How to Get Cloth in RimWorld Without Stalling Your Colony
How to Get Cloth Without Stalling Your Colony
If you need cloth fast, plant cotton immediately on 70%+ fertility soil, buy from a bulk goods trader, and pause wasteful tailoring bills. The real secret isn't just growing cotton—it's logistics.
Quick Solution: Cloth in the Next Few Days 🚑
If the problem is urgent, do not start by optimizing. Start by stopping the bleed. RimWorld punishes the player who tries to solve a three-day shortage with a beautiful permanent system. Once your baseline is secure, you can care about elegance.
Method
ETA
What You Need
Reliability
Sow outdoor cotton
Medium
Grow zone, season time, 70%+ fertility
High (if warm)
Buy from settlement/caravan
Fast
Silver, social pawn, travel ability
High
Orbital bulk goods trader
Very Fast
Comms console, trade beacon, silver
Very High
Hydroponics cotton
Medium
Power, basins, sunlamp, indoors
High (if powered)
Substitute wool/leather
Immediate
Existing alternative textile stocks
High (for apparel)
Emergency Cloth Policy
Pause nonessential tailoring and luxury textile bills.
Check every stockpile for hidden cloth, tainted apparel, and alternative textiles.
Create/expand a cotton grow zone on the best reachable fertile soil immediately.
If comms are online, call bulk goods ships and buy cloth.
If you can travel, assemble a fast trade team to the nearest settlement.
If in a hostile biome, convert spare hydroponics capacity strictly for cotton survival.
Ready to set up a permanent system?
Plant Cotton Early, on the Right Soil 🌱
Cotton wants at least 70% fertility, needs 51% light, gives 10 cloth when harvested at full maturity, and takes roughly 14.8 days of actual grow time on normal soil. Everything good about vanilla cloth planning grows out of those numbers.
Field Placement
Good cotton fields have five traits:
Valid fertility (70%+)
Short walking distance from base
Low exposure to fire and raids
Easy hauling path to storage
Adequate area without breaking labor capacity
Timing and Delay
Harvest timing and why "later" is expensive:
If the season is stable, wait for 100% maturity. What you really want is not clever emergency harvesting, but earlier sowing. The real trick is getting the field sown with enough calendar left.
Rough Field Sizes
1 to 3 colonists: 40 to 80 tiles
4 to 7 colonists: 80 to 150 tiles
8+ colonists: 150 to 250+ tiles
Cold Climate: Token field + Imports
Pro Tip: The Ten-Multiplier
Because cotton yields roughly 10 cloth per plant, you can eyeball output easily. A 10x10 field yields roughly 1,000 cloth if every plant survives to maturity. Plan accordingly!
Biome-by-Biome Cloth Plans 🌍
Your biome decides how much of cloth acquisition is farming and how much is logistics/trade.
Temperate Forest & Plains
Outdoor Viability: High | Trade Reliance: Low | Hydroponics: Low
Start outdoor cotton early. The main threat here is laziness, not climate. Give cotton a dedicated field size as soon as food is stable.
Arid Shrubland & Desert
Outdoor Viability: Medium to High | Trade Reliance: Medium | Hydroponics: Low-Med
Use fertile patches carefully. Don't waste critical rich soil on massive cotton farms if food is tight. Rely slightly more on trade bridging.
Boreal Forest & Cold Desert
Outdoor Viability: Medium | Trade Reliance: Medium | Hydroponics: Medium
Timing is the real enemy. Sow immediately when the season starts. Have a hybrid plan: outdoor for bulk, indoor/trade for insurance against early cold snaps.
Tundra & Ice Sheet
Outdoor Viability: Low to Zero | Trade Reliance: Very High | Hydroponics: High
Stop pretending this is an agriculture problem. It is a logistics problem. Buy cloth, protect your silver, build trade beacons, and use hydroponics sparingly for absolute emergencies while relying heavily on animal wools for warmth.
Hydroponics: Emergency or Permanent? 💡
Hydroponics basins provide 280% fertility and bring cotton growth time down to ~5.3 days. It feels like ultimate control, but it carries a steep opportunity cost. Every basin growing cotton is a basin not growing emergency rice or healroot.
Factor
Outdoor Cotton
Hydroponics Cotton
Power Need
None
Significant
Weather Exposure
High
Low
Best in Mild Maps
Yes
Usually Unnecessary
Competes with Food
Not directly
Constantly
Bottom Line: Use hydroponics for cloth when you are explicitly on a hostile map, or when you need a fast buffer. In temperate zones, it is usually a waste of power and steel.
Trading for Cloth Without Wasting a Season 💱
Using trade isn't a "failure to self-sustain". It's a fundamental part of the RimWorld economy.
Orbital Trade: The Midgame King
Orbital Bulk Goods Traders regularly carry between 200 and 600 cloth. Build your comms console and trade beacon before you face a crisis. Having silver liquidity means you can hit a button to buy yourself out of a logistics hole.
Settlement Caravans
If you lack orbital tools, nearby settlements are the most controlled backup. Take your best negotiator, pack animals, silver, and enough food for a round trip. Focus almost entirely on securing raw fabric or necessary substitute textiles.
The Advanced Economy & Preventing Waste 🛠️
Many players solve the first shortage, but feel like cloth is always scarce because the colony wastes it constantly.
Stop Wasting Cloth
The "Forever Bill" Trap: Do not set tailoring benches to craft purely on "Do forever". Set a target limit (e.g., "Do until you have 5"). Uncapped bills will eat your entire harvest.
Stockpile Discipline: Put your textile stockpile near the tailor bench, and put it indoors under a roof. You can not manage what you can not see, and you lose cloth if it burns or deteriorates.
Textile Tiering: Understand that cloth isn't your premium temperature or armor fabric. Save cloth for easy base items (billiards, armchairs, basic warm-weather clothing) and rely on Wool for true cold insulation or Leather for light armor.
Reserve Benchmarks
Reserve Band
Amount
What It Means
Critical
0-150
One surprise away from terrible decisions. Buy/Grow now.
Tight
150-400
Enough for a project, not enough for total safety.
Stable
400-900
Normal operations are safe. Maintain.
Surplus
1,500+
Scale back fields, sell excess to traders.
Frequently Asked Questions ❓
Can animals make cloth in RimWorld?
+
In vanilla RimWorld, no. Animals produce wool (like alpacas and muffalo) or drop leather upon butchering. While wool and leather are often superior choices for apparel, they are not technically "cloth". If a specific bill (like a carpet or medicine) explicitly requires cloth, animal products won't work.
I have loads of wool, but no cloth. What's wrong?
+
You probably aren't differentiating your bills. Assign your clothing bills to exclusively pull from Wool or Leather stocks, preserving your actual Cloth stock for items that strictly mandate it. By shifting the clothing burden away, you solve the cloth demand problem naturally.
What trader sells cloth?
+
Bulk Goods Traders. Both orbital trade ships and caravans. Orbital Bulk Goods Traders routinely carry several hundred cloth at a time, making them your top priority target during a midgame shortage.