RimWorld Best Crops (1.6.4633) | Crop Picker + Field & Hydro Planner
RimWorld Best Crops Guide + Planner
Plant rice when food is late, corn when labor is the real bottleneck and the soil is decent, potatoes when the map is mostly gravel, and haygrass when the job is animal feed. Indoors, the answer snaps back to rice because the local hydroponics basin uses fertility = 2.8 and corn cannot be sown there.
0.4 fertility sensitivity.Plant This Right Now
These are the fast situation calls the page keeps falling back to once you align urgency, soil, and indoor power.
If the colony is hungry, rice is the first answer. Once the pantry is safe and your growers are stretched thin, swap the good ground to corn. If the map is mostly 70% fertility gravel, use potatoes. If the room is built around basins and a lamp, go back to rice.
Hydroponic sow tags, and corn only has Ground.
| Situation | Best pick |
|---|---|
| Panic food or first harvest | Rice |
| Long season and decent soil | Corn |
| Gravel or stony patches | Potatoes |
| Hydroponics basin room | Rice |
| Animal reserve | Haygrass |
At 100% fertility soil, rice, potatoes, and corn are all close on estimated calendar-day nutrition per tile. The split appears when you care about fertility sensitivity, labor, and hydroponic legality.
| Crop | Grow days | Yield | Nutri / harvest | Nutri / day on soil | Work / 1 nutrition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rice | 3.0 | 6 | 0.30 | 0.055 | 1233 |
| Potatoes | 5.8 | 11 | 0.55 | 0.052 | 673 |
| Corn | 11.3 | 22 | 1.10 | 0.054 | 336 |
| Haygrass | 7.0 | 18 | 0.90 | 0.071 | 411 |
| Special case | What matters |
|---|---|
| 70% fertility gravel | Potatoes win because fertilitySensitivity = 0.4. |
| Hydro basins | Rice wins because fertility = 2.8 and corn cannot be sown there. |
| Storage | Raw corn gets daysToRotStart = 60, longer than rice and potatoes. |
One standard lamp room
24 basins gives you 96 grow tiles. The local basin def uses basePowerConsumption = 70, and the sun lamp uses 2900W while scheduled on.
Power split
Day: 2900W + 24 × 70W = 4580W. Night: 24 × 70W = 1680W. The lamp schedule runs from 0.25 to 0.8, or about 13.2 hours.
Crop call
Because basin fertility is so high, rice clears strawberries and potatoes on raw output. Keep one backup food stockpile because basin crops die when the room loses power.
Corn without heartbreak
Use corn once the pantry is safe, then split it across a few sow dates. Corn is your best labor deal, but the long cycle makes unsplit fields a raid and cold-snap trap.
Potatoes where soil lies to you
The math only flips in their favor on bad dirt. The moment you unlock rich soil or hydro space, potatoes lose their advantage to rice or corn again.
Animals should not eat your rice plan
Haygrass gives more animal nutrition per tile than the human food crops. Use kibble if you need compact storage, but grow hay first if the goal is winter reserve.
Rice buffer even on rich maps
A small rice strip lets you recover before the next corn cycle lands. It is the easiest insurance to justify.
Underground and pollution
Use the picker notes for fungus or toxipotato routes only if your actual install includes the matching DLC defs. This local Core dump only exposes raw fungus and cave-plant hooks.
Hydro rooms need reserve power
Basins keep drawing power through the night and die during long outages. Do not treat the lamp number as the whole room cost.
harvestNutrition = yield × 0.05for the raw food crops on this page.fertilityFactor = 1 + (fertility - 1) × sensitivityis the local rule the planner uses for soil and hydro comparisons.fieldTiles = dailyNeed / nutritionPerTilePerDayand then a reserve is added as extra harvest coverage.
Interactive Planner
Use the picker when you need a plain recommendation. Use the calculators when you want tile counts, hydro room power, or a hay reserve number you can actually build around.
Underground fungus and polluted-tile outputs are shown as DLC-only notes because those plant defs are not present in this local Core dump.
The calendar-day estimate divides local adjusted grow days by an active plant window of roughly 55% of a day, matching the installed sun lamp crop schedule. The nutrition-per-pawn input is intentionally editable so you can tune for unusual appetites.
What This Page Uses From Local Files
The recommendations above are not just generic crop tips. They are anchored to the installed 1.6.4633 Core defs and source hooks available in this environment.
Rice, potatoes, corn, haygrass
The page reads local growDays, harvestYield, fertilitySensitivity, and sowTags for the four core farm crops.
- Rice:
growDays = 3, yield 6, hydro legal. - Potatoes:
growDays = 5.8,fertilitySensitivity = 0.4. - Corn:
growDays = 11.3, yield 22, ground only. - Haygrass:
growDays = 7, yield 18, feed crop.
Hydroponics basin facts
The indoor planner uses the local hydro basin values directly: fertility = 2.8, basePowerConsumption = 70, and a default crop of rice.
- Basins require the
Hydroponicsow tag. - Each basin occupies four grow cells.
- Power loss kills basin crops, so the room cannot be sized on lamp wattage alone.
Sun lamp timing
Indoor crop timing and energy estimates use the local sun lamp numbers: 2900W and a schedule from 0.25 to 0.8.
- That is roughly 13.2 active hours per day.
- The planner uses that window to convert adjusted grow days into calendar-day estimates.
- The visible growing radius used in builds is the local special radius note of about
5.8.
Growth logic and DLC boundaries
The installed source shows plant growth using 1 / (TicksPerDay × growDays), and it explicitly skips Odyssey drought penalties for crops planted in supporting structures like hydroponics basins.
- Core also includes cave plants that yield
RawFungus. - This local dump does not include the actual Ideology
Nutrifungusor BiotechToxipotatoplant defs. - That is why the live calculators stay on Core crops and mark those routes as DLC-only notes.
Quick FAQ
These are the common “which one right now?” questions the tool is built to answer quickly.
Rice or corn?
Rice if the colony needs food before the next bad event. Corn if the food buffer already exists and the real problem is grower labor, not raw output.
Why do potatoes feel better on bad maps?
Because they do not collapse as hard on poor fertility. On 70 percent ground, the local numbers put potatoes ahead of both rice and corn in raw nutrition per tile per day.
What should hydroponics plant first?
Rice, unless you have a specific raw-food or roleplay reason to burn basin space on strawberries. Corn is not a hydro crop in the local defs.
Do I need a separate animal crop plan?
Yes. Haygrass should be planned as its own reserve, because feeding livestock with your human food crop turns every shortage into a colony-wide shortage.