Summary
Rusty’s Retirement is a chillindiefarming sim that you play at the bottom of your screen, even while you do other things on your computer. Gameplay is simple andrelativelyhands-off. You plan out the farm and Rusty builds and manages it. Alongside some generic bots to do rote tasks, you can also build the homes of other robots like Rusty who do all sorts of tasks on your farm.
While the game is a pretty low-pressure experience, some of these robot companions stand above the others in terms of profitability and running your farm. If you want to know what order to build these robots’ houses in and what they cost, here they all are, ranked.
150
Spare Parts
3000
If you’re into data and stats, that’s great, since Pinion’s House unlocks the Statistics menu. And while you may make a case that knowing the data about your farm — crop yields, biofuel usage versus generation, etc. — the fact of the matter is that he doesn’t do anything tangible for your farm.
He’s a dapper-looking robot and his house isn’t bad to look at, but the fact that he doesn’t add anything to your farm but data and aesthetics means that he’s optional at best.
100
2000
Depending on what you’re playing Rusty’s Retirement for, Sonnet’s Shop is either nice to have but not necessary or the single most important Robot in the game. If your goal is to make the most beautiful farm you’re able to, then Sonnet’s Shop is vital, since she unlocks the Decorations tab, which holds all the aesthetic items of the game. However, her items do very little in terms of actual functionality.
If you like to keep organized, her signs are quite useful, since you can use them to mark which crops grow in which patches. Later on, these signs are the only way to control Splunk’s behavior, but in terms of generating resources, Sonnet does nothing.
200
6000
Slate’s Barn unlocks the Animals Tab, which in turn allows you to purchase animals, which then unlocksthe fertilization mechanic. If you fertilize your soil before planting crops on it, it grows 25 percent faster, which is a nice perk if you’re also willing to build the related infrastructure for it.
Buying the barn will also unlock the related resource to animals — fossils. Slate will then travel around your farm, harvesting the fossils. This would be fine, except for the fact that these fossils can spawn on any unoccupied tile, including crop patches. Tiles with fossils on them cannot be built or planted on until the fossils are harvested. This can be annoying since you can end up locked out of those fossilized tiles for a while.
10000
Forbic’s House unlocks the Beekeeping tab, which unlocks all the berry bushes and bee-related buildings. Welcoming Forbic to your farm unlocks an even more passive form of income through beekeeping and berry-growing, which need less attention than your crop growth.
Bulb Hives release bulblets, this game’s version of bees, who go on to collect nectar from berry bushes and flowers. They convert the nectar into biofuel, which you periodically click on for Forbic to collect. This also speeds the growth of Berries, which are used similarly to other crops.
4000
20000
Arguably, you’ve reached the endgame of the map you’re on if you build Splunk’s House, inviting Splunk onto your farm. Once he’s joined, he’ll go around your farm, planting your available seeds in empty crop patches.
With Splunk around, your interaction becomes much less necessary, basically reduced to buying seeds, clicking on bulb hives, and building stuff. While this is much more efficient, you’re playing much less of the game with him around. If you want to control where and what he plants, you’re able to use the Splunk’s Signs item from Sonnet’s Shop.
Echo is the second-most vital of the robots you’re able to get to join your farm, behind Haiku. So you should definitely build Echo’s House early in your farm, right after you get a decent bot infrastructure (watering, harvesting, biofuel) going, and you’ve built Haiku’s house.
Echo wanders around your farm and can be ordered to upgrade your bots’ performance. Though this is a time-intensive, and later on, costly endeavor, the results are well worth it sinceupgraded botsperform much better than stock ones, mitigating the necessity of having multiple bots covering the same area. Since new bots scale in cost to how many of the same bot-type are on the map, this will allow you to cover more areas across your form without a drop in performance.
50
1000
Haiku is yourfirst and truest friendand, as such, you should build Haiku’s House first. Indeed, his relatively affordable pricing means that you’re pretty much guaranteed to grab him first.
And the game gets a lot easier and progresses much more smoothly when he joins your farm. He does everything that Rusty can do, including things that no simple bots could do, namely building and moving. Even as you build your bot empire, he’ll still be useful, doing spot chores that your bots miss, as well as building and moving when necessary.
