How to Have Robots Pick Up Mass-Dropped Items?

[Rancara]

This seems simple enough, and after searching both these forums, and the web in general, I found some advice that came close to what I need, but not quite. So I'm asking here.

The problem is simple. Every once-in-a-rare-occasion, some inventory-space SNAFU will happen, causing a bajillion items to suddenly litter the ground all around you. If you are out in the open, with nothing important around you, the solution is easy. First free up some inventory space, then just use the deconstruction planner to drag a box around all the dropped stuff, and your robots will rapidly pick it all back up for you.

But what about when you're in the middle of your base? Suddenly, the deconstruction planner becomes a bad idea, because the bots will also tear down all your buildings in the area you dragged.

Currently, here are the options I've found. None of them ideal, each for their own reasons.

1. Hold 'F' and run around through every little nook and cranny, and just hope you don't miss anything.
Reasons it's bad: You'll miss some stuff, and it's time consuming.

2. Use the deconstruction planner, and then rebuild everything in the area that wasn't supposed to be torn down.
Reasons it's bad: Self explanatory, I think.

3. Use the decon. planner, and VERY CAREFULLY drag lots of tiny boxes between all the nooks and crannies of the base, until you've got everything.
Reasons it's bad: Same as method 1. Time consuming, and uncertain. You'll probably miss some stuff. You'll also probably delete something accidentally.

4. Decon. planner again. This time, after hitting Alt+D, drop the red box into your inventory, like a blueprint. Right-Click it to open up its options, then manually blacklist EVERY SINGLE BUILDING in the area. Also make sure the 'Tiles' tab is set to 'Never'. If you did this right, your bots should only pick up the dropped items, and ignore everything else, since it's all blacklisted.

The source that I got this tip from actually said to use the 'Only pick up items on ground' option. But that option does not exist. I looked VERY carefully. There is no such one-click-solution option in the Decon planner. You MUST manually blacklist everything. You also cannot simply whitelist the dropped items, because items are not available to choose. The planner only lets you choose constructable objects (buildings), tiles (like landfill), or removable terrain features (like trees) to whitelist or blacklist.

Reasons it's bad:
- Tedious and time consuming to manually blacklist everything in the area.
- You ARE going to miss something you needed to blacklist, and wind up deconstructing it.


So, with all of that in mind, my question is simple. What is the easy way to tell my bots to pick up all the dropped junk in an area, and ONLY pick up the dropped junk? There simply MUST be some kind of bot pick-up hotkey. Why on EARTH would there not be? What is it? Or what's the actually good method?

[mmmPI]

There is actually a mode to select only the item you dropped on the floor in the decon planner, then it only removes item on the ground. why not use it ?

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Copy blueprint

[Tertius]

The easy way is the deconstruction planner. You almost found it. Customize an empty deconstruction planner and add the "item on the ground" placeholder from the Unsorted category.

02-12-2026, 08-47-14.png (100.89 KiB) Viewed 169 times

[Rancara]

The easy way is the deconstruction planner. You almost found it. Customize an empty deconstruction planner and add the "item on the ground" placeholder from the Unsorted category.

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Ah. So THAT's how it works. Thank you so much!

FINALLY! One of my simple questions that actually has a simple answer, with no caveats, like it should! *Face of relief*

[mmmPI]

The wiki can be a useful source of information :

https://wiki.factorio.com/Deconstruction_planner

The first sentence mention that it can be used to remove item on the ground :

The deconstruction planner is an item which allows the player to mark tiles and entities, including trees, rocks, cliffs, fish and items on the ground, for removal.

And later it is explained how to in practice :

Special items in the Unsorted section

The unsorted section provides four special items, each using a red X icon.

Item on ground: Loose items on the ground, such as dropped by the player, spilled from removing armor, and stones dropped from destroyed rocks. Does not include items on transport belts.