How do I make food seeds from the food?

[City Builder]

I had some pineapple seeds and planted them, now I've got some pineapple, but how do I make pineapple seeds out of my pineapple so that I can grow a sustaining crop instead of just eating the pineapple that I grew?

Another example, I have two watermellon seeds, so I plant them, AND I get 2 watermellons, but no more seeds to plant more of them.

[HEAVY FIRST RATE]

From what I believe I have read elswhere, when you plant seeds, your crops will not produce additional seeds, only by harvesting the items on the islands can you get more seeds. That is the way I understand the game anyway and I have only ever gotten seeds from plants on the islands.

LOL We probably have Monsanto to thank for this!

[MechWarden]

Right now, almost all of the plants aren't sustainable. The only thing that will last are the Beets and Potatoes (since you can replant them and double them up); and the palm trees barely are sustainable, but there is still a RNG factor that makes it feel shaky.

I think that's for balance purposes, since the pineapples, watermelons, and mangos offer up a lot in terms of food and/or water. It doesn't make much sense at first, I know, but I'm pretty sure anyone would agree that they would be set for food and water if you could consistently grow the good stuff; and that's why it isn't allowed.

You may get seeds back on some of those other plants you grow, but the returns are so small it might as well not be getting any seeds at all. Even the Mango seed returns are just low enough to slowly dwindle any stockpile of them.

[Kittani]

This, unfortunately, makes growing any crops on your raft a waste of resources and time. I can understand balance but even in a real survival situation, once you get to sustainable crops you are pretty much all set. Part of humanity's history is to grow and continually increase our chances of survival. This game seems to suggest that survival is pointless as it will always be a near-death struggle with no hope of achieving any sense of stability. May as well feed yourself to the shark now because 5 or 10 years from now, when you're starting to get older and more at risk of injury.... it will NEVER be any easier or better.

[Grezko]

Originally posted by Shadowhenge:

This, unfortunately, makes growing any crops on your raft a waste of resources and time. I can understand balance but even in a real survival situation, once you get to sustainable crops you are pretty much all set. Part of humanity's history is to grow and continually increase our chances of survival. This game seems to suggest that survival is pointless as it will always be a near-death struggle with no hope of achieving any sense of stability. May as well feed yourself to the shark now because 5 or 10 years from now, when you're starting to get older and more at risk of injury.... it will NEVER be any easier or better.

Potatoes and beet always give you 2 for 1 planted.

[iAndy]

I don't even bother with growing stuff since it takes up so much time to fight off seagulls and repair the scarecrow things. Devs should add a craftable net (or greenhouse) for plants to guard from birds. Right now it's much easier to just kill Bruce the shark a few times and you're set for a week or two.

[onealone]

I honestly love gardening/farming in games. So this has been disappointing. The rest of the game has been great.

Maybe fishing and hunting should offer other benefits than food.

[Grezko]

Originally posted by onealone:

I honestly love gardening/farming in games. So this has been disappointing. The rest of the game has been great.

Maybe fishing and hunting should offer other benefits than food.

well hunting aka killing bears / screacher / warthogs give you leather and feathers as well. As for fishing you get shoes and the 2 types of figures :)

[Ǵ̶͓̂͑lí̴̤̀̄́tcĥ̸]

Honestly I use crops (specifically pineapple/watermelon med crops) with a scarecrow specifically to farm Seagulls. I often lose them when exploring an island, but I also am usually bringing seeds back from said island and scarecrows are cheap. Basically an endless farm of drumsticks and feathers for me since they die in a single hit from the metal spear and yield 2 drumsticks and 6 feathers every time, and I get one every few minutes almost guaranteed. This is the only thing that makes crops useful to me.

They do occasionally give you seeds but it's random/chance just like the ones harvested from islands. Their food gain is too marginal to matter (including mango which is the best for food among them) and only watermelons provide a nice amount of water, which itself is easy enough to make with a bottle and purifier to make melons matter regardless. The time investment/maintenance vs gain isn't worth it for their food imo. Even with the fruit compote (I prefer veggie soup, easier to make, better bonus vs hunger and I can just fill my hunger meter with other food prior to or after eating veggie soup to maximize that as well).

As such I will probably never build a tree, outside of maybe for decoration. Coconuts are also the worst of the fruits (well, maybe slightly better than berries) and despite this seem to be the most rare (palms are everywhere but I've chopped whole islands down only to get like 1 or 2 coconuts enough times to realize they're worthless to try to farm, the drop chance is too rare...even their seeds seem to drop more)...so meh. Trees for decoration (maybe), the rest for seagull farming and potatoes/beets for their sustainability and thus the soup. Best soup is shark soup though, since you get 3 soups per and they last long enough that you'll likely find more big islands with mushrooms before needing to make more (and Bruce is easy enough to joust to death). Veggie soup is the only easily sustainable one though and therefore the only crop worth it for the actual crop.

[Hitsky]

For origina question, only beets and potatoes are sustainable, palmtrees have high chance to drop seeds but not "absolute". Melons decently high chance. Pineapples and Mangos drop seeds once in a blue moon so its propably more efficient to hunt islands than try to cycle mango trees.

Once you can build a bow and arrows, farming root vegetables is the way to go just for the sake of getting seagulls.. Beets and potatoes are sustainable, hunting seagulls nets you extra 2 meats per bird (along with crapton of feathers and you can even pick your arrow back). Growing anything else is kinda meh unless you are cooking recipe stuff for satiation buff.

Fishing, growing beets, potatoes and coconuts and hunting seagulls and sharks for sustenance, fancy stuff like pineapples, melons and mangos you leave for desserts.

[I Kinda Fail]

Yeah, it'd be nice if the crop plots were a bit more... versatile.

Like if potatoes and beets always gave double what you planted, so you never run out of seeds. Plus they can hang on walls.

Medium crops can regrow, slowly, like 1 melon every 2 days or something.

And tree patches should be changed so that if you plant a fruit tree, you can harvest a few fruit from them every few days... or chop them down regularly for wood.

And yeah, some sort of machine to get seeds, and a use for excess seeds, would also be nice. (Not sure, can seeds be used for fuel in the bio-thing?)

Fishing and recipes should still be the best way to restore hunger, but fruit should be a viable alternative to eating and drinking, and veggies should restore about 33-50% as much as fish when cooked.

[Martin]

There is a drop chance on trees, flowers, veg, fruit. For potatoes and beets you always get 2 returned. For the rest the chance seems to be higher for gathered items on islands. But you do get seeds from harvesting grown items as well. Incl Trees.

[Fullmakt]

Actually banana trees are great, it's pretty late game, but once you get them, tree plots really comes to life, wood and bananas to eat for days. it drops from 0-3 seed pr tree, and on average it's about 30% overproducing, so you can expand your treefarm for as long as you want.

[Jack Kenseng]

I'm learning to live without crops and rely on a steady supply fish...and weaponizing my potatoes to lure and murder seagulls seems to be the way to go. :)

[strippolka]

Banana trees will solve your food needs once you get to the final island of Ch.2 xD
Started with a couple seeds from the initial gather in the plantation and I have more seeds than I know what to do with and plenty of bananas to eat and throw extra towards biofuel. 2 birds 1 stone

[Xas]

*
/me checks Windows clock time, just to ensure its currently dated 2020, and not 2018.