Farms and how to fix them

[StarvedKasad]

So after a lot of tinkering and searching for mechanics on both DS and DST,I came to the realization that farms simply suck. Not only are they expensive to create (the advanced ones,because god help you make food out of the basic farms),they require seeds to function which leads to an infinite cycle of feed my bird my food so it creates seeds so I can get some food out of my food.

On the other hand after mushrom planters were added I was astonished.Due to the fact I have a pig village with a bait pen dedicated to farming trees,I always end up with at least 2 treeguards in the vast forest which in turn ends in a hilarious death battle in which ultimately the treeguards lose and I gain a lot of living logs.And I do mean a lot (like 10 every day or so). So let's make a quick comparison between mushroom planters:

Farms pros:

-Can sustain their crops during winter 

-Is a means to produce vegetables (fillers,exotic recipies) for your crock pot

-Can be sped up using rot/manure/white manure

-Can be used to create a steady supply of the second most amazing recipe in the game,dragonpie which is also useful during winter

Farms cons:

-Each requires a seed

-Will wither and die if left unprotected during summer in the overworld

-Wastes a lot of your time and is not a reliable food source (produces too little food)

-Dragonfruit has a 10% chance of appearing,meaning you'll have to wait on average 10 days before it appears on any of your farms and will also require even more days to fill your farms with more dragonfruits unless you have lots of manure or are wickerbottom.

-Dragonpie overheats you during summer

-Is very expensive to build (rock is "hard" to find...get it? )

 

Mushroom planter cons:

-Are initially hard to get (tree guards are at first rare and hard to kill)

-Require an initial mushroom to begin the mushroompocalypse

-Crops rot during winter

-Might require a crockpot to turn them into fillers

Mushroom planter pros:

-Can mass produce them after a few seasons

-Can function during winter in caves

-Can multiply the production by catching spores which are totally free and abundant in the caves

-Mushroom trees respawn even if you cut most of them down so your source of spores/mushrooms never end .(3 days each during specific seasons).

-Can stack up to 4 mushrooms in a few days making them ideal for food horders and people who generally love to use mushrooms instead of vegetables (100% of the player base).

-Mushrooms themselves have very positive effects and can be used in a variety of ways

-Can stack dozens of mushrooms with 1/4 of the effort required to farm veggies.Mushrooms can stack up to 40 on the fridge.They have around three times the durability of veggies(!).

 

So my question is,can we somehow buff the ultra lame farms as they are now? I'm just tossing ideas here but ... perhaps the devs could add a highly advanced farm similar to mushroom planters which requires living logs instead of simple logs ,marbles instead of rock and produces multiple veggies in a similar fashion to the mushroom planters?

Or even make them randomly generate crops every few days so that way you don't have to waste so much time in something that should give you at least equal amounts of food and positive effects to hunting animals for jerky or gathering honey.

I know it sounds egoistical,but personally I'd like to see some farm buff overhaul to give meaning to the phrase "farming's as honest as honest work gets".Farms should give back the time I built them and added their seeds,not require a constant babysitting around birds.The veggies should come at a pace equal to the most common food resources in the game (meat,jerkies,eggs,honey now even mushrooms can be mass produced). They are the least favorable food source and this seems unfair. Plus I love farming.

 

Thanks for reading .

[Diaboliko]

Mushroom planters are good as is. You also don't seem to know that by planting spores on them you will get 6 mushrooms in the end, instead of 4. Evil trees are also common enough to provide you with a few farms if you want them, however I use them as a mid-late game medkits to do not bother with going for blue mushrooms at night.

Farms are just that little thing that you wanna get before you start terraforming everything around. They are also a must have for keeping beefalo as a pet. Their early-game potential is low since theres simply better uses of your time, while mid game potential is huge. Currently, though, they act only as dragonpie farms, since noone cares about balancing and fixing existing stuff. Oh well. Live with it.

[Donke60]

3 hours ago, Diaboliko said:

Currently, though, they act only as dragonpie farms

Thats a meta thing farm foods that are pretty great are pumpkins, corn, watermelons,durians

Actually if you run low on s eeds thats your problem I never do but I run around a lot and collect them for later

[Diaboliko]

5 minutes ago, Donke60 said:

Thats a meta thing farm foods that are pretty great are pumpkins, corn, watermelons,durians

In late game I come to base mostly to drop full inventory + all this supply bundles that expand my inventory OR to heal up(since I usually leave blue mushrooms in freezer). Dragonpies act like medkit, rather then food for me.

[Donke60]

3 hours ago, Diaboliko said:

In late game I come to base mostly to drop full inventory + all this supply bundles that expand my inventory OR to heal up(since I usually leave blue mushrooms in freezer). Dragonpies act like medkit, rather then food for me.

