After the Lunar Rift, Brightshades constantly possess farm plants. Fighting them over and over kills the joy of farming in the late game. Most players simply stop planting anything — it's easier to ignore the whole system. That's a shame, because farming

[2D_]

A Shadow Scarecrow — crafted from late-game shadow materials (Pure Horror, Dreadstone, Nightmare Fuel).

 Place it near farm plots -repels Brightshades from possessing crops.
Requires fuel (e.g., Pure Horror) over time, so there's still some cost.
(Optional) Drains sanity slightly or spawns a weak shadow creature — a small trade-off.

This way, farmers can enjoy their gardens again without deleting the lunar threat. It also gives shadow materials a meaningful use and respects the time you already invested in the farming system.

Thank you for reading, and for making such a deep and unique game.

[2D_]

[xiaoziyu]

You can craft Anti-Glow Eggplants with Bramble Nodes

Edited 16 hours ago by xiaoziyu

[ShadowbirdRH]

I completely agree that brightshades are awful for farms (and in general) and there really ought to be some kind of dreadstone/pure horror based countermeasure (less convinced a scarecrow is the answer, but that's not important), but until there is something like that, there are still other solutions, such as farming underground where brightshades won't appear, and setting up dummy/trap plants a ways out from your base to get parasitized where they're easier to deal with and don't cause trouble in the base.

[2D_]

10 hours ago, ShadowbirdRH said:

I completely agree that brightshades are awful for farms (and in general) and there really ought to be some kind of dreadstone/pure horror based countermeasure (less convinced a scarecrow is the answer, but that's not important), but until there is something like that, there are still other solutions, such as farming underground where brightshades won't appear, and setting up dummy/trap plants a ways out from your base to get parasitized where they're easier to deal with and don't cause trouble in the base.

Thanks for the tips about underground farms and decoy plants - I appreciate that you're offering practical solutions for the game in its current state.

But I see the problem differently: it's not about the lack of workarounds. The problem is that a fun, well-designed mechanic (farming) becomes so annoying on the surface that people simply abandon it. Building farms in caves or trying to use makeshift solutions - that's not a real fix. That's admitting that surface farming is broken. And the developers put so much love into this mechanic.

Besides, not everyone plays with caves enabled. Some players disable caves for performance reasons or personal preference. For those players, the advice "just farm underground" doesn't work at all.

And the decoy plant method forces you to plant crops far away from your base so Brightshades possess those instead. But then those plants become useless for farming because you can't harvest them properly. Traveling all over the world to find those decoys isn't fun -- it's a chore.

A scarecrow feels like the most organic solution because it's literally something that "scares". In our case, it scares Gestalts. It's useful, decorative, and fits the lore (shadow vs moon). It doesn't remove the challenge entirely - it gives you a tool to protect your garden.

In an ideal world, I would like them to add a Gestalt trap using Wagstaff's technology, and give characters like Wurt and Wormwood separate perks: shadow affinity gives the scarecrow, lunar affinity gives the trap. But that's just dreaming -I understand that developing something like that takes a lot of work. Considering Wormwood is already immune to Brightshades and already has a skill tree, this probably won't happen. But a player can dream, right?

I understand that development takes resources, so this is just an idea for discussion, not a demand. Thank you for your perspective and for the helpful tips - they genuinely help right now, while the game lacks proper protection for surface farms.