Fertilizer is a very useful substance in Oxygen Not Included, but it can also be hard to find. Oxygen Not Included is a game that pushes its players to plan carefully and use certain resources sparingly. While some resources, such as fertilizer and algae, seem abundant at first on certain starting asteroids, it is advisable to conserve them as much as possible by building slowly and avoiding costly expenditures.
For example, fertilizer can be fed to sage hatches in return for coal, or it can be used in a rocket as a solid oxidizer; however, neither of these options uses fertilizer in the most cost-effective way. While fertilizer is a renewable resource in Oxygen Not Included, it takes some time and resources to make, so players should make sure that they are using it as efficiently as possible.
Fertilizer’s primary use is in plant growth. A farmer duplicant with the crop tending skill in Oxygen Not Included can feed fertilizer into a farm station in a greenhouse room to create micronutrient fertilizer, which doubles the plant growth rate when used. This makes fertilizer valuable in speedy food production, which is a huge asset when a player has a large colony in Oxygen Not Included. Wheezewort, Oxyfern, and Mealwood are not affected by this bonus. However, of these three plants, only mealwood is used in food production, and only in recipes labeled “terrible” and “grisly.”
Setting Up Fertilizer Synthesizers in Oxygen Not Included
Much like in other colony sims, the player's starting point in Oxygen Not Included can affect resource management for the rest of the game. Depending on the player’s starting asteroid in Oxygen Not Included, they should be able to simply dig fertilizer out at the start of the game. Some asteroids, however, do not have temperate biomes, and therefore begin without a natural supply of fertilizer. The following are starting asteroids that do have temperate biomes:
- Terra
- Oceana
- Rime
- Volcanea
- Badlands
- Oasisse
In Oxygen Not Included, fertilizer can also be produced using fertilizer synthesizers. Fertilizer synthesizers use dirt at 65 g/s, polluted water at 39 g/s, and phosphorite at 26 g/s. All of these resources are renewable. Fertilizer synthesizers produce 120 g/s, which is enough to keep about 14 plants consistently fertilized using the farm station. This means that for every 14 plants a player has in a greenhouse room, they should have one fertilizer synthesizer continuously producing. In Oxygen Not Included, as in many others games, resource management is key.
In addition to producing fertilizer, the synthesizers in Oxygen Not Included also produce heat at kDTU/s and natural gas at 10 g/s, so players should plan accordingly. It is advisable to have fertilizer synthesizers in their own cooled chamber. Having an auto-sweeper and conveyor loader in the chamber means that fertilizer can be automatically delivered to greenhouses via conveyor rails. It is a great strategy in Oxygen Not Included to have a conveyor loader in the comfort of the main base, through which dupes can deposit the dirt and phosphorite necessary. This way, there is no need to go into the chamber once it has been constructed.
The natural gas produced is not enough to consistently feed a natural gas generator, which takes in natural gas at 90/s, but it can be pumped into a chamber with a natural gas geyser that is being used to supply generators to avoid waste. Many Oxygen Not Included players even go so far as to build their fertilizer synthesizers in a chamber with a natural gas geyser to avoid extra power expenditures.
Oxygen Not Included is available now on PC and Macintosh OS