I use butter muffins or caps for healing for me 

[Lumina]

Mushrooms farm require additional living log time to time, same as the farm require rot or manure. But having rot/manure is usually easier than having living log.

Also, i usually end with a lot of seeds, so i don't see it really difficult to plant things, except if you want specifics crops, and here i agree this is a little too tedious, but more because of the bird cage than because the farm. If you don't care of which crop you have, you could have some farm without too much efforts, you have less maintenance to do (you don't have to put manure/rot too often), you could speed up the growing process in case of emergency.

 

So maybe mushroom farm is a little too good. But classic farm is ok for me, it works fine.

[zzKratoszz]

As someone who has only ever made 1 farm in DST, and that was to make a scare crow. Farms are actually a lot better than I want to give them credit for. Sure they might suck if you spend all of fall only to get 1 harvest before winter. But the crops can give you a decent amount of food, even with random seeds.

The only real turn off is the initial cost which is a 1 time fee. Poop is easy to farm with werepigs, rock and grass should take no longer than a day to farm a decent amount each. You can probably fill the ice fling o matic's range in 3 days of farming resources. All you have to do is not eat the seeds you find everywhere and plant them after your harvest.

Probably the biggest downside to farms is the sheer amount of food you already get just playing the game. Farming some silk from spiders? Now you have enough meat for the rest of the season and filler for meat balls from your juicy berries. Just killed Deerclops? Now all your drying racks are full. If it wasn't for that bird stealing all my seeds I probably would use them more my self.

[StarvedKasad]

9 hours ago, Diaboliko said:

Mushroom planters are good as is. You also don't seem to know that by planting spores on them you will get 6 mushrooms in the end, instead of 4. Evil trees are also common enough to provide you with a few farms if you want them, however I use them as a mid-late game medkits to do not bother with going for blue mushrooms at night.

Farms are just that little thing that you wanna get before you start terraforming everything around. They are also a must have for keeping beefalo as a pet. Their early-game potential is low since theres simply better uses of your time, while mid game potential is huge. Currently, though, they act only as dragonpie farms, since noone cares about balancing and fixing existing stuff. Oh well. Live with it.

Honestly there are so many pros on mushroom planters I forgot to write some like the fact that spores do provide more yield.I don't understand why you need farms to have a beefalo,unless it's specifically to feed them dragonpies. I don't use my beefalo for fighting,just for transportation and twigs are more than enough (which I have in abundance).

 

The only and I do mean the only way I can see farms becoming better than mushroom planters is if you have a poop factory. I do have one in Don't starve,it's basically a flower farm.I provide dozens of flowers everyday to my pigs (or werewolves) and can easily have a chest filled with poop within a few days.I suspect something similar can happen in DST as well.Or as someone has shown,you can use a teleportation method of stacking koelefants into a pen.

But even when I could have that much poop,the time and space consumption of farms,the materials needed to sustain the farms..it's just not worth it.Jerky,honey,bacon and eggs or turkey are just light years ahead in efficiency.

[Myself49]

29 minutes ago, StarvedKasad said:

the only way I can see farms becoming better than mushroom planters is if you have a poop factory

Literally just gather like 80 lightbulbs in the biome that grows a lot of them in a few minutes and then feed 4 monster meat to a pig and let him turn all the lightbubls into poop in a minute.

[StarvedKasad]

25 minutes ago, Myself49 said:

Literally just gather like 80 lightbulbs in the biome that grows a lot of them in a few minutes and then feed 4 monster meat to a pig and let him turn all the lightbubls into poop in a minute.

That's the scary part actually.My bee farm can generate that much amount of flowers in 2-3 days in 2~3 screens wide,while lightbulbs are randomly generated and scattered.

P.S. Did you know lightbulbs propagate every 5 days if you burn some of them down? o.O

Was actually thinking if I could somehow control how they regrow into the world so I can concentrate them into one place inside the caves!

[Mr.Tarunio]

10 hours ago, StarvedKasad said:

(tree guards are at first rare and hard to kill)

There not hard, they just have 3000 hp, you can out run them to place with tenticle /shrug.
If you befriend pigs and chop a forest, you might get like 2 guards.

[CarlZalph]

1 hour ago, StarvedKasad said:

P.S. Did you know lightbulbs propagate every 5 days if you burn some of them down? o.O

Was actually thinking if I could somehow control how they regrow into the world so I can concentrate them into one place inside the caves!

From the regrowthmanager component the prefabs being regrown will follow these rules in order:

1) After a configurable amount of time (might be broken right now, internally still using a linked list and prefabs show variable delays) the prefab will try to respawn itself.

