The bitcoin farm is the hideout's best known money maker, and one of its most expensive. Whether it is worth it comes down to what you pay for graphics cards, what bitcoin sells for in your wipe, and how often you collect.
Most arguments about the farm skip one of those three. Some players only look at the card prices and call it a waste, others only look at the bitcoin price and call it free money. This guide walks through all three, shows how to do the payback math yourself, and covers the habits that decide whether your farm earns what it could.
How the farm works
The farm is a hideout module that slowly produces bitcoins, a physical item you can sell. You install graphics cards in it, and the cards set the speed. With more cards, each bitcoin takes less time to make. The hideout screen shows the current production time for the number of cards you have installed, so you never have to guess.
The farm runs in real time. It keeps working while you raid, sit in menus or have the game closed, as long as it has power. Like other hideout production, the finished bitcoins wait in the module until you collect them.
Bitcoins you collect from the farm count as found in raid. That is the tag the game puts on items you found yourself, rather than bought, and it is what lets you list an item on the flea market. So you can sell farm bitcoins to other players, not only to traders.
What it costs
Building the farm needs other hideout modules upgraded first, plus construction items for each of its levels. After that, the big cost is the graphics cards. The farm holds up to 50 at its top level, and each one is expensive on the flea. Card prices change from wipe to wipe and week to week, so check the flea before you plan.
The farm also needs power, which means fuel for the generator unless you have built the solar power module. Fuel is a running cost that never stops while the generator is on, and it is easy to forget when you add up profit. If the generator runs dry, the farm stops along with every other module that needs power.
The upgrade path has its own cost too. Every level needs construction materials, and many of them are things other players also want for their own hideouts. In the first weeks of a wipe, those materials can cost a lot on the flea, so building the farm early is not only about cards.
What it pays
More cards make bitcoin faster, but each extra card adds less than the one before. The first cards pay back fastest, and the last ones slowest. Doubling your cards does not double your bitcoins per day, and the gap grows the more cards you add.
The farm only stores up to three finished bitcoins. Once it is full, it stops until you collect them. If you only log in once a day, a big farm's extra speed may just hit that limit and wait.
This storage limit is the part most players underestimate. Production speed only matters while the farm has room. A farm that fills up in a few hours and then sits full until the next morning is working for only a fraction of the day, no matter how many cards are inside it.
Working out the payback
The math is short. Payback in days equals what you paid for the cards, divided by the daily profit. Daily profit is bitcoins per day times the bitcoin price, minus the fuel you burn per day. The hideout shows the production time for your card count, and the flea shows the current bitcoin price.
To get bitcoins per day, divide 24 hours by the production time the hideout shows. Then cap the result at what you can collect: if you only empty the farm once a day, you will never get more than three bitcoins from it in that day, whatever the production time says.
A worked example
Here is an example with made-up round numbers. They are not current prices, only easy to divide. Say a graphics card costs 400,000 roubles, a bitcoin sells for 200,000, and fuel costs you 30,000 a day.
Say you buy 10 cards for 4,000,000 roubles, and the hideout shows the farm makes a bitcoin every 8 hours. That is three bitcoins a day, or 600,000 roubles. Take off the fuel and you clear 570,000 a day. Divide 4,000,000 by 570,000 and the cards pay for themselves in about seven days. After that, it is profit.
Now say you buy more cards and the production time drops so the farm could make five bitcoins a day. If you collect every few hours, you get all five. If you only collect once a day, the farm fills at three and waits, and you have paid for extra cards that earned nothing. In this example, the extra cards only pay back if your collecting keeps up with them.
Run your own numbers with real flea prices and the production time from your own hideout. The method is the same even when the numbers are not.
Early wipe vs late wipe
Early in a wipe, the farm has the most time left to earn. Even if cards are expensive, every extra day of production after payback is profit. The risk is that card money is also gear money, and spending it all on cards can leave you raiding with kits you cannot afford to lose.
Late in a wipe, the math changes. There may not be enough days left to earn back an expensive card purchase. Bitcoin and card prices also drift as the wipe goes on, so a farm that paid back in a week at the start may take much longer near the end. Before buying cards late, count the days to the next expected wipe and compare them with your payback estimate.
A farm you already built is a different case. Cards you bought months ago are already paid for, so keeping the farm running late in the wipe costs only fuel. That is almost always worth it.
Common mistakes
Buying all 50 cards before working out whether you can collect often enough to use them. The last cards add the least speed, and if the farm is already filling up between your visits, they add nothing at all.
Forgetting fuel. A farm with no power makes no bitcoins, and an empty generator also stops every other module that needs power.
Leaving the farm full. Every hour it sits holding three bitcoins is an hour it is not producing. Collect before each raid, not only when you happen to walk past.
Using an old bitcoin price. The price moves through the wipe. Check the flea before you plan a big card purchase, and check what traders pay too, since that can set a floor when the flea dips.
A checklist before you buy cards
Work through this before you spend on graphics cards:
Check the current card price and bitcoin price on the flea.
Check the production time in the hideout for the card count you are aiming at.
Count how many times a day you will realistically collect.
Cap your expected bitcoins per day at three times that number.
Subtract daily fuel and work out the payback in days.
Compare that payback with how many days are left in the wipe.
FAQ
How many cards should I buy? Enough that the farm fills up at about the rate you collect. More than that and the extra cards sit idle behind the storage limit.
Do I need the solar power module? No. The farm runs on generator power too, but then you pay for fuel every day. Solar removes that running cost once you have built it.
Can I sell farm bitcoins on the flea? Yes. They count as found in raid, so you can list them on the flea or sell them to a trader, whichever pays more at the time.
Is a small farm worth it? Often, yes. Because the first cards pay back fastest, a small farm can have a better return per card than a full one, especially if you cannot collect often.
So is it worth it?
Yes, if you build it early in the wipe and collect often. Late in a wipe there may not be enough days left to earn the cards back. And if you cannot collect often, a smaller farm can earn about as much as a full one, because the storage limit caps what either of them makes.
How often you collect matters as much as how many cards you own. Some players use a tool like Tarkbot's crafting mode to keep the farm emptied while they are away, but even a habit of collecting before every raid gets you most of the way there.