Money making guide

There are lots of ways to "make money" in RimWorld. Depending on the strengths/weaknesses of your colony, its location and inhabitants, some might be more lucrative or attractive than others. Some might give more profit in the long term, but require more set-up time, or more labor. And there are (at least!) two ways to measure "best" - making the fastest profit in the least time, or squeezing the most profit out of a limited amount of starting material, even if it takes longer. This guide will give an overview of the different options, with links to guides that expand in more detail on that specific pursuit.

In no particular order, options include:

• Crops, which can lead to drug production
• Animals, which can lead to textiles and Crafting
• Construction, often a byproduct of idle high-skill Constructors or unwanted lower-quality items
• Art or Crafted items, similar to construction
• Prisoners, and how to make the most of them
• Loot, found after a raid - what to sell, what to melt

Although "Trading", with visiting caravans or by sending your own to neighboring outposts, and/or via an orbital trade beacon, is an important part of economics, and a pawn with a high Social skill will get you the best prices, keep in mind that there is a base trade modifier of 60% for selling, 140% for buying, so you will not be able to "buy low, sell high" with the same items to different traders. However, some traders will only accept certain items in trade, so in that case, investing in something that is more widely accepted might be a way of turning something generally unwanted into something less valuable but that you can actually trade away. 10,000 silver in human leather is worthless if no one wants it, or if those who do want it have nothing you want.

Note: Producing things from gold and silver is best when someone has a high skill level and a creativity inspiration, as it improves the chances of getting a top-quality item. However, at the extreme high end, be cautious about creating a "white elephant", something so valuable that no trader or faction has the silver to purchase it and you're stuck with either trading it for a fraction of its value, or putting it in your Dining Room and cursing it every time you see it.

Food Production

Corn is the most profitable. It is actually more profitable than all the cash crops, but can't be turned into finished products, so the chain of profit making relies entirely on the grow cycle. Also, psychoid leaves are more valuable per material so it makes it easier to gather and haul. In terms of economics, hay is more nutrition per day but slightly less per unit work than corn, it should only be grown in limited growing season regions to feed livestock or even just once to lay down straw matting if work time is precious. It is usually better to grow faster growing crops when you don't have rich soil, so use rich soil for cash crops (especially corn) and regular soil for faster growing hay and fast growing cash crops (especially hops). Corn is still preferable to other low yield human edible crops in normal soil, but for subsistence in the early game rice is preferable in normal soil AND rich soil. Plants that can be grown in rocky soil (from best to worst in terms of fertility sensitivity): fibercorn(.1), nutrifungus(.15), potato plant(.4), haygrass(.6), hop plant(.7), and no other is well suited to rocky soil. Note: In the beginning of the game, 24 rice in normal soil is the minimum subsistence amount, so grow that along with all other crops being for profit! Hay can be planted in animal pens, set to not cut, and animals will eat it. Only when winter comes should you cut the hay. However, if there is limited time, corn and cash crops can be prioritized as it has much higher value for cutting.

Crop	Work to sow	Work to harvest	Total work to grow	Raw material per plant	Raw material value (Selling)	Value added per unit work	Time to grow (in normal soil, including account rest time)	Profit per day	Nutrition per day	Nutrition per unit work
corn plant	170	200	370	22	.66	.039	20.86	.696	.0527	.00297
haygrass	170	200	370	18	.36	.0175	12.92	.501	.0697	.0024
rice plant	170	200	370	6	.66	.0107	5.54	.715	.05415	.00081

You can also mass produce cooked meals as a means of condensing material to sell. Simple meals are the most profitable, both in terms of profit/resource and profit per unit work.

Note: Pemmican is good to keep around for people who are food poisoned so they can ingest discrete portions. Also, for long caravan journeys. It is a must for neolithic tech colonies. Note: Hay is the most nutrition/day crop. This means it can feed far more animals than other crops. Note: Meat should never be used to make simple meals and only hay should be used to make kibble.

Meal	Work to make	Raw material value (Selling)	Value added (selling)	Value added per unit work
Simple meal(Plant)	300	6.6	2.4	.008
Simple meal(Meat)	300	12	-3	-.01
Fine meal	450	9.9	2.1	.0047
Lavish meal	800	18.8	5.2	.0065
Pemmican	700	9.9	3.54	.005
Kibble(hay)	450	31.2	1.8	.004

Cash Crops

Cash crops are the ultimate renewable resource, meaning they can be relied upon season over season.