2) It will pick a position {spot} with a random degree and radius (20 units or 5 turfs) away to try to spawn the prefab.

3) It will do a series of conditionals to see if it's suitable to place:

1. If there are no players near the spot within a radius of (76.8 units or 19.2 turfs).
2. If the spot's tile is the same as the original tile's.
3. If there are no roads at the spot.
4. There are no entities within a radius of (3 units or 0.75 turfs).
5. There are no walls nor structures within a radius of (20 units or 5 turfs).
6. Place the destroyed prefab at the spot and remove from linked list.

4) If conditionals pass, then place the destroyed prefab and remove it from the linked list.  Otherwise retry at a later point in time.

 

Something big to note is that the way the random spot is calculated has a bias towards the starting position, and may not be desired/an accidental bug.

You can see more information into the math here for the circle point bias.

[StarvedKasad]

5 hours ago, CarlZalph said:

From the regrowthmanager component the prefabs being regrown will follow these rules in order:

1) After a configurable amount of time (might be broken right now, internally still using a linked list and prefabs show variable delays) the prefab will try to respawn itself.

2) It will pick a position {spot} with a random degree and radius (20 units or 5 turfs) away to try to spawn the prefab.

3) It will do a series of conditionals to see if it's suitable to place:

1. If there are no players near the spot within a radius of (76.8 units or 19.2 turfs).
2. If the spot's tile is the same as the original tile's.
3. If there are no roads at the spot.
4. There are no entities within a radius of (3 units or 0.75 turfs).
5. There are no walls nor structures within a radius of (20 units or 5 turfs).
6. Place the destroyed prefab at the spot and remove from linked list.

4) If conditionals pass, then place the destroyed prefab and remove it from the linked list.  Otherwise retry at a later point in time.

 

Something big to note is that the way the random spot is calculated has a bias towards the starting position, and may not be desired/an accidental bug.

You can see more information into the math here for the circle point bias.

That's pretty impressive.

7 hours ago, jantonio said:

There not hard, they just have 3000 hp, you can out run them to place with tenticle /shrug.
If you befriend pigs and chop a forest, you might get like 2 guards.

This actually improves my opinion about farms over mushrooms for most if not all cases.

[CaptainChaotica]

I love the mushroom farms.  They're so small, you can conveniently put them anywhere--heck, I put my first one in the main living area of the camp rather than by the other crops.  Next to to the firepit, right on the fancy carpet.  : P (In real life this'd be an awful idea 'cos carpet + MOLD, are you _kidding_ me? but here...)  Now I can finally farm my own mushrooms in Don't Starve too, like I've been doing for years in Kingdom of Loathing!   

The only problem is, yeah, living logs are not that easily renewable of a resource--it seems every time you really _want_ treeguards to spawn they don't, and then they DO spawn when you're low on health in the middle of the night.  Heh.  Stupid question--how do you GET spores into your mushroom farm?  Is it a living-in-the-caves thing only?  I wouldn't know.  At any rate, having blue or green mushrooms you can pick for healing/sanity right at your camp and _at any time of day_ IS pretty cool.

As for the regular farm...I dunno, maybe I'm an un-optimal player (what am I saying, I KNOW I am) but I kinda like and enjoy _all_ the different crops.  Whether using them for filler or something fancier (such as saving pumpkins for lanterns or scarecrow-heads), they're all welcome in my book.  If you want to see them go bonkers yield-wise, just have improved farms in the spring.  The same rain on the plain that makes you go insane in the membrane can make it so seeds planted that morning are ready the SAME evening!  It takes some time to get going, but once you have several farm plots, you'll find your icebox slots quickly filling up.

The only crops I don't really use are durians, since they work like monster meat in the crock-pot and I already have plenty of monster meat.  I tend to put my durians on the ground to become useful rot...or, a nice snack for crazy rabbits that I'm gonna eat later anyway. Whatever.

...Notorious

[ShadowDuelist]

In a world I still have (but got bored of it and rarely hop in) I made a cave base with Maxwell, and created about 22 farms in a natural light area, out of the plentiful rocks from earthquakes, and petrified forests that started to plague my world after day 100. The poop can be created in industrial amounts with just one werepig and a million light bulbs..

For the first part they sucked as I got random crops and I had to keep feeding the bird, and hoping to get at least 2 seeds. This was the main issue with my farms becoming annoying. Once all the 22 farms got to have dragonfruits, then it all turned into easy mode.
The farms had food there waiting for me all year long, and despite not growing during winter, once you reach a certain aumount of farms per mouth to feed, it still gets you through winter.

