GGGYYY (Farming Guide)

A comprehensive no nonsense guide to farming and how to go from seed to GGGYYY clone in just a few hours.

Terminology

This guide will refer to cross-breeding plants as either a parent or a child to help distinguish and simplify the explanation, but a seed or clone is used to create either. More on this in the Cross-Breeding Basics section.

The mathematical comparison operators less than "<" and greater than ">" are used to indicate when different gene values weigh more or less, and "=" when gene values have equal weights.

Equipment

All of the equipment listed here is completely optional - plants can be planted outside in the ground, or even indoors without any light with one planter box - but the poor growing conditions will slow the growth to a crawl.

Publicado originalmente por rustlabs.com:

Seeds placed in a planter grow 2x as fast as they would normally on wild ground. Being exposed to light (be it natural sunlight or artificial ceiling lamps) further increases the growth time to 4x the normal speed.

For a minimal farming setup that provides reasonably good growing conditions, and can quickly be setup to provide perfect conditions, obtain the following items. All items can be obtained through the tech tree or looted, but the scrap cost and where to buy are provided where possible.

• 1 Water Bucket[rustlabs.com] - Can only be looted from barrels (1% chance) or crafted with a level 1 workbench.
  
• 1-2 Large Planter Box[rustlabs.com] - Can be bought in Bandit Camp for 30 scrap.
  
• 1-2 Ceiling Light[rustlabs.com] - Can be bought in Bandit Camp for 30 scrap.
  
• 1 Battery - A Small Battery[rustlabs.com] can sometimes be found in crates (1% chance), or a Medium Battery[rustlabs.com] can be bought in Outpost for 75 scrap. A small battery can support two lights for two large planters, and one heater.
  
• 1 Small Generator[rustlabs.com] or 1 Large Solar Panel[rustlabs.com] - Generators can be bought in Outpost for 125 scrap and solar panels can be bought in Outpost for 75 scrap.
  
• Some form of water storage. If you live close to a river this could potentially be skipped and water collected from the river with a bucket.
  
  • 1-2 Small Water Catcher[rustlabs.com] - Can only be looted from crates (1% chance) or crafted with a level 1 workbench.
    and/or
    
  • 1 Water Barrel[rustlabs.com] and 1 Water Pump[rustlabs.com] - The water barrel can be bought in Bandit Camp for 30 scrap and the water pump from Outpost for 200 scrap, but you need to be close to a river to use the water pump.

Some optional equipment to optimize growing conditions:

• Sprinkler[rustlabs.com] - Can be bought in Bandit Camp for 15 scrap.
  
• Electric Heater[rustlabs.com] - Can be bought in Outpost for 75 scrap.
  
• Stone Fireplace[rustlabs.com] - Can only be looted or crafted.
  
• Composter[rustlabs.com] - Can be bought in Bandit Camp for 30 scrap.
  
• Fluid Switch & Pump[rustlabs.com] - Can be bought in Bandit Camp or Outpost for 30 scrap.

Tools

All tools require a level 1 workbench to be crafted.

• Hammer[rustlabs.com]
  
• Hose Tool[rustlabs.com]
  
• Wire Tool[rustlabs.com]

Finding Seeds

All crops that can be planted and cloned, and where to find them, are:

• Corn[rustlabs.com] - Can be sold for scrap in Bandit Camp, and can be found around rivers.
  
• Hemp[rustlabs.com] - Yields cloth which can be sold for scrap in Bandit Camp. In meadows and more commonly on the edges of forests and meadows.
  
• Blue[rustlabs.com], Green[rustlabs.com], Yellow[rustlabs.com], Red[rustlabs.com], and White Berry[rustlabs.com] - Can be crafted into teas with a Mixing Table[rustlabs.com], which can massively enhance gather rates of ore, wood, and scrap from barrels, or can buff player health. Having a max health buff and full health when you get into combat is pretty great. Berries can be found in meadows, but are most commonly found in forests.
  
• Potato[rustlabs.com] - Okay food. Found in green forests.
  
• Pumpkin[rustlabs.com] - Good food. Can be found in meadows, but much more common around rivers.
  

  Publicado originalmente por rustlabs.com:

  It can also be worn on your head.

