alchemy on crops?

[inzain]

is there a way to steer the metal type associated with a crop towards what you want? for example, my cabbage seeds are going salt atm, and i would really love them to be heading lead. is there a way to steer them, or must i just buy more at 25% each and retry till i get some that are highest in lead after the first harvest?

[staxjax]

Get more 25/25/25/25 seeds and try again. You used to be able to use dross from smelting, but not anymore.

[inzain]

thanks, ok imll do that then,

also, whatever is the highest once replanted over and over, eventually that will hit 100%? i read seven's guide and he mentions using 6-8 fields per alchemical type/per crop, i assume thats outdated now as they removed the changing alchemy with stuff?
i mean i get that having 6 random chances to get 6 different possible increases is better than just one, but either with 1 or 100, your crop will "eventually" still get to 100% yes?

and finally, i have a cereal crop that just put out 31.16 mercury, and 31.14 sulphur, if i grow this say in 6-8 fields is there a chance the sulphur can get higher than the mercury? or no matter what, will the mercury always be the leading agent on this crop because its higher?

thanks for the replies, its appreciated.

[_Gunnar]

From my understanding, the elemental concentrations change randomly each generation - and can go up and down, no matter what the starting point is.

So the reason sevenless suggests using many fields is that then you will hopefully always get enough seeds that grow in the direction you want to replant all the fields (since fields generally produce more seeds than you need to replant them). On average half the fields will grow in the (approximate) direction you want, and more fields means that you will get better growth of purity, since you also want the other elemental concentrations to go down

[inzain]

From my understanding, the elemental concentrations change randomly each generation - and can go up and down, no matter what the starting point is.

So the reason sevenless suggests using many fields is that then you will hopefully always get enough seeds that grow in the direction you want to replant all the fields (since fields generally produce more seeds than you need to replant them). On average half the fields will grow in the (approximate) direction you want, and more fields means that you will get better growth of purity, since you also want the other elemental concentrations to go down

well, this explains a lot then, thanks sir. i was under the impression, and from personal experience that the highest keep going higher, and the others kept slowly dropping, this has been my experience so far, but who knows i may have just been lucky ok so i will test this over the next few harvests by growing 4 crops of each type im after and see how it goes. thanks for the info.

[Procne]

We assumed here that the chance for crop to increase its highest alchemical component is 50%. But that highly depends on implementation of the randomization system. Randomizing 4-dimensional vector with constant coords sum limit is not that easy for probability caulculations, and there are many ways to do it. But I think that in most of those ways the chance to increase highest component gets slightly reduced as you are nearing its max

[_Gunnar]

We assumed here that the chance for crop to increase its highest alchemical component is 50%. But that highly depends on implementation of the randomization system. Randomizing 4-dimensional vector with constant coords sum limit is not that easy for probability caulculations, and there are many ways to do it. But I think that in most of those ways the chance to increase highest component gets slightly reduced as you are nearing its max

I think loftar has said in the past that it is +/- 5 on each element and then renormalized, which to me would be the most logical way to do it. While this changes the distribution of purity changes at different initial purities, this doesnt change the fundamental symmetry which means that there is a 50% chance of improving.

[It could have been changed however, e.g. when he changed it so fertilizers didnt matter for purity, but i doubt it and i would be very surprised & interested if someone can prove that he has implemented a formula that pushes it preferentially towards the highest element. I havent farmed for a month or so, gave up for RP reasons, so I am ready to be corrected, but I doubt I will be.]

[Procne]

We assumed here that the chance for crop to increase its highest alchemical component is 50%. But that highly depends on implementation of the randomization system. Randomizing 4-dimensional vector with constant coords sum limit is not that easy for probability caulculations, and there are many ways to do it. But I think that in most of those ways the chance to increase highest component gets slightly reduced as you are nearing its max

I think loftar has said in the past that it is +/- 5 on each element and then renormalized, which to me would be the most logical way to do it. While this changes the distribution of purity changes at different initial purities, this doesnt change the fundamental symmetry which means that there is a 50% chance of improving.

[It could have been changed however, e.g. when he changed it so fertilizers didnt matter for purity, but i doubt it and i would be very surprised & interested if someone can prove that he has implemented a formula that pushes it preferentially towards the highest element. I havent farmed for a month or so, gave up for RP reasons, so I am ready to be corrected, but I doubt I will be.]

See, with this system the chance to increase highest component is the lower the higher this component is.

Take this example:
We have (5,5,5,85) seeds, and they get (+5,+5, -5, +5) bonus. Before normalization you get (10,10,0,90), which is normalized to something like (9.1,9.1,0,81.8). So even when last component was initially increased, it was finally lowered due to normalization. At very high values you basically need that other components are initially lowered, so in this case practically only (-,-,-,+) change increases purity.

[_Gunnar]

With this system, although the mean is to reduce purity at higher purities, the median purity gain/loss is 0, which is what defines "half of the fields' purity will go up". Thats the point i'm making. You can see this by symmetry, and your example is not a counterexample.

[Procne]

With this system, although the mean is to reduce purity at higher purities, the median purity gain/loss is 0, which is what defines "half of the fields' purity will go up". Thats the point i'm making. You can see this by symmetry, and your example is not a counterexample.

No, once you have (5,5,5,85) seeds then the only way to increase its purity is to increase last component's purity, simply because it alone has so high impact on it. I'm pretty sure that if we took those values and ran simulations with the system you described we would get lowered purity in majority of cases.