Salem

Hello all,

So I've built my first claim, keeping it just small enough to cost 4 silver upkeep instead of 5, and I have a few general questions.

1. What are the first farms you guys plant? I've seen a few threads talking about dozens of cereal farms; do you guys do this on your claim or off it?
2. Is it worth building a turkey coop, bread oven, or kiln early on, or concentrating on farms first? I'm also worried about having to pave the area to set up the bread oven, as that'll pop me up on the map.
3. Speaking of being noticed on the map, I've leveled a decent area and fenced it in. Will the grass eventually grow back (even the grass under the fence)?

Thanks for any suggestions!

~Gerdaeor [Roanoke]

1. What are the first farms you guys plant? I've seen a few threads talking about dozens of cereal farms; do you guys do this on your claim or off it?

Start with Cereal to get the hang of farming.
Cereal is good for making Oatmeal Crackers (easy to make labor food), and also for filling up your compost bins with those seeds.

2. Is it worth building a turkey coop, bread oven, or kiln early on, or concentrating on farms first? I'm also worried about having to pave the area to set up the bread oven, as that'll pop me up on the map.

Bread Oven is an absolute necessity to do something with your crops. If you have space you should make 2 ovens since it only requires bricks (which are easy to make).
Kiln is obviously required so you can make Bread Ovens, also making Urns for good storage!

3. Speaking of being noticed on the map, I've leveled a decent area and fenced it in. Will the grass eventually grow back (even the grass under the fence)?

It'll grow back, give it some time though.

Gerdaeor wrote:Hello all,

So I've built my first claim, keeping it just small enough to cost 4 silver upkeep instead of 5, and I have a few general questions.

1. What are the first farms you guys plant? I've seen a few threads talking about dozens of cereal farms; do you guys do this on your claim or off it?
2. Is it worth building a turkey coop, bread oven, or kiln early on, or concentrating on farms first? I'm also worried about having to pave the area to set up the bread oven, as that'll pop me up on the map.
3. Speaking of being noticed on the map, I've leveled a decent area and fenced it in. Will the grass eventually grow back (even the grass under the fence)?

Thanks for any suggestions!

~Gerdaeor [Roanoke]

0. Nearly everything in Salem uses floating point numbers, so there's no point in keeping the upkeep just below 5s, you still pay 4.9s. Works for other stuff, too.

1. All of them if possible. But cereal is probably the most useful, the hay is important to tier up your fields (increases influence) and the flour is used for several important foods. You can plant cabbages for cabbage cakes (bb) or pumpkins for pumpkin pies (phlegm), too. Plus both can be eaten raw. Cotton is for money at the start (15s/cotton cloth to the npc in Boston) and a few other things. It's fairly unimportant in the beginning. I don't like corn very much, though my corn fields are not yet T3, then it maybe will become useful.
For higher tiers always replant your fields exactly with the same stuff, e.g. always use the same field for cabbage, until the coloured bar (different crop=different bar) gets to 100, then switch. Check out Salem Wiki: agriculture for more info.

2. Turkeys are a lot of work, they eat a lot! Build a coop only if everything else runs smoothly and you got a lot of leftovers. Kilns are very useful for urns (they don't take much ground space and are easy to make) and gardening pots (get "Horticulture" first, needs 75 stocks&cultivars) and are easy to make, built it! You'll need a bread oven, too, no way around it. You need 25 bricks, so fire up that kiln.

3. You'll be discovered sooner or later, you gotta deal with it. Store valueable stuff on alts, build defences, etc.; i.e. make it uneconomical to raid you, if your base is not worth the trouble you will be left alone. Braziers do permanent damage, if your base doesn't give enough profit to cover that it will be a loss for a raider. Most people are smart enough to do the math.

Thanks for the info guys, especially the floating point numbers, I wasn't aware of that.

I've fenced the area in (with a mine to boot), so I'm just trying to maximize what little space I have. Guess I'll get to work on a kiln and bread oven!

~Gerdaeor