Three More Reasons to Charge Up: Cultivator, Vacuum and Electric Knife
OCTOBER 12-26, 2026 / DEVELOPMENT UPDATE
The powered workshop now reaches beyond mining and construction. The battery cultivator, cordless vacuum and electric knife bring electric-tool progression into planting, cleaning, cooking and butchering. They are carried work tools with batteries and wear, so the upgrade still depends on a colony's ordinary work assignments and supplies.
Meet the new equipment
The battery cultivator serves Hoe work, including sowing and tilling, at a base tool-speed multiplier of 1.6. Its recipe uses 50 steel and three components. The cordless vacuum serves Broom work, including ordinary and priority cleaning, at 1.6, with 40 steel and two components. The electric knife serves Knife work, including cooking and butchering, at 1.5, with 25 steel and two components.
All three are made at a machining table after Electricity and Machining. Their recipes require Crafting 4 and a usable Hammer tool. The construction drill counts as a hammer for that purpose. The knife uses one-handed working poses; the cultivator and vacuum use two-handed grips.
Carrying is enough
Workers can carry these tools in inventory or in a worn toolbelt. They do not have to replace their equipped combat weapon with a cleaning appliance. Automatic fetching remains a toolbelt feature, so a loose tool on the floor is not a substitute for the fetching setup.
The tools use the existing charger and automatic-recharge setting. A full battery lasts 60,000 active work ticks. An empty electric tool is unavailable for the job, but a usable manual tool carried by the same pawn can provide a fallback. Neither the charging system nor the new tool bypasses reachability, reservations or the worker's capability.
Skill and quality still matter
Base working life is 720,000 ticks, or twelve continuous working days. Crafting skill at creation adds 10% of that base per skill level. Masterwork quality adds 15% tool speed and Legendary adds 25%, with teal-and-gold engraved artwork for those higher qualities.
These values describe the tool's own contribution. They are not a guarantee that every job finishes that percentage faster after all pawn, room, material and work factors are applied. The cultivator does not plant a field without a worker, and the vacuum does not erase a room's filth in one action.
Put the upgrade through its paces
Try a single bill at the machining table, then assign the matching job to a pawn carrying the finished tool. Watch its charge, compare manual fallback when it empties, and confirm that the charger can be reached. The .110 release includes native component and holder checks covering battery exhaustion, recharging, wear, quality and job routing. It also retains the mining and tree-tool enforcement fixes. Those checks do not replace live pathfinding, charging behavior or visual testing in your mod list.
