Farming and Alchemy
Farming runs on Garden Patches and Orchards. Plant a seed, water it, and water again every in-game day, because soil dries out after one in-game day and growth pauses until you re-water. One in-game day equals 12 real minutes, so Petals, Berries, and Wheat mature in roughly 24 minutes each. The Alchemy Bench arrived alongside farming in the same 2021 update, and it converts resources instead of brewing potions, turning metal, gold, basalt, brimstone, gemstones, and glowstones into renewable supplies.
The farming system arrived in the Farming Update on February 11, 2021 and changed how mid-to-late game resource gathering works. Instead of roaming dangerous biomes for berries and petals, you grow them at your base. That same update added the Alchemy Bench, which makes your finite mineral resources renewable.
This guide covers the full farming pipeline: Garden Patches, Orchards, crop timers, monkey automation, the Cooking Pot tech tree, and the Alchemy Bench.
Several guides, including earlier versions of this one, credit the Alchemy Bench to the Frostbite Fortress DLC. It is base game content from the 2021 Farming Update, and Team17's own patch notes list it there. You do not need the DLC to build one.
The Farming System
Getting Started with Farming
To start farming, you need three things:
- A Flimsy Garden Patch - open the building menu and go to the Farming tab. The Garden Patch is the first thing unlocked there, and it costs 6 Pebbles, 2 Stone Chunk, and 2 Mud. It is a building, not a Crafting Bench item.
- Seeds - mostly harvested off animals. Flock Birds and Boars drop Wheat Seeds, Warthogs and Devil Boars drop Sugar Cane Seeds, and Tank Birds and Volcanic Spitters drop Cocoa Pods. Wild plants give you the rest. The Collector sells Sugar Cane Seeds for 600 doubloons, capped at five.
- A Watering Can - built at the Crafting Bench on the second recipe page, from 3 Makeshift Bowls and 1 Tool Handle. Equip it and use it on any body of water to fill it.
Place a Garden Patch, plant a seed, and water it. The crop grows over time and must be re-watered every in-game day or growth pauses.
Build a Watering Can early even if you have no plans to farm. Your first one unlocks four more recipes on that same second page, including Hardwood Slats. The Orchard needs 4 of them, the Teleporter needs 3, and the Alchemy Bench needs 12, so nothing further down this page is buildable until you have made one.
Time Scales
One in-game day equals 12 real-world minutes. All crop timers are based on this conversion.
| Crop | Station | Growth Time | Yield |
|---|---|---|---|
| Petals | Flimsy Garden Patch | 2 in-game days (24 min) | 3-5 Petals |
| Berries | Flimsy Garden Patch | 2 in-game days (24 min) | 6-7 Berries |
| Wheat | Flimsy Garden Patch | 2 in-game days (24 min) | 3-6 Wheat |
| Sugar Cane | Flimsy Garden Patch | 3 in-game days (36 min) | 2-3 Sugar, 3-4 Cane |
Petals are the highest-priority crop for early farming. You need three per Foul Meal, and taming monkeys is the backbone of your entire operation. A single Garden Patch producing 3-5 Petals every 24 minutes keeps your monkey recruitment pipeline running.
Watering Mechanics
Soil stays wet for exactly one in-game day (12 real minutes) after watering. When the soil dries out, crop growth pauses completely. It does not reset, but the clock stops until you water again.
- Water crops immediately after planting.
- Check back every 12 real minutes or assign a monkey to automated watering (see Monkey Training and Automation).
- If you leave for an expedition, expect your crops to be paused when you return unless a monkey is handling watering.
Orchards
Orchards grow trees instead of ground crops. They are larger structures requiring a 3x3 physical grid.
Orchard recipe: 4 Wheat, 4 Cane, 4 Hardwood Slats
| Tree Type | Growth Time | Yield |
|---|---|---|
| Coconut Tree | 2 in-game days (24 min) | 7-9 Coconut, 6-8 Palm Leaf, 5-7 Timber |
| Fruit Tree | 2 in-game days (24 min) | 7-9 Fruit, 5-6 Hardwood, 3-4 Swamp Sap |
| Cocoa Pod Tree | 3 in-game days (36 min) | 3-4 Cocoa Pod, 3-4 Hardwood, 2 Swamp Sap |
The Fruit Tree is the important one. It is your only renewable source of Hardwood, at 5 to 6 per harvest, and wild swamp trees drop about one. Since 3 Hardwood makes 1 Hardwood Slat and the Alchemy Bench alone eats 12 slats, plant Fruit Trees before you need them.
