Rust complete farming guide

Setup

You will need lots and lots of larger or small planters. I recommend large planters as they take up almost exactly 1 square foundation so you can fit 4 very nicely in a 2x2. You can walk on them so there is no real need to have the small variants unless you are trying to have a super compact farm. You can buy a large planter from the bandit camp for 30 scrap however you can also find their BP in barrels and primitive crates however each requires 2 tarp which is often hard to come across unless you go boating. Personally I recommend buying them from bandit.

Both large and small water catchers cannot supply enough water to run sprinklers continuously. The large water catcher can just about run 2 continuously however any more and you are draining more water than you are consuming. I recommend having a few water catchers somewhere on your base or compound feeding into each other and then into a water barrel inside your base. This ensures that no one can steal your water if they climb on your roof as the catchers almost always remain empty unless your barrel inside is full. As a rule of thumb I would say 1 barrel for every 4-5 sprinklers and at least 2 large water catchers for every 1 barrel. This does scale up quite quickly and is just due to how slowly the water catchers collect water. Their rates of collection seems to be all over the place so is hard to pinpoint. However one important note is that a small water catcher can only supply 6 water ( similar to how electricity works ) and can therefore only supply a maximum of 3 sprinklers. The barrel and large catcher both can supply 10 water meaning 5 sprinklers max. Personally I like to place my sprinklers above the planters however this is personal preference and what suits your base but you can place them on adjacent walls or on the ground and there is no difference ( also sidenote but sprinklers pretty quickly put out fire from incendiary rockets, fire arrows etc so maybe worth having one in your TC room incase of raid? )
In terms of how many sprinklers per planter you can have 1 sprinkler in the middle of 4 large planters and it works some of the time. The placement I found needs to be more or less perfect otherwise some of the planters wont get water however if done correctly all 4 planters will get roughly ¼ of the water that a planter with 1 sprinkler would get. Sprinklers also stack so 2 sprinklers for 1 planter will give roughly double the water intake. The amount of water intake you have is dependant on your needs.

The pump allows for you to control the flow of water like a switch. Also if powered it allows for water to be moved “uphill”. If the source of water if higher than the sprinkler you do not need one if it is the other way around you do. The hose itself can go to the sun and back and not need a pump as long as the source of water is higher than the switch.

I haven't seen a real use for the water splitter at the moment but let me know if you find one.

https://www.reddit.com/r/playrust/comments/fqav4t/automatic_watering_system_for_farming_20_set_and/flpi9x6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Here is a link to a very good electricity set up for a “set and forget” sprinkler system. I tried it out and it works pretty well most of the time however if you have multiple plants it can get complicated but I suggest just sticking to one crop.

For lighting you without a doubt need ceiling lights. The sun only provides light for half the time and therefore your growth will be approximately half that of ceiling lights. You need 1 ceiling light per large planter if you place it in the above centre of the planter ( only 1 wall high ) Make sure to have your farm ceiling lights on a different circuit to your main lights as these ones need to be on 24/7 and never turn off.

A composter is a must as well as a reliable source of horse dung. I had a set up on my server of a 1x2 with 2 troughs and therefore 4 horses inside. This produced around 8-12 horse dung per hour. Each horse dung produces 5 fertiliser. Do not put anything else inside the composter unless it is at least going to produce more than 1 fertiliser ( https://rustlabs.com/item/composter#tab=composter;sort=1,1,0 ). At the moment if you put in 1 plant fibre the game takes it away and gives you nothing back as it returns to you 0.1 fertiliser which it then rounds down to 0. Keep them until you have enough then put them in. The composter takes roughly 5 minutes to produce fertiliser for 1 item and does them one at a time so be patient.

Conditions

Soil conditions are the easiest. The planter has a UI, just press and open and place in some fertiliser. The plants take them as and when they need them so just add a stack of fertiliser to each planter and that should last a while. Just ensure that you keep it topped up and look at the plant UI to ensure soil quality is 100%.

