Better planters (improved farming)

[Barbarion]

Hi

I have some suggestions, how to make “gardening” more useful and interesting.

Better Planters
Planters should be more like animal pens, with a section where you put the seed(s) and a section where you put the nutritions. There should be a small planter with only 1 seed slot, a medium planter with, let’s say 3 slots and a large planter with maybe 6 slots.

Harvest
Per seed slot, you need to put a certain amount of seeds (maybe 1, maybe 10 or whatever) and after some time and with the right nutritions, there will be one visible, adult plant per slot, which can be harvested with your hands or with a sickle just like a wild plant, giving you more or less the same chances of getting some plant materials and seeds like a wild plant would, etc.

Nutritions
Water should be an essential nutrition allowing the seeds to grow. Some plants may need other essential nutritions but in general, nutritions like compost should rather improve the growth rate, the yield or the life span of a plant than preventing their growth, what makes it nice to get in the mid or late game but not a pain in the ■■■ in early game.

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Well, this is already the basic concept, making gardenig more realistic and with a decent chance of being self sustainable without being boring, because you have to plant, to improve the growth or yield, to harvest and to replant the yielded seeds again. Anyway, there are some more ideas, how the concept could be expanded:

Growth stages
It would be nice, to see the plants grow in 3-4 different stages. Maybe it^s even possible to harvest them in a lower stage with a reduced yield and no chance to get seeds.

Life span
Once germinated, growing plants could have some sort of a life span. If you are two lazy and they run out of nutritions for some time, they gonna die, maybe just leaving behind some dry plant material which might be reused as nutrition for the next generation of plants.

Genetics
Plants in a planter could have different genes, regulating their growth rate, yield of plant material, yield of seeds, life span and nutrition needs. These genes might be influenced by nutritions, might be inherited, might be even influenced by crossbreeding or a Thrall, etc.

Environment
If you want to grow southern plants in the cold north or northern plants in the dry south, it could be necessary to plant them in range of a fire or a fountain. Most plants could need light for their growth so you need to plant them outside, while mushrooms may prefer some darker spaces, etc.

Gardener Thrall
Maybe a Thrall could take care of the plants, while you’re on an adventure…?

That’s it… hope you like the idea and maybe give it some support.
Cheers Exiles

[Barbarion]

Thanks, I accept every opinion and if the CE community don’t like this idea, it’s just fine.
But I think, CE should try out some fresh mechanics and not just new NPC camps, new islands, new armor skins and stronger bosses.

[Barbarion]

I agree. That’s why I like to split my ideas into “basic” and “advanced”. Advanced ideas might find their way into a mod or something.
In my opinion, it would already be nice, if you can harvest your grown plants like a wild plant - more realistic, more rewarding and probably not that hard to implement.

[DaVice]

I think an Herbalist or Botanist themed mod like you’ve described would make a decent addition for some RP players. However, I definitely feel that it belongs in the mod community. I don’t want to see the devs spending their precious time convoluting a system that is primarily just fluff and will likely add more lag to our official servers. The current planting system is already mostly unused (except for decoration) and IMO there are better ways for the Devs to be spending their time. I liked what you said though about them improving core elements and adding new content. =P

@Barbarion

new NPC camps, new islands, new armor skins and stronger bosses.

All of the above sounds GREAT!!!

[Barbarion]

Thanks for your opinion. Always interesting, how perception may differ.
It’s obvious that the current planting system is unused, because it’s useless and boring. Other survival games have shown, how successful a decent farming system can be as a sideline, whitout being just RP content or too dominant neither. But I admit, it may not fit the rather simple (or let’s say “barbaric”) concept of CE.

[Croms_Faithful]

Im up for some improvements to the Planter system, and a greater focus on renewable food resources.

May I suggest a couple of additions? I would also like to be able to plant both types of mushrooms in planters, and glowing goop. In adition, I would like to see several types of fruit trees added to Conan Exiles.