Onion
Food · FoodVegetable0★An old, well-loved vegetable that grows without much fuss, though it needs cooking before it's edible.
Onion is an early food: 15th of 20 by hunger restored, so treat it as a stepping stone, at 9 against the 100 of Corn Soup.
Onion feeds 10 different recipes, which is why it is worth farming past the point you think you need it.
Details
It stacks up to 9,999.
Where to Find Onion
If you would rather just buy it, the seller is Caravan Shop at 100 Gold.
You can also grow it yourself at a Plantation — roughly 6.5 minutes per harvest for 10 at a time, which quickly beats foraging once the farm is running.
The Onion Plantation is a level 36 Technology entry costing 2 ordinary points, and it is the only way to grow Onions yourself. Building one takes 30 Wood, 20 Stone, 2 Aquatic Pal Fluids and 3 Onion Seeds — the seeds are the part that stalls people, since nothing on the crafting bench makes them.
Onion Seeds run 70 Gold each at the Caravan Shop, so a plantation costs 210 Gold in seeds if you simply buy them. Farming them instead is cheap: Palumba, Broncherry and Broncherry Aqua each drop 1–2 every time, and Vaelet drops one half the time. Two or three kills covers the build.
| How | Where | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Merchant | Caravan Shop | 100 Gold |
| Plantation | Grown at your base | 6.5 min per harvest · 10 per crop |
Using Onion Well
Onions are also sold outright at the Caravan Shop for 100 Gold each. Below roughly a stack a day that is the cheaper option than building the plantation and staffing it; the field only pays off once you are cooking in volume — Nutrient Tonic alone eats 20 per batch.
One plantation needs three separate work suitabilities to cycle — Planting to sow, Watering to grow, Gathering to pull the crop. A base missing any one of the three leaves the field sitting at a stage forever, which reads like a broken structure rather than an unstaffed one. Check the plot's current stage before assuming the timer is wrong.
Alternatives and Upgrades
Step up from here and you get Honey at 10 hunger restored; step down and it is Wheat at 6. The size of that step is what decides whether the crafting bill is justified yet.
Other foods at a similar tier, for when you want to weigh this against the rest of its class:
