Farms And Multiplayer

[Muttbutt]

 

Before I say anything, I should let you know that this is all opinion based, with that being said.

 

Farms are one of the many ways to get food in Don't Starve, and while they may not be effective or efficient, they do offer a variety of possibilities. They provide you with little things like carrots that can be used as filler or to make bunny hutches, watermelons for meloncicles and Fashion Melons, and Dragon fruits for one of the best crockpot foods for healing and hunger in the game; Dragonpie. But where it might give a reasonable amount of helpful foods, the negatives tend to outweigh the good. 

 The resources that go into making them. It takes up a large amounts of poop and grass to make even the simple farmplot, where the four poop could've gone to fertilizing berry bushes, six bushes if you're making a improved farm. Food production and space. Food wise, they offer more in sanity and health if the right crops are planted, but for filler, berry bushes outweigh them in usefulness and in saving space. Farms are a risk when it comes to some crockpot recipes, and the last thing you want is your meatballs to turn into stuffed eggplant. Berry bushes also spawn gobblers, a surprisingly good source of meat, and farms don't.

There are perks to having farms if you have a Wickerbottom or have enough time to wait for the plants to grow. If you have a bird and something you'd like to grow constantly, feeding the bird the crop gives you the ability to mass-produce that crop, which in many cases can be helpful. Again, Wickerbottom can use her book to grow the crops instantly, completely negating the wait time. Some helpful recipes like pierogies require vegetables and survival items like Fashion Melons need the farm plots to grow. Careful planning and preparation can make them useful, but not the most efficient. 

What do you think? Do you think it's worth putting down a farm in favor of other food sources, or are there way better things you could do with the materials and space? How many is too many, and should they even be made during early game where resources are slim?

Let's talk about it, yo.

[Serph]

IMO, Farms are only worth it if you have a Wicker on the team and even that is debatable.

[HeilerderWelten]

Personally I only build farms (the normal ones), because 4 of them look good next to my base.

 

If you build 4 improved farms and get a birdcage+bucket-o-poop+atleast 4 dragonfruit seeds,

you can get instantly 4 dragonfruits out of a full bucket of poop and you have still 2 uses left (3x manure, 4x logs, 2x bone shards)

So 4 dragonfruits+12 twigs recover:

health: 160

hunger: 300

sanity: 20

Not that bad I guess.

 

Lets just craft 4 improved farms:

stone: 16 (is basically nothing)

manure: 24 (just feed a pig, 4 monster meat and 40-80 flower petals,

you will get 40-80 manure in 40 seconds, than kill the werepig and get 2 meat and 1 pigskin)

gras: 40 (is quiet a lot of gras, but a default generated map should have enough gras for multiple people in the savanna bioms,

or just play the tumbleweed lottery in the desert, you will get a ton of gras, twigs, trinkets for gold and also gears)

 

If you place 1 firefly in the center of the 4 improved farms, they should be able to produce crops even in the night.

So after you get your 8 reeds for the birdcage, get 4 silk for the birdtrap, 4 monster meat, atleast 40 petals and 40 extra gras, you can power farm like a mad man, all other ingredients should be easy enough to get.

 

You can have a fully functional dragonpie machinery in your first 10 days of autumn (spring is even better because of the rain).

If you play Wicker and use her poop book, it gets even more ridiculous.

That beeing said, the dragonfruits are the only worthwhile thing, that the farms produce, carrots can be found more than enough in caves for the hutches, summer is easy enough with an endothermic fire/icebox + a thermal stone...so the dragonfruits are really the only good thing that we get.

That beeing said, pumpkins are a decent food raw and cooked, but there really should be done something with the eggplant and the corn.

The Eggplant crockpot dish: the Stuffed Eggplant is pretty much garbage:

Health: 3

Hunger: 37,5 (the same as a raw or cooked pumpkin)

Sanity: 5

You need 1 eggplant + 1 vegetable + 2 filler for that recipe.

Lets compare the values of the crockpot dish, to the ingedient values:

 

1x eggplant (health:8, hunger:25, sanity,0)

+

1 carrot (health:1,  hunger:12,5, sanity:0)

+

2 twigs (health:0, hunger:0, sanity:0)

=

Ingredients          = health: 9, hunger: 37,5, sanity: 0

Stuffed Eggplant = health: 3, hunger: 37,5, sanity: 5

That doesn't look very impressive, even with 2 twigs as filler!

