Baumwolle in Scrap Mechanic: finden, ernten und anbauen

Pick it off a plant, do not craft it

Nothing crafts Cotton. No trader stocks it. Every piece in the game either grew on a cotton plant or was sitting in a container, so if you are stuck without any, you are looking for the wrong thing.

Cotton plants sit out in the open world and need no tool at all. Walk up and press the pick-up key. You get the Cotton, you get seeds along with it, and the plant leaves behind a young version of itself that grows back on its own. That last part matters: a good patch is worth remembering, because it keeps paying out.

If you would rather open containers, these are the published rates:

• Ruin chest: one roll at 4.9%, awarding 2 to 4 Cotton.
• Restocking ruin chest: the same roll at 4.9%, also 2 to 4 Cotton.
• Common loot crate: three rolls between 1.4% and 4.1%. The underground version tops out at 4.7%, the warehouse version at 3.7%.
• Epic loot crate: three rolls between 0.81% and 1.8%. The underground version is the one exception in this list, with two rolls rather than three, topping out at 1.7%.

Those are per roll, under a fully unlocked run. Against a plant you can walk up to and pick, crate hunting is a bad trade unless you were opening the crates anyway.

Where the plants are worth looking

Cotton plants sit on the surface rather than underground, so the search pattern is the same one you would use for any world resource: cover ground fast, look off to the sides of your route, and mark what you pass. Anything with a seat and an engine beats walking here, because the plants are scattered rather than clustered.

A habit that pays off: when you clear a patch, note it on the interactive map rather than trusting your memory of the terrain. Regrowth is automatic but not instant, so the useful thing to know is which patches you cleared least recently.

The plant hands you seeds as well

Picking a mature plant gives you one Cotton and some Cotton Seeds in the same action. If your inventory is full when that happens the leftover seeds pop out on the ground instead of vanishing, so clear a slot before a harvesting run rather than after.

Growing your own instead of searching

Cotton Seeds also come off Seedbots, which is the route to take if you want a supply you control rather than one you drive to.

A Seedbot carrying Cotton Seeds gives up one seed the moment you damage it. Destroy it instead and the published table is four guaranteed seed rolls plus three more rolls between 25% and 75%. Breaking the bot is clearly better than poking it, and a Seedbot is not a dangerous fight.

Plant the seeds in soil or in a Growbed. The Growbed recipe is 2 Component Kits, 2 Cable Rolls and 1 Soil Bag, and the Craftbot takes 30 seconds over it. Once you have a few beds running, cotton stops being a thing you drive out to find.

Cotton never raises your raid level

The raid system scores a farm from a fixed list of ten crops: Tomato and Potato at 1 point each, Carrot at 2, Redbeet at 5, Banana and Chili at 15, Blueberry at 50, Orange at 100, Broccoli at 500 and Pineapple at 1,000.

Cotton is not on that list. A cotton bed adds nothing to your farm value, which means it cannot push you over a threshold and cannot start a raid countdown on its own. Plant as much of it as you like next to your base. If you want to check what the rest of your farm is doing, the raid calculator adds up the crops that do count.

The same is true in reverse. Tearing out cotton to calm a raid down does nothing, because it was never part of the total.

What all that cotton is actually for

Twenty recipes call for Cotton, and most of them are seating, bedding or soft furnishing:

• Seat Level 1: 10 Metal Block Level 1, 1 Component Kit, 1 Circuit Board, 10 Cotton.
• Driver’s Seat Level 1: 20 Metal Block Level 1, 2 Component Kits, 1 Circuit Board, 10 Cotton.
• Respawn Bed: 50 Wood Block Level 1, 20 Cotton, 10 Paint Ammo.
• Carpet Block: 5 Cotton and 1 Paint Ammo makes 10 blocks.
• Pillow: 4 Cotton on its own.

The Dressbot also eats Cotton by the fistful. Rerolling a Common Garment Box costs 10 Cotton, a Rare one costs 15, and an Epic one costs 20. If you are chasing an outfit, budget for that before you start.

Two things that waste a trip

Do not go to the Trader Hideout for seeds. It stocks 40 seeds each of Tomato, Carrot, Redbeet, Orange, Banana, Blueberry, Broccoli and Pineapple, plus 20 Chili Seeds, and nothing else. Cotton Seeds are not part of that stock.

Do not expect bots to drop it either. Farmbots, Totebots and Haybots all carry useful salvage, but Cotton is on none of their tables. The only bot anywhere in the loop is the Seedbot, and what it carries is the seed rather than the fibre.