Farming and cooking

Your first crop

You start with a Wooden Hoe and a few Carrot Seeds. A full harvest, then a warm meal shared beside the fire, is one of the best ways to make a new place feel like home.

• Till: hold the hoe and use it on grass, dirt or mud to turn it into soil.
• Plant: hold the seeds and use them on the soil.
• Water: put the can on your hands or belt bar, fill it at open water or the village well, then use it on the crop. A watered crop grows a full growth day each game day. A dry crop grows more slowly.
• Harvest: when it's ripe, pick it with E or sweep a whole row with a sickle.

Carrots are ready in a day. Some crops, like tomatoes, chili, bamboo, cacao and mango trees, fruit again and again after each harvest.

Helping crops grow

• Compost worked into a young crop helps it grow faster.
• Rice grows only in wet soil: beside water, or watered every day. Rice and taro grow faster beside open water.
• A bamboo sprinkler waters the crops around it, day and night.
• Better hoes, cans and sickles work faster and wider.

Seeds

• Seeds come from wild plants: bushes, flowers and tall grass drop them now and then, and jungle trees sometimes leave bamboo shoots or cacao seedlings.
• Turn produce back into seeds with the seed-making action from your hands or belt bar.
• Mira sells some seeds in the village.

See all seeds on Seeds and saplings.

Farm animals and helpers

• A beehive makes honey every day, more with flowers nearby.
• A bird coop gives fresh eggs every day.
• A capybara pen gives milk every day while its capybara is fed produce.

Cooking

Raw food is fine, but cooked food heals more, keeps you fed much longer, and often gives a boost.

• At a Campfire: grilled fish, roasted corn, baked sweet potato, flatbread, fried eggs...
• At a Cookpot (it counts as a campfire too): stews, soups, rice bowls, curry, tea, hot cocoa and Tatazo's Famous Mango Pie (Tatazo's Famous Mango Pie).

Boosts last a few minutes: more XP from farming, fishing and cooking, faster stamina or mana, better farming or fishing. The food's page says exactly what it does.

Keep food fresh

In a Survival world, raw food spoils first. Cooked food lasts longer, and preserved food lasts longer still. Honey and oil keep. Food that spoils turns into compost, so it can still help the next crop.

An Icebox stops the freshness clock for food inside it. A satchel, chest, locker and vault cabinet do not. Check an item's freshness line before a long trip, and move food into an icebox when you are saving it for later.

Where next

Plant a small row, cook what it gives, and keep a meal ready for the road. Read Fishing for another food source, Survival worlds for the full Survival challenge, and Storage: satchel, chests, the locker and the vault for keeping useful things close.