Name: Hytale farming guide: How animal care and crop farming work
Uploaded: 2026-01-17T13:59:31.654Z
Duration: 4 min 30 s
Description: Farming in Hytale is still a work in progress, but there’s already plenty you can do if you’re looking to settle down and start producing food and resources. We’ll walk you through crop farming step by step.

Farming in Hytale is still a work in progress, but there’s already plenty you can do if you’re looking to settle down and start producing food and resources. We’ll walk you through crop farming step by step.

Hytale's early access version features a basic animal interaction system, with limited options for engaging with wildlife and livestock. Players can ride horses, shear sheep, and milk certain animals, but breeding and taming are not yet available, and most animal-related tools have minimal functionality.

In contrast, crop farming is fully implemented, allowing players to grow crops using seeds crafted with Essence of Life, a key in-game resource. The guide explains how to plant, water, and harvest crops, and notes that future updates may expand animal farming and breeding features.

Hytale farming guide: How animal care and crop farming work

There are a lot of creatures roaming the world in Hytale, some fantastical and some more mundane. If you've jumped into the early access crafting RPG, found a place to settle down and thought, wow this looks like a great spot for a sheep farm but I have no idea how to set one up, well then you're in the right place. Here's everything you need to know about how to farm and take care of animals in Hytale. The most important thing to know about taking care of animals in Hytale is that the animal interaction system in the current first early access build of the game is largely incomplete. Breeding is non-existent, and apart from a few exceptions, there's no real way to engage with any of the wildlife or livestock that inhabit the world. That said, Hytale isn't completely devoid of animal interactions. For example, you can ride the horses you find, though you can't seem to tame them and they'll run away from you the second you dismount. You can also shear sheep to get wool and animal poop, and milk the various cows, oxen, and yaks to get milk which if you drink can have interesting effects. Most animals don't want anything to do with you and will run away if you get near them, but if you craft the feed bag in the farmer's workbench, some animals won't run and will instead hang out with you if you're holding the bag or place it on the ground. Unfortunately, the feed bag doesn't attract every animal and there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to which animals are attracted to the bag and which ones aren't. For example, you'd think that livestock like sheep and horses might be interested in the bag, but no, they couldn't care less. If you want to capture an animal and bring it back to your settlement, you can craft the capture box from the farmer's workshop. To use it, hold the box in your hand and then left click on small animals to put them in the box, and you can left click again to release them. The capture box only works on small animals, which means you can't go around grabbing anything you like. However, most animals will have adult and baby variants, so while you can't grab a full grown sheep or horse, if you can find a baby version, you can put them in the box and bring them back home. Again, there's not much you can do with them if you bring them back to your settlement and they'll run away from you if you don't put them inside a fence, but you can set up an animal farm if you want. The animal related items in the farmer's workbench largely don't do anything, or if they do, they don't do much like what we just talked about with the feed bag. However, they do imply that animal breeding and taming will be coming to a later version of Hytale, so if you want to start grabbing animals for an eventual farm, it might not be a bad idea to start now for when the animal systems are more complete in future updates. While the animal farming in Hytale leaves a lot to be desired, the actual crop farming is a fully fleshed out system. To farm crops, you'll need to get seeds from the farmer's workbench, which usually costs Essence of Life to craft. Essence of Life is a major currency in Hytale that you'll want a lot of if you want to farm or trade with villagers. Luckily, acquiring Essence of Life is pretty simple. To get it, you just need to farm various crops or defeat monsters. I found that defeating monsters gave out Essence of Life much more inconsistently than farming, so if you're looking to acquire large numbers of the item, you'll want to set up some crops as soon as you can. If you haven't found any seed packs while exploring to get you started, wander around the world and you'll eventually find fully mature wheat to harvest. It's pretty common to find, and each batch of wheat should net you some Essence of Life, which you can then use to craft other seeds. Once you've crafted some seeds, you'll also need to craft a hoe using stone and tree trunks. Find a patch of land you want to grow your crops on, and then use the hoe to till the land. With the land ready, hold the seeds and then right click to plant them. The seeds will grow on their own over time, however, if you want to speed up the process, you'll want to craft a watering can from the farmer's workbench using iron ingots. Fill the watering can by holding it and then right clicking on the water, and then return to your farm. Right click on the patch of land you want to water, and the seedling will start to grow more rapidly. After a few in-game hours, the plants will be fully mature for you to harvest. Not only will you get the produce, but you'll also get some Essence of Life. Produce can do a handful of things like be eaten outright, or you can cook it on a campfire for added healing benefits. So that's everything you need to know about farming in Hytale so far. The game doesn't have a particularly robust farming system yet, but the emphasis on farming, with some of the items and unfinished interactions with animals, makes it seem like Hytale is planning on going all in on farming and animal breeding. For everything else about Hytale's early access, make sure to stick with IGN.

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