Canals are the quiet backbone of every successful settlement on Kewa, and learning to dig them well is one of the first terraforming skills a new player should build. Beyond These Stars hands you the back of a giant Space Whale and asks you to make it livable, so routing water through carved channels is what turns scattered housing into a working city. This guide walks through the canal system, how it connects to rivers and top soil, and the farm-and-forest rhythm that keeps the whole biome healthy. For the primary source, see Steam's Hotfix #1 patch post.
Canal Basics: What Carved Waterways Do for Your City
Canals are player-carved waterways that move water across Kewa's back, and they sit alongside the natural river as the two main ways liquid reaches your Peeps, farms, and industry. The official Beginner's Guide lists digging canals alongside adding top soil and planting trees as the three core terraforming actions, which signals how central the tool is. The developer frames terraforming as a single system: carve channels, layer soil, plant trees, and you have the conditions for a healthy biome.
The reason canals matter so much is that water is the gating resource for almost everything. A Peep needs a drink to keep working, a farm plot needs moisture for seeds, and several production buildings need water as an input. When canals are routed thoughtfully, the water moves itself through gravity and adjacency. When canals are missing or mis-routed, you end up hauling water by Peep-power across half the map, which is a slow way to watch your settlement stall.
How Canals Compare to Rivers
The map starts with some natural river segments already drawn, and you cannot edit those — they are the original flow that Kewa carries. Canals are everything you add on top: shorter, straighter, and placed deliberately. The official Dev Blog #29 is explicit that creating rivers is one of the actions that keeps the biome healthy, so carving new channels is not just convenience, it is biome maintenance.
| Feature | Natural River | Player-Dug Canal |
|---|---|---|
| Source | Pre-placed by the developer | Carved by the player using the terraforming tool |
| Editable | No | Yes (you can extend, reroute, or fill) |
| Primary role | Baseline water supply, visual anchor | Targeted water delivery to farms, homes, and industry |
| Biome effect | Contributes to a healthy biome | Extends biome-friendly water coverage when added well |
| Travel effect | Peeps and small boats follow the flow | Canals act as movement corridors when laid between districts |
What Canals Connect To
Canals do not live alone. They touch three other systems that the developer has named explicitly in the official material: top soil, planted trees, and farming plots. The order tends to be: carve the water path first, lay top soil along the banks, plant trees in clusters nearby, and only then place farms. Doing it in that order means the ground is already moist and sheltered when seeds go in, which is closer to how the developer's own terraforming loop is described.
If you want a deeper look at the wider terraforming umbrella, the terraforming overview walks through how digging, soil, and forests interact as one system. Treat that as the chapter before this one and the rest of the article as the practical follow-up.
Routing Canals: Where to Cut for Water Access and Travel
The single most common canal mistake is treating the tool like a decoration instead of a pipeline. The point of a canal is to take water from where it already is — a river, a lake, a higher tile — and move it to where it is needed. That means starting your route at an existing water source and ending it at a tile that needs hydration: a farm cluster, an industrial block, a residential ring.
Elevation Matters More Than Length
Water in this game behaves like real water in the sense that it wants to flow downhill. A canal that runs from a high tile to a low tile fills cleanly; a canal that tries to climb will sit empty. When you sketch a new channel, glance at the slope of the tiles underneath: if the line you are drawing has a steady downward grade, the canal will fill. If it plateaus or rises, you will have a dry ditch that costs travel time and gives nothing back.
The practical rule players settle on quickly is to follow contours rather than fight them. Walk a canal along the side of a hill instead of over its top, and let the gradient do the work. This is the same logic you would use when routing a real irrigation ditch, and the developer has chosen to model water flow with enough realism that the intuition carries over.
Use Canals as Peep Highways
The second purpose of a canal is travel. Peeps move faster along canal banks than across open tiles, because the flat ground and the obvious path both shorten decision time. When a residential cluster sits on one side of a canal and a Kitchen or Pasture sits on the other, Peeps shortcut across the bridge and the whole district feels tighter. Dev Blog #22 mentions that Celebrations — which grant production, movement, and sickness bonuses when enough Peeps in one location pass a high happiness threshold — happen more often when Peeps are physically close to one another, so canals that bunch people up are quietly powering a bonus you might not notice.
| Routing Choice | Best For | Watch Out For |
|---|---|---|
| Canal along a slope | Pulling water downhill to farms | Avoid uphill sections that never fill |
| Canal between two districts | Peep travel and faster shift starts | Don't double back on yourself |
| Canal feeding a Trawler site | Shell resource income | Trawlers need open water access, not narrow slots |
| Canal circling a residential ring | Keeps homes close to water without flooding the center | Leave room for top soil and tree cover |
| Canal filling a low basin | Acts as a reservoir during dry stretches | Can flood adjacent plots if overfilled |
Top Soil and the Canal Edge
Top soil is the second terraforming tool, and it pairs with canals the way mulch pairs with a garden bed. The official material lists top soil as one of the three terraforming actions you take after digging canals and before planting trees. Soil layered along the banks of a canal raises the ground next to the water just enough that farms placed there hold moisture longer, and it gives tree roots something to grip when you start planting.
