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 May 12 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.

[Medvedb]

I completely agree with the author, this problem is especially relevant for wurt. The idea with the scarecrow is also good. gg wp kulik

[Combain]

yes, there is such a problem, the idea is great, it would be very good

[2D_]

interesting fact, (Incursive Gestalt) does not possess weeds

[2D_]

While playing, another thought came to my mind: what about Crystal-Crested Buzzard? They also make it very hard to build farms, but in this case mob farms suffer. If you kill a mob in an enclosure, they fly to the corpse and start eating it. If you try to stop them, they destroy all the fences you built.

Someone might suggest killing them with signal flares, but for that you need to kill MacTusk and the Deerclops and maybe even Crystal Deerclops.

But luckily, there is a genius solution — SHADOW SCARECROW :3

On 6/1/2026 at 12:11 PM, deadtaco0 said:

Had some ideas that want to share

Shadow fisher:
Freshwater fishing rod with higher durability and repairable. When character has shadow affinity, you can hear it talk/comment stuff -
hooked fish - "Pull!", pond has less than 50% fish- "Time to look for other fishing spot", pulled crumpled package - "That's not a fish"
It can be attached to Sea Fishing rod as lure, visually Sea fishing rod icon has shadow hand/hook in bottom right, stat wise it can have large radius and idle attractiveness, but strong debuff on reel, attracts all ocean fish except lunar wobsters. Quotes -
Set up as lure - "We got a sea of fish to catch", waiting for fish - "Soon / Come here / Bite", hooked fish - "Got it, now catch it", failed reel - "Let fish get tired, then pull / Patience, let it tire", cought - "Good job / Now next one / Today you will be fed", cought heavy fish - "This one is heavy / This one is to be proud of / You can show off with this one"

Horrifying/Enlightening scarecrow

Friendly scarecrow can be upgraded with planar materials. When upgraded, decreases spawn rate of shadow/lunar creatures in its vicinity. If Horrifying scarecrow is build in Lunar grotto or on Lunar island, then after day has passed and it was unloaded, it will be turned into Broken scarecrow (quotes for it in style of - "They did not appreciate it"). Same thing with Enlightening scarecrow in ruins and atrium

Here's another idea with a scarecrow that fits well with this post.

[deadtaco0]

When i came up with scarecrow upgrade, it was intended as Crystal-Crested Buzzard deterant, but forgot to add that to description