User:Hordes/Money making guide
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, with links to guides that expand in more detail on that specific pursuit.
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. However, 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 most item yields and 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
In general, (SUMMARY HERE)
| Crop | Total Work (per plant)[1] |
Raw material (per plant)[2] |
Market Value (per plant) |
Value (hour work) |
Real days to grow[3] |
Profit / day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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. Assuming 100% soil fertility. Rice and Corn are equally affected by soil, but corn cannot be grown in hydroponics.
Corn is the best crop for both human food/work and cash/work. It is actually more profitable per unit work than any of the cash crops, but cannot be processed any further, meaning it is reliant entirely on the grow cycle. It also is less valuable per item than psychoid, meaning more time is spent hauling. Corn is more difficult to grow in biomes with winter. In addition, the slow growing cycle makes it vulnerable to destruction, whenever by fire or blight.
Haygrass gives more nutrition/day than corn, but cannot be eaten by humans unless produced into kibble, which gives a −12 moodlet. Rice is good as a stable source of food, but is not efficient at all in terms of product / work.
Drug crops
| Crop | Planter Work (per plant)[1] |
Raw material (per plant)[2] |
Market Value (per plant) |
Value (hr work) |
Real days to grow[3] |
Profit / day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hops | 370 ticks (Plants) |  8
|
10.4
|
70.27
|
9.23 days | A |
| Smokeleaf plant | 370 ticks (Plants) |  9
|
14.4
|
97.3
|
12.92 days | B |
| Psychoid plant | 370 ticks (Plants) |  8
|
15.2
|
102.7
|
16.62 days | C |
| Ambrosia bush[4] | 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 Assuming 100% soil fertility. Hops and Psychoid plants have reduced Fert. Sensitivity.
- 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.
| Drug | Synthesis Work (per plant) |
Raw material (per plant) |
Added Value (per plant) |
Added Value (hr work) |
M. Value Drug (total hr work) |
Real days to grow |
Profit / day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beer | 320 ticks (Cook)[1] |  1.6
|
8.8
|
68.75
|
69.56
|
9.23 days | A |
| Smokeleaf joint | 1012.5 ticks (Cook) |  2.25
|
10.35
|
25.56
|
46.22
|
12.92 days | B |
| Psychite tea | 800 ticks (Intel.) |  2
|
2.4
|
7.5
|
42.73
|
16.62 days | C |
| Flake | 500 ticks (Intel.) |  2
|
12.8
|
64
|
80.46
|
16.62 days | C |
| Yayo | 350 ticks (Intel.) |  1
|
5.8
|
41.43
|
72.92
|
16.62 days | C |
- 1 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.
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 and harvested by 1 pawn. This is 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, 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.
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.