Kenshi
26 ratings
Farming Guide
By Krougal
Reference and guide to farming in Kenshi. If you are reading this anywhere other than on Steam, it has been reproduced without my permission and quite probably is not up to date and/or complete.

So I started this some time ago and it is semi-finished. Partly I lost interest in playing, partly because I realized somewhere between mid-late game it no longer matters. You'll never balance the numbers, they are ever moving targets. If nothing else because your workers will gain skill and become more efficient.

At some point all your chests will be overflowing with food and goods, you'll have so much money you won't want to be bothered to trade anymore and you can focus on adventuring so it just isn't worth stressing over the numbers past a certain point. I cobbled a lot of information together from various guides and discussions as well as my own play.

All that being said, this guide is an excellent start and it has served me well so maybe someone will find it useful.
   
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Starter base setup
Borderlands (or pretty much any desert region 100% arid/10% green)

Farms:
4 XL Wheat, 3 XL Cactus, 32 Water (includes .25 per bread) = 24 Dustwich (1680 NU) will feed 42 Greenlanders. This does assume you've got 100% fertility so scale accordingly.
5 XL Cactus, 26 Water (includes 1 per rum) = 16 Rum
3 L Hemp, 15 Water = 32 Fabric

That is roughly 73 water/day, it winds up being a little less because there is downtime for harvesting. 2 level III wells at 60% (which is what Rainbow valley has) will provide 72 water which should keep up with a slight surplus. I had tried with 4 hemp fields and it was not enough water (not to mention this is a stupid amount of fabric) . You want to try to keep production as close to what is needed as possible since too much causes jammed inventories but a slight surplus is better than a deficit.

Example layout of fields, water and grain.If you cluster your buildings and/or walls around the fields then you can easily keep them well lit with a few searchlights. It would have made more sense for me to swap the wheat and hemp to shorten the hauling a little, but then there is the argument that an inefficient base layout does raise athletics faster.

Build:
1+ water storage
1 or 2 cook stoves
1 grain silo
5 storage: cactus - next to stoves/still
1 grain silo - preferably automatic
1 storage: wheat straw - outside, next to silo
2 fabric looms(hemp) - preferably automatic and in your crafting building
1 storage: hemp - next to looms
1 fabric chest - near your armor/weapon crafting
1 storage: flour - next to oven
1 bread oven
1 bread basket - next to oven
1 rum still
4 or more rum barrels
1 or more general storage chests

Plenty of room for expansion here. I should add some chests for rum but honestly after 2-3 rum/hash runs through the swamp money is no longer an issue. I'm thinking of just shutting the rum down altogether along with the supporting fields.

This is the workshop. I circled the fabric related items.

Labor:
4 farmers harvesting all fields to minimize harvest times.
Operating machine: Wheat Farm (1 for every farm)
Operating machine: Cactus Farm (1 for every farm)
Operating machine: Hemp Farm (1 for every farm)
Hauling to Storage: Cactus (build 1 for each farmer and assign them individually)
Hauling to Storage: Wheat, cactus, water - Optional, just make sure it is here or later in the order
Whatever other tasks (medic, training, gunner, etc) come after these
Don't bother hauling to fields, operating machine covers water and it does it poorly either way. You'll need to keep an eye on it and intervene from time to time or the wells will be full and the fields empty. I have tried multiple ways and they are just inconsistent. Maybe Kenshi 2 will have automation on par with Rimworld but this sure isn't.

1 cook/brewer:
Operating machine: Cooking Stove - Dustwich
Operating machine: Cooking Stove - Dried meat, optional
Operating machine: Rum Still
Whatever other tasks (medic, training, gunner, etc) come after these

1 assistant cook:
Operating machine: Grain silo (hauling to when you get automatic)
Hauling to: Bread oven
Hauling to: Flour storage
Hauling to: Bread basket
Hauling to: Rum barrels
Hauling to: Storage: Cactus (the one no farmers haul to, any subsequent haulers will also haul to this one)
Hauling to Storage: Wheat, hemp, water - Optional, just make sure it is here or later in the order
Whatever other tasks (medic, training, gunner, etc) come after these

prior to automation 2 haulers, later 1 will suffice:
Operating machine: Fabric Loom (hauling to when you get automatic)
Hauling to Storage: Fabric chest
Hauling to Storage: Hemp
Hauling to Storage: cactus, wheat, water
Whatever other tasks (medic, training, gunner, etc) come after these.
No matter what you do the fabric chest is going to fill up, manually place excess in general storage chests from time to time. They hold a lot more and multiple fabric chests require multiple jobs and will still get jammed inventories.
Farms
Crop
Water per day
Crowth time
Harvest time (S/M/L/XL)
Yield (S/M/L/XL)
Arid/Green/Swamp
Cactus
2
24h
3h/6h/9h/12h
16/32/48/64
100%/0%/0%
Cotton
10
26h
2h48m/5h37m/8h26m/11h20m
30/60/90/121
0%/100%/0%
Green Fruit
10
20h
1h52m/3h16mh/4h35m
40/70/98
100%/0%/0%
Hemp
5
18h
2h20m/ 3h45m/ 6h
25/36/64
40%/100%/100%
Rice weed
10
15h
2h48m/ 5h9m/ 7h35m
30/55/81
40%/100%/100%
Wheat
5
22h
2h20m/4h41m/7h01m/9h22m
25/50/75/100
50%/100%/0%
Hydroponic greenfruit
5
15h
1h4m
40
100%
Hydroponic hemp
5
10h
52m
30
100%
Hydroponic riceweed
10
10h
1h41m
60
100%
Hydroponic wheatstraw
5
14h
1h4m
40
100%
Hydroponic cotton
5
18h
72m
50
100%
Water
Building
Material Cost
Workers
Power
Efficiency
Water per day
Well I
5 Building materials
1
0
75%
36
Well II
6 Building materials, 4 Iron plates
0
8
100%
48
Well III
9 Building materials, 6 Iron Plates
0
10
125%
60
Rain collector
4 Iron plates
0
0
100%
48

* Water per day assumes 100% yield/rainfall, scale accordingly.
Strawflour
Worker with 0 Farming skill, will work at Grain Silo with 50% speed, processing 360 Wheatstraw into 36 Strawflour per day.
Worker with 55 Farming skill, will work at Grain Silo with 100% speed, processing 720 Wheatstraw into 72 Strawflour per day.
Worker with 100 Farming skill, will work at Grain Silo with 140% speed, processing 1008 Wheatstraw into 100.8 Strawflour per day.
Automatic Grain Silo, working at 100%, can process 720 Wheatstraw into 72 Strawflour per day.
Rum
1 worker with 0 Cooking skill (0.5) working at Rum Still can produce 12 Rum per day and consume 240 Cactus and 12 Water per day.
1 worker with 55 Cooking skill (1.0) working at Rum Still can produce 24 Rum per day and consume 480 Cactus and 24 Water per day.
1 worker with 100 Cooking skill (1.4) working at Rum Still can produce 33.6 Rum per day and consume 672 Cactus and 33.6 Water per day.
5 Comments
Fetinho 12 Mar @ 3:18am 
will try!
Artic 3 Feb @ 3:26pm 
Useful guide!
Krougal  [author] 20 Nov, 2024 @ 9:27pm 
@octlot They sure did. Thanks for the heads up.
octlot 6 Nov, 2024 @ 11:36pm 
Hello, I think someone stole your guide
https://re-actor.net/kenshi-farming-guide/
Carhd 9 Mar, 2024 @ 11:04pm 
thanks