Plants spawned by the game will yield both crops and seeds when harvested, but crops planted by the player will not yield seeds when harvested, only crops. Crops that are edible will produce a seed when eaten though, so all edible foods can be planted and harvested to obtain seeds. However, for hemp, which produces no seeds because cloth cannot be eaten, obtaining seeds can only be done through gathering.

Plant Genetics

Every seed in Rust rolls a sequence of six gene values when planted. Ordering of gene values does not matter, only the type and number of different genes. GGGYYY is the same as YYYGGG, is the same as GYGYGY. All of those values can be thought of as simply 3G3Y. Multiple gene values stack their modifiers on the plant, and G/Y are the most desirable genes, so a "perfect" clone is generally one of 2G4Y, 3G3Y, or 4G2Y.



When cross breeding a red gene will always win over a single green gene, but two green genes will win against a single red gene. Expressing the relationship between genes as a mathematical comparison:

Green < Red < 2 Matching Green < 2 Matching Red

Growth Stages

Plants move through eight different stages.

1. Seed
   
2. Seedling
   
3. Sapling
   
4. Cross-Breeding
   
5. Mature
   
6. Fruiting
   
7. Ripe
   
8. Dying

Harvesting or cloning can not be performed in the Seed, Seedling, or Cross-Breeding stages. Each stage that the plant moves through where harvesting can occur increases the yield, other than the Dying stage where the yield begins to decrease. Yield values are floating numbers with two displayed decimal places, and when harvesting the game rounds the value to the nearest integer. For example, if the current plant yield is 2.51, then the harvested value will round up to 3. If harvesting as early as the Sapling stage and the yield is less than or equal to 0.5 per plant, the harvest value will be 0. Take advantage of this when choosing the time to harvest. Both the current yield value and resulting harvest value is displayed together when inspecting the plant.

Even though plants can be harvested as early as the Sapling stage, different plants will have positive yields in different growth stages.

Growing Conditions

Each of the conditions is a percentage value (0-100%), and the Overall condition will be equal to the lowest value of the other conditions. To maximize the growth rate and yield an overall condition of 100% needs to be provided. Lesser conditions will negatively impact the plant growth rate and yield.

A plant with perfect genetics like 3G3Y or 2G4Y can overcome the negative effects of less than full overall health and produce the same final yield by taking advantage of the yield value rounding, but overall it will take longer.

The order that the growing conditions are listed above appear to correspond to the impact that growing condition will have on the plant, i.e. the light condition has a bigger effect than the water condition, and so on.

Ground

When you open a planter box it displays inventory slots where fertilizer can be placed to increase the ground growing condition. Fertilizer is produced with a composter. Horse dung will provide the most fertilizer per unit, but any organic matter like plant waste or food can be composted.

Light

Even when planting outside it is optimal to provide one ceiling light over each large planter box (or three small planters) so that light is kept at 100% through the night.

Temperature

Plants will get cold at night, and of course even colder in the winter biome, so one or two electric heaters per four large planter boxes will keep temperature conditions at 100%. Stone fireplaces could also potentially be used to heat with wood.

Water

Providing water is simple enough by stringing together a few water catchers, or if based on a river, setup a water pump, and send that to a water barrel. When adding water to a completely empty planter box it is fastest to use a bucket and just dump the water on the planters. You can even split this across planters depending on where it's dumped.

Setting up a sprinkler system is a nice-to-have, but definitely not a must when using a small number of planter boxes. If a large growing setup is constructed then having one sprinkler per four large planter boxes, placed above the intersecting corners of all planters, is ideal for even watering.

Plants can be over watered, or under watered. Aim to keep the planter boxes around two-thirds full, and of course look at the plant water condition to determine if water levels need to be adjusted.

Cross-Breeding Basics

When a plant (child) enters the cross breeding stage it will have new genetics calculated against every plant that it touches (the parents) in the planter. When inspecting a plant the genetics will be displayed as shown below. The blue box highlights the plant genes before cross breeding, and the green box highlights the gene values which changed after cross breeding. The final genetics of this cross are GGYWYX.



A plant in the middle slot of a large planter box filled with plants would cross with the eight other plants it is touching when entering the cross-breeding stage. To control the parents and child when cross-breeding, place all intended parent plants in opposite corners of a large planter, and let them reach the mature stage so they won't cross breed. This enables up to four different parent plants that will not cross genes with each other, and will not cross genes over from the child. Now plant the intended child seed or clone in the middle spot of the large planter where it touches all parents, and will cross with them when entering the cross breeding stage.

