Should I upgrade all my farming to use advanced fertilizer or just the higher seeds?

[barbrady123]

Running some tests now that I have advanced fertilizer unlocked and it's....expensive! Are people only using advanced on the seeds that are more expensive (which I probably haven't unlocked yet only level 5) or are you just ignoring the cost and running it all the same for simplicity's sake?

Example : Sage (needed for the core loop itself) with regular fertilizer is costing me ~150 coins (+ some furnace fuel cost) for 200 (manual farming yield for one seed). With advanced fertilizer this cost shoots to over 500. Yeah, I guess you need less plots due to the increased output speed, but man that's a lot of coin to swallow at this stage. Flax cost goes from ~100c to ~333c....just seems excessive. Redcurrent is the "highest" seed I have so far (needed for Vitality pots) and that ends up costing me over 2000c for the equivalent of 1 seed's manual yield (basically you need the entire log of mushrooms + regular fertilizer costs).

I'm doing "ok" money-wise, but I'm not swimming in coins yet...thinking maybe I should hold off on converting to advanced fert until I'm dealing with more expensive seeds (i'm hoping the value improves with them, maybe it doesn't).

[Fenix]

Flax is like 30/min with basic fertilizer
Advanced will max my 240 items per minute belt (12 talent points into belts)
Sage is also maxed out to 240.
Redcurr… whatever it is called is 60/min… it is so worth it.

[barbrady123]

Originally posted by Fenix:

Flax is like 30/min with basic fertilizer
Advanced will max my 240 items per minute belt (12 talent points into belts)
Sage is also maxed out to 240.
Redcurr… whatever it is called is 60/min… it is so worth it.

Yes it's not so much the per minute that I'm worried about...hell I can just plant like 60 plots manually and get more for cheaper. I just mean the cost to switch to advanced vs the basic. Doesn't matter how much you're making per minute if it's costing you a ton to craft it lol

Redcurrent with my upgrade is 75/min...so that's a ton since basic fertilizer is only something like 6.25/min. Huge difference true, but it's also costing me something like 2200 gold to produce a stack. This is still good versus manual farming, because you don't have to replace the seed each time, but versus regular fertilizer it's such a massive cost increase.

[nuvvel]

Basic is best for nutrient per cost, but in general i always rebuild everything just to get the better option. Needs less machines and less traffic on the belts.

[Ghevd]

Yeah, advance fertilizer is next level because it changes the speed the plants produce so you need less plants to fill a belt. Brings everything to 60 per minute so even redcurrant that normally produces at 5 a minute hits 60 as well.

It is similar to charcoal powder vs coke powder. It is exponentially better.

[barbrady123]

Yes, it's faster, but 2.5x cost is a lot, at least for me. Maybe I'm just not far enough yet that I can ignore these costs lol. Right now I have more space than money...I suppose at some point in the game that will flip and I'll be more concerned with minimizing machines.

[robw23]

Advanced fertilizer is just regular fertilizer plus mushrooms. Take your current fertilizer setup and just mix them 1:1 in an assembler. Use some rotten logs to get the mushrooms and sink the wood back into your factory - you can make it priority over your current wood for a couple power setups and/or sink the excess into the trash. Once your buffers for the fertilizer are full (you should use something to block off 2 of the 3 spaces) then the advanced fertilizer will shine. Buffering can cost you some headaches with outputs and profit until things fill.

[Blaarg]

The other thing is a full belt of adv. fertilizer supports 5x the output herbs compared to a full belt of basic fertilizer. 60/min of basic fertilizer w/o upgrades is only 360 flax/min. That's not that much.

[nuvvel]

Originally posted by barbrady123:

Yes, it's faster, but 2.5x cost is a lot, at least for me. Maybe I'm just not far enough yet that I can ignore these costs lol. Right now I have more space than money...I suppose at some point in the game that will flip and I'll be more concerned with minimizing machines.

It is not 2.5 the cost.
16 vs 13.x per nutrient.

[ZiggyDeath]

If Advanced Fertilizer is too expensive, just use for space - ie more normal plots using fertilizer.

Blueprints are very helpful for scaling production, especially if you design self-contained modules.

The next level after Advanced Fertilizer is Growth Potions, which are significantly more potent. The nice thing about Growth Potions is that you can craft the entire chain with just Logs and Limestone, so it doesn't need any expensive inputs. You could use Rock Salt to produce it quicker, but it's not required.

[barbrady123]

Originally posted by nuvvel:

It is not 2.5 the cost.
16 vs 13.x per nutrient.

For lower tier seeds it's much more than that.

With my production bonus, flax goes from 37.5 / min, costing 6.25 fertilizer, to 90 / min, costing 3 adv fertilizer. 3 adv fert is 150g + 3 fertilzer (which I count as ~5c each, 4c + some fuel cost) so ~165c for 90 (~1.83c each), as opposed to ~32 for 37.5 (~0.85c each), ok so about 2.1x...I think I was counting stones as 200/limestone (like wood) instead of 150/stone. Still significant for the lower seeds.

[Spanky]

idk

[barbrady123]

In the end, it seems you just need to make a bit more money and it no longer matters. I don't know that moving to advanced IMMEDIATELY makes sense but I see now the cost later on is irrelevant. Though, my point about lower tier seeds still stands...they hit the belt cap and therefore get much less benefit, though your fertilizer also lasts longer because of this, so I guess it's a wash

[Mahzrael]

https://alchemy-factory-codex.com/

I have not personally got to the adv fert stage yet (almost there) but it seems to me that if the fert is only being used when flax is being pushed onto the belt , and not being used when the belt is saturated / stopped, you still more than double your money using adv fert making things like linin.

[LordQuorad]

Use a centralized advanced fertilizer production chain to make enough for your whole base until you can replace that line with a full belt of growth potions. No need for each production chain to have their own fertilizer makers.

The cool thing about growth potions, is that you can make a cauldron recipe and production chain to output growth potions for free. Cauldron recipes for salt/clay/fuel only requiring plant ingredients is possible and I made a blueprint that has no inputs and only outputs growth potions. (need at least fertilizer efficiency 2 upgrade to be feedback loop positive)

Definitely something to think about.

[JoeJoe]

it's definitely worth it to move to advanced fertilizer pretty much all the time. The cost difference per minute per nutrient is so minimal compared to the space savings, the speed, and the functionality.

Assuming no upgrades at all, a full belt of 60/m advanced fert costs 3s 410c per minute, or 56.8 copper per bag, which is 0.08 copper per nutrient point (720 nutrient point per adv fert) thus 3410c / (60 * 720v) = 0.0789 c/v
assuming you make a self contained module to produce it.
I calculate this on this calculator I built which you can use here [joejoesgit.github.io]
(assumption is charcoal powder for heat and self fertilization with advanced fert. Be sure to turn on self fert / self fuel and turn on plank recycling).

Basic fert is 458c/m for full belt (60/m) which is 7.6c per bag but since basic only has 144v nutrients that means that it's 0.05c per nutrient point.

But when you consider you need 5 bags of basic to equal 1 bag of advanced to equal the same max nutrient amount (720/144), or 12 bags of basic to equal 1 bag of advanced to equal the same nutrient usage rate (144/12), that cost starts seeming to be not a problem. in my opinion.