PSA: You CAN place the sprinkler. Nettle Info and Sprinkler x Nettle Discussion.

[Duxe]

I'm already exhausted seeing that posted every few hours somewhere on here. You CAN place the sprinkler, it just has to be near one of the watery lake biomes because when you place it, it extends a pipe from itself into the water, the range of how far it can be placed from the water is roughly 1.5x the active radius it has when you place it.

Note: If you have the Geometric Placement mod turned on, it allows for placement of the sprinkler anywhere there is space - this will cause your game to crash as normally this type of placement is not allowed.

Now onto some nettle facts.

Nettle Facts:

• Nettle is found in the deep jungle and poison jungle (called gas jungle in prefabs) biomes, namely anywhere the leafy border exists on your display.
• Wild nettle only grows in the humid season (the one with the fog).
• Wild nettle can be dug up and replanted in which case it has to be fertilized. It still only grows in humid season after being replanted.
• Currently there seems to be a bug with fertilizing the nettle, if you fertilize in mild or lush season, nothing happens and then the fertilization resets at the start of each season, so the only way to get it to work is fertilizing the nettle at the start of humid season - then it will grow.
• Nettle grows every 4 days after you fertilize it.
• On the island where the Pugalisk spawns, there is always two massive spawns of nettle in the jungle (like 10-15 in each set). It seems to be a constant world gen set piece. I have never not seen it on one of my maps.

Now comes the interesting sprinkler part. Credit where it is due, I never would of thought to mess around with this until @Zinglon wrote that he suspects the sprinkler is supposed to be used in unison with nettle. He was absolutely correct.

If you plant nettle within the range of a sprinkler, then fertilize it and keep the sprinkler on it will grow every 4 days in any season. 

• At the start of the next season, the nettle will be fertilizable, you do not need to fertilize it after the initial time you did. It regrows as long as the sprinkler is running. [Don't know if that is intended.]
• It has to be fertilized the first time it is planted. It will not grow by just being watered from the sprinkler.
• I do not know if the sprinkler must be on the entire time or just when the nettle is about to grow.
• Sprinklers are bugged at the moment, although placeable, if they run out of fuel, the "Turn On" option still appears, and then if you turn it on, it will run indefinitely on no fuel.

I thought sprinklers were pretty useless before this, and although I don't think nettle is of huge importance, I like the idea of being able to make a year round nettle farm. [I do understand that sprinklers + farms would be a thing, but I think most people make so many farms the growth rate of the plants is of no importance, especially if it takes fuel to run the sprinklers. Also, its not like your base will always be right next to a water source, so unless they add piping of some sort [oxygen not included pipe overlay intensifies] its not really convenient.]

I'd love to hear some other peoples opinion on sprinklers.

 

[Zinglon]

Aha. Thanks a lot for the info! Thought it has similar mechanism like flingomatics (without any source or condition for functionality).

In my opinion, a sprinkler is almost a must. You need to keep them with waters. Otherwise kettle vines never regrow. In reminiscence of my only successful moment of regrowing them without a sprinkler, raining almost constantly through the season is important.

[kiwikenobi]

If all of that about the nettles and stuff is true, I think that the sprinkler needs to be given some kind of description that makes it more clear that A. it needs to be built near a lake and B. that it's not intended for your farms or berry bushes or anything, that it's intended for nettles. Because the crafting menu description just says something like "waters plants." And Wilson's reaction to it as a default object with no description yet is humorously unhelpful.

[MrNathanos]

Excuse me but where have u found the red gem for the alloy ?

[kiwikenobi]

I found mine by breaking pots in the ruins with a hammer.

[Zeklo]

35 minutes ago, kiwikenobi said:

If all of that about the nettles and stuff is true, I think that the sprinkler needs to be given some kind of description that makes it more clear that A. it needs to be built near a lake and B. that it's not intended for your farms or berry bushes or anything, that it's intended for nettles. Because the crafting menu description just says something like "waters plants."

The description is fine. It waters plants. The nettle is a plant. It's not exclusive to nettles.

[kiwikenobi]

I think it could at least be clearer that it needs to be placed near the water to work. I, like many other people, thought the sprinkler must be broken because it could not be placed anywhere that I tried, since my first instinct was to place it near my farms and berry bushes in the middle of the town.

[Duxe]

@kiwikenobi It is not necessarily "intended" for nettles. In my post I talk about this in the last paragraph. In my opinion it is most useful when combined with nettles, particularly within Hamlet. I think many of us that play tend to go over the top by end game and have farms plots or berry bushes in major excess of what we really need so there isn't a need to "speed them up" with water. I have not tested their interactions with the sprinkler however. If the sprinkler makes it so farm plots and berry bushes grow faster and never need to be fertilized again, and that is its actual purpose - that anything it is used on doesn't need to be fertilized further, it is actually quite good. That would mean anything you would use for fertilizing things in the sprinklers range could just be used to fuel the sprinkler and there isn't a [big or possibly any] net loss of time spent fertilizing vs. fueling the sprinkler or net loss of required fuel vs. fertilizer.

On the note of it needing to be placed near water... I've been thinking since we have alloy, why not allow us to make pipes? I was joking before about the ONI pipe overlay coming to this game buuut if there was simply an item in the crafting menu right next to the sprinkler that required just one alloy that was called "faucet pipe" or something and it would place exactly the same way as the sprinkler but then what would happen is if you had one of these faucets placed, you could "turn on" water flow after it was placed, and then the next faucet pipe or sprinkler could be connected to it and so on. So like a way to place sprinklers wherever? The only thing that annoys me a decent bit is that the pipe that extends from sprinklers prevents anything from being placed on it.

Edit: And I think the sprinkler would be more useful in RoG or SW. Come to think of it... you couldn't place it in RoG... unless they allow you to place it near ponds? And in SW would it even connect to saltwater?

[kiwikenobi]

@Duxe It didn't occur to me to think of using it in RoG and SW. If it could work with ponds and/or seawater, it would potentially be a very useful item.

I think that it's at least partially intended for nettles, if nettles are absolutely unable to grow when transplanted without the use of the sprinkler. But maybe that's not how it works, or not how it will work in the final release.

And I really think that changing the crafting menu description of the sprinkler to something like "uses water to water plants" or "waters plants, but needs water" would make it more clear how to use it without being too straightforward and hand-holdy like "build this near a lake" since Don't Starve thrives on not explaining much to the player. But I think in this case, a little hint would be very helpful. Then again, now that this discussion has taken place, anyone stumped by the sprinkler can just search the internet and find this information, so, maybe it's not necessary anymore.

[Duxe]

1 minute ago, kiwikenobi said:

I think that it's at least partially intended for nettles, if nettles are absolutely unable to grow when transplanted without the use of the sprinkler. But maybe that's not how it works, or not how it will work in the final release.

That is not how it works. Nettles do regrow without the use of the sprinkler if dug up and replanted then fertilized in the humid season. The sprinklers allow them to grow year round, as otherwise they refuse to grow in lush/mild season. Also the fact that currently with the use of the sprinklers the fertilization isn't needed may be a bug.

But I do see where you are coming from with the hint towards water. It was definitely not something "simple" to figure out. It's description could be changed to be a hint towards it needing to be near water to help a little. I'm not opposed to that whatsoever.