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When planning your next colony inRimWorldthere are a lot of factors you will need to consider. Depending on the traits and skills of your colonists, some tasks and jobs will be easier or harder than others. One skill that should never be overlooked is the planting skill, which is incredibly vital to the survival of your colonists.
With a high enough planting skill, you will have access to a large list of food crops and other plants you can take advantage of. Some of the crops are more useful than others, however, and knowing which ones give you the best bang for your buck is just as important as being able to plant them.
10Haygrass
Domesticating animals and ranching is always a good option for colonies to invest in, especially if you are looking for a way to create a sustainable supply of meat, milk, eggs, or wool to use for your cooking or crafting. Livestock, however, requires you toinvest in the ability to care for their needs, the largest of which is feeding them regularly.
Haygrass is the solution for your hungry farm animals, as it is very easy to grow, doesn’t require rich soil, and can even be eaten without harvesting if you’re in a pinch for labor. Hay also lasts for a long time without needing to be refrigerated as long as it’s stored inside a barn.
9Hops
Every colonist needs to crack open a cold one after a hard day of work in RimWorld. Having your planters grow and harvest a good amount of hops will give you the chance to start a beer crafting industry in no time at all.
Hops are a relatively easy crop to start planting, only requiring a colonist with a planting skill of 3 to do so. Just verify that you have your Brewery and Fermentation Barrels set up properly, so your cooks can turn the hops into wort, and then the wort into the beer your colonists deserve.
8Smokeleaf
Just like hops, smokeleaf is one of those crops that, while not vital to your colony’s survival, will make your colonists very happy if they have it around. Planting smokeleaf is not too difficult to do either, only needing a skill of 4 from your planters.
Once planted and harvested, your crafters can then take the smokeleaf to either a crafting spot or a drug lab and roll them up into joints for your colonists to smoke. They give a good mood buff when used, so keep some around for a party or as a way to manage sour moods around the colony.
7Potatoes
Our first food crop on the list, potatoes are a decent staple in any colonist’s diet. Out of all the options to grow, they are the most unremarkable, giving you an average amount of food for an average amount of work that goes into planting and maintaining the field.
Probably the biggest advantage of potatoes compared to the other food crops is that they can grow in almost any soil quality. With a low fertility sensitivity, they thrive more in poor-quality dirt like gravel as opposed to other crops, so if you’re in an unhospitable area, these spuds might be your best friend.
6Cotton
Nobody likes running around without clothes; not only do you usually get mood penalties, but you also run the risk of falling victim to extreme swings in temperature without proper outfits. Growing cotton will go a long way to ensuring your colonists stay warm, cool, or at least look fashionable.
While not edible, cotton will become one of your staple crops in your colony just for its sheer usefulness. Not only will you be using it for clothing, but it can also be used for other projects like carpeting, furniture, and more, and it can even help stimulate your colony’s economy by selling the products you make with it.
5Rice
As another food option, rice has an incredibly quick growth time, making it ideal as an emergency food source for a struggling colony, or a colony that has just begun to establish itself. It also technically boasts the best nutrition per tile farmed in the game, although it is only a slight advantage.
The biggest drawback to rice, though, is the amount of labor required for planting and harvesting; because of its fast turnaround, your planters will be working the fields a lot more often when compared to corn or potatoes. Rice is most useful when labor is plentiful, or at the beginning of the game when you need a quick and stable food supply.
4Psychoid
Psychoid offers all the benefits of smokeleaf, but in a much more potent and customizable package. While planting, it requires a skill level of 6, it can thrive in less than hospitable conditions like poor soil quality and even polluted tiles.
Psychoid’s sheer versatility makes it incredibly useful, being able to be brewed into a tea at a cooking station, or taken to a drug lab and turned into the hard drugs flake and yayo. Overuse it, however, and you run the risk of getting your colony addicted to psychoid, so be careful about its use.
3Devilstrand
If you are looking for durable, long-lasting clothes that offer good protection for your colonists, then devilstrand is the crop for you. These mushrooms offer one of the best crafting materials in the game, allowing you to make very protective clothes and armor for your colonists and valuable trade goods for selling.
The biggest drawbacks to devilstrand are its growing time and high skill level requirement. Taking on average 30–45 days to grow and needing a skill level of at least 10 to plant, the crop is best saved for the mid to late game, so ensure to plant them on rich soil to speed up growing time, and you should have no problem growing these powerful little mushrooms.
2Corn
When you are looking to feed your growing colony by the mid-game and beyond, the best thing you can do is begin to plant corn. The very best food crop in the game, corn offers you large stacks of food for a minimal amount of work needed, making it ideal for busy bases that have labor shortages.
Corn does take a while to grow, however, as a trade-off to a lower labor cost. It also can be far more devastating to lose a harvest of corn to blight or a cold snap than rice, for example, due to its long growing time, just make sure to pair it with other crops to be safe, and you will have more food than you know what to do with in no time.
1Healroot
The best, and quite possibly most important, crop to plant as soon as you may is healroot, a slow-growing, high-skill crop that will be your only source of medicine early on. While you can find it growing wild depending on your starting biome, being able to grow it yourself will save you a lot of time and effort.
Needing a planting skill of 8, it is one of the highest level crops to grow, but it should be your goal to be able to grow it as a priority,as disease and injury can ruin your colony in record timeif you’re not careful. It can then later be turned into more potent medicine at the drug lab later in the game, so ensure to start farming it as soon as possible.
