Retaining Soil

[Hollow]

The tooltips should be better:
-instead of being elusive about the actual effect state that there's a [33 / 66 / 100]% chance per quality level of retaining soil to keep a field watered EACH DAY (before looking it up I thought this would only work for a single day because the tooltip states "chance to stay watered overnight")
-should state that it can't be mixed with any fertilizer or any speed-gro
-should state that the effect of any retaining soil quality only lasts for the current season

Quite frankly the 1st and 2nd version of retaining soil are quite useless.

I'd like them better this way:
1st version: Basic Retaining Soil[stardewvalleywiki.com]
Instead of 33% chance per day to stay watered: 100% keeps the field watered until the day the crop is fully grown (on which watering is necessary again)

2nd version: Quality Retaining Soil[stardewvalleywiki.com]
Instead of 66% chance per day to stay watered: Same as 1st but keeps the field watered for as long as the same plant is rooted to that field (making this useful for plants that keep producing while the 1st version stays useful for one-time harvests).

3rd version: Deluxe Retaining Soil[stardewvalleywiki.com]
Can stay as is: A field affected by this only has to be watered once, then stays watered, even if the plant is removed. Useful for indoor gardening pots that can't benefit from sprinklers.

[buttawise]

I literally have never used retaining soil

[Antidote#77]

If this is how Retaining Soil works then there is no need for the 1st or the 2nd ones and it will make the item too expensive and less valuable overall, since it will be too op in the early game and in the mid to late game you already have enough sprinklers to cover your entire field.

[Endora]

I agree, the Deluxe version is the only one that has some uses, basically for gardening pots.

I prefer speed grow anyway.

[Ryika]

I agree that the chance-based system is quite bad, but that solution seems a bit over-engineered to me. How do you explain all of that to a new player in a short tooltip? Is it fun that Quality Retaining Soil is not actually an upgrade for plants that only produce once?

I think something like "Affected tiles retain their water for X days after being irrigated." would be a more elegant change for Basic/Quality Retaining Soil.

[Hollow]

Originally posted by FreeAntidote#77:

If this is how Retaining Soil works then there is no need for the 1st or the 2nd ones and it will make the item too expensive and less valuable overall, since it will be too op in the early game and in the mid to late game you already have enough sprinklers to cover your entire field.

There are crops that can become giant plants if planted in a 3x3 pattern, with chances for this happening being greater if expanding to 6x6 or even 9x9, where sprinklers are no longer an option to cover the entire area and for which this would stay useful.

Originally posted by Ryika:

I agree that the chance-based system is quite bad, but that solution seems a bit over-engineered to me. How do you explain all of that to a new player in a short tooltip? Is it fun that Quality Retaining Soil is not actually an upgrade for plants that only produce once?

I think something like "Affected tiles retain their water for X days after being irrigated." would be a more elegant change for Basic/Quality Retaining Soil.

2 - 3 sentences shouldn't be too much text. With the concept I tried to assign a specific use case to each one, so all of them could keep being useful.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Hollow:

With the concept I tried to assign a specific use case to each one, so all of them could keep being useful.

Why though? Most things in this game become useless or niche cases once you have the new tier unlocked, and the feeling of having the better thing now is quite great.

In the end it's personal preference, but I feel like going from having to water somewhat regularly to having to water from time to time, to not having to water at all is an interesting and intuitive progression path for cases where sprinklers are not an option.

Going from "I can use it to grow one-time crops" to "I can now also use this to grow all crops." to "I can use this for several niche cases." seems a lot more restrictive in terms of what options you have available at each tier (essentially making multi-harvest crops undesirable at base tier), and then a lot less satisfying in the case of the Deluxe Retaining Soil.

[Stardustfire]

the Deluxe is good and normal right in time to fuel the greenhouse and the Ginger Farm. the first 2 are a resourcewaste for resources you can use better elsewhere at the time you coud make them. and no mechanic change can switch that.