You can also use a red, green or blue cap instead of the carrot, but:

1. With the blue cap you waste either 20 health or 10 sanity (depends if you eat it raw or cooked)

2. With the green cap you waste 15 sanity. (if you eat it cooked)

3. With the red cap you have the only decent vegetable to use, besides of carrots and sea weed...

and in both cases you won't get any bonus hunger points by cooking Stuffed Eggplant over eating the ingredients just raw/cooked and the sanity and health bonus is so small, that you can just ignore it.

 

Stuffed Eggplant should basically never be cooked, atleast with the stats it has now.

 

Now the corn recipe, Fish Tacos:

Health: 20

Hunger: 37,5 (the same as a raw or cooked pumpkin)

Sanity: 5

You need 1 corn + 1 fish + 2 filler for that recipe.

Lets compare the values of the crockpot dish, to the ingedient values:

 

1x corn (health:3, hunger:25, sanity,0)

+

1 fish (health:1,  hunger:12,5, sanity:0)

+

2 twigs (health:0, hunger:0, sanity:0)

=

Ingredients = health: 4, hunger: 37,5, sanity: 0

Fish Tacos = health: 20, hunger: 37,5, sanity: 5

That doesn't look very impressive either, even with 2 twigs as filler!

 

Fish Tacos shouldn't be cooked either, atleast with the current stats.

 

If you need health so badly, just make Fish Sticks.

You get 40 health with just 1 stick, 1 fish and 2 monster meat or just 2 ice.

 

tl;dr

Farms look good, Improved Farms are good, Dragon Fruits are very good,

Dragonpie is insanely good, Fish Tacos are not good and Stuffed Eggplant is only good,

if you try a "Stuffed Eggplant only Challenge" (you can only eat Stuffed Eggplants...forever!)

[Mday]

1) Farm (and bee box) doesn't work in winter. So to me it doesn't make much sense to build farms (and bee box) in the first autumn. I may collect grass/rock/poop during winter and build the farms in spring. Sometimes I get 1 basic farm to get a corn and make powder cake.

2) However if you have loads of players in the team to begin with, you may as well just get some farms and bee box too.

3) While carrots can be used as filler, so does mushroom and cactus.

4) When I build rabbit hutchs I begin with farming bunny puffs. For each set of 4 bunny puffs I farm I also get 20~30 carrots. That just how I get my carrots in large quantity.

5) For dragon fruit farming I like to have 20 farms so that I can make 20 fresh dragon pies at once. Good for a long 10 days trip in ruin clearing every single hostile mobs, or kill dragonfly solely.

6) I don't fully agree with the stuffed eggplant analysis lay down by HeilerderWelten here.

Lets say all you have in the ice box is 1 green cap and 1 eggplant.

Your first option is to make 1 cooked green cap and 1 Braised Eggplant. This result in 15 sanity 19 health and 25 hunger.

Your second option, the stuffed eggplant, give you 5 sanity 3 health and 37.5 hunger.

So first of all the difference here is the 2 twigs, 10 sanity, 16 health and 12.5 hunger. Next, I think the chooses here will depends on the situation. I won't rule out the stuffed eggplant for all case. Who cares about the 10 sanity when you are in desperate needs for hunger?

7) Hot Pumpkin provide a good 37.5 hunger. Sliced Pomegranate provide a good 20 health.

[HeilerderWelten]

46 minutes ago, Mday said:

6) I don't fully agree with the stuffed eggplant analysis lay down by HeilerderWelten here.

Lets say all you have in the ice box is 1 green cap and 1 eggplant.

Your first option is to make 1 cooked green cap and 1 Braised Eggplant. This result in 15 sanity 19 health and 25 hunger.

Your second option, the stuffed eggplant, give you 5 sanity 3 health and 37.5 hunger.

So first of all the difference here is the 2 twigs, 10 sanity, 16 health and 12.5 hunger. Next, I think the chooses here will depends on the situation. I won't rule out the stuffed eggplant for all case. Who cares about the 10 sanity when you are in desperate needs for hunger?

