Farming

## Gardening

Player planting their first seedling on the Homestead (Credit: IGN Pakistan)

**Gardening** is a key gameplay mechanic and plays a role in both the character's growth and main story progression.

The player starts with a farming plot at the West Peak Homestead that can hold up to 12 plants. After clearing each Miasma-covered area, the player unlocks an additional additional garden plot by planting a Dust-eater sapling into one of the scars in the soil near the initial gardening area, and each can hold up to 7 plants.

The number of growable seedlings is greater than the number of available gardening slots at any one time (and even after the garden has been fully expanded), so the player will have to choose which plants to keep and which to move to inventory to make room for newly found seedlings. Plants moved from the garden to the inventory will revert to a seedling and have to be grown to maturity again if replanted.

## Gardening Mechanics

### Watering

You can water a plant once daily to speed up plant growth. Watered plants will have floating blue sparks and cannot be watered again until the sparks completely disappear.

Compost and watering effects stack.

### Fertilizing (Compost)

You can use compost found in the wild or crafted at the Composter to speed up plant growth. Fertilized plants will have a shiny yellow ring at their base to indicate that the compost is in effect. They cannot be fertilized again until the effects of previously applied compost completely disappear.

Compost and watering effects stack.

### Channeling

Channeling is learned shortly after watering during Initiation Rite tutorial quests, and is used to instantly grow one or more parts of a plant. It can be used to help newly planted seedlings reach maturity faster, or to make a single crop ripe for immediate harvest.

While channeling a plant, the player collects earth mana that appears in the form of **light blue orbs** clustered around the base of the plant, and guides the collected energy to the part of the plant selected for channeling.

#### Blight

Channeling the same plant has a limit on the number of uses before the plant is **blighted**. Each time you complete a channeling, the plant will take damage, visible in the form of a leaf falling from it. When the plant is out of leaves, it is in danger of being blighted. Plants that are blighted stop growing and cannot be moved or placed in inventory.

To warn the player of impending blight, the color of earth mana will change from light blue to **dark blue** to indicate that the plant will be blighted if channeled this time and one more time in close succession, and then again from dark blue to **purple** to indicate that blight will occur if the player proceeds with channeling.

Plants recover from repeated channeling and earth mana orbs revert to the initial light blue if not channeled for a while. The time needed for recovery depends on the crop; while most early game crops can endure more channeling before risking blight (such as Corn, Tomato, and Cabbage) and will only take a day or two of in-game time to recover, some wild crops (such as Truffle) can take as long as an in-game week before they can be safely channeled again.

#### Curing Blighted Crops

*Main page: Liquid Sunlight*

There are two ways to cure a blighted plant. If left untouched, the plant will recover on its own after several days. The player can also craft Liquid Sunlight at the Cauldron and use it on the plant to cure it instantly. Although Huckleberry tells the player about Liquid Sunlight later in the game, the recipe for it cannot be learned until one plant has been blighted. If you have not blighted a plant by accident until now, you will need to intentionally blight one to learn the recipe.

### Harvesting

When a crop is ripe for harvest, the player can interact with the plant to select the ripened crop and press the Harvest command button (indicated by an on-screen tooltip) to gather the crop.

Ripe crops are highlighted in **green** when selected, and unripe crops are highlighted in **red**, with a "Not Ready" tooltip shown next to them. Although the tutorial states that to harvest a crop, the player needs to pull it away from the plant, pulling the harvest item from the plant is not necessary—in fact, on the Console version the Harvest command is executed immediately after pressing the button and gives no time for pulling the crop away.

#### Crop Yields

Growable seedlings can yield up to 4 crops, although actual yield ranges between 2-4 crops and is partially dependent on luck. Once a plant reaches maturity (indicated when the plant has stopped growing), the yield is the same every time depending on the number of producing branches/vines/etc.

Early-game plants have a very high change of growing to produce the maximum yield (with Corn being the only plant to produce two distinct types of crop, 3 ears of Corn and 1 Stalk). Plants found later typically have a lower chance of growing to produce the maximum yield on the first try. In order to try for a higher yield, the player can use the trimming function.

### Trimming

Trimming is the only gardening function not learned from the start. It can be purchased from Abraham's Upgrades menu after clearing the Pearl Canyon by purchasing Shears, which cost 150 Silver.

> *Sometimes plants could use a good trim to grow yields in a different manner. Trimming can also be used for aesthetic purposes.*
>
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Trimming can be used to cut off and regrow a non-producing section (branch or vine) of a plant for a chance to regrow that section to produce a yield and get the most out of a single plant. The result is based on luck: it does not guarantee that the yield will increase and can even reduce the yield once regrown. Date trees are the only plant where all crops grow from the same section, so in order to increase their yield, the player has to trim the whole crop-producing portion at the top of the tree for a chance to increase the yield.

The same plant can be trimmed multiple times if you are not satisfied with the result after it grows back. However, excessive trimming can lead to a loss of leaves, exposing the plant to the risk of Blight if channeled, so it should be used sparingly. If you do trim off all the leafy parts of a plant, wait until at least one leaf grows back before channeling.

## Upgrades

### Tonics

There are four upgrade tonics that can be consumed to enhance the player's farming abilities. Each tonic can only be crafted at the Cauldron once and permanently upgrades gardening skills, after which it disappears from the list of craftable Cauldron tools.

* Green Thumb Tonic (canyon) - increases passive plant growth speed.
* Frugal Tonic (forest) - chance of not spending a compost item when fertilizing a plant.
* Caregiver Tonic (swamp) - plants retain water for a longer time, reducing the frequency at which they need to be watered.
* Channeler Tonic (city) - channeling can be used more times before the risk of Blight occurs.

### Tokens

Tokens are either found in the wild as ready-made items or recipes, and have to be carried in the player's inventory to activate their effects (functioning similarly to Charms). Unlike tonics, tokens can be crafted more than once and extra items sold to Abraham for a small profit.

* Flourishing Token - extends the duration of compost's effects on a plant. Recipe found in the Ancient Swamp.
* Preserving Token - *use unknown.* Due to a game bug, the found recipe does not appear in the list of Recipes and cannot be crafted. On Xbox, this prevents obtaining the Greenest Thumb achievement.

## Contributor Tips

* On console (using a controller), earth mana collection can be expedited by setting the cursor somewhere in the ring of mana and rotating the camera button around the plant, rather than collecting orbs manually with the movement button (which requires more precision and is slower).
* On the earlier-game plants (such as Corn or Tomato), it's faster to move the seedling to inventory and replant it, then use channeling to help it reach maturity faster and see what the output will be. Later-game plants take longer to grow and require multiple channeling sessions to reach maturity, so trimming might is more efficient to change their yield.
* Even though tokens can be crafted more than once and be sold, their sell price is too low to justify the use of ingredients to make them more than once.