[Hollow]

If the game wants to have a "new replaces old" concept then it should just do that and reduce crafting menu clutter instead of keeping the old options available. The suggested versions are actually better than the current chance-based ones: The 1st and 2nd version need manual checking on each day for each field because it may not be watered anymore, which is poorly visible for trellis grown crops but also tedious and prone to user error in any case.

For the age of the game I'm also surprised that it still has no watering option specifically designed for a line of trellis-grown crops, like a water canal that you can still walk on that waters all left and right to it (or top and bottom, depending on orientation). But that's something I don't want to discuss right now as it'd derail the topic.

[Buffmania]

I'd reason the only change needed for the first two levels would be to keep the same rate of them holding water overnight, but have all tiles with a particular retaining soil work at the same time, to eliminating the need to check each tile.

Changing them to hold water for a fixed amount and keep the same average savings would be really weird because you'd need to have fractional days of watering. For example, to keep the same rate for the basic retaining soil, each day of watering would keep a tile watered for 1.33 days.

OP's suggested changes would make them too powerful compared to the other soil amendments as those only provide small value bonus comparatively.

edit: clarity on last sentence

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by Hollow:

-should state that it can't be mixed with any fertilizer or any speed-gro
-should state that the effect of any retaining soil quality only lasts for the current season

pretty sure this is all covered in the general fertilizer tutorial you get on the TV or somewhere else at some point.

fertilizer will stay during season transitions if you have multi-season crops though. (but sadly not with sacrificial crops.)

Quite frankly the 1st and 2nd version of retaining soil are quite useless.

even the 3rd version is only situationally useful compared to a sprinkler.
which is fine, not everything has to be useful.

then stays watered, even if the plant is removed. Useful for indoor gardening pots that can't benefit from sprinklers.

this is already the case. there are no seasons indoors so the fertilizer stays until you un-till the soil. (i think if you destroy crops with axe instead of pick the soil stays tilled, but don't quote me on that.)

(can't wait until you find out how fertilizers work with multi-harvest crops.)

[Hollow]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

fertilizer will stay during season transitions if you have multi-season crops though. (but sadly not with sacrificial crops.)

Thanks. That's information that even the wiki lacks. If that's the game mechanic it means it's likely this works for retaining soil and speed-gro as well.

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

(can't wait until you find out how fertilizers work with multi-harvest crops.)

The wiki answered it that way: Deluxe Fertilizer only affects the basic harvest, which means that extra items gained at harvest (i.e., Coffee Bean, Blueberry, Cranberries) will be of regular quality. A youtube video that analyzed this for plants that keep producing also stated that the fertilizers only work on the 1st item every regrowth. The wiki also states that the fertilizer can be added during any stage of growth to receive a better quality, except when ready for harvest.

Also found this video on fertilizers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5hNTTnDfsY&t=37s

I'll probably mod the game for some personal changes after a playthrough. Taking the idea for this as mental note for later to see whether that's possible to do.

[Nakos]

Frankly, this is an issue best solved by mods. Leave the vanilla Retaining Soil alone please.

It does exactly what it's supposed to do, that is: It reduces the aggregate amount of watering necessary by x% (depending on the grade of soil). That's "on average" for a given tile, on any given day, it isn't meant to be perfectly predicable, it isn't meant to reduce the amount of mental time and attention you have to give your crops.

It's a game mechanic meant to reduce the demand on your energy bar on a daily basis. Specifically during the early period of the game.

It fills the job it needs to acceptably. This is supposed to be a farm, it isn't meant to be perfect and it certainly is not meant to be perfect right away. "Perfection" is meant to be a goal that one strives for over a period of game years. This means that there needs to be space in the life cycle of a particular run, for the game (and the farm) to be imperfect.

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by Nakos:

It fills the job it needs to acceptably.

on paper it's a fine fertilizer

but there are 3 practical issues with it:
-it's hard to see if a tile has been watered or not, especially when plants grow larger.
-once you upgrade the watering can chances are you will be double watering fertilized tiles anyways.
-every tier of sprinkler is available before every corresponding retaining fertilizer.

[Mysterious Sir Knight]

Or they could just allow us to use it along side the other fertilizers. That'd be fun.