Is fertilizer doing ANYTHING?

[wyldfae28]

I'm far enough along that all my seeds, trees, feed, and seaweed are at osmium level. I have gone through all the laborious processes both above and below the ocean to maximize the quality of what I grow and the animal products I should be getting. It takes considerable effort and time to achieve this, which is fine.

I also take the time to gather the sap and osmium kelp, and make compost for osmium level fertilizer because I primarily run an artisan farm at this point and nearly all of my produce/products eventually end up in kegs, bee nests, looms, oil presses and lots of barrels. It's the way to make the most profit.

What is confounding me is that even though I do all the necessary "things", I still end up with less than ideal products. The osmium fertilizer says that it "WILL grow better quality crops" if used. Not like the others, which say there is a CHANCE for better quality. This is why I bother to make it. I wish I could buy it. But if I'm using it on osmium level seeds and fruit plants, then why am I still getting anything but osmium crops? It makes no sense. Typically, I get various mixtures of gold and osmium produce. But some days it's gold and silver. I've even gotten bronze. The same is true for my very happy animals, eating osmium level feeds, and still making gold/osmium products with silver and the occasional bronze mixed in.

I plant, fertilize and harvest all crops by hand to avoid the auto SFH issues. I would really appreciate knowing if fertilizer even has an effect, if that's bugged, or if there is just no way to get predominantly osmium products from your farm. No matter how many game hurdles you jump.

[Hexo Mia]

if you are using the auto harvesters, they crops will be lower quiality, for some reason, may be a bug? but yeah, doesnt make any sense to get regual quality crops when you are using osmium seeds and fertilizer, you have to manually harvest everything if you want better loot and even so the chanse of getting lower quality is verty high, so yeah just bad implemented.

just stupid.

[spacestr]

I noticed the same thing when experimenting with auto seeders/fertilizers/harvesters. When doing everything manually I got results using even the cheapest fertilizer, but after automated stuff it went back to default. Seems like a huge bug since the top tier attachment does everything for you, but fertilizer is completely spent without any benefit.

[wyldfae28]

Originally posted by spacestr:

I noticed the same thing when experimenting with auto seeders/fertilizers/harvesters. When doing everything manually I got results using even the cheapest fertilizer, but after automated stuff it went back to default. Seems like a huge bug since the top tier attachment does everything for you, but fertilizer is completely spent without any benefit.

Agreed. But I am not seeing what I think should be happening even when doing all the planting, fertilizing, harvesting manually. I long ago stopped using the attachments. They definitely don't take fertilizers into account, and I don't know if that bug has been addressed. I am still having produce quality variations I can't explain even without the attachments.

I would love dev input as to what kind of produce/animal product quality we should expect from top level seed/feed/fertilizer or if it can still vary this much under those conditions. It would determine if I bother to even make osmium fertilizer or just buy the gold.

[wyldfae28]

I am disappointed that nobody has an answer to this question. I know the devs have people keeping tabs here. This leads me to assume that this issue is just another one that can be chalked up to bad RNG. Which kind of sucks.

Why leap through all the hoops we have to leap through in order to make osmium seeds (and then fertilizer) in the first place, both in our above water farms and then AGAIN in a different way for our underwater farms, only to discover that it's just chance what we get in the end? Maybe a slightly better chance, but chance nonetheless.

It just means if you work hard, and accomplish the goals set out for you, MAYBE you'll get good results. This game requires a LOT of grinding, in a number of ways, which ...okay. But if you go through the grind, you should at least reap the benefits. This is one way in which that doesn't seem to be happening.

[spacestr]

I fully gave up on Fertilizer. The effort to make it or cost to buy is just too much given the results. I upgraded the seed quality and invested in fully automatic seeder/harvester units and let RNG play out. I spend 1st day of the season buying/splitting/storing seeds in each unit, then last day I collect everything to sell. 22 plots of land above ground and 5 underwater without fertilizer plus some auto-chests to create artisan goods, I'm averaging 3M per season.

If the fertilizer issue gets fixed I could probably break 4M.

[Deputy Dawg]

Using osmium fertiliser is not a guarantee of osmium crops. It slightly improves the odds in the RNG so you should (in theory) get a bigger percentage in that quality, but a small amount of low quality crops will almost always show up, and the amount of osmium crops will mostly be around the same amount as gold.

I gave up worrying about it a long time ago, and just buy stacks of gold fertiliser every month from Sam. IMO there's not enough improvement to using osmium fertiliser to justify the grind of collecting the mats. I do use it in the greenhouse though, as I plant "forever" plants in there that produce without the need for re-planting.

Once you've reached the final stages in the game, with millions in the bank, you're mostly playing for funsies anyhow, so fine tuning for a few extra coral dollars isn't worth the effort.

[wyldfae28]

Originally posted by Deputy Dawg:

Using osmium fertiliser is not a guarantee of osmium crops. It slightly improves the odds in the RNG so you should (in theory) get a bigger percentage in that quality, but a small amount of low quality crops will almost always show up, and the amount of osmium crops will mostly be around the same amount as gold.

I gave up worrying about it a long time ago, and just buy stacks of gold fertiliser every month from Sam. IMO there's not enough improvement to using osmium fertiliser to justify the grind of collecting the mats. I do use it in the greenhouse though, as I plant "forever" plants in there that produce without the need for re-planting.

Once you've reached the final stages in the game, with millions in the bank, you're mostly playing for funsies anyhow, so fine tuning for a few extra coral dollars isn't worth the effort.

Yeah, it just piques me that the ratio of gold to osmium varies so much even with osmium fertilizer. Silver and bronze shouldn't show up at all with osmium seed and osmium fertilizer IMO. I have also started just buying gold fertilizer for some crops as I'm tired of the grind for materials too. Chop down all the trees for sap, sweep through the sad trashed up ocean for kelp, make loads of compost with the tree seeds. It's annoying.

I make a lot of artisan goods and I only use osmium crops/products in the barrels. The gold I just sell out of the kegs, etc. But I use barrels on pretty much any osmium product I have to maximize the profit. But like you, I'm in the end stage of the game, waiting to choose a husband and see what family life ends up being and how much they'll fix stuff. I think I just got into certain habits and it's hard to break them Lol. I've got 22 million corals, so it's not really about the money anymore.