5 self-fertilizing crop combo, 1:1:1:1:1 ratio, all giant, 8x each

[OneHitNick]

Hello everyone!

So this is sort of a follow-up to the information from this post on self-fertilizing crop combos:

A List of All Giant Crop, Auto Nutrient Pairings

One of the types of self-fertilizing combinations mentioned in the post is 5-crop combinations with 8 of each crop in a 2x2 plot. Looking at some of these combinations, I was interested in trying to grow them myself, but it didn't seem like anyone had posted anything on how to configure this to get all crops to be giant, and the task didn't seem trivial to solve.

Below is an example of all giant crops for a 5-crop 1:1:1:1:1 ratio setup (spring, dragonfruit x8, garlic x8, potato x8, tomato x8, onion x8)

Before getting into the details about how to set this up (since it is decently precise to set up), I just want to show what the layout itself is:

To explain what's going on, the thin blue lines are the 7x7 grid lines that you can get from Geometric Placement mod (which you will need) by starting at the edges of the plot with the rectangular grid and going across every other "+". The orange lines in the grid are the middle, and they determine the plot tile boundaries. Each colored dot represents a different crop type (e.g. all pink dots are garlic). Black arrows on dots that are on the orange center lines indicate which side of the boundary line the holes need to be on (more on this later). The black arrows are important for making sure that each plot tile has the correct number of total crops and correct number of each crop. The gray/white arrows on dots indicate that if the crop hole can't snap to the grid, then the hole needs to be placed just slightly to that direction of the grid indicator (again, more on this later). The gray/white arrows are important for making sure that each crop is close enough to others of the same type.

This is just simplified 2D view of the same diagram above. Notation is largely the same, except the light blue/orange gridlines show the boundaries for the holes (versus their centerlines), and the black squares are left empty.

Detailed Setup Explanation:

So for most graphics that people post showing crop position configurations, they're shown in a 9x9 grid (for 2x2 plot). This type of layout will not work unfortunately for us, since we have 40 crops to try to fit. This means we have to try something else. Thankfully, with the geometric placement mod, we get a view of a grid when holding a hoe over ground that's ready to be tilled (by using the Garden Digamajig).

The red lines drawn show the 7x7 grid where we'll be tilling the ground (ignore the bottom, where I cropped it badly lol). Note that there is 1 "+" between each gridline, since that's just slightly greater than the distance that we can have between holes.

For placing all of the holes that aren't on the edges/midlines, you can simply place the till holes directly onto the grid, as Geometric Placement allows you to. However, more care has to be taken on the edges/midlines.

When trying to till any piece of ground, a white square pops up indicating which tile the spot you wish to till belongs to. For interior spaces, there is no issue, and the white square indicating plot will be on the square you want to be on. However, on the boundaries between tiles, the game has to pick which tile that spot belongs to. The tile that the white square picks simply depends on the orientation of the tiles, which means that the square can end up on un-tillable tiles or on the incorrect side of a tile boundary. If the white square is on a un-tillable tile, then you will be unable to till that spot using the grid spot by snapping it to the grid. In that case, you will simply need to place your cursor as close to that "+" on the grid as possible, and then disable the grid (by holding control, by default) and hoe the ground without snapping it to the grid.

White square has to pick tile when trying to hoe on a boundary "+". Left: Can till since white square is in tillable soil (i.e. can snap to grid). Right: must disable grid and place cursor onto "+" manually since white square isn't on tillable soil (i.e. can't snap to grid).

How to till on midlines (thin orange lines) & edges:

You will notice on the figure that the 4th column and row are denoted by orange lines, and the crop dots all have black arrows on them if they're on that midline. That's because we need to be particular about which side of the midline that these holes end up on. These arrows indicate which side of the midline you need to till on, and you can reliably till these spots by placing your cursor on the left/right side of the "+", holding control, then right clicking to till. 

Cursor placement for midlines, left and right. Cursor can be on the "+" indicator on the side before disabling grid then tilling, we just can't snap directly to grid since it can count the hole as being in an unintended tile. I usually aim for one of the inside corners on the black "+" outline (shown by red arrows), immediately next to the center of the indicator.

The same holds for the gray/white arrows. If you can't snap those holes to the grid, you will want to make sure those are placed just inside the grid indicator so that crops of the same type are slightly closer to each other. This is just for the groups of 4 crops in a line on the edges of the plots (My first test had some potatoes on the edge not get giant since they were barely too far away from each other).

Otherwise, I think that's all there is to creating this configuration! It is a bit tedious to do, but it's not horrible and it's pretty consistent. One thing that will help a lot is if the geometric placement mod can do something along the lines of moving the white tile indicator square to always be on tillable soil, which would make setting up the edges trivial. Then, the only tricky part would be the 12 midline tiles. If this ends up gaining some traction, and isn't just a weird niche theoretical setup, then perhaps we can consider reaching out to the mod creator and asking. He actually has answered a question about implementing this, but has said that it likely isn't worth the time/confusion yet, since now most setups just use 3x3 configuration of holes per tile.

Please let me know if there's any confusion with how I wrote this, if it's too difficult to reproduce, or if someone's already done this and I just missed it. Otherwise, thanks for reading!

OneHitNick

 

[mr. brj]

I appreciate the effort and especially the images, I knew 5 crop pairings were a thing but couldn't find any images for the right placements. Also I was too lazy to experiment with them by myself and just preferred fertilizing the ground in case I messed up while dealing with more than 4 crop types:D

As a side note: Wormwood can do this very easily as he can just plant seeds with his bare hands.

One thing that confuses me is how the nutrients are being distributed by the crops in the middle. If we take the bottom right quarter as an example, there are too many potatoes and garlics, 4 and 3 to be exact, while there are 2 of each remaining crops. But if we exclude the edges of this quarter, we are only left with 1 dragon fruit, no onions and 2 of each remaining crops. Shouldn't this affect the nutrition values in theory?

Edit: Never mind, just figured out what those arrows on the chart stand for. So if we plant the crops exactly in the middle, the nutrients don't get distributed, that's why we need to make an off-set to make sure there are 2 of each crop type in each tile, correct?

[Yuuko]

Yeah I was wondering why I wasn't getting all giant crops and thought it might be that geometric placement wasn't enough.  Thanks for the write up!  This will help a lot.

[OneHitNick]

2 hours ago, mr. brj said:

I appreciate the effort and especially the images, I knew 5 crop pairings were a thing but couldn't find any images for the right placements. Also I was too lazy to experiment with them by myself and just preferred fertilizing the ground in case I messed up while dealing with more than 4 crop types:D

As a side note: Wormwood can do this very easily as he can just plant seeds with his bare hands.

One thing that confuses me is how the nutrients are being distributed by the crops in the middle. If we take the bottom right quarter as an example, there are too many potatoes and garlics, 4 and 3 to be exact, while there are 2 of each remaining crops. But if we exclude the edges of this quarter, we are only left with 1 dragon fruit, no onions and 2 of each remaining crops. Shouldn't this affect the nutrition values in theory?

Edit: Never mind, just figured out what those arrows on the chart stand for. So if we plant the crops exactly in the middle, the nutrients don't get distributed, that's why we need to make an off-set to make sure there are 2 of each crop type in each tile, correct?

That's exactly it, the slight offset makes sure each of the 4 tiles has 2 of each crop