Water retaining soil

[Phoenix-Mask]

Is it only me or does this upgrade kinda seem useless? I mean it's so deep into the game that by the time you finaly get it you watered the soil so often that it no longer matters if you still have to do this. Normaly something like this should maybe be reachable in the middle of the game.

[rmsgrey]

It can help if you're wanting to chase some of the last few achievements - getting all the sheep takes a surprising amount of linen fibre, for example, or if you're trying to figure out the remaining recipes and haven't already got a wide variety of ingredients in stock.

But, yeah, it does seem like it's only marginally more useful than the upgrades to Elena's Cubicle...

[Phoenix-Mask]

I already have enough place for all sheeps i'm just to lazy to gather them all. The game is really awesome but the balance is a little questionable

[Livia]

I got all the sheep very early with no issues because I built two farms and was constantly growing one of fibre and one of grain - I ended up with so much linen I just sold off the rest of the seeds as there was no need to have so dang much - overgrew linen and cotton with just keeping one farm running the entire game with whatever seed I could next pick up, until you get to silk, at which point, sell the other seeds, you won't need them (and then have an orchard of two silk trees and sell that raw silk to cash in!)

I LOVED this upgrade as the constant watering was one of the things I found the most annoying in the game. I didn't mind the other "chores" but the plants need so much water, it does frustrate me. Once you have some fruit trees, especially to produce you just items to feed most of your spirits, I wasn't needing to be constantly growing (either than corn since it's best for flour), so this upgrade was nice and all, but I would have been SO MUCH happier to have gotten sooner!

[Phoenix-Mask]

Well from what i see by the time i get it there will be only 3 spirits leftso not much work

[rmsgrey]

Originally posted by Livia:

Once you have some fruit trees, especially to produce you just items to feed most of your spirits

Annoyingly, the spirits that won't eat fruit seem to be concentrated later in the game - Stanley, Buck, Jackie, Bruce & Mickey... By the time you've got your orchards set up, you very quickly run out of uses for the fruit (except as animal feed).

It's another example of the game offering a way to cut out a lot of drudgery from a task, but in a way you can't really exploit.

[Livia]

You get orchards early in the game though. I also, yes, love them for animal feed as it frees up other items for those non-fruit eaters. I found once I had cherries I never had to worry about food complaints or lack feed for my animals.

I mean, granted, you can also just ignore all your spirits and let them starve, so not a huge deal...

[rmsgrey]

It depends what you see as early - you only build orchards after your fourth (possibly fifth) spirit, and about the same time as you say goodbye to your first spirit, which I'd class as early mid-game. By the time you're producing fruit, you've met over 30% of the spirits, but only 20% of the ones you can't feed fruit - and (depending on how you count Daria and Bruce & Mickey) about half the remaining spirits won't eat fruit.

Saying fruit becomes useless except for animals was a bit of an overstatement, but you basically have the time between ice-breaker and rock-breaker before fruit stops being a reliable food supply.

[Livia]

I am replaying right now. I still have Gwen and Alice and I have apples and cherries. Yes, I can't go into ice waters yet, but I hated how early you said goodbye to Gwen the first time so I am being less task oriented this playthrough.

And fruit works for Astrid, Gio, Beverly, Elena, Daria, Gustav - it's plenty useful.

[Phoenix-Mask]

Just found out the wiki is partly wrong because going by that i would need to send of Elena so that Buck starts the questline

[BlackWater]

Originally posted by rmsgrey:

Originally posted by Livia:

Once you have some fruit trees, especially to produce you just items to feed most of your spirits

Annoyingly, the spirits that won't eat fruit seem to be concentrated later in the game - Stanley, Buck, Jackie, Bruce & Mickey... By the time you've got your orchards set up, you very quickly run out of uses for the fruit (except as animal feed).

It's another example of the game offering a way to cut out a lot of drudgery from a task, but in a way you can't really exploit.

Sell the fruit, you'll have 80 K worth of glims in no time.

[Livia]

80K? LOL! I am so rich by that point from selling silk, 80K is NOTHING.