Hostile plants go in Orchards, not Garden Patches. Plant a Spiked Seed for a Venus Fly Trap, a Toxic Seed for a Swamp Bog, or a Burning Seed for a Volcanic Spitter. They mature in roughly 2 real minutes, stay friendly to you and your monkeys, and attack anything else in range. Line your Orchards along the outer wall for passive perimeter defense. Each seed drops from the matching plant, or The Collector sells them for 1000 doubloons.
Farming Layout Tips
- Place Garden Patches in rows with one-tile gaps for walking between them.
- Keep a water source (or a pre-filled water chest) within a few steps of your patches.
- Build a dedicated storage chest next to the farm for harvested crops.
- Wall off the farm area to prevent enemies from destroying crops during raids.
- Assign monkey haulers to move harvested crops from the farm chest to your main crafting area.
Advanced Cooking
The farming system feeds directly into the Cooking Pot, which unlocks the most powerful food items in the game.
Cooking Pot Prerequisites
The Cooking Pot requires:
- 12 Pebbles and 1 Bucket to build
- The Forge must be built first
Key Recipes
| Recipe | Ingredients | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Pastry | 1 Wheat, 1 Sugar | Intermediate ingredient for every recipe below |
| Chocolate Bar | 1 Cocoa Pod, 1 Sugar | Makes tamed animals fall in love |
| Meat Pie | 4 Meat Scrap, 2 Pastry | Heals a large amount of health and hunger |
| Fish Pie | 4 Fillet, 2 Pastry | Heals a large amount of health and hunger |
| Gourmet Pie | 3 Steak, 2 Pastry | Full health and hunger restoration |
That is five of the nine, and Crafting and Combat carries the full list with the unlock chain. Pastry-based recipes are the strongest healing items in the game. The Gourmet Pie fully restores both health and hunger in a single use. Stock up before tackling the Big Cat Labyrinth.
The Cooking Pot's entire recipe list is the pastry tree, and that is all. The June 2021 Expeditions Update moved the old Cooking Pot recipes back to the Campfire and gave the pot the farming-update pastry recipes in their place. Any guide that tells you to cook a Sizzling Steak, a Mango Curry, or a Slow Cooked Stew at the Cooking Pot is describing the game as it was before that update.
The Slow Cooked Stew is the food worth planning around, and it is a Campfire recipe. It costs 6 Bat Wing, 2 Steak, and 2 Makeshift Bowl, restores health and hunger outright, and raises your maximum health and maximum stamina by 100 each. Bat Wings mean clearing cave entrances at night, so start collecting early.
Farming Wheat and Sugar Cane together gives you the ingredients for Pastry and Sugar, which combine into the best food items. Dedicate at least two Garden Patches to Wheat and one to Sugar Cane for a steady supply.
The Alchemy Bench
The Alchemy Bench converts resources into other resources. Team17 describe it as letting you "transmute certain items into others", and it is the mineral-side twin of the Food Processor. It does not brew potions.
Recipe: 10 Basalt Rock, 12 Hardwood Slats, 6 Glass Sheets
Prerequisites: Build the Forge first, which unlocks the blueprint in the Farming tab. Glass Sheets are forged from Sand and Charcoal at the Forge. Basalt Rock is mined from Volcanic biomes, so you need to have reached Island 4 or 5 with a Lightweight Pickaxe before you can build one.
Its value is that it makes metal, gold, basalt, brimstone, gemstones, and glowstones renewable. Late-game crafting stops depending on finding fresh deposits, which matters for:
- Refined Gems, which repair legendary weapons
- Gold Nails for the galleon repair
- Trinket components
- Sustaining the 10-tier galleon repair
Building the bench is only half the job. Its recipes are locked and unlock separately, either by completing Labyrinths, most reliably from labyrinth mini-bosses, or by completing all four Totem Pole requests in the Red Orcling camps on Island 5. Build one before that and it sits there doing nothing.
Biome Resistance
Biome resistance does not come from the Alchemy Bench. Both resistance drinks are Campfire recipes and have been in the game since launch:
| Drink | Ingredients | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Glass Bottle (Clean Water) | 1 Glass Bottle (Dirty Water), 2 Charcoal | Protects you from the Volcanic biome |
| Glass Bottle (Elixir) | 1 Glass Bottle (Dirty Water), 1 Bone, 3 Petals | Protects you from the Swamp biome |
These two drinks are the key to the "Totally Buff" achievement, which needs health, stamina, and biome resistance buffs running at the same time. Cook a Slow Cooked Stew at the Campfire for the health and stamina buffs, then drink either bottle before the stew wears off. No DLC is involved. The achievement shipped with the game in 2020.
