Dear devs, an idea for farming.

[Kage]

I saw the thumbnail of the ashland mangonel/onager/catapult thing and it got me thinking about what would be a very good addition to late game farming:

The Plow.

Why?

• Farming is the most time intensive activity that isn't that much fun in the whole game.
  
• Farming should become a bit easier or efficient in the late game. Everything else gets an upgrade except farming. Stamina doesn't matter when you have to spam 'E' to collect planted items.
  
• It would make sense that when you explore Ashlands and find flametal, some new alloy exists to help you make a sturdy plow

What?

• A cart-like object behind you that looks like a plow and turns ripe planted objects into collectable items in a 2m wide line behind you.
  
• A bigger version that requires you to tame and ride a lox to pull it, with a 4m wide line behind you.
  
• Alternatively, you could make the player plow and Lox plow til the same area, but the player plow uses a lot of stamina and by using the Lox plow, you don't have to worry about stamina.

This would incentivize the player to tame and ride loxes. Now it's just a novelty.
This would put a little fun into the farming activity.
This would help bigger groups of players or a duo of players who have specific roles in their world get more out of their playtime. The more you have to farm for food, potions, etc, the less time you can spend building, exploring and fighting, which are the main rewarding activities.

[AsianGirlLover]

I like the idea but why wait until the Ashlands to discover technology that makes farming easier? Agriculture is complex but it’s not THAT complex.

Give us the ability to make a plow once we have iron in the swamps.

[Kage]

Ok, what about a normal plow as soon as you get iron and root or something from the swamps and a bigger lox-riding plow once you get blackmetal

[Nerevar]

fun is subjective. whenever someone says "this isnt fun" and trys to act like he/she has an argument to stand on i stop takeing them seriously.

also with the new sliders you can just set your reouces to MAX and get 3 times as much from farming. done. no more right to complain about it due to that.

[!?!]

You can hold E you know

[Nooberix]

Originally posted by !?!:

You can hold E you know

sure, but you're still rather slow when collecting or planting. I really like the idea of the plow.

[Levodrago]

This sounds pretty good. I would look forward to farming if this happened

[vinyblaster]

This isn't that kind of game. Unless I'm forgetting something, there is nothing in this game that makes a task easier. Chopping trees, mining, farming. You craft things to enable a capability but there is never anything to make it easier. You don't improve your technology, you just learn new ones.

That being said, I wish it wasn't the case. It would be nice to get a few things from Satisfactory's playbook.

[Pantstron]

Still funny people exude so much effort into farming. The game is possible without farming. Maybe just mix up your meal plan and eat a wider variety foods rather than mass produced farmed foods all the time. I mean is this a server thing where your farming for 10 people cause that's bull and unfair , everyone should do their fair share if that's the case.

[Kage]

Originally posted by Fzanco:

Still funny people exude so much effort into farming. The game is possible without farming. Maybe just mix up your meal plan and eat a wider variety foods rather than mass produced farmed foods all the time. I mean is this a server thing where your farming for 10 people cause that's bull and unfair , everyone should do their fair share if that's the case.

Here's the top 22 foods (based on how much stats they give you) right now:

Seeker aspic
Fish n' bread
Yggdrasil porridge
Misthare supreme
Mushroom omelette
Stuffed mushroom
Serpent stew
Meat platter
Honey glazed chicken
Salad
Blood pudding
Lox meat pie
Cooked serpent meat
Fish wraps
Bread
Wolf skewer (onions)
Eyescream
Cooked seeker meat
Cooked hare meat
Cooked chicken meat
Onion soup

All of them except 5 (cooked serpent meat, eyescream, 3 cooked meats) require things that are best and/or only acquired from farming. Suppose you never farm and you don't get enough fuling villages, you run out of barley. Bread and other flour recipes are super expensive in terms of barley and I'd like to see you try to get turnips/carrots, especially onions without farming. Serpent meat is way too stupid to try to get reliably. Eyescream, farming for freeze glands, okay maybe this one is okay enough, but in our collective server inventory, glands don't rank high in the number of them we got. The three cooked meats are okay, but this would mean you can't cook any good food until you reach mistlands AND you're stuck with a 180 health + 60 stamina build. That's super low stamina.

Note that you're now stuck with 180 health and only 60 stamina or you sacrifice a lot more stat points and eat things like Turnip stew and Muckshake (the first stamina foods down the line) to get 94 health + 125 stamina (219 total). Nah, I'd rather farm and reliably get at least 318 points between health/stamina/eitr, depending on the activity. My most common foodstack now is Misthare Supreme, Mushroom Omelette, Seeker Aspic, totalling 353 statpoints. I alternate between this stack and a pure stamina one for building / passive exploring / farming.

