Wondering how hydroponics work in Rimworld? This page will be your complete guide to everything hydroponics in Rimworld. It will be helpful for beginner and veteran players to the game and include everything from basic statistical information on hydroponics and farming in Rimworld, to optimal hydroponics setups and layouts.
CONTENTS
You can select any of the heading below to jump straight to that section of the page.
What Are Hydroponics?
Unlocking the Hydroponics Basin
Building and Using the Hydroponics Basin
Building a Hydroponics Basin
Hydroponics and Power
Using the Hydroponics Basin
The Best Hydroponics Layout
Why Use Hydroponics in Rimworld? (Summary)
What Are Hydroponics in Rimworld?
In Rimworld one of the main goals of the colony is to survive. To do this, you will need to keep your colonists in a good mood, warm and safe. One of the most important parts of running a successful colony in Rimworld is to make sure you have a good source of food. Food is one of the greatest challenges in Rimworld and one of the places where most beginners have trouble and end their journeys too quickly. There are a few different ways that one can obtain food in Rimworld. Some of these ways include:
- Hunting meat from wildlife roaming Rimworld
- Trading with other colonies to get food
- Growing your own food
This guide will focus completely on the last way of obtaining food, farming. To begin with, your colonists will already know how to plant and grow food outdoors in tillable soil in Rimworld, but through research they can unlock an advanced method of farming which will grow food quicker and more efficiently, at the cost of electricity. This is hydroponics. Once researched, your colonists will be able to build an object called a Hydroponics Basin. This will allow plants to grow significantly faster than if they were planted outside on the grass. Possibly the main benefit of having the hydroponic basin is the ability to grow plants indoors within this object.
Unlocking the Hydroponics Basin
To unlock the hydroponics basin and the ability to grow plants inside in Rimworld, the player will have to research the required item. Hydroponics is the research that will unlock the ability to build a hydroponics basin. You will have to first research the Electricity research and all of the prerequisites listed for that before you can start to research Hydroponics. As you can see on the left side of the image, the only thing that is unlocked by finishing this research is the Hydroponics basin itself.
The in-game description for the Hydroponics basin reads; “An artificial nutrient bath for growing plants. The nutrients pumps must work continuously; the plants will die if power is cut.”
Building and Using the Hydroponics Basin in Rimworld
Once you have successfully researched the Hydroponics piece you are now able to construct your very first hydroponics basin. Keep in mind that while you are able to build these outside, it is best to keep this indoors. Even plants that are kept in hydroponics basins are subject to the elements. You will still need to keep the plant of your choice at the right temperature in order for it to grow.
Building A Hydroponics Basin
To build the basin, first select the Architect tab from the bottom of the screen. This is where you build and create everything in Rimworld. The Hydroponics basin can be found under the Production tab once you have accessed the Architect section. Simply select the basin from the list of available items and Left-click the area within your colony where you wish to build the basin.
To build the hydroponics basin you will need the following resources:
- 100 Steel
- 1 Component
- A Colonist with at least Level 4 Construction
Once you have placed the blueprints down somewhere a colonist that you have assigned to construction will eventually come and create the Hydroponics basin. To have the basin built quicker you can select the colonist and right-click on the hydroponics basin blueprint and select Prioritize. This will have the colonist drop whatever they are currently doing and create the basin.
Hydroponics and Power
Another thing to keep in mind about the hydroponics basin is that the basin will need a constant supply of power. If the power is cut to the basin, the plants will eventually die out. Each basin draws 70W of power, so plan your power station ahead of time if you plan on having a lot of basins in your colony. You will also have to keep the plants at the right temperature. The best way to do this indoors is by using the Sun Lamp item.
As you can see from the description in the image above, the Sun Lamp grows brightly enough to make the crops think they are in direct sunlight. Another thing to take into account is that the sun lamp draws a huge amount of power when it is running. If you don’t have a decent power setup in your colony you might want to wait with the hydroponics setup for now. Or, just build 1 or 2 basins to begin with.
One of the best things you can do if you have a Hydroponics setup in your colony is to give the line a direct access to some charged batteries. You can create a spare battery area by creating a room with a few batteries already inside it. Connect these to a power source and put a circuit onto the batteries. Once they are fully charged, turn the circuit to the off position and the batteries will remain fully charged. Using spare batteries, even if the colony suffers an event in which the power goes out, or one of your cables are destroyed, you will have a backup supply of power so your plants will not immediately die.
Using the Hydroponics Basin
There are a few different settings and ways you can interact with the hydroponics basin in your colony. If you want to change anything to do with the basin, simply select the basin by left-clicking on it. You will see a bar of options appear at the bottom of the screen. I will go through everything that you can do with the basin.