The only real limiting factor to my point of view, is the bird/seed ratio. I believe that just by increasing the amount of seeds the bird provides the farms will become stronger. I'd change the random factor to always get at least 2 seeds of the specific vegetable, and with a random chance of maybe getting 3. This change alone would have made my whole experience a lot easier.

PS: I always just make 4 or 5 mushroom planters as medkits, I never thought about making them in large quantities to be used as a main food source since I'm a living log hoarder (for the swords). I'll probably try that and see if it's overall better than the farms.

[CaptainChaotica]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I use my mushroom farms for.  Only as a filler source if I'm desperate.  I hardly ever feed my bird anything but (cooked) monster meat for eggs, and dragonfruit when I have at least one to spare.  Some people are obsesssed with getting ALL their farms churning out dragonfruits and nothing but dragonfruits; I myself am glad to have a reliable source of eggs.    (Pierogis heal 40 HP each with NO downside.  That's not to be sneezed at!)

Also, if I DO want filler for some other meal besides dragonpie, it's a total waste to use a dragonfruit for that.  So it's good to have a variety around.  Especially if you're playing as Wigfrid!

...Notorious

[ShadowDuelist]

3 minutes ago, CaptainChaotica said:

Also, if I DO want filler for some other meal besides dragonpie, it's a total waste to use a dragonfruit for that.  So it's good to have a variety around.  Especially if you're playing as Wigfrid!

Agreed!
Wigfrid is clearly the character that benefits less from the whole pain of farms, would be a lot better just planting in and out berry bushes (to prevent disease), keeping a good number of mushroom planters and maybe avoiding farms altogether. All she cares about from the vegan world anyway, is to get fillers for the meaty stuff she butchered.

[CaptainChaotica]

...although I still make farms when playing as her anyway.  : P  I just don't prioritize making them very _soon_...or very many.  Heh.

Then other people come to my server and suddenly my small farm area has grown entire new rows, so hey! 

...Notorious

[Sicko Hog]

The problem with farms is, unless you're getting really lucky with your crops (like, constant eggplants and pumpkins), then a few berry bushes are way more efficient and cost way less resources. Why throw a bunch of grass, manure, and rocks into making farms for that small chance of getting good crops, when three berry bushes give just 1 less hunger than the best farm crop, and a single juicy berry bush gets you 54 hunger per harvest.

When the game throws food at you from every direction I don't get why people stop to make farms.

[Donke60]

3 hours ago, JellyUltra said:

The problem with farms is, unless you're getting really lucky with your crops (like, constant eggplants and pumpkins), then a few berry bushes are way more efficient and cost way less resources. Why throw a bunch of grass, manure, and rocks into making farms for that small chance of getting good crops, when three berry bushes give just 1 less hunger than the best farm crop, and a single juicy berry bush gets you 54 hunger per harvest.

When the game throws food at you from every direction I don't get why people stop to make farms.

I'm just one of those people that like a varied diet picked up from warly

[StarvedKasad]

I'm testing a few mods now that improve farms.I'll get a conclusion on which one seems the best.It should either increase the cost of creating farms and also improving their efficiency,or have a bird producing more seeds when fed vegetables.The later seems more balanced.

Bird types that produce more seeds from specific vegetables seems also a nice idea.For instance the fire bird would have a bias towards dragonpie  ,the crow a bias towards corn (they actually do),canaries can produce more manure and so on.Well canaries are already special,so you can see where I'm going with this.

[Lumina]

Some time ago, i made a mod adding an improved bird cage

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=525966989

The recipe could be a little hard (now that steel hard have an use), but it's an option if someone wants a better bird cage without making it too easy.

[hkhm]

On 2/10/2017 at 3:54 PM, CaptainChaotica said:

The only crops I don't really use are durians.

for me, durians always become fruit medleys.

i always have my characters start out the day with a nice fruit medley and a buttermuffin. and if i am shipwrecked, a cup of coffee.

[CaptainChaotica]

I don't know what is, but I hardly ever _have_ enough types of fruit at once to make a proper fruit medley...(in Shipwrecked, it's a bit easier of course).  Otherwise I would totally do that more often.

Anyway.  I could maybe see a mod where, say, you get more than just one piece of fruit/veggie out of a farm plot--'cos, _really_--but it takes a little longer?  I mean, you'd want it still balanced.  I'm thinking like, a plant that has more than one of the same type growing on it, and when you harvest them it disappears.  Nothing where it miraculously still grows in winter, unless you make some kind of greenhousey shelter over it that takes resources you might want to use on other things instead.  (I know there are mods out there that do the latter part, but I'm not sure how expensive the protected farms are to make, so...)

...Notorious

[Destros09]

15 hours ago, hkhm said:

durians.

They are how you make a vegan wigfred