If you’ve spent hours scavenging for berries and hunting wild game just to keep your Enshrouded character from starving mid-exploration, you know how vital a steady food source is. Setting up your own farm cuts out all that random foraging work, but the first step you’ll need to nail is learning how to put down farm soil Enshrouded players can use to grow all sorts of edible and crafting crops. I’ve messed up this process more times than I’d like to admit early on, wasting precious resources on plots that wouldn’t grow anything, so I’ve put together all the tricks I picked up across 120+ hours of playtime to make this as smooth as possible for you. You won’t have to waste rotten food or bone meal on broken plots if you follow the steps laid out here.
How to Put Down Farm Soil Enshrouded: Pre-Requisites You Can’t Skip
Before you even think about placing farm soil, you need to check a few boxes first to avoid wasting time. First, you have to rescue the Farmer NPC from the small abandoned farm in the northern part of Revelwood. You’ll get the farm soil crafting recipe automatically as soon as you bring her back to your base, so you can’t craft these blocks at all before you unlock her. A lot of new players miss this step and spend ages looking for the recipe in the basic workbench menu, so make this your first priority if you haven’t rescued her yet.
Next, you’ll need to gather the materials for each farm soil block: 8 units of Dirt, 2 pieces of Rotten Food, and 1 serving of Bone Meal. Dirt is easy to get by digging up grass or dirt blocks anywhere outside the Shroud, Rotten Food comes from letting raw food sit in your inventory for too long or looting abandoned camp storage, and Bone Meal is crafted from animal bones you get from hunting wolves, deer, or boars. You can craft as many blocks as you want at once once you have the materials, so stock up if you’re planning a large farm.
You don’t need a flat, perfectly level patch of ground to place farm soil, despite what a lot of new players assume. It works on slightly uneven grass or dirt, but you can’t place it on bare rock, sand, or snow, so pick a spot with natural dirt terrain first. You also need to make sure the entire area you’re using for your farm is completely free of Shroud, because crops won’t grow at all if any part of the plot is covered in the toxic fog. Make sure the area has at least 2 blocks of empty space above each soil plot so crops have room to reach their full mature height later on.
Step-by-Step Farm Soil Placement Walkthrough
Once you’ve got all your pre-requisites sorted, placing the farm soil itself is pretty straightforward. First, open your crafting menu, navigate to the new Farming tab that unlocks when you rescue the Farmer, and craft as many farm soil blocks as you need. Move the crafted blocks to your hotbar so you can equip them quickly when you’re at your farm spot. I usually craft 16 blocks at a time for a small starting farm, which is enough to grow 4 different crop types at once.
Equip the farm soil block from your hotbar, then aim at the spot you want to place it. You’ll see a bright green outline around the block if it’s a valid placement spot, and a red outline if something is wrong. If you get a red outline, check if the area is still partially in Shroud, if there’s a small object like a rock or twig in the way, or if you’re trying to place it on a non-dirt surface. You can clear small debris by hitting it once with your pickaxe to make the spot valid.
Left click to place the block once you see the green outline, and repeat until you’ve placed all the soil blocks you need. You can place them right next to each other to make large, connected plots, which is way more efficient for watering later. You can pick up placed farm soil with your pickaxe if you make a mistake, and you’ll get the full block back with no resource loss, so don’t stress if your first layout isn’t perfect. I rearrange my farm at least twice every playthrough as my base grows, and I never lose any materials doing it.
Common Farm Soil Placement Mistakes to Avoid
Even if you follow the basic steps, it’s easy to run into issues that leave your plots useless. I’ve made every single one of these mistakes at least once, so keep an eye out for them:
- Placing plots too close to walls or overhangs: Even if the block itself fits, crops will stop growing if there’s not enough overhead space for their full mature size. 2 full blocks of space above each plot is the minimum you should aim for.
- Building farms in high-traffic base areas: Pets, NPCs, and even your own character will trample crops if you walk over them repeatedly, so place your farm away from common paths to your base entrance, workbenches, or storage chests.
- Forgetting to leave space for water access: You’ll need to place water sources within 3 blocks of each soil plot to keep them hydrated, so don’t fill every available spot with soil first. Leave 1 empty block every 2 rows of soil for water troughs later.
Another mistake I see new players make all the time is placing farm soil directly on top of crafted building blocks, like wood planks or stone bricks. Farm soil only works when placed directly on natural, unmodified terrain blocks, so you’ll need to remove any built blocks first if you want to put a farm on top of a raised platform, for example. You can build a frame out of stone first, fill the inside with dirt blocks, then place farm soil on top of those natural dirt blocks if you want a raised farm that’s easier to harvest.
Maximizing Your Farm’s Efficiency After Placing Soil
Once you’ve got all your farm soil placed correctly, there are a few extra steps you can take to get the most out of your plots. First, you can craft basic fertilizer from extra rotten food and bone meal to speed up crop growth times by 50%, which is a game-changer if you’re growing crops for high-volume crafting, like flax for linen or wheat for bread. You only need to apply fertilizer once per crop cycle, so it’s worth the small extra resource cost to get harvests twice as fast.
You should also place a scarecrow within 8 blocks of your farm plots to keep birds from eating 20-30% of your crop yield before you can harvest it. Scarecrows are cheap to craft from wood and cloth, and they last forever once placed, so there’s no reason not to add one even to small starting farms. If you’re building a large farm, consider setting up a raised wooden walkway around the perimeter so you can harvest every crop without stepping on the soil and accidentally trampling young plants.
You can plant up to 4 different crop types on a single 2x2 patch of farm soil as long as they have similar water and light requirements, which saves a ton of space if you’re working with a small base area. I usually plant carrots, wheat, flax, and tomatoes in the same 2x2 plot for my early game base, and it gives me enough food and crafting materials to last for hours of exploration. You can also add torches around the edge of your farm to let crops grow at night, which cuts down on total grow time even more.
At the end of the day, setting up your farm doesn’t have to be a frustrating process if you know what to look for before you start placing blocks. Learning how to put down farm soil Enshrouded players can rely on for consistent crop yields is one of the biggest quality of life upgrades you can make for your base, and it frees up so much time you would have spent foraging to explore new areas or take on tough boss fights. Don’t stress if your first farm layout isn’t perfect—you can always rearrange soil blocks later to fit your needs as your base grows and you unlock more crop types.