Zombie gardening - profitable?

[howi]

Hi all, do you have problem with getting seeds from zombie farms? With every iteration I lose more and more seeds, so I see no possibility to start farming gold vegetables. My zombies have 15% efficiency, but I am not sure if it influence seeds return rate.

[XenialBear]

all i know is that i dont see an option for zombies to do gold star farming, what i do is just plant the gold star crops myself and just use a zombie for making the crates and transporting them, works like a charm!

[DotNL]

if u use quality fertilizer u will upgrade the zombie farm, then the option to supply quality fertilizer II becomes available to upgrade once more so gold star crops become available

[Dwalinn]

U should use 30% Zombies (u need 12 white skull) even than u have a little decay.
Just use a few normal fields beside the Zombie Farm... i had 500+ gold Pumpkin seeds befor i start with zombies^^
Hint: i think 2-3 farms are enough if u want 10 crates for the merchant

[FluffyGuy]

Originally posted by Dwalinn_Z:

U should use 30% Zombies (u need 12 white skull)

so at 6 skulls its 15%? holy crap

[XenialBear]

Originally posted by Dotnl:

if u use quality fertilizer u will upgrade the zombie farm, then the option to supply quality fertilizer II becomes available to upgrade once more so gold star crops become available

oh! well thats interesting. thanks, i didnt look at that!

[pizzabandit]

I have 5 zombie farms setup with 20% or better zombos and they eventually run out of seeds, even with gold level fertilizer. I have to manually grow new seeds every now and then to keep them going. I am not sure if having better zombos will grow more seeds, I am working on improving my zombo workforce with better body parts, so I will find out sooner or later, but for now zombo farms provide diminishing returns, although semi-auto farming is still pretty good for makng crates for cash.

[ishe5555]

I haven't tested it extensively, but it varies how many seeds they return. I checked two gold pumkin runs of a 45% zombie and one gold lentils run of a 35% zombie. The first gold pumpkin run returned 27 gold seeds (3 over) and the second returned 23 gold seeds (1 under). The gold lentils run returned 27 gold seeds.

[mrkelso]

So, is the implication of that comparison between 35% and 45% zombie seed return, both returning 27 seeds, that the % doesn't effect the seed return? Maybe it just effects the work speed? A shame we can't supply the zombie farm with fertilizer, to get rid of this problem. It may make zombie farming a bad idea.
I'm so happy with the zombie porter carrying those crates for me... I'm not complaining.

[ishe5555]

I wasn't implying anything with it, and there is too little data from it to draw any conclusions other than that the number of seeds you get back is randomized. It is likely, though, that the number of seeds you get back is approximately even on average, maybe a little more. As far as the 35% returning the same amount of seeds as the 45%, it could be a case of a particuarly lucky roll for the lentils, or that lentis return more seeds than pumpkins on average, or that the number of seeds is not affected by percent, or that the number of seeds is not affected by percents above 30% - 35% because in order to get that high you have to have more than 12 or 13 white skulls which can't be done without part swapping.

[The Antagonist]

Originally posted by author:

I have 5 zombie farms setup with 20% or better zombos and they eventually run out of seeds, even with gold level fertilizer. I have to manually grow new seeds every now and then to keep them going. I am not sure if having better zombos will grow more seeds, I am working on improving my zombo workforce with better body parts, so I will find out sooner or later, but for now zombo farms provide diminishing returns, although semi-auto farming is still pretty good for makng crates for cash.

I have this exact same problem; for the most part, lentils and onions are self sustaining M O S T of the time, but carrots to not yield a significant enough return to sustain itself each time. Frequently. Turns out it seems that farms give ~24 seeds, +/- a few. Period. All farms are quality II farms, and I am noticing that it honestly does not seem to do anything in terms of seed yield whatsoever. I have tested for a while with various quality levels and all quality runs into this problem. The only difference is the quality of produce.

It is highly recommended that at this point, if you are running zombie farms, Run a manual plot to supplement seeds...

And quality of zombie task force affects their channel work speed: farming/growing the crops, chopping trees, mining, et cetera. It has no effect on amount produced.

Also, while on the topic of running manual farm to supplement seeds...

Is zombie farming truly worth it? You want gold crop to create crates of veggies...but one has to manually supplement the seeds for a zombie farm anyways. In order to get to gold crops, you have to manually farm up the seeds, because you cannot buy them anywhere, and farms don't produce a surplus. Why use zombies? Sure they are working on something while you are gone but if you want as much money as possible for that payday, farm gold and use the billions of ore ingots to make complex parts chests of goods (which sell for nearly gold crates anyway without all the hassle). At least you are also working towards perfecting alchemy zombies and amassing gold nuggets for embalming injections.

Lets say you want to be a farmer instead. Why use zombies? You can grow crops nearly twice as fast as what a theoretical 40% efficiency gold farm can. At the cost of boost and quality II fertilizer, quality of which you have to do anyway, one can yield 30 seeds minimum from 6 plots, in addition to receiving around 70 crops in ten minutes. No seed deficit. Half the time. You already had to do this for gold seeds anyway. You also don't have to stand there chopping away or hacking away. You plant fertilizer, plant seeds, walk away. harvest later and repeat for a quick process that is required regardless of auto zombie or not. Those farming zombies can instead be making the alchemical reagents for when you need to make some quick fertilizer. It is ultimately a five minute process as opposed to a 2 minute process, and saves many hours, and weeks spent waiting on faith, for the zombies ignoring the automated farming all together.

