Agriculturist and growth rates

[NotThatHarkness]

At farming skill level 10 I took Agriculturist (crops grow 10% faster), largely by accident since Artisan (artisan products worth 50% more) sounds a lot better.

This is the growth time in days I'm seeing in game now. I'm wondering if this is a bug or whether this is expected based on how growth rate is calculated in game. Unless otherwise stated, I'm using Quality Fertilizer (not the Speed-Gro stuff) which shouldn't affect growth rate.

Wheat (with Basic Fertilizer) - 2 days to harvest (normally 4)
Potato - 3 days to harvest (normally 6) (edit: corrected days to harvest)
Cauliflower - 8 days to harvest (normally 12)
Cranberries 4 days to first harvest (normally 7), 2nd harvest 5 days later (normally additional harvests every 5 days after, apparently no benefit)
Starfruit - 9 days to harvest (normally 13)
Melon - 8 days to harvest (normally 12)
Red cabbage - 5 days to harvest (normally 9)
Bok choy - 2 days to harvest (normally 4)

Growth stages are impacted, at least with wheat. On day 1 after planting wheat is at stage 4. The next day it's harvestable. http://stardewvalleywiki.com/Crops#Wheat Same with bok choy.

Is there anything related to growth times that I'm missing? Most of the above was done in the greenhouse, but harvest times were similarly affected outside in summer and fall. So I don't think the greenhouse has anything to do with it. It's winter currently in my game and I just thought to take notes yesterday.

My other thought was perhaps Agriculturist was rebalanced to compare better with Artisan, but I doubt that since the explanation in-game said 10% when I made the choice. Maybe it's the way growth rate is calculated?

Does anyone have any insight?

[Twizzler]

You sure you meant 9 days to harvest for potato instead of 6? Sounds like a bug to me since it's supposed to shorten, not lengthen time lol.

Also,

https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/48piqs/psa_if_you_chose_the_wrong_profession_you_can/

[Kohmei]

I picked agriculturalist because I wasn't going to make artisan goods and I also noticed it to affect times far greater than 10%. I'm also wondering if this is not deliberate. Consider you would need a growth time of 10 days to even affect it by one whole day, and how do you affect the growth time by less than a day? I'm guessing the effect was increased and the description wasn't updated to match

[NotThatHarkness]

Originally posted by Meowsa:

You sure you meant 9 days to harvest for potato instead of 6? Sounds like a bug to me since it's supposed to shorten, not lengthen time lol.

Hmmm...in my notes I have that I planted in winter day 2 (greenhouse) and harvested on day 11. Either it's a bug or I planted much later and my notes are wrong. (edit: good catch though. I didn't see that. I'll have to retest potatoes next spring.)

Thanks for the link. I'm ok with Agriculturist for now. Turns out I'm not pushing artisanal products much anyways.

[Aramazon]

Aw man. If that's true I would have definitely taken this trait...but yeah, the 10 percent description made it sound abysmal. I mean that should have done nothing for most plants.

[Elegant Caveman]

This is weird, but really interesting.

10% is terrible (especially compared to Artisan), but this is a lot more than 10%... (and wtf, potatos?!).

Would love to know if this is a bug, or if the description for Agriculturist is wrong.

[NotThatHarkness]

Originally posted by Elegant Caveman:

(and wtf, potatos?!).

I'm in winter and was just using up leftover seeds in the greenhouse since I had room. Unfortunately I won't be able to test the potato again for a few more in-game weeks.

[Elegant Caveman]

Originally posted by TreyNutz:

I'm in winter and was just using up leftover seeds in the greenhouse since I had room. Unfortunately I won't be able to test the potato again for a few more in-game weeks.

Looking forward to hearing more about your strange slow-growing potatos. lol

I mean, if it wasn't for that, it would be easier to assume that Agriculturist is simply better than the description says, but with the potatos taking longer to grow, it sounds more like a bug.

[one-turian kind of woman]

In Fall, with Quality Fertizers and choosing the Agriculturist perk, mine was:

Bok Choy - takes 2 days (instead of 4 days)
Egg Plant - 3 days (original: 5 days)
Cranberry - 4 days (original: 7 days... but the time it takes to harvest in between is still 5 days :/)
Amaranth - 4 days (original: 7 days)
Sunflower - 5 days (original: 8 days)
Artichoke - 5 days (original: 8 days)
Yam - 8 days (original: 10 days)
Pumpkin - 9 days (original: 13 days)

Grape, Corn, Fairy Rose all had their time it takes to harvest days reduced as well (didn't jot down by how much)

[Fishbones]

here's what we do know about speed increasing perks:
they reduce time required by *at least* the stated amount.

crops update only when asleep, and the game handles fractions of a day by rounding down.
i.e. 3.5 days to grow becomes 3 days.

numbers dont seem to match even the description though.
9 days for pumpkin is what deluxe speedgrow gives you and that is 25%

[ReV0LT]

It's interesting. I wonder, if you add Deluxe/Regular Speed-Gro into the mix, and then use these harvest only for the artisan goods, it could in fact be better than the Artisan since you'll be pumping on volume rather than on quality.

