Satisfactory Power Slugs and Power Shards

Power Slugs are glowing creatures you find around the map. You turn them into Power Shards, and Power Shards let you overclock a machine so it runs faster than normal. This guide covers what to unlock first, how to find slugs, and how to spend shards.

The three slugs

There are three colours, and the rarer the slug, the more shards it makes:

Slugs sit still and glow, so they're easiest to spot at night. Blue slugs are the most common and purple the rarest.

Unlock the research first

You can't turn a slug into a shard until you've researched it. It all happens in the MAM, under the Power Slugs research:

1. Research Blue Power Slugs. It uses up one blue slug, so pick one up first. It unlocks the shard recipe for blue slugs.
2. Research Slug Scanning so the Object Scanner can look for slugs.
3. Research the yellow and purple slugs once you have one of each. Each unlocks its matching recipe.
4. Research Overclock Production. It costs one Power Shard, so make one first. It unlocks overclocking.

What each step costs can change with updates, so go by the numbers on the research screen in your game.

Turn slugs into shards

Shards are made in a Constructor: put a slug in and pick the matching recipe. It makes 1, 2 or 5 shards from a blue, yellow or purple slug. You can also craft them by hand at the Craft Bench.

Find slugs

Slugs are scattered across the map. Look for the glow as you explore, especially at night.

For a faster way, use the Object Scanner:

1. Finish the Slug Scanning research above.
2. Equip the Object Scanner.
3. Open its menu and choose a blue, yellow or purple slug, or slugs of any colour.
4. Walk about. The scanner blinks in the slug's colour when one is in range, and beeps faster as you get closer.

We don't list slug locations here, because the scanner finds them faster than a list can.

Overclock a machine

1. Open the machine (E by default) and find its clock speed panel.
2. Put Power Shards in its slots. Each shard raises the highest speed you can set by 50 percentage points, and a machine takes up to three, so the limit is 250 percent.
3. Set the speed you want, anywhere from 1 to 250 percent. Running a machine below 100 percent needs no shards.

What it costs in power

Overclocking isn't free. A machine draws more power as you push it, and the cost rises faster than the speed does. The game works it out as the machine's normal power multiplied by its clock speed (as a fraction, so 1.5 for 150 percent) raised to the power of 1.321928. So a machine at 150 percent draws about 171 percent of its normal power, and at 250 percent about 336 percent.

Somersloops are different

A Somersloop is a separate item you find in the world, used to amplify a machine's production. It isn't a slug and doesn't make shards.

On your server

Everything here works the same on a dedicated server. The Factory Stats tab in your dashboard uses each machine's clock speed when it works out your factory's output and power: see Satisfactory Factory Stats, Planner and Map. If you haven't added your server in the game yet, start with How to make a Satisfactory server.

Checked against Satisfactory 1.2 in October 2026.