About Crops

[Dolphyn]

My crops are ready to harvest but I want to see how much better it is when doing it with a friend. Can they go bad if I wait too long? Additionally, does anyone know if it matters if they harvest it with me or is it fine as long as they just helped grow it with me?

[pixet]

You cannot collect crops with friends. You can only tend the plants while they're growing to give you more vegetables when they're ready to harvest. There aren't any penalties if your plants are ready to harvest (neither can they go bad and you can start a new batch as soon as you harvest the last one.)

[Douota]

Plant something → Free action, alone
Garden with dorm mates → Nighttime hangout action (takes time) that improves your crop yield when you harvest them
Harvest plants → Free action, alone

Just make sure you always keep something in the planters, harvest them as soon as they're ready, and use the night hangouts in between harvests to improve your crops. You'll see the fruits (or veggies) of your labor when it's time to harvest.

[Dolphyn]

Ooooh I see I had the wrong idea at first. Thanks guys!

[Necrofitz]

Originally posted by Douota:

Plant something → Free action, alone
Garden with dorm mates → Nighttime hangout action (takes time) that improves your crop yield when you harvest them
Harvest plants → Free action, alone

Just make sure you always keep something in the planters, harvest them as soon as they're ready, and use the night hangouts in between harvests to improve your crops. You'll see the fruits (or veggies) of your labor when it's time to harvest.

As a correction, you can plant stuff as part of the teammate action, but it still just acts like the crop tending steps for the conversation.

[nfinite.recursion]

Also gives you a companion point. Just today I got my 3rd companion point with Junpei while tending the plants and now he has boosted crit chance + crit damage. I assume this will apply to the other companions when you spend time with them.

[Necrofitz]

That is simply the benefit of the smiley face activities. Best to generally give your evenings to them if you're happy with your social stats. The couple of night time social links should be exceedingly easy to finish out before the end of the game making them not at all bad to generally skip out on.

[Dolphyn]

Yeah I always got the impression their stat raising traits weren't the best. Good to have some confirmation

[Necrofitz]

Stat raising traits are a little meh, yeah, but there are a couple traits that are way too good to pass up.

[Douota]

Cooking with Ken will give you full SP restore items, Akihiko gives you Heat Riser items, Yukari gives you Kamimusubi Water equivalents, Mitsuru gives you single target full-heal items.
I don't know all of the rewards that gardening with the dorm mates will give you but they generally will give you bonus crops that improve on the quality of the original crop (for example golden tomatoes→Golden Tomato EX, which gives 150 HP and 30 SP to the whole party). The exception is the simple herb available in December, where you'll get completely different items (like charge and concentrate) depending on who you garden with

[Necrofitz]

Though it's big not worth focusing on those benefits until you've done due diligence maximizing everyone's battle capability. Never know who you'll be wanting to slot into your team later, and if you suddenly find someone is really worth using but is six interactions behind the curve for their characteristic, that's gonna feel bad.

That said, I feel like hitting the point where those interactions are all you really have to do with your evening is pretty likely to happen by November at the latest.