A faster method to cross breed, and control parents and children, is to plant the intended child first, let it reach the Sapling stage, and before it enters cross breeding plant the parent plants around the child. This will ensure the child enters cross breeding before the parent plants. It also enables all planter spots to be utilized for cross breeding in a controlled manner.

The new gene values for the child plant are calculated by first looking at all the gene columns of the parent plants, and summing up the gene values for each column to determine the largest weight gene in each column. For example, let's look at a single column of gene values for five different parents:

1. G
   
2. W
   
3. X
   
4. Y
   
5. G

Adding the matching gene values produces 2G, 1W, 1X, and 1Y. Using the mathematical comparison of gene weights from earlier (green < red < 2 matching green) we can say that 2G is the largest gene weight value for this column. Now compare this parent gene value to the crossing child plant gene value in the same column. A child gene will change if the largest weight in the sum of parent genes is greater than the child gene weight, and a child gene will remain the same if the largest weight in the sum of parent genes is equal to or less than the child gene weight. The largest possible gene weight a child plant could have in a gene column is 1 red, which is less than the 2G in our example parents, so the child plant gene will be a G after cross breeding.

Let's look at one more example where parent 3 has a Y instead of a X.

1. G
   
2. W
   
3. Y
   
4. Y
   
5. G

The parent gene sums for this column are 2G, 2Y, and W. Both 2G > 1 red and 2Y > 1 red are true, and also 2G = 2Y in weight, so there are two new gene values which outweigh the child gene value but also have equal weights. In this event there is an equal chance for the gene to change to either a G or a Y. When largest weight sum of parent genes have an equal weight, and are greater than the child gene weight, there is an equal chance for which parent gene crosses to the child.

By repeating this comparison for each gene column, and applying the principles in bold, it is possible to determine how a plant's genetics will change when entering the cross breeding stage, and it is fairly simple to determine no matter how many parents there are.

Finding the Right Genetics

I like to call this the seed slots mini-game. Put a seed in, let the wheels turn, and see if it's a winner. Don't worry you won't need to play seed slots very much, unless you like it.

Crouch in front of a spot on your planter, equip the seed you want to use, and plant it. What you are looking for is a plant with all green genes, and no more than 2 H's, but sometimes this can be elusive. If you do get one off a roll it might save a breeding step, but that really depends on how many H's the all green clone has, so it's really not that big a deal if you don't get one. It's usually faster to just create an all green clone with only one H using the right combo of genetics.

Keep and clone any plant that has only one red gene, and at most two H's (3-5 G's or Y's). Any plants that don't meet that criteria can be immediately axe'd and the spot replanted until you get reasonably good genetics (1 red, 2 H's). The reason for this choice is it gives a very high chance to create an all green clone with only one H in it, which will be covered more in depth in the next section. Do this until you have 10-20 clones to choose from, which should give enough options to pick from to create a clone with all green genes. This goes fast (15-20 minutes) but will take anywhere from 100-250 seeds depending on the luck of the rolls.

If you were lucky and got an all green roll with not many H's while doing this you can skip ahead to the How to Change a Green Gene section. If not, see the next section to create an all green clone.

How to Create an All Green Clone

Creating an all green clone can be done fairly simply by combining three different parent clones that have only one red gene, and where the red gene in each clone is outweighed by a matching set of green genes in the other clones.

Take the following three parents as an example, where each parent has one red gene and the rest are green.



Plant the three parents and the targeted child in a large planter as demonstrated in the table.

Parent		Parent
	Child
Parent

The calculated parent gene values for each column are 2G, [1G/1H/1Y], 2H, 2G, 2Y, and 2Y, which contains no red genes. Because of the double weight green genes any child planted will be guaranteed to have genes changed in every column except the second. If we plant a seed at random as the child, and that seed has a red gene in the second column, then the resulting cross will always have the red gene. If, however, we choose a clone as the child which has a G or Y in the second column, then the final crossed plant gene will not change in the second column because the parent gene weights of [1G/1H/1Y] are all equal to the one green gene in the child. This produces a final child clone of GGHGYY, or GYHGYY, depending on the gene value in the second column for the child.

