If I go out of my way to harvest 1,500 aloe leaves to get 40-50 seeds, then create compost heaps, grinders and planters, then collect bonemeal, plant fiber and putrid meat so I can wait for compost to build up so I can put it in the planter with a seed to produce aloe at home rather then have to go back to the desert to harvest it…why do I not get a seed with the produced aloe leaves?
You’re telling me that I take all this time, material and resource listed above to reap a whopping 250 leaves before I have to go out and harvest 1,500 MORE aloe leaves to get 40-50 MORE seeds? Why bother having a farming mechanic at all? If it’s not self-sustaining, it’s not farming.
I don’t feel there’s a reasonable excuse for not producing a single seed with the grown leaves from the planter so you can replant the seed to grow more aloe leaves. It doesn’t even need to be every crop, just SOME of the time to make the process worth the time and resource required.
If you were to get seeds off of farming and have it self sustaining, you’d go out once to get seeds and never have to do it again which then means you’d never have to go out into the world to harvest plant fiber or aloe or yellow lotus flowers etc again.
Or do you want to have it so like every 10th plant, you get 1 seed so it’s diminishing returns? Then again, that’s not self sustaining either.
With the Horticulture mod farming IS self-sustaining, but players still go out into the world because there are too many things to do except gathering aloe near the Noob River for high-level players ))) If there were some mechanics for trading between different players and clans, we could buy aloe from Far South for some leavening agent from Green Zone etc. But now it’s quite a dull waste of time running across the whole map to get this healing potion. It is even more so if you play at the official server solo or in a small clan; many private servers use Horticulture mod and nobody complains about players sitting at home.
If it is not sustainable then it just defeats its own purpose.
It is 10 times easier and faster to just go harvest the plant you need with a sickle than the whole process and cost of making compost and planters and the entire farming process, especially since the lotus plants need improved compost which is even more longer to craft.
yes i agree it would be nice, maybe not as many as you brought first, but some at least. i felt kinda the same as the OP when i first went into the farming content, then i decided to drop it and collect seeds / plants by myself since i felt like it was not worth it to go through this entire process of farming to get what you get in the end and that you will have to go gathering again and again anyway if you want to get more benefits from this feature. now i only use planters for decoration purposes and get my own plants/seeds by myself and i feel like i’m not wasting my time anymore.
But i get that for roleplaying purposes this farming mechanic must be a great thing and can keep you busy for a while.
Remember seeds are a by product of harvesting a plant, it’s not supposed to be a 1:1 harvest ratio otherwise you’d be littered with seeds every time you harvest which doesn’t make sense or help the game in any way.
I got a pretty hefty amount of berry seeds when gathering up north and it took little time. I don’t really see the need to increase the seed amount we get or allow planters to drop them every harvest, but purchase/trade of seeds in the future when they expand on city life could be a nice alternative to those who don’t want to go out and gather a bunch every time.
would like to see 0-3 seeds produced per compost use with planters.
0 means there’s still the chance that it will run out of seeds and require one to venture out to find more. having the chance of multiples means it can also be sustaining, so it balances out.
I’d have it set up like so:
I like Demiwolfe’s idea.
But I am in the boat of farming should mean (self sustaining). There are plenty of reasons to go out into the world but if you want to build a ton of planters and compost heaps and farm within your base why not? If your generating too much seed, toss it on the ground it will vanish in a few mins.
Makes sense for farming to be self sustaining… it is the point of farming after all. But it also makes sense that it is not a 1:1 (leaf:seed) ratio … many dangers affect crops – seed production could drop due to bugs and other maladies. I think a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio for return of seeds when harvesting from planters would be equitable.
Demiwolfe gets it. I’m not asking for an OP farming mechanic, I’m asking for a functional one.
The point of structures and equipment as you level is to become more streamlined and efficient so you can produce more with less effort.
Currently, the farming mechanic is a complete waste because there is a negative return on investment compared to just scavenging. It doesn’t match the character of the game or any other resource progression model.
I was mostly responding to “NinjaEd” “you’d be littered with seeds every time you harvest which doesn’t make sense or help the game in any way.” Toss it on the floor if you have too much.
But sure you can put seed in the press. Or cook it with fiber and make gruel, whatever makes you happy!
Sure it does it produces plants that you don’t have to go out and get. It’s not a waste. There is no negative return on investment unless you’re wasting compost on plant fiber.
Planters as they stand are useless. Much easier to go farm what you need in bulk and store it. Not worth the time to invest in making compost and the space the planters take up. You need one planter, for grey lotus, for strength potions.
Then furnaces are useless, it’s much easier to just go to New Asagard or Black Keep or Mounds of the Dead or Black Galleon and kill NPCs for iron bars/steel bars/hardened steel bars.
There is nothing useless about planters, you set some crafting that does the work itself while you go out elsewhere to do something else.
You can’t actively go farm seeds. You get like 2 seeds for every 20 of the actual plant you are farming. Again making it so that farming the main material is much more efficient. I can go farm iron ore or stone for my furnaces. Its not a byproduct.
Normally seeds are dried for storage and to extend the use of the dryer in-game I would like to use this tool for producing seeds. Exception is that it wouldn’t need bark to work for plants you store in the dryer.
When getting seeds in real life you would choose seeds from the best yielding plant, so for every plant dried you could use something like @Demiwolfe suggested for the amount of seeds produced to mimic this.
I would also like to see beehives close to planters providing a buff that increases production or decreases time.