Flax seed - what to use it for?

[Nox]

As title, I have too much flax. ON the wiki it states for oil, but I cannot find a use ingame.
Right now I have 4500 flax seeds, and growing as I need the linen..

[Kaelroth]

Flax will make linen when harvested. You can use that for making clothing and a few armors it is used as ingredients for a few other items as well.

[Nox]

Hi, I'm after a use for the seed, not the linen! I need more linen still so I'm growing flax still, but it's overproducing the seeds like mad, so was after a use for just the seeds. As my original message said, the wiki says for oil, but can't seem to find a way to do that

[Kaelroth]

At the moment, all seeds (not including barley and redcurrants which serve as both seed and product) are only useful for growing the corresponding plants. They may add oil in a later update, but at the moment I don't think that use is implemented yet.

If you're having too many seeds, you can always create a separate stockpile that is outside in the open environment and set it to store only flax seeds. The ground/weather will eventually decompose them. You can either leave the stockpile at low priority or set it to medium priority to encourage settlers to move your excess seeds to this stockpile.

I'd also recommend storing a few hundred seeds in a safe stockpile or on shelves somewhere (preferably a cold room to reduce decomposition) and set these to high priority just to ensure you always have enough on hand to regrow your flax fields.

[Philtre]

You can sell them to traders. They're not worth much, but it gets you a little value out of them over just letting them rot.

[Jermarlie]

Low effort animal feed. I plant them in my animal pen and the livestock burn through it. I believe (some?) livestock will also eat any seeds off the ground, but I'd have to double check; if so, you may be able to just stockpile your excess seeds in your pen rather than go to the effort of planting.

And when I say they burn through it, I really mean they burn through it. I don't think I've ever had enough to feed my animals solely off of flax fields for very long. One time I forgot about it, left the field set on replanting for too long, and ran out of flax seeds, so I didn't have enough for my normal linen production fields. Just keep an eye on it if going this route.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by Jermarlie:

Low effort animal feed. I plant them in my animal pen and the livestock burn through it.

I would still just sell extra seeds. Berry bushes are a much more labor-saving crop to feed your animals outside of winter, because you get multiple meals per planting. (Plant them in the pen and set them to never be harvested.)

I don't think any animals will eat the seeds by themselves.

[Kaelroth]

Originally posted by Philtre:

Originally posted by Jermarlie:

Low effort animal feed. I plant them in my animal pen and the livestock burn through it.

I would still just sell extra seeds. Berry bushes are a much more labor-saving crop to feed your animals outside of winter, because you get multiple meals per planting. (Plant them in the pen and set them to never be harvested.)

I don't think any animals will eat the seeds by themselves.

Selling seeds isn't really that great. Once a settlement gets going, there will be far more valuable by weight surplus items to sell than seeds. Linen itself is easy to amass in large quantities and it sells for far better prices per weight than seeds could.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by Kaelroth:

Selling seeds isn't really that great. Once a settlement gets going, there will be far more valuable by weight surplus items to sell than seeds. Linen itself is easy to amass in large quantities and it sells for far better prices per weight than seeds could.

I agree, but that's not the point. The OP wants to get rid of the seeds so they're not taking up storage space. By the point in the game where you have 4,500 surplus flax seeds like they do, you probably aren't in dire need of more cash. Selling the seeds, or just giving them away as gifts to any passing trader, is an easy way of getting rid of them while still getting a bit of value out of them.

[Kaelroth]

Originally posted by Philtre:

Originally posted by Kaelroth:

Selling seeds isn't really that great. Once a settlement gets going, there will be far more valuable by weight surplus items to sell than seeds. Linen itself is easy to amass in large quantities and it sells for far better prices per weight than seeds could.

I agree, but that's not the point. The OP wants to get rid of the seeds so they're not taking up storage space. By the point in the game where you have 4,500 surplus flax seeds like they do, you probably aren't in dire need of more cash. Selling the seeds, or just giving them away as gifts to any passing trader, is an easy way of getting rid of them while still getting a bit of value out of them.

Nah. It's entirely the point. If you want to get rid of them quickly, you let them decompose outside. You can get rid of thousands of them pretty quickly with little to no effort rather than having to wait to sell them off in batches to the visiting merchant caravans or wasting time sending them off in a caravan of your own, potentially wasting the time of settlers and pack animals better served doing other tasks in the settlement.

As you just stated, the OP wants to get rid of the seeds so they're not taking up storage space. Moving the seeds to a stockpile that's exposed to the elements so they decompose and disappear would therefore be the point, not getting value for them that you just agreed isn't necessary. It also establishes the means of keeping those seeds from building up to very high levels again by constantly moving them to the 'disposal stockpile' in order to maintain the process.