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, 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
In general, (SUMMARY HERE)
| Crop | Total Work (per plant)[1] |
Raw material (per plant)[2] |
Market Value (per plant) |
Value (per hour work) |
Real days to grow[3] |
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. 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 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.
Cash crops
| Crop | Planter Work (per plant)[1] |
Raw material (per plant)[2] |
Market Value (per plant) |
Value (per hr work) |
Real days to grow[3] |
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[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. Note that these bushes can be harvested multiple times.
Psychoid and cloth are the clear winners when selling raw.
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)[1] |
Added Value (per plant) |
Added Value (per hr work) |
Profit/day plant growth | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beer | 320 ticks (Cook)[2] |  1.6
|
19.2
|
69.56
|
8.8
|
68.75
|
2.086[3]
| |
| 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.
- 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. 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 all relevant stats, considering beer's fermentation time. Yayo takes less work per leaf, but selling flake + excess leaves is more valuable than selling yayo. 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[1] | Market Value | Profit @ 0% TPI (per drug) |
Profit @ 0% TPI (per hr work) |
Profit @ 30% TPI (per drug)[2] |
Profit @ 30% TPI (per hr hour)[2] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Penoxycyline | 600 ticks |  2 ( 16.8)
|
18
|
−6
|
N/A | 2.28
|
9.5
| |
| Medicine | 900 ticks | 1 + 3 + 1 ( 8.4 bought + 14.5 other)
|
18
|
Never | N/A | Never | N/A | |
| Go-juice | 600 ticks | 2 + 1 ( 16.8 bought + 21 other)
|
53
|
2.4
|
2.4
|
13.2
|
55
| |
| Wake-up | 900 ticks | 2 ( 16.8)
|
35
|
4.2
|
11.67
|
14.46
|
60.25
|
- 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 sell at x0.78 and buy at x0.98.
As the trade price disadvantage is increased for difficulties past Strive to Survive, all neutroamine drugs cease to become (very) profitable.