Why Top Soil Goes Down Before Trees
If you plant trees first and add soil later, the trees often refuse to establish because the underlying tile is too dry or too compacted. The developer frames terraforming as a layered system where each step prepares the next. Add soil while the ground is bare, plant trees into the improved tile, and your forest has the start it needs to actually grow instead of stalling. The same logic applies to farms: soil-then-seed beats seed-then-soil because the seed lands in a medium that already holds water.
The community has noticed that tiles near existing rivers and canals accept top soil more readily than tiles that are completely dry, which is another reason to carve the canal first and amend the soil second. The detailed soil system is covered in the soil guide, which goes into how terrain difficulty affects the rate at which soil spreads.
Spreading Top Soil Without Wasting It
Top soil is a resource you spend, not a magic brush, so the goal is to place it where it has the most leverage. Three patterns work well:
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Canal banks: A one-tile-wide strip of top soil along each side of a new canal anchors moisture and sets up future farm rows.
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Forest seed points: Lay top soil where you intend to plant a tree cluster, then place the Tree Nursery or seed directly on top of the improved tile.
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Farm footprints: Cover the entire farm plot with top soil before you assign Peeps to plant, because the difference between amended and unamended soil shows up in how fast the crop reaches harvest.
Farming Along Canals: Building Productive Rows
Farming is where canals, top soil, and tree cover stop being separate ideas and become one system. The official material lists topatoes as a named resource and the Pasture as a building that produces Wool on a planet with sheep, with Cotton seeds findable in some places. Potatoes need a moist tile and enough Peep attention to harvest; wool needs grazing animals and a stable climate. Canals that run past farm rows supply the moisture; top soil underneath the row holds it; trees nearby shelter the crops from wind and extreme temperature swings.
Setting Up Your First Farm Block
The simplest farm layout in the early game is a rectangle of canal-front tiles, each covered in top soil, with a Tree Nursery on the windward side. Peeps walk down the canal, harvest the row, and walk back along the same path, which keeps travel time low. The Kitchen is a verified building that turns ingredients into meals, and a Kitchen placed within adjacency range of the farm row keeps the food pipeline tight.
| Farm Element | Verified Resource / Building | Role in the Farm |
|---|---|---|
| Canal edge | Player-carved water | Provides irrigation and a Peep path |
| Top soil layer | top soil | Holds moisture, improves yield |
| Tree windbreak | Tree Nursery, planted trees | Buffers temperature, lowers Pollution |
| Crop | potatoes (verified) | Staple food resource |
| Livestock | Sheep, Cows (verified) | Source of Wool and animal products |
| Processing | Kitchen, Pasture, Weaver, Tailor | Turns raw food and fibers into meals, fabrics, and clothing |
Connecting Farms to the Wider Economy
Once a farm block is producing, the next step is hooking it to the rest of your city. A Kitchen that is adjacent to a farm row processes ingredients faster, and a Weaver sitting near a Pasture turns Wool into fabric without long Peep commutes. The Tailor, in turn, takes that fabric and produces Cold Weather Clothing and Warm Weather Clothing — both verified end products that are essential when the galaxy temperature shifts.
Dev Blog #29 explains that a hot galaxy drags Kewa's happiness down, and if the temperature drops far enough Kewa starts emergency travel to a colder region. Clothing is what keeps Peeps productive through those swings, and a tight farm-to-wardrobe pipeline is what makes the difference between a settlement that rides out a temperature shift and one that stalls. The biome side of this loop is covered in the ecosystem health guide, which explains how rivers, forests, and Pollution interact with Kewa's mood.
Tree Cover, Pollution, and the Long-Term Biome
Planting trees is the third terraforming action in the official trio, and it ties the canal-and-soil work back to Kewa's wellbeing. The Tree Nursery is a verified building whose indirect job is addressing Pollution, while the Cleaner building — where Peeps mix Water and Chemicals — is the more direct Pollution tool. Together they form a two-track approach: trees for slow, structural improvement, and Cleaners for fast response.
