Farming

''' is the process of growing food in '.

Overview
Farming is an essential part of Survival Mode. It serves as the player's primary method of providing food for themselves throughout the entire game.

Basics
First, place a Soil Bag on the ground (i.e. a terrain surface) so that it is placed as a square mound of soil. Seeds can then be planted in this mound by left-clicking. Next, the newly planted crops need watering in order to grow. Use a Water Bucket to collect water from a nearby body of water and throw it onto the crops. It is possible to water multiple crops with a single splash, which may happen if the water lands on the edge of a mound. After some time, the crops will grow. Applying Fertilizer is an optional step that doubles the speed of the growth process. Once the crops are ready to be harvested, they can be picked, which produces the item and 1 to 3 Seeds.

Crops should be planted near water to facilitate watering them. Soil can be watered before planting, though watered soil will dry out eventually if nothing has been planted.

Crops can also be planted and picked by a Vacuum Pump, and watered by a Water Cannon or Vacuum Pump.

The basics of farming are depicted on a billboard near the pond at the Crash Site, where a few pre-placed soil mounds, Soil Bags, Seeds, and a Water Bucket are found. One of the mounds has a Tomato already planted.

Growable Items
Growth times are in in-game hours (real-time minutes).

Raids
Raids are triggered by planting too many crops in an area. When this occurs, an alert message will appear, saying "UNAUTHORIZED FARMING DETECTED!". A red timer will also appear on the approximate center of the group of crops. This timer will reach 0 at midnight. At this time, Robots will spawn nearby and attack the crops.

The raid timer only appears when the raid is triggered. Because of this, it will not reappear when the world is exited and reloaded. The raid will still occur, but the timer will not be displayed.

Each type of crop has an associated crop value, which is used to determine if a raid starts and the amount of Haybots spawned. Crops considered "high-level" will cause Tapebots and Farmbots to spawn if there are at least five of them and the total crop value is at least 80.

The level of a raid is determined when it is triggered, not when it begins. As such, crops added or removed before then will not affect the raid level. This means a raid will still occur if there are no more crops present. The intensity of raids increases on subsequent nights if crops continue to be planted. This is reset once no more new crops are planted. The second night farm detection occurs between 4 and 5 AM. To avoid a higher level raid using low-level crops, you should plant between midnight and 6:45 AM so you can harvest before 4 AM.

Mini-Farming
Mini-farming is a safer, less risky alternative to regular farming. The purpose of it is to prevent raids from occurring. The basic concept is to plant smaller groups of crops far apart from each other so that they go undetected. The main advantages of this strategy are making your crops far less likely to be destroyed and it frees you from having to defend your crops every single night while still being able to grow food.

These are the maximum safe amounts per cell for each crop:

Each type of crop should have their own mini-farm, with a good amount of distance between them so that each is in a different cell. Cells are 256x256 blocks, so anything 256 blocks apart is safe. Mini-farms may be closer to each other if they are near a cell boundary, as long as they are in separate cells.

Remember to take a break from farming for at least one night every so often to reset the farming intensity. This is important, as a buildup of farming intensity will eventually trigger a raid, even without planting any additional crops.

If you do happen to accidentally trigger a raid by having your mini-farms too close together or letting farming intensity build up, you can apply Fertilizer to your crops to speed up their growth. If you have enough time left before the raid starts, you will be able to harvest your crops before it begins. It's important to note that harvesting your crops does not cancel the raid. You will get only a level 1 raid, though, so you can also simply fend off the three Totebots.

All you have to be concerned with when using this strategy is Totebots and Haybots wandering too close to your mini-farms and destroying them. This should only be a problem if any of your mini-farms are positioned close enough to your base so that the robots could happen to find the crops if they spawn near them or when chasing down a Woc. Because of this, you may want to fortify your crops a bit, just in case.

Upcoming
Chili Peppers will be a new farmable crop, grown from Chili Pepper Seeds. Chili Pepper crops will attract particular type of dangerous robot that "looks like a handful". Presumably, this means raids on farms with Chili Pepper crops will spawn this robot, similar to how high-level crops increase the raid level. The robot in question is possibly a new type of robot or a variant of an existing one.