Kenshi – Quick Farming Guide

Farming Guide for Beginners

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.

Two Level 3 wells running at 60% in Rainbow Valley give you 72 water per day. You’ll actually get a bit less because of harvesting breaks, around 73 water daily. This amount should be enough to keep things running with a small extra amount left over.

I tried using 4 hemp fields but that used too much water (and made way more fabric than needed). It’s best to produce just what you need – having too much can block your storage, but having a little extra is better than not having enough.

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

Water

*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.