Why Forests Sit Next to Canals
Trees and water go together because both are biome-health signals. The developer has stated that planting trees, minimising pollution, and creating rivers all keep the biome healthy, so a canal bank that is also a tree-lined path is hitting two of those signals at once. Players who treat their canals as greenways rather than just ditches end up with a biome that recovers faster from storms and a Kewa that stays happier through hot-galaxy stretches.
| Biome Action | Verified Tool | Effect on the Biome |
|---|---|---|
| Plant trees | Tree Nursery | Indirect Pollution reduction, long-term biome health |
| Lower Pollution directly | Cleaner (Water + Chemicals) | Faster response to dirty tiles |
| Add water | Canal, river expansion | Contributes to a healthy biome per Dev Blog #29 |
| Improve ground | top soil | Sets the base for trees and farms to thrive |
| Move Kewa | Dialogue choices | Nudges happiness up or down based on tone |
When to Plant, When to Clean
A useful rhythm is to plant trees in clusters during calm stretches and to switch to Cleaners when Pollution spikes. The Tree Nursery is slow but permanent; the Cleaner is fast but consumes Water and Chemicals continuously. Canals matter here because they pipe the Water that Cleaners need directly to the industrial block where Pollution tends to concentrate, so a canal routed past your Burner and your Composting saves you a long Peep commute with a bucket.
The Peep mood side of this loop is its own system. Celebrations trigger when enough Peeps in one location pass a high happiness threshold, and they grant production, movement, and sickness bonuses. A canal-and-tree-lined plaza is a natural Celebration site, which is one more quiet reason to invest in the green infrastructure instead of leaving the canals as bare ditches. Sickness itself is covered in Dev Blog #25, which notes that sickness chance rises at the start of a shift as energy falls — another reason to keep Peep travel short, which canals help with.
Putting It All Together: A Practical Terraforming Loop
Stepping back from the individual tools, the canal-first, soil-second, trees-third rhythm is the cleanest way to build out a district. It mirrors the developer's own framing in the official Beginner's Guide, and it composes well with the rest of the verified systems: the Pasture and Kitchen, the Weaver and Tailor, the Tree Nursery and Cleaner.
A Sample District Order
The following order is the one most players settle into within the first few hours, because each step sets up the next:
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Survey the slope: pick a downhill line from an existing river or high water tile toward an empty stretch of Kewa.
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Dig the canal: carve the channel and let water fill it before you commit any buildings to the site.
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Lay top soil: cover the canal banks and the planned farm footprint with top soil while the ground is still bare.
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Plant tree windbreaks: drop a Tree Nursery on the windward side of the future farm and let a small forest establish.
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Place farms and pasture: add farm rows along the canal and a Pasture where Sheep can graze; Cotton seeds can be found and planted in matching plots.
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Hook up processing: build a Kitchen for meals, a Weaver for fabrics, and a Tailor for Cold Weather and Warm Weather Clothing.
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Add a Cleaner block: route a side canal past your Burner and Composting and drop a Cleaner to keep Pollution from climbing.
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Watch the biome: confirm Kewa's happiness stays stable and the surrounding tiles stay green; reroute canals or add soil if any section goes brown.
What the Developer Has and Has Not Published
Because Beyond These Stars launched only a day before this guide was written, the developer has not published specific numbers for any of these systems. There are no published per-tile yield figures for potatoes, no exact Pollution thresholds, no fixed biome-health formulas, and no detailed cost tables for the Tree Nursery or the Cleaner. Anything that quotes a number — a happiness percentage, a Pollution rate, a farm yield — is invention, and the official material is clear that those numbers are intentionally not exposed.
The right reading is to treat the systems as types: canals move water and support travel, top soil improves ground, trees and Cleaners address Pollution, and Kewa's happiness is the long-term scoreboard. If a number is needed for a planning decision, the honest answer is to observe your own save and write the number down, because the developer has chosen to keep those values out of the documentation. This open-negative approach is what the forests and habitability article uses when it talks about atmosphere and habitability without quoting percentages.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do canals replace the natural river, or do they work alongside it?
They work alongside the natural river. The river is a pre-placed feature you cannot edit, and canals are the player-carved channels you add on top. Treat the river as the trunk and your canals as the branches that reach the parts of Kewa the trunk does not cover.
How do I add top soil along a new canal?
Open the terraforming tool, select top soil, and paint the bank tiles on either side of the canal. Doing it while the canal is freshly carved and the ground is still bare gives the soil the best chance to take. Cover the planned farm footprint at the same time so you do not have to redo the work later.
Where should I put my first farm in Beyond These Stars?
Place it next to a canal or river, on top soil, with a tree windbreak on the windward side. Potatoes are a verified crop and the Kitchen is a verified processor, so a Kitchen within adjacency range of the farm row keeps the food pipeline short. The same logic applies to a Pasture, which produces Wool on a planet with sheep.
How do I plant trees without wasting them?
Use the Tree Nursery on tiles that already have top soil, ideally along a canal bank or near a future residential ring. Planting into amended ground is more reliable than planting into bare tiles, and grouping trees in clusters gives the biome a stronger signal than scattering single trees across the map.
Do canals actually help with Peep travel, or is that just a visual effect?
They do help. Peeps move faster along canal banks because the flat ground and the obvious path shorten decision time, and canals between districts cut shift-start commute time. That shorter travel also feeds into the Celebration system, which fires when enough Peeps in one location pass a high happiness threshold, so the canals quietly power a bonus you only notice when it is missing.