Lowering the Farming Upkeep

[TokuNiArimasen]

I think part of why farming seems tedious is because it's a consistent grind, rather than an initial one. The upkeep you need to do to grow different kinds of plants is a lot of effort and time, that not everybody has. I think a way you could offset that is to lower the investment of bare minimum farming, i.e. fertilizer. I think you could do this in a few ways:

1) Remove the fertilizer cost from mushroom spores.
I think this would be a huge help to reducing the fatigue for farming. Let's say you have 6 mushrooms and convert them to spores to put into a single plot. Once you're able to harvest all 6, you yield a total of 36 mushrooms. Because mushrooms convert to spores at a 1:1 ratio, you need to set aside 6 for another round of mushroom growing. That's a yield of 30. Then you need to set aside 12 for Hobart's Growth Formula to grow the mushroom plot. That's a total yield of 18. So from the original 6, you're actually only able to use 18 of the mushroom that you gained, with the rest going back to making more mushrooms, a 1:3 ratio.

Considering how much fertilizer you need (for farming in general), this simply isn't enough to invest plots to growing mushrooms to make more fertilizers. It also feels counterproductive to use fertilizer to grow mushrooms to make fertilizer.

If you remove the necessity of fertilizer in growing mushrooms, then it suddenly becomes a lot more worth it. The ratio of planting mushrooms becomes 1:5, and you're suddenly gaining a total yield of 30 mushrooms per plot. Managing fertilizer becomes much more doable at this ratio. 30 x 8 plots = 240, have multiple plots devoted to mushroom farming around and eventually the player can naturally sustain the current mushroom cost of making fertilizer, all from the comfort of their own abode.

2) Reduce the cost of faery dust by 1, or make some kind of renewable way of producing the faery dust.

Faerie dust is probably the most limiting factor in producing fertilizer. It comes from a monster, and doesn't always drop in bulk (sometimes only 1 per Faery). Outside of a few mid-level dungeons, faery camps have typically 3-4 faeries, which can yield anywhere between 3-12 faery dust per camp. That's only, at the most, 6 growth solutions per camp, which the player must religiously farm every reset, in addition to the roaming faeries around Ignus. It takes too much time and effort to move from place to place, hunting faeries to sustain a farm, especially if you're maintaining a large amount of plots (imagine trying to sustain 10 8x plots centered around sprinklers).

3) Reduce the extreme dependency on certain plants

Part of the problem is the large upkeep, and the problem of the large upkeep arises out of a large dependency on certain plants. Typically, players typically need a large amount of farming plots running in order to sustain the plants that are required in crafting new gear, potions, and building material. These plants are namely Black Hellebore (produced from Corpse Flowers and Snapdragon (produced from Snowdonia Hawkweed). The upkeep required to make these plants is excessive, as they are produced not from a single cycle of growth, but from 2.

A player needs to manage the production of the prerequisite plant to break down into seeds, to convert to the next level plant, then to grow that plant. This is particularly painful in the case of Snowdonia Hawkweed, which is also used to make the last tier of potions, in which case you need to manage such an excessively large number of plots that it becomes tedious to keep up. You need to gather the mushrooms and the faery dust for fertilizer to make the Hawkweed to make the potions, of which you can only keep a few leaves because you need the rest for Snapdragon seeds, which you also need fertilizer for, in order to plant. Then once you're out of Snapdragon seeds and you need more in order to build ornate buildings or potions of amnesia or whatever, you start the cycle all over again.

This dependency on certain plants strips the freedom away from other goals that the player may want/need. It makes it difficult to even think about developing more plots (more upkeep) in trying to grow plants to produce mana potions, or wheat to produce flour for foods, plants for enhancing spells, etc etc.

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In short, the continual investment - the upkeep - required for farming should be lowered in order to make it less tedious, more rewarding, and more worthwhile. The initial grind of farming mushrooms and rune crystals to set up the plots and farmland and sprinklers is fine, in my opinion. That's a one-time grind that the player can endure through, with the promise of a worthwhile renewable resource awaiting them.

[Vivaldi]

this game requires you to dedicate your life to it.

[Zero-G]

I was actually excited for farming back when I still thought it would be some optional thing to help cut back on some grind. Boy was I wrong.

Great writeup of the situtation.

[Xen]

I agree the cost and time to farm spores is prohibitive. Even though it is really neat that they added the option.

Did you know feathers decon into fairy dust? Can accumulate it quickly that way.

[123]

totally agree. It is very limiting and tedious the cultivate. especially when it comes to obtaining snaps for ornate marble. Very good well-founded post.

[flarezi]

Agree costs are too high.

[JustinSullivan]

+1

[Elquin]

Agreed

[Millay]

I built a castle out of wood and stone that i am slowly transitioning into ornate. At the current rate, ill be done in a month. I hop on and gather enough resources to start my farm and collect from it about twice a day, and it takes 1-2 hours to collect fertilizer and hobarts. It's slowly turning into a farming simulator for high level players. This could all be negated if it gave you 8-10 flowers instead of 3.