Water Sprite Statues Critique

[Wintermute]

Manually watering crops yields some essence, whereas the automation with sprite statues yields no essence whatsoever. Due to this, it is only an essence drain and you cannot break even. This renders the automation of the crop growing process worse than useless, actually detrimental, as it is not sustainable.

[FOI]

Yes, there's downside for using them. I would use on repeatable yield of crops like strawberry, onion, etc. In my opinion, it does give me time and I get more essence from elsewhere like in the dungeon just by breaking rocks...
But yeah, I do agree with you; it does drain essence using the 20-day essence on each statue while not receiving any of essence and seeds from any crops in return.

[Noone]

I kinda like this system to be honest. In my farm I have 4 12x12 gardens (so over 500 crops), not to mention the terrain that just got expanded that i might convert to farming as well. Because of it, I have 5k essence that i literally have nowhere to spend and I needed to spend my entire morning watering plants. I like the tradeoff between my precious time and sanity OR the many things i gain by hand watering (which, in my current level of farming even gives me back some seeds on occasion beyond the huge amount of Essence). And now I get to actually use all the essence surplus I have stocked for no reason.

It's the same as hand feeding your animals, really. You get to the hundreads of beads in a couple of days if you just boil some eggs and make them eat em daily but when you've been doing it for a year you just want to ring a bell and let them fend for themselves lol. And i like i can try either one and switch back at my convenience.

[Wintermute]

I suppose that the most useful way to use this system of automation is if I want to concentrate on clearing the next stage of the mine, I can turn on the statues so farming doesn't use any time or stamina before I go. Previously, I would either have to use the rain spell or wait for a rainy day. If I look at it that way, it's nice to have the option. If only the mount could clip through the statues so I don't have to go around them.