farming?

[Why-Not?]

am i missing something i plant 2 corn crops and when i punch them i get 6 but its take 5 to make a seed why is this because it makes getting the food so tedious

[esthergray]

I never bothered with making seeds for that reason. It's just not worth it. I just loot them and you can buy them from the trader, especially that nasty trader Rekt. Good luck!

[TheVagrant]

It seems bad at first but it's not too bad. I'd suggest to hold off on farming at the start until you put points into the harvesting skill where you get more per crop. While your putting points into that start looking for seeds and learning how to craft them. Whenever you have enough seeds, 4 would be good but more is better, just plant them. Use the crop you get to make more seeds if you need them since it's only a 50% chance to get a seed back. Keep expanding how many seeds you plant and you'll be fine.

[Mithrandir]

Originally posted by Why-Not?:

am i missing something i plant 2 corn crops and when i punch them i get 6 but its take 5 to make a seed why is this because it makes getting the food so tedious

What you're missing is probably that 50% of the time, you also get a seed back.

[Dr. Sarkasmus]

Farming is totally fne, espacially in the later stage of the game. i can only highly suggest to skill into it but wait with building a base until you have completely skilled the farming notes to max.
I don't know.... i really like the state of farming, but i can understand people that don't.

In my opinion, it is perfectly balanced. It wouldn't make sense to make it easier in a survival environment, the same goes for empty jars in my opinion.
Water was a non issue and it was stupid to "manage" water.

For a long term game, i see these systems done*.

Maybe the game will come out before 2030

[SiliconPenguin]

Originally posted by Why-Not?:

am i missing something i plant 2 corn crops and when i punch them i get 6 but its take 5 to make a seed why is this because it makes getting the food so tedious

There's a mod called "1Plant1Seed", by Phys1csGamez. After you put 3 skill points into living off the land, you can turn 1 plant into 1 seed.

[Kryzx]

From what I heard it use to be relatively easy to stay fed with farming in earlier alphas before TFP decided to nerf it.

So, now it's not worth harvesting until you put at least 1 point into Living off the Land, and even then you'll likely recover just enough to replant the same amount of seeds.

It is luck-based getting a seed back per harvest, like @Mithrandir says, 50%. No other way to increase your chances except to plant more of them or putting more points into LotL to harvest more from your crops to convert into seeds.

[Mithrandir]

Originally posted by Kryzx:

From what I heard it use to be relatively easy to stay fed with farming in earlier alphas before TFP decided to nerf it.

So, now it's not worth harvesting until you put at least 1 point into Living off the Land, and even then you'll likely recover just enough to replant the same amount of seeds.

It is luck-based getting a seed back per harvest, like @Mithrandir says, 50%. No other way to increase your chances except to plant more of them or putting more points into LotL to harvest more from your crops to convert into seeds.

Having more farm plots effectively solve the statistical problem.

Let's say one uses 10 farm plot for corn. With 3 in LoTL, he'll get 60+ corns and an average of 5 seeds. He now must craft 5 other seeds to maintain his 10 plots, so he'll use 25 corns for that. He's left with 35+ corns, so an average of 3.5+ corns production per plot. (The + here is for the effect of LoTL 2 which give you a chance to get one more corn half of the time).

With LoTL at 1, he gets 2 less, so it'll be 40 corns, 5 seeds, 25 corns to get the other 5 seeds. He's left with 15 corns, so an average of 1.5 corns production per farm plot.

The more farm plots you have, the more chance you get to consistently hit the average production of 1.5 or 3.5+ corns per plot and ofc, the more total corns you'll harvest each time.

And what you say about the easiness of the previous farming system is true. It was so easy that nobody cared to take a perk in farming. It was completely superfluous.

[Tesityr]

it's funny because IRL we always get 1++ seeds per fruit/output
so we can ALWAYS plant a fair number more than we planted before....

the world truly is a bounty

[Seftak]

Originally posted by Tesityr:

it's funny because IRL we always get 1++ seeds per fruit/output
so we can ALWAYS plant a fair number more than we planted before....

the world truly is a bounty

Yeah and in real life you can grow a potato in 3 days, right?