- Deconstruct: This one just breaks down the Hydroponics basin to reclaim the resources needed to build it. Good if you are running low on steel and have enough food.
- Allow: You can allow or forbid colonists from using the Hydroponics basin for whatever reason. Remember that even forbidden basins will draw power from your colony.
- Reconnect: You can press this option to reconnect the hydroponics basin to the nearest power source. If you have broken down your power conduits and moved them and the basin is till showing it does’t have power connected, you can try reconnecting the power using this option.
- Designate toggle power: You can use this toggle do decide whether you want to turn the hydroponics basin on and off. If you toggle the power on or off one of your colonists will have to manually go to the basin and flick a switch before the effects of this will be realized.
- Plant: Here you can select which type of plant you want grown at this hydroponics basin. The plants that can be grown depend on which plants you have already researched. Note that before some plants can be planted an maintained your colonists will need to be at a certain growing level.
- Build Copy: This allows you to quickly build another Hydroponics basin without having to go through the appropriate menus in order to build one. This one is just a time-saver.
Each function of the hydroponics basin also has a hotkey associated with it. In the image above, you can see that each icon has a corresponding letter attached to it. For example, you can create another hydroponics bench immediately by pressing the ‘O’ key and placing it down somewhere.
Once you select the Plant menu you will be able to decide which plant is going to be grown. If you are already growing a plant in the basin be careful. Choosing a different type of plant to the one which is already growing will cause your colonist to take out and destroy whichever plant is currently growing in the Hydroponics basin, causing you to lose all plant progress for that plant. If the plant had already reached a stage where it can be harvested, you will yield whatever resources are available to be harvested from that plant.
Each plant has its strengths and weaknesses and some will produce materials as opposed to food. For example, the cotton plant will grow and yield cloth, which can be used to create clothing an furniture. Growing a Rice plant will obviously create a source of rice when they are finished and harvested. Press the small information icon on each of the plants to figure out which is the best to grow for your conditions.
Once a plant is growing, you can select each individual plant in order to see it’s growing progress and see how healthy it is. Farming colonists will automatically plant into the hydroponics basin. They will also automatically harvest the plant when it reaches 100% growth.
The Most Efficient Hydroponics Layout
The image below shows the most efficient hydroponics layout in Rimworld. As the plants are indoors, they will need a sun lamp in order to grow. Using the following layout, you are able to fit 24 different hydroponics basins in the area around one sun lamp. Another thing to note is that you will need to keep the room at the right temperature for your crop, so it is advised to place heaters (and possibly air conditioners) inside the room as well. Credit for the original plan for the design.
To build this, you will need 11×11 blocks of usable space in a room. This means the walls will all have to be 13 blocks long. As the colonists are able to climbs over hydroponics basins thanks to an update, you no longer have to allow room to walk past them. Any way you lat the basins out, you will have 4 blocks free. By using the layout above, you can utilize those 4 spaces by placing Firefoam poppers inside them. Note that you will have to research the firefoam poppers first.
The total amount of materials that you will need to create the most optimal setup as seen above are:
| Hydroponics Basins | Heaters | Sun Lamp | Walls/Door | Total | |
| Steel | 2,400 | 200 | 40 | 25 | 2665 |
| Components | 24 | 4 | – | – | 28 |
| Blocks | – | – | – | 240 | 240 |
As you can see from the table above, most of the troubles with building this setup come from the amount of steel required to build the hydroponics basins. You will need a total of 2,665 units of steel in order to build this. Of course if you don’t have the materials all at first, you can always build a few of them and complete it later. Getting started on a good food supply early is always a good idea for any colony.
Why Build Hydroponics in Rimworld? Is It Worth it?
There are a great many reasons for deciding to research and use hydroponics in Rimworld. I would even go as far to say it is an absolute game-changer. Once of the most common reasons a colony falls is due to a lack of food to each. This is particularly a problem in the winter when hunting is scarce and nothing grows outdoors. By having a good hydroponics setup inside your base, you eliminate one of the biggest challenges of the game.
Another great idea for the hydroponics room is to simply mass produce materials. If you have enough food coming your way, you can focus you hydroponics efforts on creating devilstrand or cloth. That way you can create as many clothing items for your colony so you can either sell them to traders for a big profit or keep your colonists warm and happy with decent clothing.
A well-managed hydroponics setup will keep your colony fed for many years through every season of the game. It will eliminate one of the largest challenges of the game to help you focus on other aspects such as organ farming or keeping those darn pirates in check!