Plant work speed and harvest yield are two factors affected by skill level, manipulation, sight, and global work speed. It is crucial to have a skill level of 6 in plants, going higher may increase work speed (11.5%/level) but does not noticeably increase yield (3,2,1...%) and also allows the most profitable cash crop, psychoid plants, to be grown. Herbal medicine is not the most profitable crop so level 8 in plants is unnecessary for cash considerations, although it may be helpful for general medical purposes. Plants level 4 is the minimum recommended level for this money making strategy.

Note on medicine:

• cloth can be bought for 1.5*1.4=2.1
• neutroamine can be bought for 6*1.4=8.4
• herbal medicine can be bought for 10*1.4=14
• medicine can be bought for 18*1.4=25.2

Therefore producing medicine from bought ingredients costs more than purchasing medicine directly, so is counterproductive and should be avoided. Medicine is 1.66 as effective as herbal medicine but almost twice as expensive so, for purely economic purposes, it's cost effective to buy herbal medicine instead of medicine. Glitterworld medicine is 1.6 times as effective but is more than twice as expensive. Growing herbal medicine is so low profit and drug production is so costly in making real medicine that it is best to use the profits from other crops to purchase herbal medicine and medicine production should be avoided for economic purposes.

Crop	Work to sow	Work to harvest	Total work to grow	Raw material per plant	Raw material value (Selling)	Value added per unit work	Time to grow (in normal soil, including account rest time)	Profit per day
hops	170	200	370	8	.78	.016	9.23	.676
smokeleaf	170	200	370	9	.96	.0233	13.85	.624
psychoid	170	200	370	8	1.14	.024	16.62	.549
healroot	800	400	1200	1	6	.005	12.92	.464

Value added labor used to make finished products may further increase profits but at a lower rate of profit per unit work. The upside is that this can be done continuously while growing is an intermittent activity. Corn is the best cash crop without further processing, however some "drug" crops can be far more profitable if processed into an end product.

Note: A grower working round the clock would be more profitable for purely selling than a grower splitting his/her time between multiple activities, including drug production. However, a specialized grower coupled with a specialized drug producer and hauler is the most profitable configuration. It is best to remove hauling from your growers work tab to maximize production (or put it at a minimal priority). It is important to notice that the best configuration and overall productivity and money saved may include a grower who also produces drugs (to keep within the colony).

Note: Go juice is something that should only be traded in one direction, bought and not sold. It is better to make it yourself though.

Note: Wake up is the most profitable for selling. It also is more profitable than money saved for several drugs, some drugs have high money saved though.

Drug Production

Drug	Work to process	Processed value added (selling)	Money saved by producing and not selling	Value added per unit work	Money saved per unit work
psychite tea	400	1.44	8	.0036
beer	200	3.3	4.8	.0165	.0405
joints	450	2.76	4.4	.0061	.0159
yayo	350	3.48	8.4	.0099	.0339
flake	250	3.84	5.6	.01536	.03776
go-juice (made yayo)	950	-6	21.2	-.0063	.016
go juice (bought yayo)	600	-14.4	21.2	-.024	.0113
wake-up	900	18.2	14	.02	.0357
penoxycyline	600	1.2	7.2	.002	.014
medicine	700	-3.5	7.2	-.005	.005

There are lots of ways of "making money" in RimWorld. Depending on a colony's location, progress, and inhabitants, certain means of production will be more viable than others. Some can give profit in the long-term, but require more set-up or work. And there are (at least!) two ways to measure "best" - making the fastest profit in the least time, or squeezing the most profit out of a limited amount of starting material, even if it takes longer. This guide will give an overview of the different options.

In no particular order:

• Crops, including cloth & drug production
• Animals, including textile crafting
• Construction, art and crafting.
• Prisoners, and their human resources

Note on trading

There is no "buy low, sell high" in RimWorld. In general, trader prices do not vary by a lot. At most, any faction base offers a +2% Trade Price Improvement, resulting in both lower buying prices, and higher selling prices. But certain traders will only accept certain types of items. While a faction base will buy almost everything in their tech level, a combat supplier may not be interested in your human leather.

What's more important to note is the default 0.6x price multiplier for selling, and a seperate 1.4x price multiplier for buying. The Trade price disadvantage storyteller difficulty setting will make things even worse. Your trading disadvantage can be reduced by increasing Social skill (and other means of raising TPI).

All values in this guide assume Strive to Survive difficulty, and use Market Value instead of "actual" value. Difficulty impacts yields of most items, as well as the trade price disadvantage. If you have 0 Social skill, expect things to become 233% more expensive in Strive to Survive, and 350% more expensive in Losing is Fun.

