Extreme Desert Survival (I need help.)

[EnricoDandolo]

Im trying to get a colony of 3+1 (Came on their own.) to survive in an Extreme Desert, and so far its not working.
By day 5 we're out of food, and our crops need like 1-3-4 more days to mature euough to the point of where we have any chance of getting food from them. We captured someone who is a really good miner (15) and im interested in using him, but I don't want to turn to cannibalism.
How do I do this?

[Shurp]

It's too late now, but next time you play, forbid all food items and do not let any colonists eat until they are starving.  You can easily double how long food lasts.

Also, if there are any animals on the map when you start, immediately kill them and cook them.  Forbid your survival meals and you won't have to worry about the meals spoiling, your colonists will eat them faster than they rot.

[Nainara]

For early food security, I suggest growing rice in the closest rich soil that you can find on the map. IIRC even deserts have rich soil scattered around.

[carbon]

If there's an ancient danger room, you could clear it out and use the cryptosleep caskets on all but one colonist who is left in charge of growing / cooking.

[Serenity]

It's the same as for arctic survival really

1.) As said ration your food. You can starve for a while and just one meal is enough to reverse that
2.) Get the nutrient paste dispenser. Also helps a little with stretching your resources. Once you have a stable food source you can dismantle it
3.) Hunt all animals. Even lizards help
4.) Grow potatoes in gravel. That will take a while, but you can harvest part of them at 80% or so to at least have some food until the rest is done.
5.) Cannibalism is ugly, but eating the first raider can really help to get over the rough start
6.) Get on researching hydroponics immediately

[Canute]

artic survival is a bit different, but same problem.
On desert you need to focus much on planting, while corpses/meat will rot pretty soon.
On artic you can hunt anything, corpses are mosttimes frozen you just need to keep them under a roof, but you will have a hard time to plant anything. On artic an early manhunter is your friend.

[Serenity]

but you will have a hard time to plant anything.

I meant the initial start to set you up. In the arctic too you can farm potatoes in gravel. At least when you're not on an ice shelf. Ideally you find a geyser and a gravel patch that covers as much of a sunlamp as possible.

[Panzer]

As the others have said, manual rationing can help in the beginning. You should also plant an abnormal amount of potatoes, with heatwaves and whatnot they can take forever to grow, that should be your first action after you landed, even before hauling your stuff.
Nutrient paste dispenser is kinda mandatory until you can set up hydroponics, even then I would keep it around because you never know when the blight is going to happen.
If you can spare the colonist, a early caravan with the starting silver to buy food is a good idea, helped my runs to get through that though phase in the beginning where you barely have any food.

[Canute]

Potatoes on desert? Not a wise choise if you can't keep them fresh. Rice and corn are a much better choise.

[cultist]

Potatoes on desert? Not a wise choise if you can't keep them fresh. Rice and corn are a much better choise.

Potatoes grow reasonably fast in poor soil and early on, there is very little food surplus anyway. It's definitly the best crop for starting out in hot climates.
With that said, I always plant rice first because it grows the fastest. But potatoes go in the ground right after the rice. The rice is just for the very first harvest, when you're starting to run out of survival meals.

[Shurp]

If you're growing in gravel, wouldn't the potatoes mature faster than the rice, even for the first meal?

But yes, if there's any soil around rice is definitely the right choice for the first harvest.

[Hans Lemurson]

I think even in Gravel Rice still beats Potatoes for speed, but the yield/day is lower.

[Serenity]

Unless something changed rice is horrible in gravel because of its fertility sensitivity

[East]

The desert has a really good world map movement speed. If you have a friendly village within 10 spaces, consider packing up with your money.