 crushed copper, 20 sulfuric acid and 50 water produce 30 copper plates and a 9.5% chance of residue in 8 seconds. The probability accounts for crushing's extra output and returned raw ore. Ordinary crusher recipes gain no tellurium output.

Alloy Smelting and Wood Industry

Tellurium copper and bismuth telluride use existing kiln categories. Coke and charcoal provide processed-carbon reduction and replace the coal fallback. When separate kilns are disabled, Alloy Smelting's converted furnaces provide its solid kiln category. Finished thermoelectric components are assembled rather than smelted.

Lignumis adds no direct peat/lumber reduction; its charcoal connection is through Wood Industry. Tellurium does not gate its starting machines.

pHactorio and chemistry integrations

Existing hydrochloric acid can improve extraction. pHactorio's sodium hydroxide and electrolysis plant enable an alternative reduction route; its plant does not require tellurium to build. Other supported chemistry providers can supply peroxide, hydrogen or argon for additional refining/alloying routes. Peroxide extraction uses three residue per dioxide, versus four for chloride extraction and five for basic extraction: 25% less residue than chloride and 40% less than the basic route, at the cost of five peroxide. Its only fluids are ten sulfuric acid and five hydrogen peroxide; there is no separate water input, so ordinary chemical plants can run it. It unlocks through the existing peroxide production technology. A late alternative does not replace the early core chain.

Alternative refining and argon alloying

Argon gives 20% more bismuth telluride than the ordinary five-output recipe. Hydrogen and electrolytic reduction offer alternatives to solid carbon. Each route appears only when its materials and required machines are available; the ordinary reachable route remains available when an optional late route is not.

Brevven originals and maintained legacy mods

Graphite supplies a reductant; Foundry supplies alloying machines; Tin supplies solder; Aluminum, Zirconium and Silicon supply candidate ceramics. Chlorine and Noble Metals supply refining connections. Lead, Tungsten and Titanium do not force unrelated new tellurium ingredients. Legacy providers that exclude Space Age remain separate profiles; their compatibility does not imply Space Age support.

Timeken: solder, heatsinks and satellite bodies

Available solder and substrate materials replace the basic copper-cable/stone-brick formulation in the standard thermoelectric recipe. Their production technologies become prerequisites. Tantalite heatsinks or If Nickel cooling fans fit into that same recipe, keep the solder requirement, and raise output from four to six components. There is no equally productive cheap fallback alongside it.

With IntermediatesForYou, the satellite's four-crystal requirement moves into its satellite body. The body technology requires Tellurium optics, and the satellite does not pay the same crystal cost twice.

Planetfall/Ashier: instruments, regulators and rubber

• Lasing Around: scanners and spectroscopes are made in batches of twenty using one optical crystal. All other ingredients and crafting time per instrument stay the same. Shared laser emitters keep their upstream ingredients; laser turrets retain their direct crystal cost.
• Them Thar Hills: adds a tellurium-recovery variant of trace gold from copper, retaining its existing products and taking 25% longer. It also uses one tellurium copper per batch of ten HV power regulators. Other costs and crafting time per regulator stay the same. Equipment that consumes those regulators does not also get a direct alloy charge.
• If Nickel: cooling fans can improve thermoelectric assembly, as described above.
• BrimStuff: adds the optional rubber process described above: a third more rubber, with a 99% chance of returning its tellurium charge each batch.

These integrations preserve existing brass, waste and slag. Bypassed recipes keep their upstream behavior.

Bismuth

Bismuth activates the bismuth-telluride and thermoelectric-component chain. Its glass is preferred for optical crystal growth when it has a suitable production route.

Krastorio 2 and K2 Spaced Out

The existing copper-enrichment recipe gains rare tellurium residue and takes 25% longer, preserving enriched copper, dirty water and other mods’ byproducts. There is no separate Tellurium enrichment recipe; K2's native enrichment processing gate remains in place. Hydrogen and glass can integrate with refinement and thermal assembly. With Bismuth, research servers require four thermoelectric components and quantum computers require eight. Their technologies gain the thermoelectrics prerequisite. Generic AI cores are unchanged. K2 Spaced Out is a separate test profile.

Space Age

Nauvis recovery remains available. Dedicated Vulcanus melting recipes provide residue while retaining existing molten-metal outputs and surface restrictions. A foundry can cast tellurium copper. Fulgora receives a dedicated scrap-recovery option after Recycling; it is not tied to a late cryogenic technology. The ore-melting and lava variants take 25% longer than their source recipes. Ore-based recovery keeps the baseline average of 0.005 residue per raw copper ore equivalent, including when Crushing Industry supplies crushed ore. Lava recovery averages 0.125 residue per 250 molten copper produced.

Fulgora's dedicated recipe consumes 20 scrap, 20 sulfuric acid and 50 water for 4 copper plates and a 10% chance of one residue in 8 seconds. It preserves the scrap recipe's surface restrictions. Foundry alloying consumes 1 tellurium metal and 200 molten copper for 20 tellurium copper in 8 seconds. Other planets can import tellurium products.

Can I add this to an existing save?

No map regeneration is needed because no resources are placed. Already researched Tellurium technologies refresh their recipe unlocks when the mod configuration changes. Back up a save before changing any mod set. Removing content mods can remove their items from a save.

Can I bypass a recipe change?

Use the startup setting for bypassed recipes, with comma-separated internal host recipe names. The modified-recipe diagnostic setting helps identify names. A bypass leaves the named host recipe's ingredients, outputs and unlocks intact; it does not alter unrelated consumer recipes or the other mod's own recipe edits.

Does productivity create infinite tellurium?

Rare residue at the source is excluded from productivity. Material refining can benefit from productivity where supported. Recovery and refining are excluded from automatic reverse recycling so copper, scrap and tellurium cannot be repeatedly converted into additional trace residue. Host recipes retain their own byproducts and exclusions.

How does glass integration work?

The existing crystal recipe uses 1 tellurium dioxide + 20 water + 2 bismuth glass to make 4 crystals in 12 seconds when bismuth glass has a suitable production route. Otherwise it uses 2 ordinary glass when available; without either, the base dioxide-and-water recipe remains. Only one crystal recipe exists. Its existing optics technology requires the selected glass production technology. Recycling, matter conversion and sources downstream of Tellurium optics do not qualify. The glass represents supporting optical material in the simplified game recipe, not a claim that pure TeO2 crystals are synthesized from ordinary glass.