Food Crops

Crop	Total Work (per plant)	Raw material (per plant)	Market Value (per plant)	Value (per hour work)	Real days to grow	Profit/day plant growth
Corn plant	370 ticks (Plants)	22	24.2	163.5	20.86 days	0.696
Haygrass	370 ticks (Plants)	18	10.8	73.0	12.92 days	0.501
Rice plant	370 ticks (Plants)	6	6.6	44.6	5.54 days	0.715

¹ Time it takes to sow and then harvest. Directly reduced by Plant Work Speed. Does not account for travel/hauling time.

² Assuming 100% harvest yield (difficulty stat) and 100% Plant Harvest Yield (pawn stat, impacted by Plants skill).

³ Time to grow, taking into account day/night cycles, but not sub-optimal light level. Assuming 100% soil fertility. Rice and Corn are equally affected by soil, but corn cannot be grown in hydroponics.

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Corn is the best crop for both human food/work and cash/work. It is actually more profitable per unit work than any crop in the game, including every drug. However, it cannot be processed any further, meaning it is reliant entirely on the grow cycle. Per unit, it is less valuable than any drug, meaning more time is spent hauling. You'll might have to carry all that corn - only bulk goods traders and faction bases will buy it. And, in practice, the slow growing cycle can be a large issue. Corn is more dfficult to grow in bomes with a winter. It is vulnerable to destruction, whenever by fire and blight.

Haygrass gives more nutrition/day than corn, but cannot be eaten by humans unless produced into kibble, which gives a −12 moodlet. It is also less efficient for work. Rice is good as a stable source of food, but is not efficient at all in terms of product / work. Make sure not to sell food that you need to eat. When cooked into simple meals or regular fine meals, each colonist will eat an effective 20 raw food per day.

Product

Raw food can be turned directly into sellable packaged survival meals, pemmican, and chemfuel. However, both packaged meals and pemmican require a source of meat, meaning they will not be covered in the table below. Both haygrass and corn can be used to feed animals, but most animals can graze in the summer (or all year, if the biome supports it).

Product	Total Work	Cost	Market Value	Profit @ Corn (per hr work)	Profit @ Human meat (per hr work)
Chemfuel	2500 ticks (no skill)	3.5 nutrition (70 raw food)	80.5	< 0.01	24.5

Corn-turned chemfuel in a biofuel refinery is barely profitable when compared to selling raw corn. You can use less desirable food, like human meat and insect meat, though it is still less profitable than growing rice. Haygrass cannot be used in the refinery unless first turned into kibble.

Chemfuel has its advantages: it is lighter and never rots.

Cash crops

Crop	Planter Work (per plant)	Raw material (per plant)	Market Value (per plant)	Value (per hr work)	Real days to grow	Profit/day plant growth
Cotton plant	370 ticks (Plants)	10	15	101.35	14.77 days	1.02
Devilstrand	600 ticks (Plants)	6	33	137.5	41.54 days	0.794
Healroot	1200 ticks (Plants)	1	10	20.83	12.92 days	0.773
Hops	370 ticks (Plants)	8	10.4	70.27	9.23 days	1.127
Smokeleaf plant	370 ticks (Plants)	9	14.4	97.3	12.92 days	1.115
Psychoid plant	370 ticks (Plants)	8	15.2	102.7	16.62 days	0.914
Ambrosia bush	200 ticks (Plants)	4	60	(750)	N/A	N/A

¹ Time it takes to sow and then harvest. Directly reduced by Plant Work Speed. Does not account for travel/hauling time.

² Assuming 100% harvest yield (difficulty stat) and 100% Plant Harvest Yield (pawn stat, impacted by Plants skill).

³ Time to grow, taking into account day/night cycles, but not sub-optimal light level. Assuming 100% soil fertility. Psychoid has the least Fert. sensitivity, and hops are less than the other plants.

⁴ Ambrosia bushes cannot be planted, only appearing from the event. You cannot control where the ambrosia sprouts, meaning that travel time is highly variable. Note that these bushes can be harvested multiple times.

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Psychoid and cloth are the clear winners when selling raw. Psychoid has lowered fertillity sensitivity, so it is weaker per day in hydroponics.

Devilstrand gives more $/work, but it grows nearly twice as slow as corn. As corn gives even more $/work, it is the superior option. Ambrosia blows all plants out of the water and requires no process work afterwards, but is limited to the event.

Cloth and devilstrand can be used as textiles for both Crafting and Construction items. The rest of the plants are drugs, and can be processed with either Cooking or Intellectual.