Now we have an all green clone with only one H left to splice out, which is a very rare roll when planting random seeds. H's have a much higher chance to roll than a G or Y, so it's much more common to end up with a result that has 2-3 H's when rolled directly from a seed, or even 4 H's, yuck. But with this method and the right genes selected for the parents, and careful choice of child, it's usually possible to guarantee a result with only one H. If a combination that will produce only one H cannot be found, expand the search out and start looking for combinations that will produce a clone with two H's, which should be possible if one was not.

If you weren't able to make the proper match with the genetics already harvested, go back to playing seed slots a little more to harvest some more desirable genetics until a match is made. It's much quicker than it sounds - it just requires a good number of seeds.

Method to find a match

If you followed the Finding the Right Genetics section you should have a bunch of clones with 1 red gene and only 2H's, a few with 1 red and only 1H, and possibly even one with 1 red and no H's. Find all the clones with only 1H, and then try to find two of those where the red gene is in different columns. Now, search through all of your current genetics to try and find a clone that has a red gene in a different column, and where its green gene values will double up with the other parent values in that column. Try different combinations of your current clones as well.

From the above example, between the three parents there are red genes in columns 1, 3, and 5, so there needs to be 2 matching green genes in those columns to eliminate all red genes. It is also very possible to end up with a combination that will produce 2 matching green genes in every column, in which case the child plant does not matter. The example demonstrates how a careful choice of child can often eliminate H's in the final genetics, which is a very useful tool. It's also possible to play seed slots for the right child to eliminate H's from parent gene columns where there is only 1 green gene and nothing larger.

Could you create a perfect clone in one breeding round?

With this method you definitely can! It just takes some lucky rolls. In practice, when a plant rolls with only one red gene it is significantly more likely to roll the red gene in either column 1, 4, or 6, and column 6 has a lower chance of rolling a G or Y than any other column. This means you usually end up with 2H in column 6, which is guaranteed to be an H in the child. However, if the match made has all 2G, 2Y, and 1H in the parent gene column sums, then you can make a perfect clone in one breeding round with the right child.

How to Change a Green Gene

With an all green clone either rolled or created, it's possible to splice out individual green genes and change them to the desired gene value using four parents when cross-breeding. Two of the parents are the desired genes you wish to preserve, but want to change one gene column value for. The other two parents must have gene values that will not result in a change to an undesired gene column, and the columns which match the targeted splicing column must both have the desired green value to change to.

The basic principle is to look at the gene column you want to change, find two other clones that have the desired value in that column, and then check the rest of the gene columns across the four parents to ensure they can't possibly change.

This is much easier to grasp if we look at a concrete example, and actually much simpler as you will see. Taking the all green clone from the How to Create an All Green Clone example, let's say we start with a clone of GYHGYY, so there is a single H gene we want to change to a G.



Plant the four parents and a child seed in a large planter as demonstrated in the table.

Parent		Parent
	Child
Parent		Parent

By using four parents, and doubling up the clone we want to change a gene for, we ensure that the parent gene columns will all have a weight of 2, outweighing the genes in the child. The two additional parents both have a G in the third column, and all of the gene values in the other columns do not match, so are outweighed by the first two parents. Now any child seed can be planted to get the desired outcome, but there will be a 50/50 chance of the third column gene being a G or a H.

The fourth parent here is a complete garbage roll if planting for the purpose of creating an all green clone, and the third parent isn't a winner either, but for changing a single recessive value (the third column H to a G) they are perfect. These were deliberately chosen to demonstrate that when changing a single gene value of an all green clone the two additional parent plants can have wildly different genetics, which makes looking for the correct genetics when playing seed slots even simpler. The key thing to scan for is matching gene values in the one column to be changed.

Can you change multiple genes at the same time?

Hypothetically, yes, but probabilities start to work against you pretty quickly. To perform this parent 3 and 4 would now need to have the desired gene values to change in two matching columns instead of one, so the probability of that match is much lower. Additionally, because at best there is a 50% chance the gene will change as desired, and we are attempting to do two columns at once, the probability that both columns get the desired gene value is reduced to 25%. The probability of success gets lower with each additional gene that we attempt to change in the same breeding round.

