Once Human Farming Guide | How to Grow Crops

This Once Human Farming Guide will tell you how farming works, how to get new seeds, and how water and light levels can affect your harvest.

You're going to need food to survive in Once Human, and farming is a great way to get raw ingredients for cooking and crafting items. Setting up a proper farming operation at your base is no easy task, but we're here to help you understand how to make the most of your crops — read on to learn more!

How to Unlock Once Human Farming

You can unlock Once Human farming by purchasing the "Planting" Memetic in the Logistics Tree. Although this will unlock farming at its most basic level, I strongly recommend advancing to Planter Boxes as soon as possible for their superior capabilities and flexibility.

How Farming Works in Once Human

Farming in Once Human is surprisingly complex. You have to do a little more than simply plop a seed down in dirt and keep it watered; there are four key factors that you need to monitor.

• Vitality: Vitality is the overall "health" of a crop. Low Vitality will reduce the growth speed and the yield (number of plants on harvest) of a crop. Vitality is affected by imbalanced light, incorrect water usage, and exposure to Dirty Water (including rain).
• Irrigation: A rating of how optimally watered the crop is. Too little (or too much) water can negatively impact a crop's Bitality.
• Lighting: A measure of how much light a crop is getting. Too little (or too much) light can reduce a crop's Vitality. Decorative lighting for your house does not provide any light for farming, unfortunately.
• Mutation: The chance for a crop to mutate into something else entirely. Certain Fertilizers can greatly increase the chances of Mutation.

Every crop is different in terms of its requirements for Irrigation and Lighting. Many crops actually require less than the maximum water or light; in such cases, too much water or light can be just as bad as too little water or light.

The appropriate ranges of water and light are shown for the crop you're planting; you can also view this information by interacting with a farming plot. While you can control the amount of water and reduce pollution by putting Planter Boxes indoors, precisely controlling light levels is much more difficult.

How to Get Crop Seeds

You can get crop seeds by harvesting wild plants. After that, you may gain additional crop seeds once you've harvested a crop that you've grown. Still, the fastest way to get more crop seeds is to simply run around the world and harvest as many wild plants as you can.

How to Water Your Crops

You can water your crops by interacting with a farming plot and depositing the correct amount of water from your inventory. It's generally preferable to use Boiled Water; using Dirty Water will negatively impact a crop's Vitality.

Additionally, rain counts as "Dirty Water." While other games incentivize planting outdoors, putting your Planter Boxes outside is actually a bad idea in Once Human. You should unlock Planter Boxes and place them underneath a roof as soon as you're able so that you can precisely control water levels and increase a crop's Vitality.

How to Give Your Crops Light

There are two ways to give your crops Light in Once Human:

1. Expose your crops to sunlight
2. Use Grow Lights

Unfortunately, using Grow Lights will require unlocking the "Grow Lights" Memetic which is locked behind Seasonal Progress. Furthermore, you'll need to establish a power system in your base for the Grow Lights to actually work.

You'll have to think of using Grow Lights as a mid-to-late game strategy (at least in context of the game's available content on launch). For now, it's best to focus your efforts on crops that won't be too badly impacted by low (or otherwise unusual) levels of light.

How to Use Fertilizer

Fertilizer can be used to enhance the growing speed or yield of your Crops. In some cases, Fertilizer can mutate your crops into something entirely new!

You'll need to unlock the "Compost Bin" Memetic and build a Compost Bin to actually make Fertilizer. Basic Fertilizer will increase the chances that you'll get extra crops on harvest, and more advanced Fertilizers (which you unlock with additional Memetics) can give you even greater bonuses.

We've reached the end of our Once Human Farming Guide, but you can still learn some more tips and tricks by reading our other guides below!