Dimensional Depot & Mercer Spheres: The Complete Satisfactory 1.0 Guide

🎯 The core idea

The Dimensional Depot is a shared, unlimited-range storage network you unlock through the MAM — upload items to it from anywhere, build directly from its contents, and pull items back out into your inventory while exploring, all without walking back to base.

• free costs nothing
• cheap small cost
• setup needs preparation
• grind pays off slowly
• skip the thing to stop doing

What the Dimensional Depot actually does

Every Dimensional Depot Uploader you place feeds one shared storage pool. Drop items on a belt into an Uploader and, provided there's free space, they leave your factory and land in that pool instantly — accessible from any other Uploader, from the Build Gun, and from Crafting Benches anywhere on the map. The reverse works too: open a Depot Uploader's inventory panel and you can pull items out manually, which is exactly what saves a trip home after looting a crashed drop pod like the one above — grab what you need from storage instead of carrying it back on foot.

In multiplayer the depot pool is shared across every player, so it doubles as free-form central storage for a whole team.

Unlocking and placing your first Uploader

1. Research "Dimensional Depot" in the MAM cheapIt sits in the Alien Technology research chain and costs 1 Mercer Sphere + 11 SAM Fluctuators to unlock — the only thing gating it is finding a single Mercer Sphere. 0:43
2. Build the Dimensional Depot Uploader cheap1 Mercer Sphere, 10 SAM Fluctuators, 10 Modular Frames and 100 Wire per building. SAM Fluctuators must be crafted manually until you unlock Manufacturers, so budget the time. 1:03

Upload speed, capacity and what it costs to upgrade

A single Uploader starts at 15 items/min and that rate doubles with each of four speed research tiers: 15 → 30 → 60 → 120 → 240 items/min. Storage capacity upgrades separately, adding one extra stack per tier (1 stack at first, up to 5 stacks fully upgraded). Both research lines are priced in Mercer Spheres and SAM Fluctuators:

Maxing out both the speed and capacity trees costs 92 Mercer Spheres between them, which lines up with the video's estimate. Add the Manual Uploader feature (below) and the full Dimensional Depot tech tree costs roughly 97 Mercer Spheres in total — against a hard world cap of 298 Spheres, so there's comfortable room to max everything and still have spares for other alien tech.

The video says a single Uploader can move at most 240 items/min once fully upgraded — if you need more throughput than that for one item, place a second dedicated Uploader for it rather than waiting on a fifth speed tier that doesn't exist.

The Manual Uploader: taking storage with you

The Manual Uploader lets you drag items from your inventory straight into the Depot, and pull them back out, from a small five-slot buffer — no belt required. It's what makes exploring practical: sink loot from a crashed pod on the spot, or grab spare Modular Frames from storage before a building run, all from the field.

1. Unlock the Manual Uploader grindCosts 3 Mercer Spheres and 17 Computers in every source we checked, but the two we compared disagree on the SAM Fluctuator cost — the video states 29, the wiki's cost table implies 47 (matching the tier-1 speed/capacity upgrade cost). Bring extra Fluctuators and you won't be caught short either way. 3:26

You'll need at least one Dimensional Depot Uploader already built and fed before the Manual Uploader interface unlocks — it isn't available from a bare MAM unlock alone.

What's actually worth storing

Store anything you need repeatedly for crafting or building — not raw materials that are just passing through on their way to becoming something else. The video's rule of thumb: skip ores, empty canisters and DNA Capsules (they're transitional or sink-only), skip Space Elevator parts once that line is hooked up directly, and never park stacks of radioactive material in the Depot unless you're geared for it.

A dedicated outpost feed like this is the cleanest use case: instead of hauling ore home, upload it straight into the shared pool from wherever you're mining. Realistic budgets from the video: about 50 dedicated Uploaders for finished parts and fuels (accounting for tier upgrades like Packaged Fuel → Packaged Turbofuel → Packaged Ionized Fuel replacing each other over a save), another 12 or so for ammunition types, and 2-4x that for cheap, fast-consumed items like Concrete, Iron Plates, Rods and Screws — roughly 100 Uploaders and 100 Mercer Spheres in practice, leaving the other ~200 Spheres for everything else.

Building and crafting straight from the Depot

Depot contents are usable directly at the Build Gun and at Crafting Benches — you don't have to move anything into your personal inventory first. The video calls out that build-menu resources pulled from the Depot render in a distinct light-purple tint so you can tell at a glance whether you're spending Depot stock or carrying it yourself; treat that as a video-only visual cue since the wiki page for the Uploader building doesn't document HUD colors. You can also toggle whether building draws from your inventory first or the Depot first — the video recommends leaving inventory-first on, so a full inventory doesn't force you to trash items when you pick up a resource node you didn't need.

Where to actually place your Uploaders

1. Stack an Uploader on every storage container cheapSnap a Dimensional Depot Uploader above existing Storage Containers with a conveyor lift between them — instant Depot access anywhere you already keep a central stash. 7:17
2. Route factory overflow through the Depot before the sink freeSend excess production to a Depot Uploader first; only what doesn't fit continues on to the AWESOME Sink. You bank the surplus instead of burning it for free coupons. 7:37

1. Build a dedicated Depot array for high-use items setupSplit a bulk line — the video's example is 1,200 Concrete/min — across five Uploaders, since each Uploader caps at 240 items/min once fully upgraded. Five parallel Uploaders on one item soak the whole line. 8:19

1. Tap a sushi belt with Smart Splitters as a last resort cheapSet a Smart Splitter's third output to a specific item type and route it into a Depot Uploader before the belt reaches the sink. Slower than a dedicated array — a 480/min sushi line only delivers roughly half that to the Depot — but needs no extra belts. 9:22

How this guide was fact-checked

Upload speed (15/min base, doubling to 240/min across four tiers), the five-stack capacity ceiling, the 298-Mercer-Sphere world total, and the roughly 97-Sphere total tree cost were all cross-checked against the Dimensional Depot Uploader page on satisfactory.wiki.gg (fetched 2026-08-22) and matched the video within rounding. One number did not match: the video states the Manual Uploader costs 29 SAM Fluctuators, while the wiki's cost table implies 47 for that tier — both are reported above rather than silently picking one. The claim that Depot-sourced build resources render in a distinct purple tint could not be checked against the wiki, since that page documents the Uploader building rather than UI/HUD behavior, so it's flagged as video-only.

What this guide doesn't answer

The source video doesn't cover where to actually find Mercer Spheres in the world — it treats their collection as a prerequisite already handled. If you need Mercer Sphere farming routes and locations, that's a separate topic (the Notion research notes point to a companion video by Jack Blade covering exactly that). This guide also doesn't cover whether the Dimensional Depot Uploader itself draws power, since neither the video nor the wiki page states a power requirement.