Drug Production

Drug	Synthesis Work (per plant)	Material (per plant)	Market Value (per plant)	Value (per hr work total)		Added Value (per plant)	Added Value (per hr work)	Profit/day plant growth
Beer	320 ticks (Cook)	1.6	19.2	69.56		8.8	68.75	2.086
Smokeleaf joint	1012.5 ticks (Cook)	2.25	24.75	46.22		10.35	25.56	1.916
Psychite tea	800 ticks (Cook)	2	20	42.73		2.4	7.5	1.316
Flake	500 ticks (Intel.)	2	28	80.46		12.8	64	1.842
Yayo	350 ticks (Intel.)	1	21	72.92		5.8	41.43	1.381

¹ Combined work from both planting and synthesis. Controlled by Plant Work Speed and either Drug Cooking Speed (Cook) or Drug Synthesis Speed (Intel.).

² For beer, hops need to be converted into wort, then put into a fermenting barrel to make beer. This extra hauling work is not accounted for.

³ Beer takes 6 days to ferment from wort in a fermenting barrel. Fermentation can be done concurrently with plant work, so this is ignored.

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• Why Drugs?

Despite having a lower value/work ratio than their raw plants, drugs have several major advantages.

All calculations assume that a drug is constantly being planted, harvested, and synthesized by 1 pawn, before travel time. These tables are comparing 1000 leaves-turned-flake to selling 1675 raw leaves, not 1000 to 1000 leaves. In other words, drug synthesis allows you to get more value from the same growing space.

Creating drugs allows 2 pawns, perhaps with different skills and passions, to "work" at the same sized field at the same time. Certain biomes may be limited in grow space. Other biomes can let you grow in the summer, and synthesize in the winter. But even in a tropical rainforest, large fields can be difficult to protect from fire, raiders, and blight - not even considering walk distance. This shouldn't need to be said, but if you have a pawn that's bad at plants but great at intellectual, then they are better off creating drugs.

The second advantage is logistic. More traders accept drugs than raw plants. Drugs are much lighter than their raw materials, meaning caravans and transport pods can carry much more at a time. In addition, plant matter will rot when unrefrigerated; drugs don't.

• Drug Comparison

Flake is the absolute winner for almost every relevant stat, considering beer's fermentation time. Yayo takes less work per leaf, but selling flake + excess leaves is more valuable than selling yayo. However: if work time is not an issue, but hydroponics space is, then smokeleaf is the superior choice. If Psychite Refining has not been researched, then Beer (requires Beer Brewing) and smokeleaf (requires Drug Production to not be half speed) have their merits.

Psychite tea is clearly the worst available drug for selling. However, colonies may produce it to drink, decreasing the Rest each colonist needs. As calculated in psychite tea's analysis section, it is virtually always positive in terms of work gained : work required ratio. Extra psychite tea can be sold to traders for a decent profit.

Neutroamine drugs

Some drugs require neutroamine, which can only be reliably obtained via trade. This is subject to the various Trade Price Improvements, but under the default difficulty settings at 0% TPI, you buy at a x1.4 markup and sell at a x0.6 loss. Neutroamine is a finite resource at any one point in time, so you are often better off using it for the actual drugs

Drug	Synthesis Work	Cost ( @ 0% TPI)	Market Value	Profit @ 0% TPI (per drug)	Profit @ 0% TPI (per hr work)		Profit @ 30% TPI (per drug)	Profit @ 30% TPI (per hr work)
Penoxycyline	600 ticks (Intel.)	2 ( 16.8)	18	−6	N/A		2.28	9.5
Medicine	900 ticks (Intel.)	1 + 3 + 1 ( 8.4 bought + 14.5 other)	18	Never	N/A		Never	N/A
Go-juice	600 ticks (Intel.)	2 + 1 ( 16.8 bought + 21 other)	53	2.4	10		13.2	55
Wake-up	900 ticks (Intel.)	2 ( 16.8)	35	4.2	11.67		15.54	43.17

¹ Assuming neutroamine is bought, at 140% markup. Anything that can be produced in your colony is assumed to be produced at your colony, and is worth regular market value. The trade disadvantage is taken account when calculating profits for not-neutroamine goods (i.e. yayo is 21 * 0.6 for the 0% TPI profit column).

² 30% TPI is reached at 20 Social skill with no other modifiers, or 8 Social skill with a trading inspiration (you may need to have multiple inspirations). You sell at x0.78 and buy at x0.98.

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As the trade price disadvantage is increased for difficulties past Strive to Survive, all neutroamine drugs cease to become (very) profitable.

Apparel and Armchairs

All the uses for cloth and other textiles. Both buildings and apparel have a quality value. The higher the quality, the higher the value. For all effects of quality, including price multi. per quality, and the chance of each quality at a given skill level, see the Quality page. For reference: you average normal quality at Crafting / Construction 6. You average good quality at Skill 13.

