Breeding better plants in Rust

1Genes at a glance

Every seed, clone and plant has six genes (hover it in your inventory, or look at it once planted). Each is one of five letters: three good (green) and two bad (red).

The two “god clones”

Six greens is the best you can get. Players aim for one of two:

Anything with four or more greens and no reds already farms well: get rid of the reds first, polish later.

Godclone's score adds up G = 1, Y = 1, H = 0.5 and W = X = 0, so a god clone scores 6. Farming in snow? Raise H in Options.

2Growth stages

Eight stages. Genes are decided at Crossbreed; you clone on either side of it.

1. Seed
2. Seedling
3. Saplingclone keeps the old genes
4. Crossbreedgenes decided here
5. Matureclone keeps the new genes
6. Fruiting
7. Ripeharvest
8. Dying

Seed, Seedling, Sapling and Fruiting are the same for every plant. The rest differ a little:

3How crossbreeding works

When a plant enters Crossbreed it may take genes from the plants touching it. This happens once, one slot at a time: slot 1 only listens to the neighbours' slot 1, and so on.

Which plants count

• Same planter. Planters pushed together never cross.
• Same plant type. Hemp only listens to hemp; a red berry ignores a blue berry.
• Touching slots, diagonals included. Two slots away, or across an empty slot, doesn't count.
• Any living stage. A fresh seed counts, and so does a mature plant.
• Never itself. The bred plant's own genes don't vote; they can only defend.

The rule, slot by slot

1. Add up the neighbours' genes in this slot: each green letter (G, Y, H) adds 0.6 to its total, each red letter (W, X) 1.0.
2. The biggest total is the candidate.
3. It replaces the bred plant's gene only if strictly bigger than that gene's weight: over 0.6 to replace a green, over 1.0 to replace a red. A draw keeps the old gene.
4. Two letters sharing the biggest total is a tie.

One slot, quick maths

Worked example: three flawed clones make a god clone

Three hemp clones, each with one red gene in a different slot, around any spare hemp in a large planter:

Worked example: how a bad cross goes wrong

Now a bred plant YGHYHH with three random neighbours XGYYGW, YHXHGY and HYYWYY:

It ends up XGYWGY: two greens lost to reds nobody outvoted. Slot 2 shows the other trap: when nothing gets past 0.6 the bred plant keeps its own gene, so the middle plant does matter. Godclone names a specific middle plant when that happens.

4Planter shapes and who touches whom

The shape decides how many donors can touch. ★ is one plant, ✓ slots touch it, plain slots don't.

From the game's planter files: side-by-side slots are about 0.9 m apart, diagonals 1.3 m, two apart 1.85 m. Crossbreeding is believed to reach about 1.5 m, which gives the pattern above.

5Ties and planting order

A tie is two letters sharing the top total in a slot, like G 1.2 against Y 1.2. Four hemp donors around a spare plant, slot 3 highlighted:

What decides a tie

Players and calculators long treated a tie as a coin flip. In March 2026 Facepunch rewrote how growing plants find their neighbours (commit notes of 3 March, shipped with that month's update). Since then the best evidence says the game walks the neighbours in the order they were planted, and the first letter to reach the winning total keeps the slot. Before that, where a plant sat (east or west side) seemed to matter instead.

More than one tie? On paper the odds multiply (two tied slots: 25%), but one planting order can often win them all. The planting order can force this badge means Godclone found one that favours your target in every tied slot. Without it, the ties pull different ways and some luck is unavoidable.

6Using Godclone step by step

1. Pick the plant type

   Each plant type has its own clone list, saved in your browser only.

2. Add your clones

   Type or paste one clone per line: GGXWYH, g-g-x w y h and G,G,X,W,Y,H all work. Anything after the six letters is a note, like GGXWYH # from the lake. On a phone, use the keypad.

   Scan Rust (beta) reads genes from a screenshot, or live from your shared screen on desktop. Check what it read.

   Each clone gets a number (#1, #2…) that results refer to. Duplicates and typos are flagged. Ten or more different clones is a good start.

3. Calculate

   Godclone tries every mix of your clones as surrounding plants (2 to 5 per cross by default), then builds on the best for two-step plans. Options sets plants per cross, steps, whether a clone may be used more than once (it can: clones are copyable) and the gene scores.

