Composters and auto fertilizing

[Morion]

If I understand correctly, composters should auto fertilize 9x9 area around them. How to use that? Simply putting them in center does not affect anything already existing, neither preparing new area around them does not help

[FrankYakumo]

Wait... composters can auto-fertilize the soil? I did not know that

[IncompleteSky]

Originally posted by FrankYakumo:

Wait... composters can auto-fertilize the soil? I did not know that

I second this... I didn't know this. Which is irritating after finishing my farm up. I would have to rearrange it now to actually utilise it.

I'm going to guess you have to assign a small dino to it?

[peajay64]

I mean, it’s neat they have some kind of use. I haven’t used them once since I got my T-Rex since I have hundreds and hundreds of each fertilizer type-

[Morion]

From wiki:
Composters can be used two different ways. They can either be used to produce fertilizer as items, or they can directly fertilize any soil within a 4 space radius of the composter. This means that a single composter can fertilize an entire 9x9 patch of soil if it is placed in the middle. (Note: It's not clear if this is intentional or not, but a composter can fertilize soil even after seeds or plants have sprouted. Unfortunately, doing so does not count towards the quality, so be careful with using the composter in this way as it will waste weeds)

When you put them near farm soil you will see icons similar to those for seed pot.

[AlphaGodith]

what. auto fertilizing?! that makes NO sense. and is said NOWHERE in the game. *sigh* i guess i shouldn't be surprised at this point. contradictory mechanics that are never explained are par for the course with this game apparently.

Originally posted by Morion:

From wiki:
Composters can be used two different ways. They can either be used to produce fertilizer as items, or they can directly fertilize any soil within a 4 space radius of the composter. This means that a single composter can fertilize an entire 9x9 patch of soil if it is placed in the middle. (Note: It's not clear if this is intentional or not, but a composter can fertilize soil even after seeds or plants have sprouted. Unfortunately, doing so does not count towards the quality, so be careful with using the composter in this way as it will waste weeds)

When you put them near farm soil you will see icons similar to those for seed pot.

if it's similar to the seed pot, i'm guessing you have to assign tenders to them to make them do the fertilizing, which makes more sense than the composters somehow doing it themselves. i'll try it out but it seems likely this is just something that was planned but didn't get finished in time for release.

update; yeah i think this feature just didn't get finished. no option to assign tenders to them. and for the record i've unlocked seeding, harvesting, and watering with avery so far, and the latest quests he's given me were not tender related. MAYBE i still have composting to unlock but i doubt it.

[FrankYakumo]

I tested it, you need to put weed in the composter and the fertilizer go to the crops automatically when produced.

[tracytigress]

Doesn't seem to work for me, even with the firm composter. I placed it the middle of my fields (all patches were highlighted like the seed-pots do), but any compost it makes with weeds just sits in it waiting to be picked up. I tried to keep an eye to see if any of the Soft soil patches would turn into Firm by themselves, but no luck.

[FrankYakumo]

Update and conclusion: After a lot of testing, the auto-fertilizing only works on Normal soil without a crop, aka recently tilled plots, if all plots in the composter's area have another type of soil (even if match with the type of fertilizer they made), the feature don't work on that plots.

If some dev check this, I suggest to also adding the auto-fertilizer works on the same type of soil, to give more utility on this feature.

[Dragonkin56]

Originally posted by FrankYakumo:

Update and conclusion: After a lot of testing, the auto-fertilizing only works on Normal soil without a crop, aka recently tilled plots, if all plots in the composter's area have another type of soil (even if match with the type of fertilizer they made), the feature don't work on that plots.

If some dev check this, I suggest to also adding the auto-fertilizer works on the same type of soil, to give more utility on this feature.

I will make note of this feedback! I apologise that it is not acting very user-friendly <3