Temperature is a tricky one as its the only condition that you can’t really control… You obviously can control it by building in a certain location but once you’ve planted a crop its temperature is up to the rust gods. However it is relatively straight forward to solve and try and circumvent. If you build in the mountains and snow it will be cold. If you build in the desert it will be hot. Very straight forward. The best place to build if you know you are going to be a farmer is in the temperate biome near a river for water. The temperature will almost never be 100% but it can get close. It also gets colder at night and can get so cold in the snow biome at night that many plants can instantly die. You can slightly remedy this by having lots of BBQs and campfires around your plants but this is not very efficient as it takes way too much wood to make your plants get warmer but may be a solution for those of you who want to build in the snow biome

Water saturation is slightly more complicated but relatively straight forward. Each planter has a water capacity of 9000ml. Water is only used up when plants are planed there and each plant says how much it uses per minute on its UI. Depending on a plants hardiness will depend on how much water you want to add to the planters but as a rule of thumb between 6000 and 8000ml is best in my experience. You want to keep the plants at 100% water saturation. Too low and this will drop and too high this will also drop. The best way to quickly increase the saturation of the planters is by using a water bucket or water container from a river or barrel and splash it over the planter. Then looking at it should display how much water is has in it. Get each one above 6000ml and then turn on your sprinklers to fine tune your levels to ensure 100% for all plants. Also take into account if you have the same sprinkler system for all of your planters with different plants in they may require different levels of water and have different uptakes so I recommend having either only 1 type of plant or having separately controllable sprinkler systems for each type of plant. In my experience pumpkins are very thirsty whereas corn is not and therefore if you have them all on one sprinkler loop and try and turn it on you will have an unbalance of water levels due to the pumpkins needing more than the corn.

Stages

There are 6 stages to the plants growth. Seedling, Sapling, Crossbreed, Mature, Fruiting, Ripe and then Dying. It is impossible to say how long each stage lasts but there is a % completion with the plant UI that will tell you. Its time will depend on what genetics as well as conditions.

In the seedling stage you can view the UI by looking at the plant with an empty hand ( If you have a weapon in hand you cannot view the UI ) View the genetics as well as condition.

The Sapling phase is the same as the seedling stage and is not that interesting.

The Crossbreeding stage is where genetics get into this but I will leave that for later as it gets quite complicated. There is however a cool animation that plays when they enter this stage.

The mature stage is where the plants begin to increase their yield drastically you can harvest hemp in this stage however they will default to 5 and increase from there so is not advisable.

The fruiting stage is when you can harvest the 3 edible plants

The ripe stage is not very interesting it is just when the plants have their maximum yield. This stage appears to last for a while however if you do not harvest them they will die so make sure to pay attention.

The dying stage is as you would guess just what it sounds like. The plant cannot be harvested for any fruit or cloth and there is an empty husk of a plant left behind. This can be picked up for 1 plant fibre. This can be used to make fertiliser. When a plant is harvested it will immediately transition into its dead phase. If not harvested in this time the plant will just disappear.

Genetics

This is the section you’ve all been waiting for. Its complicated and It doesn't make a lot of sense right now but I have a working theory which will be updated as and when I find out more.

There are good, bad and “null” genes. Good are green. Bad are red. There are 6 gene “slots” each of which can have any gene in it. There are 5 types of genes.

G for increased growth rate. This is always green and from what I have seen so far will produce more or less exactly the same growth rate in a specific type of plant.

Y for increased yield. This is also always green and again from what I have seen 1 Y gene increased the yield by some set amount ( Unknown how much now but it seems to be roughly consistent ).

H for increased hardiness. This means the plant is more resilient to conditions. This gene will always be green. The potato is naturally more resilient and can withstand bigger extremes in conditions however this gene should only be bred for if you want your plant to grow better in temperature as the other conditions you have complete control over and therefore is not worth wasting a gene spot for.

