Rusty's Retirement Equipment Guide: Best Equipment Ranked

Q: Does the farm keep running while I work on something else?

Yes, that is the whole design. The window sits as a strip along the bottom of your screen, or vertically at the side, and production continues while you use other applications. Focus Mode slows the rate so there is less movement in your peripheral vision.

Q: What should I build first?

Water Bots, then Haiku's House at 50 biofuel and 1,000 spare parts, then Echo's Workshop at 300 biofuel. Haiku adds a second worker doing everything Rusty does, and Echo unlocks the capacity upgrades that carry the rest of the run.

Q: How do I unlock animals?

Build Slate's Barn, which costs 3,000 biofuel and 10,000 spare parts. After that each animal needs fossils, dug from slate patches in your field tiles, and an animal feeder built nearby. Cows, pigs and chickens are the three types.

Q: What are giant crops and how do I get them?

Certain crops including tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers and pumpkins can grow oversized when planted in a solid block. Tomatoes, cabbage and cucumbers need a 2 by 2 plot and pumpkins need 3 by 3. A golden pumpkin is a rare result from a full 3 by 3 pumpkin field.

Q: Is there an ending?

There is no story ending. Progress runs through 71 achievements, the crop unlock chain, the seven robot neighbours and long targets such as 666 crop tiles on one farm or 10,000,000 spare parts earned. Most players treat it as a background game they return to for months.

Complete Rusty's Retirement equipment guide. Every equipment option ranked with stats, best builds, and how to get them.

EarlyGuides Editorial Team

Researched and editorially reviewed. Updated August 12, 2026.

Rusty's Retirement is an idle farming sim from solo developer Mister Morris Games, released on 26 April 2024. Its trick is the layout: the farm docks to the bottom of your screen as a thin strip so it runs beside a browser, a code editor or a stream, and a vertical side-screen mode and a slower Focus Mode exist for people who want it even less distracting. You play a robot named Rusty who plants crops, converts them into biofuel, turns biofuel into spare parts and spends those parts on more land, more bots and more robot neighbours. There are 71 achievements and a Twitch integration that lets chat run the farm, and the game sits at 97 percent positive on Steam.

Your choice of equipment defines your damage output and playstyle. This guide ranks every major option, explains what makes each one strong, and tells you which builds they pair best with.

Equipment Rankings

Equipment	Tier	Best For	Notes
Water Bot	S	The first hour of any farm and every field expansion afterwards.	Waters crop tiles, which is the single job that stops the farm dead if it is neglected.
Harvest Bot	A	Large fields where crops finish faster than Rusty can pick them up.	Collects finished crops and carries them to storage or a converter.
Biofuel Bot	A	Keeping converters fed once you stop clicking manually.	Moves crops into the Biofuel Converter, which needs three different crop types before it will produce anything.
Berry Bot	B	Farms that have committed to berries as a converter input.	Handles berry bushes specifically, and it is the one bot that only accepts speed upgrades rather than capacity.
Waste Bot	B	Any farm that has built Slate's Barn and wants the 25 percent fertilizer growth boost.	Collects animal waste and delivers it to a fertilizer facility, where it converts instantly.

S-Tier: Water Bot

Waters crop tiles, which is the single job that stops the farm dead if it is neglected. Capacity upgrades let one bot cover more tiles per trip, so a small number of upgraded Water Bots beats a crowd of unupgraded ones.

Attribute	Detail
Tier	S
Best For	The first hour of any farm and every field expansion afterwards.
Key Mechanic	Bottom bar farm that shares your desktop
Recommended Build	Haiku

How to get it: Available from mid-game onward. See our walkthrough for the exact progression point.

Best builds using Water Bot: Pairs naturally with Haiku thanks to how their stat scaling lines up.

A-Tier: Harvest Bot

Collects finished crops and carries them to storage or a converter. Its capacity decides how many crops it can carry per run, which becomes the limiter once your plots outgrow its bag.

Attribute	Detail
Tier	A
Best For	Large fields where crops finish faster than Rusty can pick them up.
Key Mechanic	Biofuel converters and spare parts
Recommended Build	Echo

How to get it: Accessible in the early-to-mid game. Check our maps guide for the location.

Best builds using Harvest Bot: Pairs naturally with Echo thanks to how their stat scaling lines up.

A-Tier: Biofuel Bot

Moves crops into the Biofuel Converter, which needs three different crop types before it will produce anything. Without one, the converter sits idle while your storage fills.

Attribute	Detail
Tier	A
Best For	Keeping converters fed once you stop clicking manually.
Key Mechanic	Seven bot types running the farm
Recommended Build	Splunk

How to get it: Accessible in the early-to-mid game. Check our maps guide for the location.

Best builds using Biofuel Bot: Pairs naturally with Splunk thanks to how their stat scaling lines up.

B-Tier: Berry Bot

Handles berry bushes specifically, and it is the one bot that only accepts speed upgrades rather than capacity. That makes upgrading it cheaper but caps its ceiling lower than the others.

Attribute	Detail
Tier	B
Best For	Farms that have committed to berries as a converter input.
Key Mechanic	Crop unlock chain and giant crops
Recommended Build	Slate

How to get it: Found in later areas. Our walkthrough covers when you can access this.

Best builds using Berry Bot: Pairs naturally with Slate thanks to how their stat scaling lines up.

B-Tier: Waste Bot

Collects animal waste and delivers it to a fertilizer facility, where it converts instantly. One achievement asks for 1,000 units of waste collected, which is a good measure of how long the animal loop runs.

Attribute	Detail
Tier	B
Best For	Any farm that has built Slate's Barn and wants the 25 percent fertilizer growth boost.
Key Mechanic	Animals, waste and fertilizer loop
Recommended Build	Forbic

How to get it: Found in later areas. Our walkthrough covers when you can access this.

Best builds using Waste Bot: Pairs naturally with Forbic thanks to how their stat scaling lines up.

Equipment Progression Path

The order you should acquire equipment as you progress:

Starting gear → Enough to clear Rusty's House
Harvest Bot → Your first real upgrade, available early
Biofuel Bot → Mid-game upgrade with good scaling
Water Bot → Best-in-slot, aim for this by late game
Upgrade to max → The power spike from max upgrades is enormous

Equipment Tips

Always upgrade your primary equipment before diversifying. One strong option beats three mediocre ones.
Match your equipment to your build's stat priorities for maximum scaling.
Buy Water Bots before any other bot, because unwatered tiles stop growing entirely and every other job depends on crops finishing.
Check our tier list for how equipment rankings affect overall build effectiveness.

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