Field

Game Version v1.0.0.9

A **field** is a farming "building" that enables the production of various crops and vegetables.

## Description

A Field is a patch of land that is used for cultivation of various plants, such as grains, vegetables, flax, etc. The Field is unlocked and immediately usable at the start of the game. Fields can be either manually tended by the player or can be automated by assigning villagers to the Farmer profession through the Farm Shed.

Each plant takes up a 1x1 square of space, and a single field's maximum size is 16x16.

## Construction

Fields can be constructed by selecting the *Field* under Farming from the Build Menu and drawing an area on the ground. The width and length (in squares) is shown on screen while designating the field area. Left-click to finish.

Fields can only be placed on open ground, and must be free of any obstacles like trees and stumps (stumps can be removed with a shovel).

Fields are always aligned to the axis of the in-game cardinal directions (north-south, east-west) and cannot be rotated.

A newly created field has to be "grubbed up" before it can be used for farming, which can be done by using a Hoe on each square. This only has to be performed once for each new field.

Fields can be destroyed with a hammer, whether they are planted with crops or not. Equip the hammer, right click, and select Destroy from the option wheel. Note you can't destroy part of a field.

## Growing Crops

Here are the steps required to grow crops on a field. These steps have to be completed in-order every time to grow a new crop:

0. **Grubbing Up**: If it is a newly created field, it has to be "grubbed up" before it can be used for cultivation. Use a Hoe on each square of the field to prepare it. This only has to be performed once.)
1. **Fertilization**: Using a Simple Bag or Bag select Fertilizer mode from the right-click menu and put fertilizer on each square of the field. You need to have enough Fertilizer in your inventory to perform this. 1x Fertilizer per square is required.
2. **Ploughing**: After the field has been fertilized, use a Hoe on each square of the field to prepare for sowing.
3. **Sowing**: Using a Bag or Simple Bag select the Seed type you wish to plant from the right-click menu and sow the seeds on each square of the field. You need to have enough seeds in your inventory to perform this. 1x seed per square is required. Different crops can be planted in each season. You can check the seed's information to see in which season it can be planted and harvested. (If you planted the wrong seed by accident, you can remove it with a Hoe.)
4. **Harvesting**: When the crops have fully matured (you can check the status on the Fields screen in the Management menu) you can harvest the field. Harvesting requires different tools depending on the crop. Grains (Wheat, Oat, Rye), Poppy and Flax need to be cut down with a Scythe or Sickle. Vegetables (Carrot, Cabbage, Beetroot, Onion) can be harvested with an empty hand.
After harvesting a field, it can be used again for growing crops by performing these steps, starting with fertilization.

**Important:** You don't have to complete the fertilizing, ploughing and sowing in a single season! If you fertilize/plough a field, but don't plant any crops on it, the field will not revert back to a fallow (unfertilized) state when the season changes, keeping all the fertilizer and work put into it!

## Automation

Fields can be automatically tended by villagers of the Farmer profession. They will do all the necessary steps to grow the designated crops on the fields and will also harvest mature crops.

Villagers cannot be assigned to fields directly! Villagers have to be assigned to a Farm Shed and given the Farmer profession. Farmers will automatically tend every field in the settlement, but they work completely on their own volition, so workers cannot be assigned to fields directly and individual fields cannot be prioritized for work, although farmers will prioritize fields closest to the farm shed.

To automate farming, a field has to be created and the desired crop designated. Navigate to the *Fields* tab in the Management menu and select a field. (The field's location can be seen by the icon on the small map.) On the right side of the screen the squares of the field will be visible on the grid, depending on how large it is. Select the desired crop from the top and mark all the squares the crop to be grown on. Exiting the menu and confirming the changes will enable the field for automatic cultivation. Villagers with the Farmer profession will now perform all the necessary farming tasks (grubbing, fertilizing, ploughing, sowing, harvesting) on that field. If the field's designation remains unchanged, villagers will replant and harvest the same crop each year automatically when the correct season comes around.

Assigning more Farmers can speed up the cultivation process, as each worker only performs a single task at once. More workers can cultivate a field faster by performing different tasks at the same time (one villager fertilizes, another one ploughs, a third sows, etc.), and work more fields at once. However, the Farmers efficiency is determined by how far the fields are from the Farm Shed. If the fields are outside certain range, the Farmers efficiency will drop with these fields.

All crops and seeds/resources harvested by villagers will be placed in the Food Storage and Resource Storage respectively. If there is no space in storage, materials will be placed in the Farm Shed's own storage chest. If all storages are full, production will cease.

A field's production can be changed at any time by selecting a different crop or removed from automation by deleting the designations from it's grid in the Fields menu.

## Known Issues

As of the version (v0.2.1.2) there are known bugs and issues with automated farming. These problems might not affect everyone or every game, but can severely affect gameplay:

* **Farmers randomly stop working**. Assigned Farmers can randomly stop tending fields and just stand idling around the Barn or near the fields, even though there is still work to be done. Saving and reloading (F5-F9) can sometimes fix this issue and allow the workers to continue. This can also be sometimes prevented by not touching fields designated for automatic farming. **Do not** "help" the AI, do not manually tend (grub, fertilize, plow, etc.) a field you have marked for automatic farming in Management! This can confuse the AI and make your worker stop working altogether.