How long can a drought last on normal difficulty?

[harboringseal]

On normal difficulty droughts tend to get longer with each passing cycle. I just had a 7 day drought, and am wondering if their is a maximum length a drought can be on normal difficulty.

[🐺Blue Wolf]

I think it's 9 (or 10) days that will be the longest on normal.

[Shas'O O'Kais]

On normal, I don't think i've ever seen one longer than maybe 9 days? Or maybe not even that long, it is possible the 9 day one was on hard.

However, I am fairly certain there is a cap based on the Custom difficulty settings. In custom difficulty, you put a range of days, minimum and maximum, and then put a modifier to make it easier when you first start. Based on that, I believe both normal and hard difficulties work the same way and have a range of possible lengths that it just randomly determines.

I used to believe that they would get longer and longer as time goes on, but that apparently isn't the case. I've been piddling around on maps for 20 cycles or more and never seen them reach any really high lengths.

[IronSquid501]

I think it's about 9 days at the longest, and I believe you can have up to 12 days without a drought on Normal?

Hard difficulty is about 6 days off/12 days on for the drought, so work your plan around that if you're planning on stepping up

[Wolfen]

8 days was the longest i can remember of in normal, but i already had a setup i would have been able to survive 12-14 days without too much issues, so i didn't payed much attention anymore after that.

[ButActually]

I have a theory that the well being of your districts seems to factor into the length of the drought. I have been dealing with 8 day droughts in my first save [re: multiple first saves until I figured it out], but after creating a second district I was now back to having 5 day droughts.

[John Cleena]

It actually looks like some buildings have value associated with them, like manufacturing buildings, etc. Seems like a similar mechanic to the Rimworld wealth.
Also, on Hard the droughts last up to 27 or 29 days, I cannot remember which. That's the most I've gotten at least- seeing if it wants to go more.

[Prometheus]

When you select the custom settings it shows droughts at 5-9 days with a 7 cycle grace where droughts are 50% as long. I'm pretty sure this is the normal difficulty. Its honestly not hard at all. On plains you can get through a 9 day drought by making flood gates on the section a level higher than your start and dumping it in when there are 2 days left. Once you have explosives just blast 2 levels out of the bottom of your river and you are set.

On hard you are staring down the barrel of 9 day droughts starting the 3rd or 4th cycle. I'm still working through that save but I'm hoping a 2 high above ground level levee plus blasting to 3 below will be enough to get through the 30 day droughts I hear about.