Guide to Farming

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Revision as of 21:19, 2 August 2024 by Drayco84 (talk | contribs) (Reworked intro guide, started adding crops and info on them.)
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The Soilson/Soilbride's Path

Every town needs food supplies, and Rockhill is no exception. Unlike most places though, raisin bread is actually valued here.

The Layman's Guide to Planting, or How to Get Started

You will need the minimum materials to start farming or growing crops...

  • Seeds: Gained by Striking produce with a blunt object, and can be destroyed by walking over them. (You'll need a certain amount of skill in Farming to tell seeds apart just by looking at them.)
  • Dirt Tile: You can convert grass tiles to dirt via a hoe, which must be wielded in both hands.
  • Container of Water: Preferably a Bucket as Mugs and Cups are too small for the amount typically required. Murk is fine for crops, so you can save the clean water for drinking/cooking.
  • Fertilizer: Quality of fertilizers are Manure/Cow Pie > Compost > Ash.

Use the seeds on the dirt tile to make a planting space, then put the seeds into the soil for them to start growing. Water the soil and add some fertilizer. Compost and manure are ideal, but ash will also work and is far more common for bare minimum farming or if you're just starting out before you've built a Composter. An easy source of ash is to build a campfire, (Or greater campfire if you really don't like walking into fires. Any fuel added to them also lasts longer, so it might be worth trying to find a couple rocks if you're going to be in the area for a while.) throw sticks into it, and then pick up the ash after they've burned. Compost can be gained by crafting a composter using sticks and filled with any kind of produce, rotten produce/meat, (Tossing produce or meat into Murk will instantly rot it, leaving it outside of a chest for a while will do the same.) burned messes, and apple cores. They take time and need to be flipped occasionally, but they can store and stockpile a great deal of fertilizer.

Primer on the Various Crops

While there's not a lot of crop options at this time, there are still enough for one to make a decent income at farming or to keep a certain number of people fed.

  • Jackberries: Eaten straight, used to make raisins (Which won't rot.) via a Drying Rack and wine via a Barrel. (Poisonous berries will remain poisonous if made into raisins or wine, so be cautious!)

Found by searching bushes. However, make note that there are two types of jackberries, poisonous and regular, and the color of each type changes every round but remains consistent during the in-game week. (Be advised that the colors chosen have been know to be similar at times.) To easily determine which is which, eat only a few of the berries. (IE, take one bite.) If they taste like berries, then you've found the edible ones. If they taste like something and you start losing health, you found the poisonous ones. If you only sampled a few berries, then you can easily sleep off the health loss whenever you have a convenient time to do so. If you ate the whole bunch, then you're in for a lot of vomiting and eventually death unless you can get some healing or pass out/sleep ASAP. While the poison is valued and useful for other purposes, none of them are the focus of this guide.

  • Apples: Usually eaten straight, but can also be used in pies like berries, or fermented in a Barrel for cider. Can be sold directly into the Stockpile, making it a useful crop for no-frills mammons.

Seeds are typically found in a soilson/bride's satchel or in the Boghill farmhouse, but the most reliable source are via whole apples from an established farmer or the Stockpile. As a basic food item, apples are probably one of the fastest and most efficient crops to get started, assuming one has the seeds, as well as the cheapest aside from berries.

  • Wheat: Grows into stalks which must be shucked or threshed into wheat, which then must be ground into powder for cooking use.