Farming experience

[Ellorien]

You might think that harvesting crops with your trusty scythe or threshing and winnowing tons of grain in your barn would increase your farming skill but you will be wrong. These labor-intensive activities have no effect. Zilch, zero, nada.

Perhaps they contribute to technology (I am guessing here because it is hard to tell with those green boxes which activity adds to the progress and by how much) or to other skills (I maxed out several so couldn’t tell; wish I paid more attention earlier) but they definitely do not increase your farming expertise. Which is clearly wrong because they absolutely should.

I get farming points only when plowing, adding fertilizer and sowing seeds. I specifically made one small 3x5 field for myself so I could improve my farming skill which is still at 1 and increasing painfully slow despite all my efforts. My peasants work on the big fields and their skills increase much faster.

I haven’t tried feeding pigs and chickens myself yet to test how feeding affects the farming skill. Just did not have time to start making animal feed. Spent the whole season hunting 6 wolves all over the map after accidentally — a slip of the finger! — accepting another stupid Night Howl quest while simply trying to sell stuff to a vendor.

By the way, speaking of pigs, I bought 2 cute piglets and, as luck would have it, they both grew up into the hogs (visually at least, because the game does not provide information) so I went and bought a lady pig to keep the boys company. Yes, I know they don’t breed at the moment.
The point is it’s kinda inconvenient when you can’t identify a piglet’s gender. Hopefully, this will change in the future updates.

And there is no rooster but chickens still lay eggs. I sell eggs because my Tavern 3 does not have sufficient knowledge to use them. Hell, it can’t even use water (requires buckets which is obviously arcane high tech in this game, available only to Zen Master).

Please share your own experience. How to you improve your skill?

[Random Zero Gravity]

Yes, they are contribute to the technology experience point, I'm not playing as a field worker so can't tell if it does improving skill or not. But yes on the technology.

For NPC Field Worker yes, they improve their farming skill much faster compare to us.

Animal Farm does not need Animal Feed currently.
However, they all improve the farming technology experience point, the more you have the faster it goes up. I had all of them, and have tested them.

You can get Bucket from Fold then buy Female Goat, or Cowshed then buy Cow to produce Bucket with Milk 10/10, then once the bucket is used, it will be empty and it will be return in the Food Storage box for you to use.

But the most important out of all farm animal is Fold then buy Ram or Sheep to produce Wool. They also house Goats.

You can pick Henshouse or Goose House both produce Egg & Feather, only Goose House produce more.

Most skill it still in "working progress" so not so much important when compare with Technology experience point, which you do need to buy their each Schemes then build their respective building.

[Ellorien]

Thank you for your reply. Yes, I know about fold. I haven’t unlocked this technology yet so can’t make buckets and therefore can’t make food that requires buckets of water. That was my point — water seems to be the last thing you unlock. That’s just ridiculous.

And yes, as I said, I tested it and those things do not contribute to skill. They absolutely should but they don’t.

I am going to plant all my fields by myself this upcoming spring. I have plenty of seeds, and fertilizer literally clogs my storage. I will report by how much farming skill increases.

[grafton37]

I agree with the bucket. The idea that I can craft all other items in the game before I can make a water bucket is .... not sound. Yet I can make a wash basin (basically the same thing) very early in game. Given the water bucket is needed for so much of the cooking, it is not good.

[Ellorien]

Okay, soon after I posted my animal breeders earned enough points to unlock fold so I built one and purchased a little goat and a lamb.

Spring came and I started my test run.

Here is the result.

Starting point: farming knowledge 2/3, XP 390/500.

One square fertilized — +3 xp
One square plowed — +3 xp
One square sowed — +3 xp.

Pretty soon my XP grew enough to advance to the next level, 3/3.

Then I started to get more XP per square — +4 for each activity.

After cultivating 50 squares I ended up at farming knowledge 3/3 and 669/750 XP, not bad. I let the crew work on the other fields and went to pay my taxes (3,200).

My efforts also contributed to technology.

In conclusion:

You may be wondering why I was so anxious to advance my farming experience.

Going through this process is the only way to advance farming skill which is needed to eventually unlock the Tier 3 skill Night Rider when it is implemented. That skill unlocks the ability to ride horses. That’s why,

So, folks, don’t rely on your peons when it comes to your farming skill (they don’t contribute to it), do it yourself whenever possible if you want to ride a horse one day.

[Random Zero Gravity]

@ellorien

Very nice finding there. Yes riding horses is very important, I will try your way. I will add it to my guide as well when I've done it and able to level my farming skill. I will try to pay close attention to those one square activity on how much EXP I'll earn.

Interestingly, the EXP goes up by 1 as you mention. I wonder why. Just curious.

I will need to make a new fields just for me to use later on.

Thanks @ellorien :)

[Drudge Jedd]

So instead of complaining you carried forward and had a fun time discovering sounds like a win.

