Farming Doesn't Work?

[onewhofound]

Seems like with farming skill maxed and all epic farming gear, you get about 10-15% return after grinding all your potatoes (or whatever) into seeds.

[Tahnval]

It shouldn't be that bad in practice. The last time I bothered with testing farming in vanilla it was just about possible to get a surplus with LotL 2 or LotL 1 and the magic farming gear, if you planted enough seeds. That was in 1.0.

Farming is also of some minor use for seeds you find while looting, if you keep those seeds and take them back to base.

I haven't bothered farming in vanilla since A19. Fortunately it's completely unnecessary. I only use it now for decoration. I think it looks right to have crops growing at a base.

If you like the idea of farming in 7DTD, your best bet is mods. Either farming-specific mods for vanilla or overhaul mods that radically change farming. I'm currently playing Craft Until You Die, an overhaul mod. Farming is vastly superior to vanilla and it's almost certainly essential for survival as food is far more of an issue than it is in vanilla. You have maybe a dozen more crops (and recipes using them), plus farming bees, chickens, sheep and cows. And extra farming workstations. And extra food prep workstations.

[Uncle Al]

How are you calculating "10-15% return"?

With maxxed everything you get 7 crops back per farm plot with a 70% chance of not losing the seed.

That's an average lifetime return of 23.3 crops per seed, for a 5 crop investment to make the seed. That's more like a 350% return, although it'll take multiple farming cycles for you to see the full return.

It's usually more useful to think of your returns in terms of 'expected crop per farm plot'. With 1 point in Living off the Land and no farming armour at all, you can expect to get about 1.5 crop profit per farm plot, assuming you convert enough of your harvest back into seeds to replace any seeds you didn't get back.

It is quite a lot of work for small returns, but you don't really need to farm unless you're brawling (for beer) and it's still a decent return for one single skill point.

With everything maxxed out you get around 5.5 crop profit per farm plot. Having high skill or gear just means you have to make fewer farm plots and you take less time with your harvest. It's a convenience but not necessary. You could get the same total crops back just by having one point in the skill and four times as many farm plots. You do have to have at least one skill point, though.

[Mardoin69]

I think they 'sort of' nerfed farming cuz it used to be way too easy to produce a huge surplus of food. However, I could see where being able to do that for MP might be desired... one person does farming to feed the entire group of 8 for example... in which case, these changes probably make that more of a challenge. But, that's what (seemingly) TFP is working for... to make the game always being a challenge in every way... instead of 'too easy' leading to also 'too boring.'

[onewhofound]

UPDATE: turns out my gear bonuses aren't functioning, for whatever reason.

Tried in a new creative world, and farming works fine, getting 70-80% seeds and enough excess crops to make up the shortfall.

[Ensign Toby]

UPDATE: turns out my gear bonuses aren't functioning, for whatever reason.

Strange, but try this (it can't hurt, and may actually help):
* Pull all your gear mods out, then Exit the Modify Screen
* Put all your gear mods back in

No promises, but this (potentially) could reset the gear bonus (assuming they are glitched).

[onewhofound]

Originally posted by Ensign Toby:

UPDATE: turns out my gear bonuses aren't functioning, for whatever reason.

Strange, but try this (it can't hurt, and may actually help):
* Pull all your gear mods out, then Exit the Modify Screen
* Put all your gear mods back in

No promises, but this (potentially) could reset the gear bonus (assuming they are glitched).

Thanks for the suggestion, but it didn't work. Any other ideas?

[Mardoin69]

Open game properties and go to 'local files' tab and do the file verification. You might also try running the 7d2d launcher.exe and going to 'tools' to 'clean' some of the data options. Just don't check the boxes for cleaning old maps and saves. Might be good to back those up first... just in case you mess up and end up cleaning out those... just for good measure. But, checking all the other options should reset everything to defaults and may resolve whatever you got going on. Could be a Mod is causing an issue... if you have some mods installed that are conflicting with something else. Might have to try moving a mod out of the mods folder one by one and test to see if problem goes away.