The Frostbite Fortress Expansion
Released March 12, 2026, Frostbite Fortress is a paid DLC ($3.99/€3.99) pitched at experienced survivors. It adds a frozen biome, its own labyrinth, frostbite variants of familiar enemies, new equipment, and a potion brewing mechanic.
Potion brewing works by mixing and matching ingredients to produce what Team17 call "primordial potions" for unique buffs and boosts. This is a separate system from the Alchemy Bench.
Team17 have published very little about this expansion, and no community documentation exists yet. The names of the potions, the recipes, the brewing station, the labyrinth boss, and how you reach the frozen biome are all undocumented as of August 2026. Treat any specific DLC recipe list you find elsewhere as unconfirmed, including claims that you build a portal to get there. The base game already has a Teleporter structure, and that is not the same thing.
The Food Processor
The Food Processor is the Alchemy Bench's food-side twin, and it arrived in the same update. It costs 6 Stone Slab, 5 Wooden Slat, and 5 Rope, and its blueprint unlocks after you build the Refuse Pit, which itself unlocks when you build a Garden Patch.
It converts one food resource into another: Petals into Meat Scrap, Berries into Fruit, and Long Grass into Palm Leaf. That turns the crops on this page into cooking inputs, so a base farm becomes self-sufficient instead of just a petal supply for Foul Meals.
Patch History Context
Understanding the farming and alchemy systems requires knowing how the game evolved:
| Update | Date | What Changed |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | October 9, 2020 | No farming at all. You gathered berries, petals, and wheat in the wild. |
| Farming Update | February 11, 2021 | Garden Patches, Orchards, the Watering Can, the Food Processor, and the Alchemy Bench. Crops capped at 64 per world. |
| Achievement and Crop Limit Hotfix | March 22, 2021 | Crop cap raised from 64 to 512, fixing save corruption on large farms. Also fixed the Forging Ahead and Camping Out achievements. |
| Balance Patch 1.1.3 | Post-launch | Legendary weapons removed from labyrinth loot tables. Taskmasters became the source, and labyrinths give a trinket slot instead. |
| Expeditions Update | June 24, 2021 | The largest content patch. Quests and the four Taskmasters, 40 or more trinkets across four earnable slots, the Trinket Bench, the Token Shop, the Bestiary, pets, elite enemies, gated caves, and the island generation that gives each island its difficulty rating. It also moved the Cooking Pot recipe tree back to the Campfire. |
| Frostbite Fortress DLC | March 12, 2026 | Frozen biome, its own labyrinth, potion brewing, frostbite enemy variants, and new equipment. |
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do crops take to grow in The Survivalists?
One in-game day equals 12 real minutes. Petals, Berries, and Wheat each take 2 in-game days, about 24 minutes, while Sugar Cane takes 3 in-game days, or roughly 36 minutes.
Why did my crops stop growing?
Soil stays wet for exactly one in-game day, which is 12 real minutes. Once it dries out, growth pauses completely. Your progress is not lost, but the clock stops until you water the patch again.
What should I farm first?
Petals. You need three per Foul Meal, and Foul Meals are how you tame monkeys. One Garden Patch yields 3 to 5 Petals every 24 minutes, which keeps your recruitment pipeline running.
How do you build the Alchemy Bench?
It costs 10 Basalt Rock, 12 Hardwood Slats, and 6 Glass Sheets, and the Forge has to be built first. It is base game content from the 2021 Farming Update, not part of the Frostbite Fortress DLC. Building it is only half the job, because its recipes unlock separately from labyrinths or from the four Totem Pole requests in the Red Orcling camps on Island 5.
Does the Alchemy Bench brew potions?
No. It converts resources into other resources, and that is what makes metal, gold, basalt, brimstone, gemstones, and glowstones renewable. Biome resistance comes from two Campfire drinks instead. Glass Bottle (Clean Water) covers the Volcanic biome and Glass Bottle (Elixir) covers the Swamp.
Can plants defend your base?
Yes, but they go in Orchards and not Garden Patches. Plant a Spiked Seed for a Venus Fly Trap, a Toxic Seed for a Swamp Bog, or a Burning Seed for a Volcanic Spitter. They mature in roughly 2 real minutes and attack anything hostile that comes near, so line your Orchards along the outer wall.
What to Read Next
- Monkey Training and Automation. Monkeys running your farm loops.
- Crafting and Combat. Buff potions before a raid or labyrinth.
- Islands, Biomes and Labyrinths. Biome-specific crops and drops.
- Tips and Tricks. Dry soil, Fruit Trees, and planting your perimeter defense.