Factorio Forums

The recent patch which fixed what was apparently a bug that allowed you and agricultural towers to plant trees anywhere on Nauvis was a real bummer. Now you cannot plant trees in deserts or on landfill (not nuclear ground either), which made a pretty and cool niche tech for combating pollution in those massive desert maps or on top of lakes significantly worse. I think it was an unneeded nerf. It was also an interesting, albeit not very good, power generation method.

It would be nice if either the change was reverted, making trees plantable on any nauvis soil by default (or at least on landfill), or an introduction of a "Nauvis overgrowth soil" of sorts, a fertilizer if you will, to make the deserts and landfill fertile. Heck, if you are feeling lazy, make nuclear ground plantable, as a costly and manual way of doing it.

Also would be cool if it were possible to plant trees using bots, but if you think this shouldn't be implented i understand why.

I'd be fine with some kind of Fertilized Soil for Nauvis. IMO, it'd be reasonable to unlock it on Gleba.

I don't think it was a bug, but just one of the stupid game changes made by the developer.
There were some mods that dealt with this, and added fertilizer that could be placed on the ground, but I am not sure they were updated for 2.0 Factorio yet.

This was a really really dumb change in my opinion.

Edit: This mod helps with this. Places normal ground near water, instead of the new Landfill tiles.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/nicefill- ... rom=search

Edit2: Added a request to update the Landfill Painting mod:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LandfillP ... 8a71ad9ade

in fact, we can plant trees in deserts, in real world

Signed up to request this and found this post. Letting us plant on Nauvis desert has many positives.

Potential for a new soil type, or just reverting the patch.
We can terraform practically everything else by the end of the game, why not the desert?
No feels-bad moment like we had on our server when we found out you can plant trees but there's no greenery for miles - nobody wants to move a late game factory
A way to decorate and make 'green' factories, begetting a thousand youtube videos
By the time you unlock the tech, you have likely solved the biter problem, so the pollution reduction wouldn't be OP.
However this would also allow for players to do early-Gleba runs to get the tech and try low-pollution builds if skilled enough.

tldr; patching this removed interesting gameplay

Thanks for your time

+1 for some sort of Nauvis overgrowth soil

you can plant trees in deserts. it's just a few specific tiles (the barren sand ones) that are unplantable.

My nauvis starting area was a huge desert at the start and is now a massive forest

I wanted to suggest something like this too - I would be happy for an artificial soil type for Nauvis trees.

Created an account to say this!

Free the trees! Many of us are trapped in the city and need more trees in our life.

A costly product like an overgrowth soil made with spoilable components from Gleba would be worth it.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

Free the tree. Let Nauvis breathe!

Artificial Tree Soil is now available as a Mod.

NYC wrote: Thu Oct 02, 2025 12:16 am Created an account to say this!

Free the trees! Many of us are trapped in the city and need more trees in our life.

A costly product like an overgrowth soil made with spoilable components from Gleba would be worth it.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

Free the tree. Let Nauvis breathe!

Absolutely agree! +1 for this!

I felt the same disappointment after the patch. I loved greening up barren areas because it made my desert base feel alive. It reminded me of nurturing worlds in other games where creativity mattered as much as efficiency and resource control.

TL;DR

Right now you can't plant trees on landfill. Add a new soil that lets you plant trees anywhere on nauvis

What?

Tree farms on nauvis are restricted to natural soils, and you can't build them on landfill. Not only is this a little annoying when trying to get trees close to pollution sources (seemingly the best way to absorb pollution), it's also annoying when you're tearing up concrete and can't tell whether there will be natural soil or landfill beneath it.

I suggest a new nauvis soil type, Overgrowth Nauvis Soil. This recipe would include normal landfill, fish and biter eggs, possibly other things. It'd let you put your tree farms in former lakes.