farmer water pathfinding on isle

[Stu -1]

trying to make a decent farm setup but didnt want to have channels everywhere through fields so figured id just stock up on bots and farmers and get them to do their job. but the farmers seem to want to walk a long way to the river to collect water.

ive tried digging an area of ground up in the middle of the farm and filling it with water. ive put wells. well rooms. but they always pathfind to the big river in the farm area. is this deliberate? are we supposed to build farms along the river we build? or is there a water source you can build that they WILL use?

[lilisaur]

Nope. Sometimes they'll use water nearby, sometimes they'll go a ways. Seems random in my experience. It may work like Chests though, where if someone else is using the water source, they'll go find another in the area.

Don't put Ladders in your water though and turn them into Pools. I don't think the farmers collect water from Pools.

I do wish the Well item served this exact purpose though. But its just for looks and doesn't supply any water to anybody.

[Stu -1]

thanks for the reply. guess i'll dig irrigation trenches. i liked the idea of having the npcs plant water and harvest the crops. but they just end up making long chains to collect water and everything else gets neglected.

few random things like this i wish they'd fix. only putting items related to the buildings use in community chests is another one. my chests always get filled up with random blocks, wood, and stone etc. wish farm chests would be limited to seeds or crop. and kitchens to crops or cooked items. and so on

[lilisaur]

They might harvest water twice from a nearby pond if you pour out our Bottomless Pot a second time, on a different block than the first. Water flows from blocks you've poured out, so perhaps having several source blocks in a pond might break the NPCs up instead of having them form one long line. I can't be sure as I've got streams running through, beside, or very near all my fields. With 1000 or so crops planted, the farmers harvest way more crops than can be cooked into food or consumed for meals so I really don't care if they take a long walk to fill up their water pail. I've seen them do it but I don't spend any time to correct it.

Good trick is to put the Kitchen and its chests next to fields. Farmers will be inclined to deliver the crops right to the kitchen for cooking. You can take it a step further by not having any other chests in the area (probably Green Gardens), such that the farmers have no where else to take them. With no Barn you won't get a lot of the junk wood and stone either, though very happy dogs and cats might produce some (but you could assign them to another area if this was an issue.) So a specific village design can reduce, or even eliminate, a lot of the junk filling your chests. Although I don't do these things on my main island either, and also wish they'd stop making junk of which I have an infinite supply or delivering crops to distant chests.

[Stu -1]

yeh i just put in irrigation channels. i tried that idea of creating 'source blocks' near the farms by dumping the pot out at the point of the farm directly adjacent to the river. but they still preferred the long walk. its as if the game does a scan to find the position of the farm relative to the tablet. and then the closest water also to the tablet in that direction. because they always seemed to go for the 2 corners of the river on either side of my farm. with my farms being built on a u-shaped island area.

was getting to bothersome so just dug some channels. im in the same boat got almost too many crops now. so losing a few lanes to water channels won't matter.

aesthetically i want things like a barn etc in my farm. so i have those things. and even if i manually sort chests. i soon find crops in all of them. and all the other junk. suppose its not the end of the world. just need to ignore that itch i get in the back of my brain that likes neat inventories lol

[lilisaur]

Regarding crops in odd chests, that's becuase if a chest is in use by one NPC (or you!) then that NPC will seek out another chest. Since people wake up at same time, go to eat at same time,a nd generally take same amount of time ti eat, when they start harvesting they are too often on the same schedule. Maybe moving people around to distant rooms can fool it a bit, but not solve it. Only good solution I've found is more than one chest near fields. Cooked food works the same way - if they can't use the chest, they'll go seek another rather than wait. Only if there are no other chest available will they wait (which really should be default behavior)

[Stu -1]

yeh i agree with everything you said. for the rest of my playthrough i just tolerated the random-ness of chests. and avoided building things liek barns if possible. it took me a while to realise farmers root around the barn for stone and stuff. i thought it was more of an aesthetic building.

there's a few things id like to see improved in this. or more likely DQB3 if it happens. designated inventory. better npc job systems. i could not get certain npcs and monsters to do their jobs. although granted that may have been lack of understanding for the mechanics on my part. anyway thanks for all the info.