Food and farming

A colony that eats well works well. Hunger, thirst and tiredness all slow your crew down, and good meals lift their morale.

How hunger and thirst work

Every crew member has a food and a water bar that slowly empties. When one gets low they stop what they are doing to eat or drink from your stores or the piles on the ground. A crew member who is very hungry or thirsty works more slowly and loses morale.

Raw berries keep someone going; cooked food is far better. A potato is never eaten raw — it goes to the campfire or the kitchen first.

Farm plots and crops

Build farm plots from the Build tab (you can drag a whole field at once) and choose what to sow on them. Potatoes and carrots each need seeds, water every hour and one game day to ripen. A ripe potato plot gives four potatoes and two seed potatoes back, so a field keeps itself going.

Click a plot to see how far it is, whether it is wet or dry, and to change the crop. A dry plot stops growing until someone waters it.

Tree zones for timber

Wild trees run out near your base. Mark a tree zone and your crew plant a tree seed on every tile and tend the saplings. After a few game days they are ready to fell; a felled zone tree gives plenty of wood and a new seed. Wild trees only sometimes leave a seed, so keep the ones you get.

Trees and bushes do not grow in closed rooms: without light, plants shut indoors wither away after a few minutes.

The kitchen

From level 3 you can build a kitchen. It turns one potato, one carrot and two pieces of meat into a quality meal that feeds far more than its parts. Queue meals in the Make tab and your cooks will work through them.

Hunting gives meat: right-click an animal with a crew member selected. Keep a few meals in store before sending people on long journeys.