That is true, but by that logic even Ratatouille is good, if you only have 4 red caps,

that still doesn't make Stuffed Eggplant or Ratatouille a decent recipe, 97% of the time you shouldn't cook that crap.

And then there is something like Meatballs:

1x Monster Meat + 3 Ice

Ingredients = health: -1,5, hunger:    25,4, sanity: -10 (if Monster Meat is cooked)

Meatballs    = health:      3 hunger:   62,5, sanity: 5

Result:        = health: +1,5 hunger: +37,1 sanity: +15

That stat gain is crazy, the ingredients are very easy to get...and ice never spoils in the ice box.

 

There are clearly some recipes in the game, that are so bad, that you just should ignore them in almost all cases,

then there are some recipes, that are so insanely strong, that you can survive of them without any problem,

with only a minuscule amount of preparation...or even effort.

and then we have recipes like the Froggle Bunwich, a perfectly balanced food item.

Good spoil time (15 days), good amount of hunger for the used ingredients and 20 bonus health from it.

[Mday]

My point is there are cases where you want to make that stuffed eggplant. As rare as it is, it is useful under certain circumstances. We all know 3 ice + 1 meat= OP meatball.

In DST, individual player don't really have that total control on what is available in the world/ice box. Someone could have burn your spider dens, ice box could be emptied within a day or 2 before you notice it. You just come to this flower thinking you can stand there whole day getting butterfly wing, the next second a noob come by and pick up that flower. That useless stuffed eggplant along with all the other useless things in the game may just be the very little thing that keep you alive. 

[werlpolf]

farms should be able to consume more then 1 seed at a time. They could then let grow a fixed number of food at the same time, but slower.

Example you put 10 seeds on a farm. The farm grows 2 carrots and 1 water melon at a 1.5 times longer then usual. When they got farmed, the farm uses another 3 of the 7 left seeds to grow another food again.

Else, how many of you already pointed it out, the farms will take alot of time and organisation stuff in order to get some food. Then better walking somewhere around and pick food or mine ice ....

Alternatively, farms could get bigger, so we can plant manually several seeds at the same time.

[BeastNips]

I don't NEED farms at all, but I tends to make them towards the end of Winter, ready for Spring. I usually keep a dragon fruit patch as a reserve food supply as they don't spoil until picked, and only take twigs to make Dragon Pie. These usually just stay fully grown on the farm plot unless I'm short on morsels or big meats (sometimes in Spring), or I need to restore a lot of health.

My primary food is usually Bacon and Eggs until I have bee boxes for Honey Ham. This is by far the least effort for the most reward if you take into account that a Honey Ham operation (or B&E) can be set up pretty much anywhere on the map. I rarely resort to Dragon Pie to restore health if I'm using Honey Ham as there is only a difference of 10 health points.

I then work on a second patch for pumpkins to make pumpkin cookies, which are the real advantage of farms and why I always have them. They are great for sanity and restore the same amount of hunger as meatballs while not decreasing health like taffy. They require 1 pumpkin, 2 honey and one filler. The filler can be from a berry bush (or ice if it's winter) and 2 honey is more efficient than taffy's 3 honey for the same sanity gain (as well as higher hunger gain).

Overall, pumpkin cookies are just awesome. While all their advtanages can be gained in other ways, they are really easy to manage for what they give.

[KitcheVadimas]

In their current state, a base with several people needs 9-12 farms, and it's still far easier to get buttloads of meat than a decent amount of veggies, so vegetarian mod characters are very difficult to keep alive, sometimes more so than Wes depending on the wordgen and team skill.  

I have heard the suggestion of getting multiple veggies in 1 harvest.  I think 1-3 for normal farms, and 2-4 for improved farms sounds OK, with about a 10% chance for the highest number, maybe less.

I have given the suggestion of better veggie-only meals, so there's more 'main meals' than eggs and bacon and honey ham.  The current good veggie meals are Dragonpie and Pumpkin Cookies.  Every other veggie-only meal is varying levels of meh.  I don't really pay enough attention to the numbers of what goes into food compared to what goes out to really know what meals to suggest here.  I guess I'll look up some actual vegetarian meals for ideas, then edit post....