RUST Farming 2.0 – Farm Setups and Meta Guide
The RUST Farming 2.0 Farm Setups and Meta Guide are brought to you by our content partner, Malonik.
In this video guide, Malonik follows up his previous introduction guide to RUST Farming 2.0 system and dives deeper into how to set up a RUST farm to be as efficient as possible. You will also learn how to deal with the current water supply issues and how you can improve your RUST crops’ genes. The basics for setting up an efficient farm will be covered in detail, and how to continue supporting the farm.
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Video Transcript
Hey guys! Mal here and today, we’re going to take a look at the meta for farms in RUST.
This is something that I received a lot of requests for after my video covering rust farming as a whole, where I explained how things work.
If you haven’t seen that video and you don’t know what you’re doing with farming, please go and watch it. The video is only 7 minutes long and it will give you an essential understanding of the farming system in the first 4 minutes. It’ll help a lot.
Now that the patch is out, we can be fairly sure that things won’t drastically change for a month. So now we can take a look at how to set up farms to be as efficient as possible.
I’d like to suggest something of a meta for farming. Since the patch, I’ve been playing on a popular vanilla server to see what is possible with the new system.
Firstly I have to say that I’m enjoying it immensely. I tend to spend a fair bit of time around the base, and adding this into the base maintenance rotation is great fun.
I had no trouble finding the components or BPing them, and I’m happy to say that I set up a nice big 4×4 large planter farm quite easily by day 2.
Now let’s look at sprinkler placement. I’ve set up sprinklers at the major intersections of the planters. There is some overlap, but that’ll just help when planting thirstier plants.
Each planter should get its own light. I’m using a single wind turbine for this base, and it’s easily powering the lighting, the pumps, an auto turret, and an eight igniter launchpad for fireworks.
Make your farm as big or small as you like. Keep in mind that the bigger your farm is, the easier it will be to refine your genetics.
I’d recommend going no smaller than four planters in a square. This gives you enough space to refine four separate sets of genes at once, and it allows two separate crossbreeds between those four initial sets at the same time.
For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to refer to these four planters set up as a farm block. So whenever I reference a farm block, I am referring to this.
If you’re going to go larger, do so in farm blocks. This way, you can place three central sprinklers, and it will deal with the block.
Doing it this way will keep your water usage efficiency, and it will work regardless of your water source.
If you are using the large catcher or water barrel, you’ll be able to run water to 6 sprinklers or two farm blocks. Using the small catcher still works; however, you’ll need one catcher per farm block.
Now a big issue people are having is their water catchers can’t keep up with the demand.
I’m not sure if this is intentional or oversight on Facepunch’s behalf. Either way, it is what it is for now, and we have to deal with this.
Now, if you’re looking to be a serious farmer, then you’re going to want to set up by the freshwater rivers.
I’d even go as far as building over it and leaving a middle foundation out somewhere, so you have access to it within your base.
Start hitting the road and the supermarkets. Food crates are your friends. Keep every single blue water jug you find.
Another positive to setting up nearby one of the freshwater streams is that you’ll usually find fresh crops growing around them. This can be extremely useful for keeping an influx of new seeds into your farm. Doing so is essential because you need to be able to experiment with seeds and introduce different genetic strands into the farm.
If you’re really against building by water streams, for whatever reason, then there is an alternative; however, you aren’t going to like it.
With this patch, possibly one of the most useless items in the entire game has been transformed into an essential tool, the water purifier. For years this tool has been in the game, and for years it has been largely ignored.
Hell, there was even a point in time when Facepunch messed up with it, and so for a good few months or maybe even a year, we couldn’t actually see the water purifier at all. You got the steam effect when you turned it on, and that was it.
If you aren’t near a fresh water source, then this is your next best thing. It’s more effort than the stream option; however, this is what you’ve got. Try and get your hands on the water barrel and throw two of them down along with two water purifiers over campfires.
Use one barrel for salty water, transfer the salty water from it with whatever you’ve got that holds water. Even the craftable bota bag would do in a pinch. Over to your water purifiers. As it purifies, move the freshwater into the other water barrel.
Rinse and repeat for as long as you can stand it, and the supply should last you a decent amount of time.
Okay, so let’s cover the essentials to this meta again real quick.
The minimum farm size should be four large planters or one farm block.
When adding to the farm, add entire farm blocks.
Each individual planter needs its own ceiling light.
Place three sprinklers at the intersection of each farm block.
If I can set up a four farm block-sized farm on a busy vanilla server by day two of the weekly wipe, then it’s quite achievable for anyone that is interested in getting into farming in rust.
Now let’s talk about what to grow. There are a number of different options, including the new addition of the potato.
In case you’re wondering, the potatoes spawn in the brown patches in the forest biome, much like the mushrooms. That being said, unlike the mushrooms, the potatoes only spawn singularly, and they seem to be less common.
If you take a look at the various seeds, you’ll notice that the potato seems to be ahead of its competition.
For whatever reason, most of the crops we can grow have 10 or 15 percent for their stats. The potato, however, has 30 percent across the board.
They also seem to offer an unmatchable yield with each harvest.
As for eating them, they give you 125 calories, which beats the pumpkins 100. However, they only restore half of the health and hydration of the pumpkin.
Ultimately grow whatever you like, and you’ll keep your team fed. Corn seems particularly good for bulking up the fridge too.
If you can get your hands on some potato seeds, start growing and cloning them immediately.
Separate your seeds as much as possible, so you are creating at least four different genetic strains.
Now once you reach the point that your farm is full of different strains, start to combine them. Pair them up and intertwine the two planters in a checkered pattern.
From here on out, it is survival of the fittest. Only take cuttings of the absolute best in each planter. Start the process again. Separate your strains and repopulate them. Then repeat the intertwine.
If you continue to do this, you’ll gradually improve your seeds more and more until they are ready to be merged into what I’m calling a super seed batch.
So at this point, we have grown and refined our own two strains or more. Now it’s time to bring it all together.
Intertwine all of your seeds across your entire farm into the checkered pattern.
Depending on how crazy you want to go with this, you can refine this batch and even reset the whole process with a far superior starting point.
Otherwise, you can just take cuttings of the best until you have enough clones for your whole farm and then pick the rest for food and plant fibers.
It’s also worth mentioning something one of my viewers commented on in the last video.
The composter. I was mistaken in thinking you had to use horse poop and plant fiber. That is an option, but there are others.
For example, corn will yield 1.5 fertilizer per 5 corn, trout by themselves yield 1.3 fertilizer each. Mushrooms get one fertilizer per 5 of them. Lastly, composting meat gets you one fertilizer for five meat regardless of whether it’s raw, cooked, or burnt.
Thanks again to John Watkins for letting me know about all that.
Hopefully, this video helps get people up and running on the new farming 2.0 update. Let me know what you think of this video in the comments. If there’s something you’d like to know how to do, please leave it in a comment. I personally read every single one of them.
Also, it would mean the world to me if you could swing me a thumbs up on this video. It really does help, and if you’re new here, why not subscribe for more quality guides and content.
Anyway, thanks for checking out my rust farm setup meta, and I’ll see you guys in the next video.