Please help a hermit learn the farming secrets

[Sollar]

So, I started playing this game learning stuff on the go. Now I just settled and started growing some crops. I have some questions though:

1. Fertilizers - is there a point when it's useless to add any fertilizers as there is no benefit, and can I see this point in the growing stages ? (I feel like I'm throwing 500+ influence on an already 50 influence field at different growth stages, but after I harvest it I only get 80total influence)

2. Seeds purity - I keep sorting my seeds, replanting only the higher ones, but the resulting crops are absolutely random that I cannot see a pattern in this. Is there anything that I can use to control the crops alchemy/purity ? I keep applying random alchemy fertilizers, should I stick to 1 element fertilizers only ?

3. Worm efficiency - I have it at 40% in a compost bin, what is the benefit of raising it to 100 ? Is it worth raising it ?

4. I got my first copper pot and I put 4 mushrooms in it since an hour ago and nothing is changed. How do I know if they are boiled or not ? I read an announcement saying they have different graphic, but I fail to see it.

Thank you kind people, I have read almost everything the wiki has on this game, but the above questions still remained unanswered.

[lachlaan]

1. Base influence gain of a crop is 5, when you harvest that gets multiplied with the influence multiplier you raised by spamming hay, humus, or droppings. So to get a bar from 0 to 100 you'd need 2000% influence bonus. 500-600% bonus will raise a 50 influence field to 75-80, so it's in line with how it should work. In terms of utility, it's only useless if you don't think the extra effort is worth the extra benefit, and different things will matter more or less, like you might want to spam another 50 lime on a field even when they give 2% plenty each, provided the field will yield wheat, and is your only wheat field. If you have more than one field,or know you need less of that crop, or aren't in a rush to get it faster, or only need 15 influence to get to 100, then you simply stop spamming lime, coal, or hay respectively (provided your influence bonus is already at 300% in this example)
2. It's just the planting humus that affects crop purity, but there's still a pretty big randomness factor involved. Still, planting with humus of the element you want to get will raise your chances.
3. Worm efficiency increases how much of their averaged elemental composition the worms in the bin contribute to the humus produced. You can feed worms "any plant" and they'll shift towards the elemental composition of that plant slowly. Then you put the worms in the bin and will push the humus produced towards their own composition.
4. I think they should have a progress bar a bit like things in ovens, but I lost my copper pot before they added the progress bar.

[Orlpar]

In terms of utility, it's only useless if you don't think the extra effort is worth the extra benefit, and different things will matter more or less, like you might want to spam another 50 lime on a field even when they give 2% plenty each

Even when they give 0% plenty each?



Purity humus is priceless nowadays, need to make the best use of it.

[Mereni]

2. Seeds purity - I keep sorting my seeds, replanting only the higher ones, but the resulting crops are absolutely random that I cannot see a pattern in this. Is there anything that I can use to control the crops alchemy/purity ? I keep applying random alchemy fertilizers, should I stick to 1 element fertilizers only ?

To be clear, it used to be that planting your highest seeds would allow you to slowly increase purity, but now we have the mechanic that seed purity doesn't matter as much and the humus you use to prep the field has an influence on purity. Some things in the wiki may say otherwise, but they haven't been updated yet. Many thread in the forum will say otherwise.

Also, a recent change means that tier 2 and tier 3 products are much better to get than they used to be. Something that takes 'flour' can use oatmeal, barley or rye, or wheat and depending on the tier, the result will be better and better for gluttony. So, you can get higher humors from growing and gluttonying with tier 2 and tier 3 products. The system is still in the implementations though, and only applies to some foods. There is more info in the OP of Project Mayhem in the Announcements section.

[Sollar]

Sorry .. at 1 I meant - when should I stop adding fertilizers at all ? Like if I add a lime 1 second before the crop is ready to harvest, do I still get the plenty bonus ? Or after some intermediary growing stage no more bonuses apply ...

[Scilly_guy]

personal experience tells me that so long as you can add a fertilizer you get the bonus, except for coal (and droppings)/anything that effects speed, these should be applied as early as possible to see the effect.

[Orlpar]

Sorry .. at 1 I meant - when should I stop adding fertilizers at all ? Like if I add a lime 1 second before the crop is ready to harvest, do I still get the plenty bonus ? Or after some intermediary growing stage no more bonuses apply ...

Bonuses from fertilizers depend only on the amount of them already put onto field. The more fertilizers you put, the less you get from them. Time when you put them only matters with speed, when you have 3 days left for a field to grow and put speed up to 200%, you'll have to wait 1,5day for it to finish. If there are like 10 minutes left before it finishes, and you speed it up to 200%, it will only drop 5 minutes from that time.

[robert]

as they havent changed the basic mechanics for farming since i semi retired.

there are only 3 ferts that you should worry about for farming as a main go to.

hay
lime
humus
coal is a very iffy item to use but its good to use as a last resort mostly.

basically if you are Tiering fields purity you use mostly coal (coal gives only pure positive bonus when used and its a speed boost) . if you are trying to tier the field it self you use hay(hay only gives pure positive boost to field influence when used) and if you want high production you use lime/humus(lime is for pure positive plenty boost but you can use humus for both plenty and influence boosts)

(pure positive means when used you do not suffer negative effects as well, dross lowers stats while semi boosting others.. making it ****)

best advice anyone can give you is get 3 fields. that saves you a hell of alot of time later on. do to the slight bonus you get from using fertilizers. do not use dross or turkey poop on fields.. poop is only if you lack coal frankly... cause you lose alot of bonus fert points using ****** fertilizer. and dross is just out right ****. with 3 fields you start out at about 40-60 points with 1 unit of hay used at fert #1 it slower degrades to about 10 after you drop over 100.. but by then you have 2000% so dont need anymore lolololol. if you want to teir the field for next type of crop you want avg 1000% influence as that is 50 points on that crops meter. each planting subtracts 5 points from all meters. so its better to focus fields for singlar types of crops. rather then going for a 4x meter.. as each meter will be -5 points with each next planting with the last one being highest (unless you plan to go insane gathering all items for influence boosting each crop to 100% .... which i dont suggest X_X)