[Tesityr]

Originally posted by Seftak:

Originally posted by Tesityr:

it's funny because IRL we always get 1++ seeds per fruit/output
so we can ALWAYS plant a fair number more than we planted before....

the world truly is a bounty

Yeah and in real life you can grow a potato in 3 days, right?

months* - it's actually more like three to four months, although some species of potato will grow is a little less time, say around fifty days. nature truly is a bounty

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Tesityr:

Originally posted by Seftak:

Yeah and in real life you can grow a potato in 3 days, right?

months* - it's actually more like three to four months, although some species of potato will grow is a little less time, say around fifty days. nature truly is a bounty

His point was that in game your potatoes grow in 3 days... Every crop grows in 3 days, instead of their realistic growth period.

You also:
Don't have to water them
Don't have to de-weed them
Don't have to protect them from pests
Don't have to rotate crops to avoid soil depletion
Don't have to deal with crop illnesses
Don't have to worry about weather ruining your crops
Don't have to plant it 3-9 months ahead of when you'll need it
Don't have to preserve the results
Grow the same thing over and over in the same bucket without ever re-enriching the soil
Barely have to worry about lighting conditions such as over/under exposing your plants
and a host of other things besides.

Simply put, The fact that you've got a super crop that literally grows itself after you toss it in a box of dirt and grows to harvestable state in 3 days is exactly why you don't get 100+ seeds from a single cob of corn and also why you cant just plant every potato you grow to get a dozen more potatoes from each.

It's game balance, Simple as.


As for the functioning game mechanics of it, since I don't see it outlined especially well, It all revolves around the Living off the Land skill and the statistical average of scale.
First, every time you harvest a given plant you have a 50% chance of getting a seed back in addition to the resulting harvest

Returns w/ the varying levels of the LotL skill(per harvest, per plot, on average) are:
LotL 0 - 2 crops, so average 0.5 loss
LotL 1 - 4 crops, so average 1.5 gain
LotL 2 - 4.5 crops, so average 2 gain
LotL 3 - 6.5 crops, so average 4 gain

These values are achieved by halving the seed cost(due to the 50% chance of getting a 'free' seed) and then comparing vs the resulting harvest(by removing the 2.5 presumed average cost from the harvest value)...

So using LotL 0 as the example, when harvesting a player grown crop you gain 2 crops; It costs 5 to make a seed, but you have a 50% chance to get a seed back when harvesting; So your net gain is 2+2.5=4.5, averaged over a large scale, you'll net a loss of 0.5 crops per cycle- With luck you might gain a lot, with bad luck you might lose a lot.

As you can see Prior to investing in the LoTL skill, it's essentially never worth it to craft seeds to plant. You'll average a loss of 0.5/planting cycle.

With LotL rank 1 though you now gain 4 crops per; 4 + 2.5~ = 6.5; on average you'll be gaining 1.5 crops per plant per planting cycle- Roughly gaining an average of 30% crop volume per cycle.
With LoTL rank 2 the base crop gain stays at 4, but you gain a new 50% chance of getting +1 crop; represented in the above as an added 0.5 to the base value. This leads to a gain on average of 40% crop volume per cycle
And with LotL rank 3, the base crop gain again goes up to 6- Now no matter what you will ALWAYS be net positive per planting cycle; even in the absolute worst case scenario where every single planted crop gives no seed and also doesnt give the bonus +1 crop, you'll have gained 6 crops, enough to craft a seed with 1 leftover.


In short, Never craft seeds with LotL 0. Plan for bad periods with LotL 1 and 2; that is to say, keep extra crops on hand in case of a bad harvest so you can still fully replant. And with LoTL 3, go wild.

Which, honestly, kindof echoes the reality of farming- Someone who is really bad at farming isn't going to get great returns, someone who has the experience (ranks in the skill), will get those great returns reliably.