You’ve managed a fair number of cycles into your game of Oxygen Not Included at this point. You have food, you have supplies, and you have power. But now there’s a new, gradually growing threat: heat. The easiest solution to this? Wheezewort!

Wheezeworts are a special type of plant located in the Frozen biome. The tall, cactus-like plants don’t need food or water, however. Instead, they feed on heat, making the world around them a little colder as a result.

In other words: They are a powerless, effortless way to cool the immediate area.

Where to Find Wheezewort

The biggest limitation of this miracle plant is the lack of reproducibility. There are a set number of Wheezewort plants in the world and you can’t get more. Look to the left and right sides of where you spawn, eventually you’ll find Ice biomes. Each biome will have a randomly determined number of Wheezewort plants. Go harvest them, and replant them in flower pots.

Where to Use Wheezewort

The best places are where the temperature matter or where heat is made. The two most common locations are the farm and the power room. The farm needs cooler air because the food crops will stop growing if too hot.

The power room, which contains anything from coal generators to petroleum refineries, will often generate heat as a result of making more power. To offset this heat and help it not spread, you can use Wheezeworts.

If you already have a ventilation system in place for your base, another idea is to have a room that the main vent passes through that is full of many Wheezeworts. The room will be rather cold due to the collected plants, and that room will cool down the air inside the ventilation shafts. Be sure to use radiant ventilation shafts in this room.

The Limitations of Wheezewort

There are some restrictions to this method. The limited number of plants is the most obvious one. The other two are that they aren’t the most powerful and they can’t handle too much heat. If you have a lot of heat being generated or need heavy cooling fast, then these might not do the trick.

If the immediate area is above 95 degrees C, they will become inactive. On the same side of things, they will also stop if it gets below -60 degrees C. Wheezeworts are capable of making its own environment too cold of itself to live in.

Technical Info

• One Wheezewort will exchange gas at a rate of 1kg/s. They take the gas at the bottom block of their location and release it at 5 degrees C colder than it was before.
• Weighing 400kg itself, it’s own mass is prone to slow down the area cooling process.
• The best gas to use for cooling is Hydrogen, due to its fast rate of temperature transferring.
• Natural Gas will cool the fastest, but hydrogen transfers heat best.

Fun Facts

• Wheezewort will not cool a gas lower than its condensation point. So it will never get so cold it becomes water.
• They’re technically not a plant, but a living creature, according to the codex entry. This is not entirely unlike real life coral.
• It’s “Wheezewort,” but is commonly misplelled as “Wheezlewort.”

Don’t have the game but want to play it for yourself? You can find more information on the official game website.