[NotThatHarkness]

Come spring I compared the harvest days of having the Agriculturalist perk combined with Speed-Gro and Deluxe Speed-Gro. First, my initial data for potatoes was wrong, I think I messed up my notes. Corrected value is above.

All data below is with the Agriculturalist perk. Normal harvest time taken from the wiki: http://stardewvalleywiki.com/Crops . Quality Fertilizer only impacts the ratio of normal, silver star, and gold star harvests, not growth time.

crop --- normal harvest time -- +Quality Fertilizer -- +Speed-Gro -- +Deluxe Speed-Gro
Cauliflower -- 12 -- 8 -- 9 -- 8
Garlic -- 4 -- 2 -- 3 -- 2
Jazz flowers - 7 -- 4 -- 5 -- 4
Kale -- 6 -- 3 -- 4 -- 3
Parsnips -- 4 -- 2 -- 3 -- 2
Potato -- 6 -- 3 -- 4 -- 3
Rhubarb -- 13 -- 8 -- 10 -- 8
Tulips -- 6 -- 3 -- 4 -- 3

I did not grow the following with Speed-Gro or Deluxe Speed-Gro:

Strawberries, time to first harvest -- 8 -- 6
Green Beans, time to first harvest -- 10 -- 7

I do not know harvest times of the Speed-Gro and Deluxe Speed-Gro without the Agriculturalist perk.

The Speed-Gro increases harvest time. This suggests to me that the Speed-Gro mix trumps the Agriculturalist perk. They obviously don't stack and if used together my guess is that you get the growth times of the Speed-Gro mix alone. I cannot confirm this because I've never used Speed-Gro before (that is, without the Agriculturalist perk). If that's true though, and if that's also true for the Deluxe Speed-Gro, then the Agriculturalist perk appears to be equivalent to using Deluxe Speed-Gro. I would have to start a new game and retest w/o the Agriculturalist perk, or try editing my save file and repeating.

So perhaps Agriculturalist is a way to get the benefit of Deluxe Speed-Gro in a way that allows you to combine it with Quality Fertilizer (or Basic Fertilizer).

[Elegant Caveman]

Originally posted by TreyNutz:

Come spring I compared the harvest days of having the Agriculturalist perk combined with Speed-Gro and Deluxe Speed-Gro.

I really wish this had happened before I took Agriculturist... ;_;

I just started my own tests, but it looks like you've nailed it.

I'm almost at the egg festival, so I'll try the strawberries soon. I also included green beans in my test crops, so I'll see how those go.

I'd really like to see Agriculturist and/or Speed-Gro affect regrowth times, but everything I've read up to now says they don't, so I'm not holding my breath.

At this point, I'd like to see someone's test results for speed-gro/quality speed-gro without the Agriculturist perk.

Agriculturist is strange insofar as that it doesn't seem to produce the same results with all crops, and I'm wondering if speed-gro might be more consistent.

If the only "value" to taking Agriculturist is the faster growth with the benefit of being able to use fertilizer, it seems hardly worth it, and Artisan remains the clear winner.

I'm looking forward to seeing how it affects rare seeds, though. But given the data up to now, it seems to speed up fast-growing crops more than the slow-growing ones...

[NotThatHarkness]

I agree that Artisan seems better if you exploit it. Nevertheless, Agriculturalist seems better than a mere "10% off of crops that grow 10 days or more" that was often speculated.

I don't have any regrets. I'm not pushing kegs in my current game enough to really exploit Artisan if I had chosen that. I like being able to dump everything in the sell box and just moving on to the next crop.

At some point I'd like to test Deluxe Speed-Gro without the Agriculturalist perk, but that will be time consuming to do.

[Kay]

Thank you everyone for working on this. I really hope that agriculturist gets boosted or someone discovers another benefit to having it. I picked agriculturist before I was even making artisan items. Maybe something will change in a future patch. I really don't want to start over or edit my save.

[Elegant Caveman]

Seems that it's a bug, unfortunately.

From here:

Originally posted by xylonez:

I forgot another thing.

You should also mentioned that agriculturalist is currently bugged, as explained here

It's also a bit more complicated than a flat 10% decrease.

Agriculturist is supposed to be 10%, and it's supposed to stack with Speed-Gro/Deluxe Speed-Gro.

The bug is that Agriculturist is presently acting as though it's stacked with Deluxe Speed-Gro, so there's a minimum 35% boost.

The reason we're seeing different effects on different plants is due to how various crops have different numbers of growth stages.

Since it's a bug, it's just a matter of time before it gets fixed and Agriculturist actually only gives 10%.