[Random Zero Gravity]

Hi @Ninjai, she is not complaining. She sharing her experience, and improving it for us to know on how to earn farming experience, for the Racimir (us). So, we could be ready when the raiding of horses will be introduce in the future, we know how to get it fast in order to ride a horse :)

Which is great!

[Ellorien]

Originally posted by Ninjai:

So instead of complaining you carried forward and had a fun time discovering sounds like a win.

There is a big difference between complaining and an experienced strategy/city building games player commenting on the game design.
Some design decisions look arbitrary and nonsensical to me. That observation remains true. This is still alpha, though, and things are expected to be tweaked. But the positive changes will never take place if we the users who, basically, act as alpha testers now, would not post our critical comments.

[Random Zero Gravity]

Yea it is great there is a farmer player that sharing their experience and knowledge, as I am a hunter player, won't know much about farming, I know the basic of it, but not in this close attentive detail.

Since I've mostly play as a hunter travelling around and killing animals. Also, not all hunter use the same weapon of choice like me, some like to use bow or a mix with spears and camp in the distance and wait for the prey to come, as for me I prefer to charge in and only use spear.

Different kind of play style. So, I wouldn't know much about bow on how to be exact detail how to pull the string in order to archive certain velocity of the speed of an arrow/bolt if used by crossbow. Etc..

[Ellorien]

Originally posted by Random Zero Gravity:

@ellorien

Very nice finding there. Yes riding horses is very important, I will try your way. I will add it to my guide as well when I've done it and able to level my farming skill. I will try to pay close attention to those one square activity on how much EXP I'll earn.

Interestingly, the EXP goes up by 1 as you mention. I wonder why. Just curious.

I will need to make a new fields just for me to use later on.

Thanks @ellorien :)

Thank you. I assume you start with 1 xp per square, then put one point into your farming knowledge (1/3)and it will go up to 2 xp per square,
At 2/3 it is 3 ex and at 3/3 it is 4 xp.

The +1 change seems small but if you have a 40-square filed it will translate into 40x4=160 xp at 3/3 vs, 40x1=40 xp at 0/3.

Still, the difference is not significant, just 120 xp and that’s why Racimir’s farming skill advances so slowly if ever if you don’t plant your fields yourself. Because other farming chores don’t contribute to his skill, for some reason.

On the other hand, your crafting and survival skills skyrocket.

The devs need to balance this. Not by nerfing crafting, though, but by boosting farming and allowing some other activities to contribute to the farming skill,

[Random Zero Gravity]

Ah... I seeee. So I should wait until the dev balance this then, so I won't have to do the changes so often as I am still need to complete NPC worker Approval section and that takes a lot of time/work.

But I will add a note to this post, so I can get back after the next patch I hope. I don't know if this is fix by the next patch, we will have to see later on after the patch v0.2.0.3, maybe patch v0.2.0.4 or higher.

I hope you will update this post as well @ellorien because not so much farmer player able to share this with the community, let alone notice it in this detail, I don't know either I miss it in the past, all I know I am now stumble upon this post, your post which very interesting, and very helpful too. :)

[Ellorien]

Whether they balance anything at all we don’t know. Maybe never. Your guide is not set in stone anyway because everything is subject to change, potentially.

What we know for sure is that today only planting fields by yourself improves farming skill, by the certain amount of XP per square depending on the level of farming knowledge.
We also know that you need this skill leveled up in order to ride a horse.

First, need to raise the knowledge to 3/3 to accumulate XP faster (while earning xp is relatively easy) and only after that add one point to tier 2 and eventually to tier 3 in order to unlock Night Rider.
Skipping 3/3 will prove detrimental in the long run, obviously,

Maybe feeding animals by yourself will help with the skill too.

Edit: one 40-square field fertilized, plowed and planted will give 120 XP at 0/3 and the same field will give 480 XP at 3/3.

Edit 2: harvesting veggies (e.g., onions) also gives 1-2-3-4 XP per square, same as planting. Therefore our 40-square field will eventually give additional 160 XP at harvest time. Harvesting crops with scythe (wheat, rye, flax etc.) will not yield any XP, though.

Crop rotation XP-wise:

Spring — onions
Summer — cabbage
Fall — rye

This schedule will provide 16+16+12=44XP per square yearly.

[Random Zero Gravity]

True, it just that I don't have to alter it so often ^^ especially since I am not a farmer player.

This is a good suggestion, really. I will mention this in my guide later on. Also, will add Riding section to it as well.

Yes, maybe once dev has enable this function.

[Random Zero Gravity]

lol.. This gonna be fun @ellorien.

[Random Zero Gravity]

Starting state:
2/3 = 3XP / Square Field (for each activity)

10x10 = 100 Fields x4 = 400 Fields x3 XP = 1200 XP.

Is this correct?