Farming

## MMO

**Farming** is a Tier 2 crafting skill in the Household branch. Farming is used to produce crops for activities such as Cooking, Tailoring, Animal Lore and sowing new crops. Level 30 Household is a prerequisite of learning this skill though to increase Farming to level 30, Household must be at level 60.

#### Getting started

Prepare a 11x11 gathering field with any ground resource of quality 30 (quality 20 for Wild grape vines). The type doesn't really matter, although it seems that wild plants spawn more often on soils. The center tile has to be grassy, so `Pour Water` on it to regrow the grass.

Then get a Primitive sickle or Sickle and `Look for - Wild Plants` on your gathering field. Wild crops will spawn around you, depending on the current Seeding day and your region.

#### The fields

Prepare your fields by plowing grassy fertile soil with a Shovel or a Plough or by pouring fertile soil from your inventory on the ground. Hint: Dropping soil from your inventory will default to 30 piece stacks. You can Shift+click a stack to manually sort out 15 soil to drop. A 15 to 30 soil stack will represent the top layer of a tile, but using 15 at a time will halve the amount of soil needed to cover a field.

The soil has to have at least the same quality as the used seeds and Fresh Water. You can improve the quality of the soil by using the `Fertilize` ability if you have level 90 farming.

#### Fertilize

With Dung in your inventory, right click on plowed or dropped Fertile Soil and choose `fertilize`.

You can't `fertilize` Fertile Soil with seeds already planted in the tile. You can't fertilize grassy Fertile Soil.

You can inspect Fertile Soil on the ground to determine its quality. After fertilizing, the System Chat will show the new soil quality.

Use the Improper Honey recipe in level 60 Cooking to improve Dung quality and increase the amount of quality improvement per fertilization.

#### Sowing

You can sow out your crops during their seeding days, check the calendar to see what is in season. You can only sow crops that can be gathered in your region, importing other seeds/crops to sow them is not possible.

The quality of the soil and the growing crops gets set to the lowest value of the effective Farming skill, quality of fertile soil, fresh water and the seeds. The quality can raise by 1 with a chance of 10% for wild and 5% for domesticated crops, you can raise the chance by following the crop rotation and by increasing your luck.

* *Note: Sowing on Soil will halve the quality of the soil and the growing crops. Always make sure to use Fertile soil.*

Rotate vegetables with grains and potatoes; water and replow the tiles for flax and grapes.

#### Harvesting

Crops will be fully grown when the next gathering phase starts and will rot and disappear after a while.

* *Note: You can `Inspect` your crops to see how long it takes until they reach their next stage (seedling - half grown - fully grown - rotten)*

The yield is fixed, you have the chance to harvest domesticated seeds from wild crops.

The quality of the harvest gets set to the lower value of the crop and the effective farming skill, the quality of the soil doesn't change, even if the skill lowers the harvest. The quality of the harvest can raise by 1 with a chance of 10% for wild and 5% for domesticated crops, you can raise the chance by following the crop rotation and by increasing your luck.

## Your Own

#### Stages of Growth

Crops take 8 stages of growth to reach maturity *(when they can be harvested)*, known as a "growth ticks". The visible crop model changes twice, from sprout on the ground when you plant, to the "green" stage after 4 growth ticks, to the "mature" stage after 8 growth ticks, at which point they can be harvested.

Crops increase by one growth tick each time the weather changes from Sunny to Rainy, or from Rainy to Sunny.

Weather stays the same for the entire length of one in-game day. The default length of one in-game day is 3 real life hours, though this can be changed by server settings.

So, this means one in-game day is the minimum amount of time it takes for a crop to increase by one growth tick. However, the growth tick will not increase if the weather is the same as the previous day**.** Only a change in the weather will cause the growth tick to increase.

#### Weather

The growth of a crop is determined by two kinds of weather: Rainy days and Sunny days. All other weather types are ignored in the algorithm.

*NOTE: One consequence of this is that crops will no longer grow during the winter months when snowfall replaces the rain.*

Here is an example of a weather pattern you might experience:

* Day 1: Sunny
* Day 2: Sunny
* Day 3: Rainy (+1 growth)
* Day 4: Cloudy
* Day 5: Rainy
* Day 6: Sunny (+1 growth)
* Day 7: Cloudy
* Day 8: Rainy (+1 growth)

As you can see, the cloudy days don't count as a weather change, and end up increasing the number of days it takes the crops to grow.

Whereas in previous patches it took 24 hours for crops to grow, it now is random based on the weather, with 24 hours *(8 ticks of 3 hours each)* being the absolute minimum amount of time possible.

In our example, for instance, you can see that the crop only advanced 3 ticks in 24 hours. If this weather pattern were to repeat, then our example would require 17 in-game days to reach 8 growth ticks, which is 2 days and 3 hours in real-life time. *(In fact, my own tests with growing crops all tended to average a real-life growth time of slightly less than 3 days, though a few individual test times were much shorter and at least one was much longer.)*

#### Stages of Rot

After a crop has reached maturity and is harvestable, it will then last for 3 more growth ticks before it rots.