For this comparison, each product is made out of cloth.

Product	Total Work	Cost	Value @ Normal	Profit @ Normal (per unit material)	Profit @ Normal (per hr work)		Value @ Good	Profit @ Good (per unit material)	Profit @ Good (per hr work)
Tribalwear	1800 ticks (Craft)	60 ( 90)	97	0.117 (+7.7%)	9.72		121.25	0.521 (+34.7%)	43.4
Duster	10000 ticks (Craft)	80 ( 120)	156	0.335 (+22.3%)	9		195	0.938 (+62.5%)	18.75
Armchair	14000 ticks (Constr.)	110 ( 165)	150.5	−0.13 (−8.6%)	−2.59		188.1	0.34 (+22.8%)	4.13
Corset Formal vest	12000 ticks (Craft)	45 ( 67.5)	111	0.97 (+64.7%)	9.06		166.5	2.2 (+146.6%)	14.84

¹ All constructed buildings are sold at at x0.7 price, in addition to the regular TPI and difficulty penalties. This is reflected in the armchair's value and profit.

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Dusters or Corsets / Formal vests are most valuable crafted items in terms of Profit/Material. However, they are poor in terms of $/Work. You should make them if you have crafters doing nothing AND have spare textiles lying around. Alternatively, you can sell any low-quality textiles to any traders that show up. Tribalwear is the polar opposite; best in $/work but worst in profit/material. If you have a lot of spare material but need extra money fast, then create those. In addition, tribalwear is more impacted by quality than the fancier clothing.

Armchairs are in a similar, but worse position to dusters. Only make them if you have the textiles to spare, have an idle constructor, and have a much better constructor than crafter. With poor quality armchairs, it is more convenient to just deconstruct armchairs than sell them.

Sculptures

The game encourages creating art for sale, as it is about 57% more profitable than most constructed items. Wood is the only material that makes sense to build sculptures for profit in terms of value added per unit work. For materials other than wood, the ratio of work cost versus value added is so low that it isn't worth it unless you either 1) have time and material to burn, or 2) are trying for a specific high-quality sculpture and are willing to sell off the failures.

Small sculptures have the highest profit/material and lowestprofit/work, while grand sculptures are the opposite (with large sculptures falling neatly in the middle). What this means is that if you have time but are short on material and want to make the most of what you do have, make small sculptures. Conversely, if you have lots of material and want to create value (relatively) quickly, make grand sculptures. Practically speaking, grand sculptures, at a size of 4x4, are not as useful in your colony as large sculptures, so many players make large and sell off their lower-quality discards.

Also, be mindful that traders may not have enough silver/goods to buy the best large/grand sculptures. Even faction bases and orbital traders will run out of actual silver.

Size	Work to process	Profit / Material	Profit / Work Hour
Small sculpture	12600	0.88	6.6
Large sculpture	21000	0.76	6.825
Grand sculpture	73500	0.6625	11.55

It is about 1/10th as profitable to make sculptures per unit work as to farm crops.

Ranching

Most animals will not provide terribly efficient returns for the labor needed to extract their products. However, depending on biome, simply allowing the animals to breed and graze freely can be a strong source of intermittent revenue. Simply leave them alone in a large pen to breed until they exceed the grazing capacity, then call in a trader or bring them to market. Animals have the additional benefit of being able to carry themselves in a caravan!

Note that since this is designed to be a minimal-labor strategy, it may be necessary to exclude your colonists from pens containing harvestable animals. Additionally, this may make it more profitable to immediately sell a sick animal rather then spend labor and resources on helping it recover.

Ranching for profit works best in equatorial biomes (where growing hay is unnecessary), and for colonies that are more constrained by space than labor (most of them, under default map size/soft pawn limit settings). Other areas will find it far less efficient.

Material Production

(tbd)

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Guides

Progression

Quickstart Guides • Basics • Intermediate Midgame Guide • Advanced Endgame Guide • Ending the game

Scenarios

Lost Tribe Guide • Rich Explorer Guide • Naked Brutality Guide • The Mechanitor Guide

Survival

Extreme Heat Guide • Extreme Cold Guide • Extreme Desert Guide • Ice Sheet Guide • Sea Ice Guide • Events Guide

Combat

Defense tactics • Offense tactics • Weapon Guide

Construction

Colony Building Guide • Defense structures

Production

Food production • Money making guide

Other

Skill Training • Permadeath save conversion guide •
Ideology Min-Maxing