Using RustBreeder

A very excellent utility exists to perform all the necessary gene comparisons automatically in RustBreeder[www.rustbreeder.com]. Not only will it calculate all potential paths to breed for what you select, it can automatically scan for plant genetics in your inventory or when inspected. When you open RustBreeder you will see a Scan Rust button, that has excellent instructions on how to use it, that can scan for and input the genetics directly from the game.

Using some of the selection concepts from this guide, if you select a number of plants with only 1 red gene and no more than 2 H's, you can guarantee a perfect clone in no more than two breeding rounds. Play some seed slots until you roll a minimum of three plants with genetics meeting that criteria. Scan or add those plant genetics to RustBreeder manually and then click Calculate. Now adjust the filters for 3G's, 2Y's, and 1H as shown below:



Continue farming for more genetics until RustBreeder is able to find a match for the search criteria of an all green clone with only one H. If you are using the RustBreeder scanner then stop scanning periodically and then re-calculate to see if recent genetics make a match. The example below used 9 plants that had only one red gene and two H's, so a large planter box worth.



Now adjust the gene filters for 3 G's, 3 Y's, and no H's to see if the current set of genes can actually make the desired perfect clone. If not, set the filters back to the previous settings and take note of the column the H is in for the matched all green clone. Go back to planting more seeds and look for plants with the desired gene value in the same column as the H. If the all green clone had an H in the second column that needs to be changed to a G, look for any plants that have G in the second column. You will likely only need one or two of those for RustBreeder to now be able to match a perfect clone with 3G's and 3Y's.

This example had all genetics necessary to create a perfect clone without any additional seed rolling.



The Gen.2 status indicates two breeding rounds, and if the desired match is selected it is possible to get details on the first breed necessary for the second breed.

However, RustBreeder provides some additional powerful tool you can use to try and get to a perfect clone in only one breeding round. Click the Options button and adjust some settings as shown in the screenshot:



By adjusting the Crossbreeding Saplings Range to allow for more plants there are more possible combinations RustBreeder can check for match. The tradeoff here is that doing the additional comparisons is very costly and adds significant processing time, but when keeping the gene selection pool small like we have the additional calculations can be performed in a reasonable amount of time.

The Number of Generations is set to 1 to filter for a single breeding round only.

Now we calculate again with a filter for 3G's and 3Ys, and there you have it, a match that gives a 50% chance to produce a perfect clone in one breeding round with minimal genetics harvesting.


Try RustBreeder[www.rustbreeder.com] out for yourself it's an amazing tool!

And here are the plant genetics from the example screenshots so you can quickly copy this into RustBreeder and try it out for yourself.

GYGGYX
YHYXGY
GHGYYW
WHGGYH
WGHYGH
YYYWGH
WGHGYG
YHGWYG
GYGYWH

Conclusion

Rust farming is definitely the most clever and best designed farming system I have ever seen. It's a great example of how to create and introduce a fun puzzle mini-game into something that's traditionally just a grind.

Once the mechanics are well understood you can deterministically craft the genetics you want, and even have a lot of tools to minimize the number of breeding rounds this will take, or how you get there. By following this guide breeding perfect clones in two breeding rounds is pretty reliable.

Hopefully this guide encourages you to try out the puzzle for yourself. Once you get the first one down the rest will become easy. And with this knowledge you can do other fun things besides making a ton of scrap and tea. Create a clone of all W's to give to your enemies. Find another farm base on the server, raid it, and replace their perfect clone with your perfect garbage clone before you leave. Monopolize the server economy by farming in huge volumes and selling/trading tea at a price point where no one else can compete. Or take all the competition out and jack up the prices.

[Aribad]

Where's the growth time list for different amount of g's?

[EllyG]

I come back to this thread SO often. So damn helpful. Thank you!

[Llulu]

the most useful information i could find after spending a day looking for greater explanation than just a 60 second video on youtube. thanks for that. the way you described the crossbreeding method were very helpful because now i understand in detail how to apply the methods and i can now do crossbreeding without using rustbreeder.

[Silent Fart Drifter]

Hello his name is doctor green thumb
Agree, the growing of digital nature is great in this game

[RoboticOz]

Well written and very helpful! So much time and research had to be put into this I'm sure. Thank you

[doozybenji]

no way bro didnt make us pay for this

[Crayon Delicatessen]

Its amazing what people will do for free