Again, these growth ticks are still based on the daily weather changes, so 9 hours is the least amount of time it can take before the crop dies *(based on a 3-hour day)*.

The good news is that the randomness in the daily weather can extend that time by increasing the time between each tick. However, you still want to harvest your crops as close to maturity as possible in order to maximize crop yields.

#### Tips/Notes

* You should plant your crops on either a Sunny day or a Rainy day. Planting during any other kind of weather will always add an extra in-game day to your crop growth time, whereas planting on a Sunny or Rainy day has a chance to avoid that extra day.

* It is useful to plant towards the end of the day cycle, since that can cut between 2-3 hours off of your growth time.

* Don't plant anything during the winter season. During winter there is no rain, so crops will not grow then. On top of that, you can get snow drifts on the ground that may randomly cover up your crops, killing them. *(You can check the time of year by pressing "M" to open up the minimap, though you may have to enable the date display first.)*

* When dropping high quality fertile soil, one can separate the piles into 15 and then drop, to double your amount of soil.

* Can increase quality of soil by sow 99q seeds. 1q of soil -> 20q, 10q -> 27q, 20q -> 35q, 30q -> 43q, 40q -> 51, 50q -> 59q, 60q -> 67q, 70q ->75q, 80q -> 83q, 90q -> 91q.

#### Tools

* Primitive shovel/Shovel - is used for plowing the ground in preparation for planting the crops.
* Plough - is also used to plow the ground and is much quicker than using a shovel
* Primitive sickle/Sickle - is used to harvest mature crops, and for gathering wild plants when you don't have any seeds.

#### Items

* Plants - are also used as a seed to regrow themselves
	+ Cabbage - used to tame wild sheep, and cooking
	+ Carrot - used to tame wild horses, and cooking
	+ Grapes - are used in Brewing to make Wine
	+ Onion - used in cooking
	+ Flax Seeds - Flax stems are used to in the production of Linen rope and cloth (after processing)
	+ Wheat - used to tame wild pigs, and grinding into Flour for cooking; also produces Straw which is used for building barns and stables and some other crafted items
	+ Potato - used to tame wild bulls and cows, and cooking
	+ Peas - used to tame wild pigs, and cooking

#### Plowing

There are 3 types of soils. Grass, Soil and Fertile Soil.

You can sow seeds on Fertile Soil and Soil, But sowing on Soil will give you a smaller harvest.

You can right click with a Primitive shovel/Shovel equipped to turn Grass into Fertile Soil. Rocky Surfaces, Soil and some steep tiles cannot be plowed.

After crops are harvested the Fertile Soil grown on will turn into Soil and might decrease in its quality. You can fertilize Soil and turn it back into Fertile Soil.

When you pick up Soil and Fertile Soil by Terraforming they will yield Soil and Fertile Soil respectively. However, when you try to pick up Grass by Terraforming they will yield Fertile Soil. So if you want to be really inefficient and troll you can refuse to use the Plow ability and just pick up Grass and pour out the given Fertile Soil to plow your field. (Q: can you fertilize unplowed / fertile soils? Check the Q before dropping to know how good the Fertile Soil is)

#### Gather Wild Plants

Until you have seeds or plants, you must gather seeds from wild plants to then sow in your fields. Level 0 of the **Farming** skill allows the use of a Primitive sickle (or sickle) to search for and gather wild plants.

Searching for wild plants will spawn harvest-able brushes and plants in the area that is only visible to you, harvesting these plants will yield seeds. The wild plants that are available are determined by two things, first the crop must be marked as gatherable in the current calendar. Secondly crop must be available to you in that region, so dependent you will only discover one type of vegetable and one oat at a time.

#### Fertilize

You can use the fertilize ability at level 90 **Farming**.

Higher quality Fertile Soil will yield higher quality crops. The quality of the seeds determine the yield.

Fertilizing Fertile Soil will increase the fertile soil quality and thereby improve your crop yields.

Fertile Soil is not used to fertilize plowed ground. Take Dung from your coops, barns and stables and right click on the ground and choose farming/fertilize.

You can't fertilize Fertile Soil with seeds already planted in the tile.

You can pick up Fertile Soil with Terraforming and hover your mouse over it to inspect its quality. Caution: After harvesting it may show Q100 SOIL, but you need to fertilize it to make it Q100 FERTILE soil.

Growing crops will eventually turn fertile soil into regular Soil and fertilizing will turn it back into fertile soil.

#### Sow Seeds

Right click on Fertile Soil and choose **Sow** and the seed type. The word "seed" is used loosely. Except for Flax and Wheat, you sow the vegetables themselves. (Requires Farming 60 for cabbages, grapes and potatoes, and 30 for all others.)

#### Training Tips

*Have a piece of advice for effective training? Edit this section and place it here!*

* Farming skill is increased by picking silk cocoons from mulberry trees.
* A steady yet easy way to level farming is to plow tiles of fertile soil. You will eventually need more space for your crops, so it might save you some time later.
* One easy way to level up your farming skill, and start your farm at the same time is to use "Gather Wild Plants". You will get enough plants and seeds to start your farm, and also level up farming in the process.

## Gallery

* peas as fully grown plant
* onion as fully grown plant