Gathering vs Farming

[Fox]

This is in relation to the recent patches trying to balance the overdamage gathering mechanic of dinos. To recap, first you could gather large amounts of items directly proportional to the amount of damage your dino did, regardless of how much actual HP the object had. Then, you could only gather based on the maximum HP of the object. This change was reverted for a little bit with the option to re-enable the fix on private servers, and finally it was patched to "clamp" at 5x of the objects HP.

Now that you're caught up to the present, why would you build a farm over simply using a dino to gather? In the amount of time it would take you to gather the materials to set up a small plot, find an area to set up a farm, run irrigation to the farm, make enough fertilizer or collect enough feces to get the crop to start seeding, NOT EVEN COUNTING THE WAIT, you could have tens of thousands of each kind of berry. Even if the exploit (yes, it is) was removed, it would still be faster to simply use a dino to farm berries.

Why would you build a farm? You wouldn't. Planting berries is a waste of time, because the bushes will always grow back faster than you can pick them, and you can always pick berries faster than you can grow them yourself.

Seems like an issue, huh?

[Eternie]

+1

[Maximy]

2 hours ago, took the Bronto was riding it for 5 minutes (you know for fun), then I said lets do it. ~10-12 minutes later had like 1100 narcobarries. I took those crops for testing,but after a first "harvest" it's just not worth it at all. Crops are good for special food like lazarus dish (which adds you more oxygen) , and stuff like that. Making crops for narcoberries is just waste of time. Better spend like 2 hours get at least trike and start gathering. ;)

[Ansgar Odinson]

Farms are for planting the rare vegetables needed for recipies

[Fox]

Originally posted by Ansgar Odinson:

Farms are for planting the rare vegetables needed for recipies

Small plots cannot be used for this, thus they are only for berries. Medium and large plots both can produce the farm-only crops, thus large plots are useless.

[MycroftCanadaNS]

@OP: +1

[Ralifur]

In most cases you dont even need irrigation as the rain tends to keep everything alive. just a couple of water tanks and you are good to go. atleast currently.

As for why you would do it. well for pvp reasons. Having to venture out of your base removes the safety of your walls and puts you in risk of getting ganked. Ofcourse this doesnt happen much and generally its safe enough to venture out as if you met a ganker he would possibly also destroy your base afterwards. So the reasoning here is still minimal.

A second reason is this. Crops can be hidden away to a degree and at some point you will be griefed and loose all your dinos and possibly your loot. when you then have to start taming again its quite nice having a few crop plots with narcoberries stored away for just that situation. Unless it ofcourse has also been destroyed. This reasoning is valid as this is something me and my tribe have been utilizing to good effect and saves us some berry farming time. :-)

We usually have a few small crops hidden away at some areas for this reason but I really cant see any other reasoning than this and the management of fertilizer is still kinda annoying when you place them decently far away.

Also this reasoning is quite useless when it comes to PvE servers.

[Zifang]

The infrastructure (reserving land, irrigation and fertilizers) can be reused for medium / large plots, so I don't see them as a waste.

As for small plots, they may be useful in giving you a steady supply of nacroberries before you get your first dinos. Gathering them by hand during early-game is still a pain.

Once you have a trike or steg and have unlocked the medium plots, you may then upgrade your farm to now be growing the ingredients used in recipes.

As for the pointlessness of large crop plots, I do remember them addressing that in the latest digest.

Edit:

Here's the quote from the digest regarding large crop lots:

As for the Large Crop Plots, as we introduce more types of crops into the game, we’ll work them into the Large Crop Plots.

[Lianite]

Another point to consider is active vs passive. Using farms frees you up to do other things while also gathering berries. Granted, you can gather just as many(usually more) by taking a trike or better out and harvesting the bushes. But that means that you have to do that, thus taking away time when you could be doing something else.

So they do have a use even on PvE servers.

It all depends on how you want to spend your time. I'm actually trying the farming route for narcoberries, primarily for making narcotics. That way when I log in each day, I have loads of berries sitting there waiting for me, and usually a bunch of spoiled meat on my dinos that can be instantly turned into narcotics.

[Maximy]

Originally posted by Lianite:

Another point to consider is active vs passive. Using farms frees you up to do other things while also gathering berries. Granted, you can gather just as many(usually more) by taking a trike or better out and harvesting the bushes. But that means that you have to do that, thus taking away time when you could be doing something else.

So they do have a use even on PvE servers.

It all depends on how you want to spend your time. I'm actually trying the farming route for narcoberries, primarily for making narcotics. That way when I log in each day, I have loads of berries sitting there waiting for me, and usually a bunch of spoiled meat on my dinos that can be instantly turned into narcotics.

With dinos I think it would be like 10000% faster. For those crops you need thatch,you need medium/large ♥♥♥♥ to make plant grow faster. Not to mention huge waiting time... Not quite sure how many barries you can grow now, but for that amount of time I think it's just better to farm it yourself. Crops are useful only for specific food lke I mentioned - Lazarus (Mostly lazarus cause of oil and pearls).

[Lianite]

While you do make good points Maximy, I personally still like the passive generation of resources. Most of my time is spent gathering other resources for my tribe, so the less time I need to spend actively gathering something is more time I have for generating a surplus of other resources.

Granted, the primary use of crop plots at this point in the alpha is for the tier 2 crops (savoroot, rockarrot, citronal, and longrass) for the specialty foods. Perhaps when they finish their work on dino gathering rates and make certain dinos gather particular things much more effectively than others, crop plots will be useful for the standard berries.

[Myrkana]

I love the farms, we get a few hundred berries pretty easily from them and don't have t ospend the time to go get the berries, dinos can be a pain to get out a gate >..> sometimes the stego catches and goes random directions. The poop farming isnt hard either.... I can get 1000 thatch in a small amount of time, heck we get that much just during our wood farming to expand our house x.x

That and its passive, I ran a few pipes to them and I only ever have to check the fertilizer, my dinos poop constantly so 10-15mins after I log on all boxes are full with 2 sets of poop + 100 thatch. I had so much fertilizer I filled an entire large box with it.... and had 2-3 pieces per crop plot :p

[BloodDeacon]

Small plot farming could use a small buff, but I don't think they are nearly as bad as people portray them to be. With 8 narcoberry plots I pull in 200ish berries every day without any effort beyond 400 thatch every week for fertilizer. Irrigation may eventually be an issue, but right now the rain insures that it is not. Not as good as a bronto haul, but then it's much easier to pull off, particularly early on.