And then you need to get threads from flax, you require the farmables to make the spice rack to upgrade your cauldron, the best way to breed boars/chickens on a decent scale is to give them farm foodstuffs/seeds. So, farming is essential.

That's why I propose we make it less of a chore, since we have to do it anyway. Real world vikings had plows. It's one of the oldest technologies we have.

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

This isn't that kind of game. Unless I'm forgetting something, there is nothing in this game that makes a task easier. Chopping trees, mining, farming. You craft things to enable a capability but there is never anything to make it easier. You don't improve your technology, you just learn new ones.

That being said, I wish it wasn't the case. It would be nice to get a few things from Satisfactory's playbook.

Literally every tool upgrade from stone to blackmetal makes a task faster, thus easier. Then you discover carts and boats to help you carry more and to go farther. You get harpoons to get easier serpent kills. You can breed animals and then use a butcher knife to slaughter them easily. Not only do you get so many improvements to technologies, you also get 'new' ones. Of all the game's activities, farming is the only one that NEVER gets an upgrade except by proxy (better stamina gear/potions). What is your argument even? Do you really like farming as it is now? You don't want to plow with a Lox bro? Think about it.

[warrenchmobile]

Yes, I really like farming as it is now. No, I don't want to plow with a Lox bro or a Lox sis.

I have never farmed but I did grow up with exposure to farmers. I know that the time and effort required to farm with hand tools in the game is less than one per cent of the time and effort required to farm with hand tools in real life.

Farming in Valheim with hand tools takes less that one per cent of the time and effort required for fully mechanized farming in real life. It takes less that one per cent of the total time and effort I expend doing whatever I can do in the game.

If you really don't like farming just use dev commands to spawn all the high level food you want. That way you can skip cooking, too.

[vinyblaster]

Originally posted by GL252:

Literally every tool upgrade from stone to blackmetal makes a task faster, thus easier. Then you discover carts and boats to help you carry more and to go farther. You get harpoons to get easier serpent kills. You can breed animals and then use a butcher knife to slaughter them easily. Not only do you get so many improvements to technologies, you also get 'new' ones. Of all the game's activities, farming is the only one that NEVER gets an upgrade except by proxy (better stamina gear/potions). What is your argument even? Do you really like farming as it is now? You don't want to plow with a Lox bro? Think about it.

What tool makes it easier/faster to chop tree? Yes you get "better" axes, but you still go hit the tree 5 or 6 times to get the wood. What tools make it easier to mine ores? None. You just upgrade your pick to be *able* to mine ores, it never gets "automated" or done in bigger "batches". It's still always hitting the deposit to get ores. There is no way to cook faster, or level the ground faster.

You misunderstood my message, of course you get better weapons to do more things. But once you "know" how to do one thing it never gets made easier.

And yes I like farming as it is, I don't want to plow with a lox.

[Nooberix]

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

What tool makes it easier/faster to chop tree? Yes you get "better" axes, but you still go hit the tree 5 or 6 times to get the wood. What tools make it easier to mine ores? None. You just upgrade your pick to be *able* to mine ores, it never gets "automated" or done in bigger "batches". It's still always hitting the deposit to get ores. There is no way to cook faster, or level the ground faster.

well, you can speed up tree chopping with the elder power. And for mining exists a boss power, too. I'm not sure about chopping power of the axes. I think I'm faster now than at the beginning of the game. I suspected the better tools to be the reason but maybe it's just the chopping skill. So I hope you are wrong but I'm afraid you are not...

[pipo.p]

What could be, if the farming aspect were to need development, is a certain level of automation, but loxes would be too much for the average cultivated fields. There could be arm-tools, like there is a arm-cartwheel, and based on it. The same way as carts are not mandatory, and only save playtime if they are properly used, those tools would save playtime, but only under special circumstances.

A manual plough (ararian) that would be loaded with seeds (one inventory slot), and could plant one row when you push it forward, at the speed of a walking character.
A manual harvester like the gallo-romanish one, you would push ahead of you, and that would collect any grown vegetable on a 2m-wide front (or only two rows at the same time).

Both tools would be quite clumsy, like the cart, so only useful on large, even surfaces.
Eventually the yield could be a little greater, if the plough allows to plant seeds in an optimum way.

Or perhaps, a mod could do it?

[dirktoot]

Originally posted by Nooberix:

Originally posted by !?!:

You can hold E you know

sure, but you're still rather slow when collecting or planting. I really like the idea of the plow.

I don't know if it has been mentioned, but the atgeir is actually one of the best farming tools. Just spin to win again. You clear an entire radius of crops around you and they all become collectables. It sadly only works on plains crops though(not 100% sure), but making it work on all plants is actually an obvious solution that will drastically alter farming speeds.

[Pantstron]

yes the game can be finished without farming anything, not a single thing. That's right you can finish it without turnips, carrots, etc. It's possible to make do with only whats lootable.