One of the primary challenges of RimWorld is learning how to successfully feed your colony through a harsh winter. It’s one of the first proper tests of the colony sim. However, one tool can ease the burden altogether, and that tool is the nutrient paste dispenser. It crushes down food products into a malleable and filling paste-like product designed to keep your colonists on their feet and working diligently. But is RimWorld nutrient paste viable for a long-term base?
How Do You Get Nutrient Paste in RimWorld?
You can craft a nutrient paste meal at the nutrient paste dispenser by inserting raw foodstuffs into the hopper. These meals use 0.3 nutrition of any food inside the hopper; you cannot craft paste beforehand. Once your pawns grow hungry, they immediately activate the dispenser and create a paste meal.
A nutrient paste meal provides 0.9 calories and 300% nutrition efficiency. Furthermore, paste meals cannot cause food poisoning, which is especially useful if you don’t have a pawn with excellent cooking skills.
Nutrient paste remains one of the most efficient ways to feed an entire colony. Your pawns will not enjoy their meal, and it can lead to unhappiness in the long term, but you won’t have to worry about cooking extravagant meals.
Related: How to Research New Technologies in RimWorld
How to Use the Nutrient Paste Dispenser
Utilizing the nutrient paste dispenser is simple. First, you’ll need to construct a dispenser, which requires 125 Steel and 3 Components. Then, you’ll have to add at least one hopper to the backend of the dispenser. To construct a hopper, you’ll need 15 Steel. The more hoppers you install, the more raw food ingredients you can add to increase the nutrition of the nutrient paste meals produced.
With hoppers installed and raw food inserted into each, it’s now up to the colonists. Once they grow hungry, your pawns will travel to the nutrient paste dispenser, activating the machine and then consuming the byproduct.
It should be noted that nutrient paste meals do not last long, only 0.75 days. You’ll need to work quickly if you want to cheese the system and produce many paste meals to freeze. Send a colonist to the dispenser to eat, then immediately draft them. The nutrient paste meal will fall to the floor, where you can disallow it. Then, undraft the pawn. They’ll make another nutrient paste meal, leaving the first on the floor. You can repeat this process as often or as much as necessary to create a stockpile.
What is the Best Crop for Nutrient Paste?
A few crops in RimWorld (Steam) go the farthest, including corn and rice, which will serve your colony faithfully through many brutal winters.
But if your goal is to pump crops into the nutrient paste dispenser to craft paste for the whole colony, then nothing beats corn overall. Sure, growing takes longer, but the yield is much higher than most crops at this game stage.
It should be noted, however, that all crops provide the same output in nutrient paste. It does not matter whether you use pumpkins, corn, or rice; the result is always the same. But for pure yield, go with corn.
What’s your favorite way to feed colonists in RimWorld? Let us know in the comments below!
Once you nail down feeding your colonists, it’s time to grow! Here’s how to get more colonists in RimWorld to join your community!