I'm in spider HELL

[xreyakx]

I can't get rid of the damned spiders. I'm killing 6-7 every day, and they just keep coming. I can't progress at all. There's no wild herbs or flowers because the stupid spiders eat EVERYTHING. The only way I've been able to keep my poison levels down...ish... is by eating squirrels, when I can find them. There's no thyme... none.

Is there any way to nerf those stupid spiders? Spiders are supposed to eat BUGS, by the way... And, lizards... they eat bugs, and spiders... I can't get the cat, yet. I've got it's basket, and a more than high enough green level, but it's going to take at least a week.

I'm pretty desperate here... Apart from never progressing beyond this point, if I don't find enough squirrels, I'm toast.

[Stormbird]

There are no spiders in the game. Are you talking about beetles? Do not plant trees near your crop fields and the bugs will not reach them.

As to your thyme problem. Plant a single elm tree (or two if you want to speed the process up) somewhere near your house, in place where you spend most of your time and you can easily see what is going on around the trees.
As soon as grass and plants start spawning start removing everything apart from thyme, kill the beetles whenever you see them too (obviously).
It is vital that you resist the urge to cut the very first thyme spawns, no matter how dire your toxicity situation is.
Once a day the plants that you leave uncut around the trees (in your case the thyme but it works the same with any vegetation) will multiply provided there is free space around them.
When there are three or more thyme spawns cut one and let the rest multiply further.
Keep repeating the process and you will end up with a field of thyme after a few days.

[fireboon269]

Stormbird's advice is 50 50, meaning no offense.

It's true that you want to remove all grass and weeds from the area, from what I see it prevents valuable resources spawning as they can't go on top of each other. it seems like it's more likely to group together, so would suggest leaving two of each resources before harvesting over each other.

the main issue with Storms advice is that it does not mention the Cedar (I think?) trees. they are the tall, skinny trees seen all over the place in the game. while the Elm will spawn I think Nettle, Thyme, Grass, and beetles, Cedar will spawn around it the grass, and Lizards, maybe other things, I group trees together so they synergize so lose track.

mainly, if you have about 2 Cedar for each elm, place them nearby, not on top of the Elm, then they will spawn lizards nearby, which then eat the beetles, usually before they eat Thyme.

additionally, if you cut down fully grown trees, you ALWAYS get 2 seed, so can make a new tree and repeat. if you do that from game start, there is NO issue with toxin. I have about 50 Thyme saved up on day 25.

and Squirrels are your best friend(food) so make sure to chop down the tree when mature and spread around to get more of them.

for more advice, go to the guides, then find the only one in English. it goes over most things and is where I learned most of how to survive past a week.

[xreyakx]

I'm not having a whole lot of luck with elms using ceders. 2 for 1, 3-4 for 1... It seems the same. The beetles spawn, eat the thyme, THEN get eaten. Making sure the thyme is the only thing growing would work just fine, if you could keep them long enough to duplicate...

However, I am doing just fine, now. I'm not really eating/drinking anything but squirrels and water. I gave up on the thyme tea a while ago, and have been using them on the ship, the few I get... It's not a bad setup, really. I've just started expanding only using oak, so I'm inundated with ore and squirrels. Anything else edible I pick up, I just drop in a cupboard to rot for fertilizer.

It's a bit of an exploit, really... Apart from certain recipes, you could just plant nothing but oak, and survive off them alone... -5 poison isn't much, but it works. Those nice fat squirrels are a bit... special... so it's not hard to obtain dinner. Plus you've got more ore than you could ever want.

[Stormbird]

Cedar trees are not needed for an organised thyme plantation. They just add an unnecessary layer of complexity to the project. The solution i described works, I managed to create many thyme fields that way.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2366608620

[xreyakx]

I've actually found that your method works, but with one alteration. Don't reap everything but the thyme, not at first. Leave the thyme there, but allow other things to grow as well. This gives beetles something to snack on other than thyme, though it is random. Once you have enough of it to safely allow it to reproduce, you can kill everything else off. Otherwise, you're sitting there, watching the plot all day, and there's a fair amount of traveling around in this game.