W is for increased water intake. This is always red and is the only true negative gene. From a few hours of experimenting it appears that pumpkins tend to have this gene more than the others and corn have this gene a lot less although this is based on a relatively small sample size. The more of this gene you have the more water your plant will need.

X is an empty gene slot. It will always be red. Although technically not a negative gene it means that another gene cannot be here. They came in handy though when I was experimenting as it allowed for control experiments as well as to eliminate other variables.

The more of a gene you have the bigger its effect will be. For example if you have a plant with 1 Growth gene it may have a 2x multiplier whereas a plant with 6 Growth genes may have a 12x multiplier. Although these numbers may not be true the principle is the same. The more of a gene you have the better ( or worse ) said characteristic will be.

When it comes to cross breeding what I have found is very very tenuous and always seems to change. I spent a while trying to figure this out but it makes very little sense. My working theory at the moment is that red genes have a weighting of around 2 and green genes have a weighting of around 1. This means that if you want to replace a red gene with a green gene you need to have at least 2 or more green genes around ( anywhere in the planter that is directly adjacent hence I recommend putting the plant you are trying to rewrite in the middle to give it a higher chance ) it to override and rewrite the gene. After the crossbreeding stage is done the new genetics will appear as 2 lines with various lines coming from it and black genes. The black genes are those that have been overwritten and are now useless. A gene from slot 1 can only be overwritten by another gene from slot 1. This is very tricky but from what I have played around with so far it is reasonably easy to get a very good plant if you take clippings from your plants with the highest yield and plant them next time. It is almost identical to survival of the fittest. Those with a low yield “die” and get harvested and those with a higher yield “survive” and reproduce by being the clones for the next harvest.

Also it is important to remember that seeds will produce random genetics whereas clones will produce identical genetics to that of its parent ( unless planted in the ground in which for some reason it gets slightly randomised. I don't know if this is a bug or a feature but avoid planting in ground ) Hemp plants do not produce seeds hence you will need to take clippings from half of your crop ( each hemp plant clipping produces 2 identical clones ) to continue to grow. Unless of course you have seeds in which case plant them. Harvesting potatoes gives seeds and eating corn and pumpkins also gives seeds. You can take clippings from all pants to produce 2 identical clones in which their genetic information will be displayed.

[iamfry]

Ty this is quite useful

[RamRod]

Great

[stcrispin]

some errors early in the guide that led me to stop reading: 4x4 is a terrible way to place planters since you will need heaters in many placed and they cover a 1x3 footprint. its best to make a 2 floors with 2x3 planter plots. placing a heater on the wall near the middle planter of the 3 on both sides of the room will heat all 6. it will also heat the 6 in the room directly above.

if you place triangles around the 2x6 floor (like you would if you were honeycombing) you can place 1/4 walls at the mid planter to mount the heaters on AND fit 2 tea tables, a shelf with 4 Lg boxes along 1 wall for your berry storage and use.

be sure to use triangular roof hatches to save space getting between floors.

as an added benefit if you put the farm on floors 2 and 3, you can park 2 tankers on the ground floor and have a 400,000 ML water supply to support your crops.

[B3zzkha]

Legen... wait for it ... dary!
LEGENDARY!

[Lirili Larila]

Great post, thanks mate!

[Shadow24]

Electric heaters will keep the temp 100% and are cheap power draw wise

[ルシファー]

The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is an American twin-engine, all-weather tactical fighter aircraft designed by McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing). Following reviews of proposals, the United States Air Force (USAF) selected McDonnell Douglas's design in 1969 to meet the service's need for a dedicated air superiority fighter. The Eagle first flew in July 1972, and entered service in 1976. It is among the most successful modern fighters, with over 100 victories and no losses in aerial combat, with the majority of the kills by the Israeli Air Force

[Toshy]

weed

[SGT.silverman]

very cool.
i have a weed farm.