Skip to making fertilizer, don't waste time setting it up. Get the trade agreement, make fertilizer, make money. DIY. Loging and mining, something you don't want to do on your own. It is nice to have those things topped off and available, but if I want money, I find myself just making crates of complex parts. I also find gold useless for most things other than advancing the story, and acquiring the 75 blue points weekly from the lighthouse for 15 silver If I went ahead and made five or six zombie farms, maybe it wouldn't be a problem...but by the time I have set that up waiting on the faith, i could probably just be done with the game if I just continue manual farming crop and growing the seed quantity.

So at this point, making gold crop zombie farm is to feel accomplished that you did it. It does not help you finish the game. Does not help you with the graveyard, does not accomplish finishing a quest that you did not already acquire the resources to finish in creating the farms, and is not the fastest way to make gold.

[GlassDeviant]

With no fertilizer, you will not be self-sustaining. With Peat, you probably won't be self-sustaining. As soon as you get silver star and then gold star fertilizers, you will most likely become self-sustaining (you can fail, but it's a very low likelihood).

I tend to keep the leftover row across the top of the garden going manually to make sure there is no chance of ever running out of seeds.

It's definitely one of the biggest sources of cash in the game, if not the biggest, but by the time you have it really going you probably have already earned enough money to not really need it, except possibly to finish getting your aristocrat papers.

Remember, zombies are just an expansion. The game was and still is possible (and not all that difficult) to complete entirely without using zombies at all, and I've done it despite not having bought the game until months after the zombie DLC was released. My first game I didn't "do" the DLC content at all until after I finished and watched the end cut scene, but then I reloaded and proceeded to "complete" the cathedral and graveyard to max score. I wouldn't want to do that without zombies as you need tons of marble, iron and wood.

[hinoron1]

Where are you guys getting gold vegetable seeds from?

I just finished my first playthrough of the game (79 hours). Upgrading the zombie farms with gold-quality fertilizers causes them to return roughly 100% of the seeds planted in them, letting them run pretty close to constantly, but the farmer only ever sold up to silver-grade seeds, even at Tier3. (I kept buying those up for a while to keep a healthy surplus so my farms didn't stall waiting on another field to spit up it's new seeds)

I found at best a couple handfuls of gold-level seeds by smashing dungeon pots, but nothing I could multiply.

Best I could do was a continuous crop of silver veggies for my merchant-factory. By that point I wasn't hurting for cash anyway, but those options for gold-star crates kept taunting me. >_<

And to the OP, AFAIK, Zombie efficiency should only effect how fast the zombie farms operate; seed return % is a function of the fertilizer.

[GlassDeviant]

Buy bronze seeds (or silver if you have enough tiers open) from Farmer.

Bronze seeds + Quality Fertilizer I = some silver seeds when you harvest

Silver seeds + Quality Fertilizer II = some gold seeds when you harvest

Gold seeds + Peat (aka bronze fertilizer) or any quality fertilizer give varying amount of extra gold seeds when you harvest.

Zombie farms do not upgrade seeds.

https://graveyardkeeper.gamepedia.com/Fertilizer

[EVIL Shenanigans]

Basic Crop Seed Results w/ Farmer perk
Fertilizer type; result per crop
no quality star; 2-3 seeds
copper star; 3-4 seeds
silver star; 4-5 seeds
gold star; 5-6 seeds

Complex Crop Seed Results w/ Farmer perk
Fertilizer type; result per crop
no quality star; 2-4 seeds
copper star; 3-5 seeds
silver star; 3-5 seeds + 1 upg
gold star; 4-6 seeds + 2 upg

Ex1; None + Carrots = 2-3s
Ex2; Silver + Carrots = 4-5s
Ex3; Peat + copper Pumpkin = 3-5s (copper)
Ex4; Silver + silver Lentils = 3-5s (silver) +1s (gold)
Ex5; Gold + copper Grapes = 4-6s (copper) + 2s (silver)
Ex6; Gold + silver Grapes = 4-6s (silver) +2s (gold)
Ex7; Gold + gold Grapes = 6-8s (gold)

This pointedly has *nothing* to do with zombie farms - simply your own planting, as of v1.037;

Protip; Ideally, you want to use Gold-Star Fertilizer for Complex, Silver-Star Fertilizer for Basic, and Peat for anything that you already have plenty of seeds for. Never use nothing. Once you have a decent stockpile (1 stack / <50 seeds) of a single variety, start using them in your Z-farms.

[hinoron1]

(facepalm)
And of course I built the Zombie Farms first, THEN bothered to start using fertilizers stronger than peat. Ergo I never saw higher level seeds appear from lower level crops, not once, during the whole game.

Well thanks for solving that mystery for me. :P