Seeds: Take them WITH YOU

[Dagmar]

Long story short, I spent a few hours this weekend just farming stuff. Every seed I've gotten went into planters, Tempest card played, Forest Herbarium, the whole thing. I farmed up a sizeable stash of seeds for things like coffee (not nearly as useful as I thought it would be), wheat, mistberries, three types of mushrooms, etc.

Tonight I got ahold of a new berry type, so I figured I'd go back to the farm and spin up a hundred or so of them.

...except the third portal I'd build just for this was now cardless. Not just offline, but cardless. I figure, okay, I've seen before that one must apparently explicitly reset a realm so I plop two more cards in and flip the switch, expecting to see Morningwood Farms just over the next hill.

NOPE.

I got a Forest Herbarium realm with all the POIs enabled as if I'd already cleared the Fae Tower, but it was an entirely new map, completely devoid of all my precious seeds.

Don't let this happen to you. When you prepare to depart your farming realm, take your seeds and produce with you back to your respite realm before you log out.

[Bored Peon]

You can build multiple portal devices in your Abeyance base.
Make one of them to a farming realm and just do not change it.

[Ravenblade]

Always depart from your home base. Ignore the big portals in the created realms. You will have enough lotuses for an entire hub and more later on.

[Dagmar]

Uh, guys, maybe re-read. I did those things. It's right there in the post. I specifically set aside a portal just for a farming realm and it's not like I could have gotten confused about which of the three it was being that it had it's own special cubbyhole. I also mark my current "progression" portal with lit candles. My guess is that the farming realm was impacted by something related to the recent developernotes and the realm files themselves just got wiped out, which meant >13 different types of seeds poofed out of existence (because hey one can grow T2+ fiber instead of realm-hopping for it).

[Foxglovez]

They do warn us that all the realms but abeyance one (and sometimes that with past hiccups) are unstable and we shouldn't count on them. That being said, ouch. What a pain in the ass. I have done zero gardening because I just don't trust the game to not screw it all up. We should be able to use other realms for farming, fishing. It really adds to the game and to be able to use special cards and not have to reset them all the time. As it is, farming is bupkis without those buffs. Just not sure why the devs give us options then have them not function reliably. I know, EA, blah blah.

[Robearicus]

It may be an update between when you last went to that realm. I have used the same portal for different cards, and when I put the old combo in, without changing the settings or clicking reset. It is as I left it. If I use a different portal, same setting, without reset. It is the same place. Here is what I am wondering, is there a time-out. If you don't use the realm in a period of time, it gets picked up by the garbage-collector, you know, bring out your dead...

[Dagmar]

Originally posted by Robearicus:

It may be an update between when you last went to that realm. I have used the same portal for different cards, and when I put the old combo in, without changing the settings or clicking reset. It is as I left it. If I use a different portal, same setting, without reset. It is the same place. Here is what I am wondering, is there a time-out. If you don't use the realm in a period of time, it gets picked up by the garbage-collector, you know, bring out your dead...

It's a good theory, but it was literally Saturday and Sunday that I was doing the farming, so... not a timeout. Also, there were dev notes talking about people's progress being reset so that's probably what ate the realm data.

Also, I figure if this were a GC reaping incident it would have been "cleaner"--I wouldn't have returned to a Forest Herbarium realm with all the POIs lit up. Clearly it remembered some things... just not the map and everything that had been built on it (sixty flower beds)

[wildbill]

Not saying your realm was still there, but if you do a realm reset, it is guaranteed to be deleted. That is what a realm reset does, delete any previous realm that matches the cards and difficulty.

Sounds like your portal got reset somehow. Your realm may have still been there if you just put the cards in and used the same difficulty. You can actually do that on any portal. Doesn't have to be the one you used originally to get there. One caveat, you can have one and only one portal pointing to a realm.

I know that some realms give a boost to farming, but for me, the risk is too great. Only the abeyance realm is considered to be "permanent". Other realms are temporary. I've seen a few of mine bug out where the portal gets stuck in standby. I've tried reset of the portal (not reset of the realm) and so far that hasn't worked to get the realm working. I've had to do a realm reset to get a new random version of the same realm.

I really wish they would have used a different word for two different things. For portal reset, clear settings would have been better. For realm reset, the current name is fine.

[Ravenlute]

Originally posted by evildagmar:

I've seen before that one must apparently explicitly reset a realm so I plop two more cards in and flip the switch, expecting to see Morningwood Farms just over the next hill..

My guess as to what you are saying here is that you did not reset the realm, and that you just put the cards back in expecting to see your Farm because you had heard it would only change if you reset it. Did I get that right?

Because you would be correct, it should have been your Farm. However, there should have been a location (cards in place) too and the fact that there wasn't indicates you got screwed. Sounds like the realm was wiped.

Maybe try opening the realm in a different difficulty, go in, return home, then open the realm again in the original difficulty your Farm was in. It probably won't work but it may be worth trying anyway. Sorry that happened.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Ravenlute:

Because you would be correct, it should have been your Farm. However, there should have been a location (cards in place) too and the fact that there wasn't indicates you got screwed. Sounds like the realm was wiped.

Before two patches ago it did not display which cards were used to open a realm.
After it was added in it did not display them until you opened the portal.
Since then I almost want to say I did have the cards stop being displayed in a glitch, but the open realm still worked.

Learning the game mechanics, bugs, and glitches is like making an omelette, it cannot be done without breaking a few eggs. Unfortunately you had your eggs broken, but thankfully sharing your experience can help prevent others from breaking their eggs.

My guess would be something happened to wipe/reset your non-abeyance realm. The seeds can be replaced over time by finding the plants and converting them to seed, it just sucks having to do the legwork over again.

[Spikenard]

make sure you didn't change your difficulty at some point. In addition to the cards being the same, the difficulty must also remain the same or it'll be another realm.