4. Read a result card

   GGGYYY1

   GEN.1Score 6Chance 50%Overall 50% planting order can force this2

   Center 3

   any spare plant of the same type

   Surrounding plants 4

   • #1 GGGYYW 1st
   • #3 HGGYWY 2nd
   • #2 GGYYYY
   • #4 GXYYYY

   PlanterWhyCopyI got it5

   1. The plant you'll get. Other ways to reach it are tucked under the best one.
   2. Score: see section 1. Chance: this cross. Overall: every step of the plan working first time.
   3. Center is the bred plant. “Any spare plant” means every slot is won outright, so use your worst seed. If one is named (like #5), use it: it keeps one of its own genes.
   4. Surrounding plants go in the slots touching the center, by #number in your list. A number listed twice needs two clones. 1st 2nd are the planting order for a tie.
   5. Planter shows where everything goes, Why each slot's totals, and Copy a plain-text recipe for Discord.

5. Two-step plans (GEN.2)

   A GEN.2 result first breeds an in-between plant (GEN.1), then uses it as a donor or the center for the final cross. Steps shows the route, first cross first; Overall multiplies every step's chance.

6. Got it? Tell Godclone

   When a cross works, press I got it: the new genes join your list (marked as bred) for the next Calculate. Unlucky results are worth adding too.

7. Try your own layouts in the Planter Lab

   The Planter Lab is a sandbox for any planter shape: place clones and see the outcome and slot totals live. Open in Planter Lab on a result card loads that recipe, with a button for each step of a longer plan and a way back to your results.

7Timing the cross

The cross uses whatever touches the bred plant the moment it enters Crossbreed.

1. 0 min

   Plant the bred plant alone for a head start.

2. +10–15 min

   Plant the donors (labelled ones first) about halfway through its Sapling stage. They count even as seeds.

3. ~20–30 min

   The bred plant crosses. Keep every donor alive and in place until it's past Crossbreed.

4. Mature

   Check the genes and clone it.

Another way: use donors already Mature or later. They've finished crossing, so their genes won't change.

Clone soon after the cross. Genes don't change after Crossbreed, but a plant left too long gets harvested or dies, and the new genes go with it.

8Tips

Growing mixed plants without crossing them

To keep different clones' genes, no two plants of the same type may touch. In a large planter the four corners never touch each other. A two-type checkerboard fails because diagonals count (the middle touches all four corners); with four types you can fill every slot:

Donors change too. After a session they've usually crossed with their own neighbours: check them before reuse, or reuse the clones you took before planting.

9How Godclone calculates

For each slot of the bred plant, Godclone does exactly this:

1. Only neighbours count: same planter, same plant type, touching. The bred plant's own gene is not added.
2. Each neighbour adds its gene's weight to that letter's total: 0.6 for G, Y and H, 1.0 for W and X. (Internally these are the whole numbers 3 and 5, so rounding can never fake a tie.)
3. If the top total is strictly greater than the weight of the bred plant's current gene, the top letter replaces it. Otherwise the gene is kept.
4. If several letters share the top total, each gets an equal share of the chance (1/2, 1/3…), and the planting order that favours your target is worked out and shown as 1st, 2nd….
5. A cross's chance is the product of its slots' chances.

Choosing the middle plant. If every slot's top total is 1.2 or more, it beats any gene: “any spare plant”. A top total of exactly 1.0 (one red) makes that slot red whatever is in the middle. A top total of only 0.6 leaves the middle plant's own gene, so Godclone tries each of your clones there and names the best.

The search. Every combination of your clones as surrounding plants (repeats allowed unless you turn them off), from the smallest to the largest group you allowed, split over your computer's cores. It keeps the best few ways to reach each outcome; for two- and three-step plans it adds the best new plants to your pool and searches again. Results rank by score, then overall chance, then fewer steps and fewer plants. It all runs in your browser.

Where the rules come from

• The game's own files (Rust server, September 2026): the weights from the shared gene asset generic.genes that every plant type uses, plus stage lengths and planter slot positions.
• Facepunch's notes. The Farming update devblog (April 2020), official change lists and public commit messages: the Crossbreed stage (2020), longer crossbreeding for berry bushes (2020) and the physics-free neighbour lookup (March 2026).
• Community testing. Years of player guides and other calculators agree on the weights, the “must strictly beat the gene that's there” rule and diagonal neighbours.

What's still uncertain

Godclone never reads or decompiles the game's code. If Facepunch changes the rules, the guide and the calculator are updated together.

10FAQ

Plan my god clone Open the Planter Lab